Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a
sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a
"mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride
and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an
empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this
emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central
Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates
the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even two thousand
years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions
about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence,
empire, luxury, and beauty. From the foundational myth of Romulus
and Remus to 212 ce-nearly a thousand years later-when the emperor
Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the
empire, S.P.Q.R. (the abbreviation of "The Senate and People of
Rome") examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but
challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have
existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of
themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they
responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new
idea of citizenship and nation. Opening the book in 63 bce with the
famous clash between the populist aristocrat Catiline and Cicero,
the renowned politician and orator, Beard animates this "terrorist
conspiracy," which was aimed at the very heart of the Republic,
demonstrating how this singular event would presage the struggle
between democracy and autocracy that would come to define much of
Rome's subsequent history. Illustrating how a classical democracy
yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire, S.P.Q.R.
reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous and
familiar characters-Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus,
and Nero, among others-while expanding the historical aperture to
include those overlooked in traditional histories: the women, the
slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side of
Rome's glorious conquests. Like the best detectives, Beard sifts
fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record,
refusing either simple admiration or blanket condemnation. Far from
being frozen in marble, Roman history, she shows, is constantly
being revised and rewritten as our knowledge expands. Indeed, our
perceptions of ancient Rome have changed dramatically over the last
fifty years, and S.P.Q.R., with its nuanced attention to class
inequality, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of
people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries,
promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.
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