SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
Mary Beard, 2015
How did an unremarkable little town in central Italy become a power on three continents? The British historian Mary Beard tells the story of a thousand years of Roman history, from the legend of Romulus to the year 212, when every free inhabitant of the empire became a citizen. She looks for the other side of every famous story and shows that Rome's strength lay in its knack for making outsiders its own.
Who it is for
For anyone who wants to understand how a small town became the Roman Empire. And for anyone curious how historians tell a loud legend apart from what really happened.
In a certain sense, we know more about Rome than the Romans themselves did.
How a town by a river became Rome
Imagine a city where more than a million people live. This is Rome in 63 BC, the largest city in Europe. It rules lands from Spain to Syria. And once it was a small, unremarkable town in central Italy.
How did it become a vast power? The Romans themselves puzzled over this. The British historian Mary Beard called her book “SPQR”. These four letters stand for “the Senate and People of Rome”. The Senate was a gathering of about six hundred men who had once held high office. The People were all adult men with the rights of a citizen.
Beard does not admire Rome blindly, and in every story she looks for the other side. Her main idea is simple. Rome did not grow because the Romans were by nature more warlike than their neighbors, and it did not follow a plan drawn up in advance. It grew because it knew how to make outsiders its own, and because for centuries it argued about what freedom is.
First we will see a conspiracy we know about only from the winner's words. Then we will hear about a brother killed on the day the city was founded, and about a power that lost battles but not wars. We will also meet the first emperor, who on the surface abolished nothing. And the story ends in 212, when all the free inhabitants of the empire became Romans in a single day. Let's begin with the conspiracy.
A conspiracy we know from the winner's words
In the autumn of 63 BC, Rome was expecting a coup. The plot, it was claimed, was being prepared by Catiline. He came from an ancient noble family but was almost bankrupt. Elections in Rome cost huge sums of money, and Catiline had lost the election for consul twice in a row. There were two consuls, they were elected for one year, and there was no higher office in the state. According to his opponent, Catiline promised to cancel everyone's debts, kill the leading politicians and set fire to the city.
That opponent was the consul of that year, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the famous orator. He came from the small town of Arpinum and had fought his way to the top thanks to his speeches in the courts. In the summer of that year, Cicero came to the next elections with an armed guard, and armor could be seen under his toga. Beard writes that it is as if a politician today turned up in parliament in a business suit and carrying a machine gun. On 8 November, Cicero made his accusation in the Senate, and that same night Catiline fled the city. His accomplices were arrested, and Cicero had them executed without trial. Catiline himself soon died in battle. Cicero was hailed as the father of the fatherland. But five years later, the people voted to exile anyone who had executed a Roman citizen without trial. Cicero had to leave, and his house in Rome was wrecked.
The most detailed account of those days was left by Cicero himself. Beard thinks the question is not whether he exaggerated the danger, but how much he exaggerated it. His account is like a quarrel between neighbors when you can hear only one of them through the wall.
To hear the other side, Beard looks at coins. Their design changed every year back then, and from the number of stamps used to strike them, scholars estimate how many coins were made. At the end of the 60s BC, the making of coins dropped sharply. Cash ran short, and lenders were demanding their money back. So Catiline's people may have had real reasons for despair.
Beard calls this approach reading “against the grain”. It means finding the cracks in the winner's story and filling them with other evidence. There is a simple habit to take from this. When you hear a loud story about a villain, it helps to ask who told it and what they gained from it.
About the author
Mary Beard is a historian of the ancient world. The publishers of this book call her the world's leading expert on ancient history. Here she tells the story of Rome for a general reader and draws on the finds of the last fifty years.
All books by this author: Mary Beard
Terms from the book
- Senate
- Cicero
- Alexander
- Republic
- Gracchus
- Caesar
- Caligula
- SPQR: Short for the Latin words Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, “the Senate and People of Rome”. It was the Romans' short way of naming the lawful power of their state.
- Catiline: Lucius Sergius Catilina, a Roman aristocrat who was accused in 63 BC of plotting against the state. He died in battle.
- Consul: The highest elected office in the Roman Republic. There were two consuls, and they were elected for one year.
- Arpinum: A small town about 100 kilometers from Rome, Cicero's birthplace.
- Romulus: The legendary founder and first king of Rome. His name is formed from the Latin name of the city, Roma.
- Remus: Romulus's twin brother. According to the legend, Romulus killed him on the day the city was founded.
- Livy: Titus Livius, a Roman historian who lived under Augustus. He wrote a huge history of Rome from the founding of the city.
- Tiber: The river in central Italy on which Rome stands.
- Sabines: A people of central Italy, neighbors of early Rome.
- Horace: Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a Roman poet of the first century BC.
- Cannae: A place in southern Italy where Hannibal crushed the Roman army in 216 BC.
- Hannibal: A general from Carthage who crossed the Alps with elephants at the end of the third century BC and fought Rome in Italy for many years.
- Carthage: A city in North Africa, in what is now Tunisia, and Rome's main rival. The Romans destroyed it in 146 BC.
- Tribune: A tribune of the people, an elected official who defended the interests of ordinary citizens and could block the decisions of other officials.
- Marius: Gaius Marius, a Roman general of the late second century BC, elected consul seven times.
- Rubicon: A small river in the north of today's Italy. At that time the border of Italy ran along it.
- Augustus: The first Roman emperor, Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son. The name means roughly “revered”. He died in AD 14.
- Pompeii: A town in southern Italy buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. That is why its houses, bars and writing on the walls survived so well.
- Timgad: A Roman town in North Africa, in what is now Algeria, founded in 100 as a settlement for retired soldiers.
- Caracalla: A Roman emperor who ruled from 211 to 217. In 212 he gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire.
- Zoilos: Gaius Julius Zoilos, a former slave, most likely Julius Caesar's secretary. He later became a rich benefactor of his home town, Aphrodisias in Asia Minor.
All terms
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