Mary Beard, "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome"

  – kindle

 

Read from December 24^th to March 4^th 2021

My Rating: 

 

 

In the Epilogue of her SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard confesses that the book is the result of about fifty years of history researching, archaeological sites visiting, Latin language learning, Latin literature reading and books with Roman subject studying, because for her “the Romans are a subject not just of history and inquiry but also of imagination and fantasy, horror and fun.”

Ancient civilizations, she says, do not teach direct lessons, either military or political, and are not necessarily models to follow. However, we are supposed to learn a lot by simply engaging with their history, which is our own:

We do not want to follow Cicero’s example, but his clash with the bankrupt aristocrat, or popular revolutionary, with which I started this book still underlies our views of the rights of the citizen and still provides a language for political dissent: ‘Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?’ The idea of ‘desolation’ masquerading as ‘peace’, as Tacitus put into the mouths of Rome’s British enemies, still echoes in modern critiques of imperialism. And the lurid vices that are attributed to the most memorable Roman emperors have always raised the question of where autocratic excess ends and a reign of terror begins.

Another purpose of the book, as stated in the Prologue, is to debunk many myths and half-truths about Romans that badly need to be demystified, inter alia: that they proceeded to the world conquest according to a plan, that the empire expanded into a world of peaceful communities, that Roman civilization opposed classical Greece like a “thuggish younger sibling… committed to engineering, military efficiency and absolutism, whereas the Greeks preferred intellectual inquiry, theatre and democracy.”

Therefore, famous historical characters parade before our eyes, often with their image a little dented: the sage Cicero is laughed at because of the overinflated opinion of himself, the mighty Spartacus is denied the idealised image from modern writings as an “ideological hero… who was fighting the very institution of slavery” for at that time slavery was taken for granted, the pompous Augustus is dismissed as an “old reptile”, the legendary triumvirate is cheekily called “the gang of three”, the tragic Cleopatra’s death as a suicide by snakebite is doubted, for “hefty” snakes are not easy to conceal in a fruit basket, etc.

Elsewhere, bad translations are savoury explanations for  some other myths and common ground beliefs: the image of Caligula partying “with his sisters ‘underneath’ him and his wife ‘on top,’ rests simply on a mistranslation of the words of Suetonius, who is referring to the place settings — ‘above’ and ‘below’ — at a Roman dining table”, and his intriguing order given to his soldiers to gather seashells as war spoils is explained by the fact that the word musculi in Latin means both ‘shells’ and ‘military huts’.

Famous sentences or phrases are either historical inaccurate or simply inventions: “Et tu, Brute” is Shakespeare’s phrase, not Caesar’s (he actually said, reproachably or regretfully in Greek, ‘You too, child’); the Battle of the Caudine Forks, in 321 BCE, was not really a battle – Romans were trapped in a narrow mountain gully, the Forks, with no water, and they simply surrendered; while crossing the Rubiconthe exact Cesar’s words were a quote from an Athenian comic play, ‘Let the dice be thrown’, therefore they were much less decisive than the usual translation ‘The die is cast’. The Twelve Tables (bronze tablets now lost on which was written the first Roman law) gave some confusing punishments everybody hopes are only bad translations, like the one in which the body of a debtor with several creditors should be divided into pieces to give each creditor according to the amount owed

In fact, often even accurate information is supplemented with anecdotes and joking remarks that make ancient Rome vivid and actual:

•  The fact that the acronym SPQR is seen even today everywhere in Rome has led to inevitable new “translations”, like ‘Sono Pazzi Questi Romani’ (‘These Romans are mad’);

• “Cancel culture phenomenon” is not at all new. In the third and second centuries BCE, foreign influence (from literature and philosophy to naked exercise, fancy food and depilation), especially Greek, was rejected as “bound to sap the strength of the Roman character”. Cato the Elder, for example, dismissed Socrates as a ‘terrible prattler’.

• Ordinary people were educated enough to understand and write jokes about famous writers (graffiti with quotes from Vergil to illustrate inappropriate actions, for example) or philosophers: a painting dating from the second century CE as the main decoration of a bar shows The Seven Sages accompanied by scatological slogans:

Above Thales ran the words ‘Thales advised those who shit hard to really work at it’; above Solon, ‘To shit well Solon stroked his belly’; and above Chilon, ‘Cunning Chilon taught how to fart without making a noise.’ Beneath the Sages there was another row of figures, all sitting together on a communal multiseater lavatory (a normal arrangement in the Roman world). They too are uttering lavatorial mottoes: for example, ‘Jump up and down and you’ll go quicker’ and ‘It’s coming’.

•  Pirates are compared with nowadays terrorists with their human trafficking and rogue state navies.

• Caligula’s nickname originated in his childhood, when his parents used to dress him in a soldier’s uniform complete with army boots called caligae in Latin.

 

Overall, an amazing, nonconformist but without vulgarisation historical narrative that introduces the reader to an era with its ups and downs not only as a spectator, but often as a participant. The last words of the book remain with us long after we closed the book, like an echo of a dialogue in a hall of lost steps:

We do the Romans a disservice if we heroise them, as much as if we demonise them. But we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to take them seriously – and if we close our long conversation with them. This book, I hope, is not just A History of Ancient Rome but part of that conversation with its Senate and People: SPQR.