LIVERIGHT S.P.Q.R: A History of Ancient Rome

I started to read this book with a question in mind: "what distinguished the Roman empire from the rest, how did they rise while many others didn't?".On the positive side, the author is clearly super well versed on the topic, and shares an astonishing amount of findings and facts. However, these findings / facts were not presented in an easy to read way. I found the book to be very hard to read as I personally felt there was no coherent story or a natural flow.I also wasn't able to find the answer to my original question. If you read a few hundred books per year and/or are a massive Roman history fan this could make a nice addition, otherwise I'd pass.

All Gud

Mary Beard is up there in terms of current day classicists and her expertise on Ancient Rome makes her the perfect candidate to take on the role of producing a history of Rome for our time.There is no doubt reading this that Beard really does live and breathe her subject matter and speaks to you as though she was there having conversations with these people. The book is often anecdotal, relatable and humorous. Making history relevant always has been Beard’s underlying quest to determine why history is still so important and how we can relate the past to the present and this book is no exception.So why 3 stars? The stars awarded are a credit to Beard’s breadth of knowledge. Those parts of the book where you are gripped and the pleasure of being party to her enormous wealth of knowledge on a subject I love.However, if I were to review this book on the basis of whether it sets out its objectives and satisfies the reader I’m not so sure. One thing that jumps out at you reading this book is that whether or not it is excellently researched or entertaining, it is NOT “a history of Ancient Rome” in terms of what many readers would expect.For anyone who has a mild interest in Rome or has very little experience with it I would steer well clear of this book. Whilst Mary’s writing style is accessible, much of the content of this book is not for those who don’t have a working knowledge of Ancient Rome beforehand. Several names are peppered throughout sometimes expecting you to know who they are, events happening are taken for granted and more importantly so much is missing. In fact the book seems very deliberate in teaching you considerable amounts about the people and places you don’t normally hear about and glazing over the famous bits. Not only this but her consistent lack of committing to an answer (the ultimate “we just don’t know” attitude to ancient history) is far too frequent for me and begs the reader to infer why they are even reading this if the author isn’t invested in any of the sources she is working with.If you write a history of Rome you either have a very long book (certainly longer than 537 pages) with considerable detail or you have a smaller book which covers the history briefly but without the detail.Beard appears to do neither. Based on the length of this book it would be long enough to cover the first millennium of the Roman Empire (as it does) in relatively broad strokes. However, Beard appears to go into specific events or themes in microscopic and anecdotal levels of detail whilst glazing over pretty significant people and events. She adopts the strategy of going into detail (good) but only picks certain bits.Take the emperors for example. The chapter on Augustus is superb and arguably the highlight of the book for me. Yet the chapter before it barely gets under the surface of Caesar (probably assuming we’ve heard all this before) and the chapter after runs through the following emperors up to commodus (lots of emperors) so quickly and doesn’t even cover some of them barely at all. Just taking the first few, Caligula is given a lot of coverage but Claudius gets next to nothing. Almost nothing said of the Flavian dynasty, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius etc in fact I’m not even sure Antoninus Pius is mentioned once.It’s almost as though Beard has an agenda with this book. Essentially this book is about Mary Beard using her accessible and anecdotal writing style to explain how the Roman people (not just the important ones either) evolved and changed over 1,000 years socially and politically in terms of how an empire should be run and how it’s citizens should behave. The emphasis is clearly on social and political change. It’s no mistake that almost the first 40% of the book is entirely a political and social commentary on the rise and fall of the republic.There are so many points in this book where I think “what am I reading?” And “I can’t follow this at all”. It’s like listening to a teacher who cannot resist but go off at a tangent. There’s nothing wrong with a tangential and anecdotal style but when you’re selling it as a “history of Ancient Rome” it’s easy to feel short changed. It’s like going shopping to buy one item and coming out with 20 different items minus the one you went in for. A lot of the time reading this book you feel like you are not learning history but you are just getting Beard’s opinions, anecdotal jokes or showing off her Latin. In this sense it may be a socio-political commentary on the first millennium in Rome but “a history of Ancient Rome” it isn’t I’m afraid.Still worth a read and very insightful for anyone with some existing knowledge (if you are starting out please buy something else for now). For anyone wanting to know more about Augustus’ influence the chapter on him is superb. The final chapter on life in the provinces is also fascinating as this is rarely debated in other similar books. The first half of the book is very dull though and feels like it takes a long time ambling its way through Beard’s quasi-fetish of Cicero which dominates so much of the first half of the book.I think if Mary Beard had sub-titled this book with the idea that it was socio-political commentary on the first millennium in Rome centred around Roman citizenship then it would be a 5 star book. Sadly what we have is a book that is interesting and insightful and written with superb expertise but ultimately isn’t what it says it is on the cover which makes it, at times, come across as a rambling and anecdotal mess with little thread or coherent chronology of history being communicated.

