SPQR by Mary Beard

SPQR is a brief modern history of Rome from its earliest beginnings to the end of its prime years of empire.  Beard has a full and distinguished career as a classicist behind her, and in SPQR she writes fluently and insightfully not only about what we know about ancient Rome, but also about what the Romans thought they knew about Roman history, what most of us think we know about Roman history, and what we actually don't know and can't now ever know.

For example, did Livia really poison Augustus by painting the figs on a tree with poison to clear the way for her son Tiberius to become emperor?  Was Claudius really so in love with gambling that he outfitted his carriage such that he could continue to dice even as he travelled from place to place?  Did Nero use a self-sinking boat in an attempt to assassinate Agrippina, and was her maid murdered in her stead when the maid falsely claimed that she was her mistress assuming that the guards would rescue rather than kill her? 

These are the kind of stories that make Roman history the stuff of melodramatic television series almost 2000 years after the fact, and these are the kinds of stories that we love to read about Rome.  However, Beard points out that in most cases, we do not have contemporary accounts of these events. Roman historians like Suetonius or Tacticus wrote 50 or 100 years afterwards.  Just how could some of the stories they tell have escaped the palace walls in the first place?  How accurate were those stories 2 or 3 or more generations down the road? Especially when contemporary politics made it convenient to play up the debauchery of a Nero, or the competence of a Hadrian? It seems likely that substantial parts of the stories about Rome that we love to read might just be pure invention. 

Beard brings this kind of questioning perspective to the full sweep of Roman history, from the competing mythologies of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome by Aeneas to the economic and political reasons behind the fall of the Roman Republic.  She asks questions about what we think we know, and reminds us how much of our knowledge is based on a somewhat random collection of surviving stones and inscriptions, and a very incomplete collection of stories, letters, and histories. 

SPQR is an interesting read. 

But as I was reading, I wondered why. Knowing more about Roman history, or even knowing more about historiography, doesn't really serve any long term interests of mine. And SPQR, while well-written and erudite, isn't one of those amazing books that turns your understanding of some part of the world upside down. 

Fundamentally, these days I feel that I no longer have an infinite number of books in my future.  I've recently given myself permission to put down novels part way through if they aren't really working for me.  Maybe it's time to be a bit more selective about what which of my random curiosities I choose to pursue by reading nonfiction?

Unfortunately, saying that out loud makes me feel rather old.