SPQR A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard

As Dante had Virgil for his guide through Hell and Purgatory so Mary Beard had Cicero as her guide through the Roman republic. This is an important point and what makes the book so good. Instead of starting with the end of the Etruscan kings, through the republic and finishing with the Empire, Mary Beard starts in 63 BC. Cicero, with his skill in oratory, had persuaded the senate that Cataline (a disgruntled and bankrupt aristocrat) was the orchestrator of a plot to assassinate Rome’s elected officials. We start here because this is where the strongest evidence comes from for the history of Rome. This is where we have most written evidence.

By Tristan Ferne – Flickr: It’s Rome, it’s Professor Mary Beard!, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22643486

As we move towards the beginnings of the republic we start to move more into myth and legend. We have Romulus and Remus vying alongside the later founding story of Virgil’s Aeneid. We have the rape of Lucretia. Of course it’s not just Cicero’s voice we hear, there are others. As we move towards the empire there are Pliny (the elder and younger), Tacitus, Plutarch and so on. Many of the stories that have come down from the likes of Suetonius come under the microscope. Was Caligula quite that bad or was it convenient for Claudius to let those stories stick to help legitimise his ascendancy to the throne? Did Nero sit back as Rome burnt, despite Nero being the sponsor of effective relief measures for the homeless after the fire? This is a great, well researched, page turning account of ancient Rome.