This book is more of a critical analysis of Rome's history than history itself. Mary does not describe events but rather analyses them to extract their meaning. She is very sceptical of historical accounts and at time she seems to even question if Rome was as great as it is remembered. This is good but it can get confusing for someone who knows little about Roman history. She often jumps around the timeline and sometimes goes in circles without any clarity mentioning 2 or 3 unrelated events in the space of one page.Personally I was looking for a book that would take me through the different chapters of Roman history and describe the events, battles and give detail of political and social systems.

This should not be called “A History of Ancient Rome” but more of essays analysing it through the writers biased opinions.I thought I was getting a history book that would take me through a chronological timeline with detailed accounts. What I got was much different.In fact, I’m shocked that this book has been so well received. It is quite pretentious and highly opinionated (without actually backing her opinions) piece of writing. There is a lot of assumptions of how certain people thought with no reason for it but her preconceived ideas of the world. She looks at the past through the prism of today which changes history itself.In order to get a certain piece of history you need to go through A LOT of her annotations. If that’s what you’re looking for than great. However, that’s NOT what this book is marketed as. Quite disappointing really.All these (and other reasons, I could go on for days really) make for a really exhausting read. Information that could have been written in 2 pages is extended to a whole chapter because her assumptions - NOT facts - and unrelated events are plastered all over it, interrupting the flow.I’m wondering who is the targeted audience of this book. It’s definitely NOT for the general public wanting an introduction to Roman history, given how pretentious the writing format itself is. I also highly doubt that scholars would want to read this book unless they want an opinion piece.Enough ranting for me. I DO NOT recommend this book and certainly do not see it as “essential” reading as the reviews led me to believe. Highly overrated and underwhelming.

Mary (bless her) really does know her stuff. I found at times the book was heavy going, but passable because you could hear Mary's voice in your head and her enthusiasm about her subject (yes I know. Some like her or Loath her. I have always liked her.)! The early time of the Romans is often over shadowed by the later periods of the Caesars and the roman period where Britain and Europe were under them, at the height of the empire. Although I find that history interesting too, the early history of how Rome came about is terribly important because it helps you put it into perspective. With this book (if you can retain the amount of knowledge imparted. (its a bit like the intro of lord of the rings)) you will get a great grounding in the foundation and important people of early Rome. And it will come in very useful when you next visit an roman site or Rome itself. A Great Read (literally) full of knowledge. Well done girl!!

I absolutely enjoyed this read. This is a very informative and entertaining read and for the first time I feel I have a solid understanding of the timeframe of the Roman empire and what happened around when.Here are a couple of aspects that I enjoyed the most:- the fact that this is an analytical piece and how she reminds us what we can know (and how) and what we cannot know. As such, I cannot agree with the previous reviewer who criticises her "we just don't know" attitude. On the contrary, I enjoyed how (i) she remind us that our knowledge cannot be taken for granted, (ii) and walks us through her analysis and thought process rather than selling events and positions as a fact.- initially, I also thought that the title was misleading, i.e it appeared in the first chapters that this is the history of the CITY of Rome and not Rome itself. However, I can testify that this book is really about Rome as an empire in its 1st millenium of existence. Naturally, Rome was just a plot somewhere in Italy at the beginning, and that's how she starts out the book. She does discuss, in later chapters, the wider empire and how it was managed (or not) and the implications for Rome itself.- I really enjoyed her analysis and account of the early (hazy) days of Rome. I had never heard of the Conflict of the Orders and thought it absolutely fascinating that the lower classes managed to extract rights (e.g. to have an elected tribune) through a walk-out. How advanced for their times these people were. It is fascinating that it happened, and the more puzzling that it hardly happened thereafter (thinking middle ages and even nowadays when you think of how the costs of living affect those less fortunate in the UK)- Equally I enjoyed reading how similar debates were now and then. For example, the question on what it means to be Roman, who is Roman and who is not, and how (and whether) citizenship should be granted seems a very timely debate. As such, I feel that the Romans had a pretty pragmatic approach that should give us some food for thought for current debates.- I enjoyed how she also puts forwards accounts / analysis of those people who left little written accounts, such as women, slaves etc.In sum, I would absolutely recommend this book. I feel it finally pieced together my disparate knowledge of random events / people of the empire while discussing the different stages of the Roman empire, where I found especially the segue from a republic to a de facto monarchy (starting with Augustus) revealing.