ΣNΠ

SPQR

Author: Samuel Peterson

Date Published
2017-10-15 (ISO 8601)
72-10-15 (Post Bomb)

Recently I finished a modern book on Roman History entitled "SPQR" by Mary Beard, my impressions of which I would like to share with you. Before I begin, however, I believe some personal context might be useful to understand why I found this history to be such a delight.

I was homeschooled for much of my youth, and before I began my studies of mathematics with any diligence my favourite topic of study was ancient history. My pursuit of this discipline was a little old-fashioned, however; I almost exclusively stuck to ancient authors, who tended to write with somewhat different focusses in mind than do modern historians.

Initially I bought into the idealized depiction of Republican Rome put forward by Livy in much the same way the Niccolo Machiavelli seemed to in his "Discourses"¹. A common theme from roman writing is this notion that true roman virtue was to be found in the times of the first and second Punic wars, and that the chaos which ended the republic was owed to the corruption of honest roman virtue by the "spoils from eastern conquests". While this moralistic line was not something I could fully buy, I did believe that the republic was the better model of state than the autocratic form government which followed. Such matters were important to me at one time. Later my starry-eyed view of Rome and its republic faded, and the last roman history I read (Plutarch's Biographies on Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Marius and Sulla) left me with a distinctly sour impression; I was convinced that the republic fell because it was peopled by nothing but a bunch of psychopathic A-holes and that its loss was nothing to shed a tear over.

So what did I think of the book? It was just what I needed -- it gave me a sense of closure. The book covered much of the period that I was most interested in, included some wonderful critiques of many of the authors which I grew up on, provided some truly fascinating archaeological information, and really did a bang-up job putting Roman strengths and weaknesses into an understandable context.

Before I begin talking about the book itself though, I think some words about why modern historical work is important for a period so far in the past

Why modern history?

The answer is that modern history differs enough in tone and focus to provide a different picture that provided by ancient sources.

Ancient writers tended to focus their studies on great men, embodied core pieces of their historical analyses in speeches made by one or multiple parties in a given conflict, , and there was no hint of economic, archaeological, or sociological inquiry involved. In contrast, modern history tends to take a much more impersonal narrative structure, and tries to explain systemic changes and differences between peoples; often this leads to an interpretation of events that are somehow governed by forces of such inertia that individuals are only capable of the slightest of influence on the world.

The two styles differ in another important respect: Ancient history rarely if ever attempts to depict with any detail the nature of life for, say, the average peasant or woman -- their's is a study almost solely of great men and political struggle; conversely, despite the more impersonal nature of modern history, much more attention is given to these mundane concerns which are often ignored in ancient sources, and so it is with SPQR. As important as ancient sources are to understanding the history, a fuller context can be obtained through modern works. The Author of "SPQR" puts it very well:

Yet the history of ancient Rome has changed dramatically over the past fifty years [...] That is partly because of the new ways of looking at the old evidence, and the different questions we choose to put to it. It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not. But we come to Roman history with different priorities -- from gender identity to food supply -- that make the ancient past speak to us in a new idiom.

With that out of the way, the rest of this review will be all about Mary Beard's "SPQR"

Themes and Takeaways of "SPQR"

SPQR covers Roman history from the founding of the city (sometime in the 8th Century B.C. or 28th B.B.) to the decision in 212 A.D of Emperor Ceracella to grant Roman Citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire. This termination point was very appropriate for the book, since a key theme was the evolving concept the Romans had for what being a Roman meant; it also worked as a stopping point because this was the beginning of a period of instability, the aftermath of which was a transformation of the Roman state "Beyond recognition".

Rather than focussing on events themselves over this period, the book's main concern was asking big picture questions like: how the roman state functioned?, what were the fundamental conflicts and difficulties which they resolved or failed to resolve?, what set it apart from its rivals?, what was life like for inhabitants across social strata?, and how do ancient accounts clarify or obscure the answers to these questions?. Given that the book spans a period of almost a millennium, you shouldn't be surprised that the answers to these questions are moving targets. The book does make a good case for there being at least relative continuity in how these questions are answered over this period.

In broad strokes I think her narrative can be broken down into 4 sub-periods:

Early Roman Period
- Ancient accounts of this period suffer from poor credibility, as they were written centuries after the events they describe.
- The archaeological evidence is clear that Rome was indeed ruled by kings, and that this changed to a proto-republican government in which many of the familiar offices and institutions of the roman republic were either non-existent, or took very different form than their classical depiction.
- Rome's political reach was probably relegated to central Italy during this time, and Rome was probably little different from its neighbors.
Rome's Great Leap Forward (actual title of a chapter in the book)
- Around the time when Scipio Barbatus was Consul ( 298 B.C, 2242 B.B) ancient accounts become much more reliable.
- Political offices took on a shape which probably agree with their historical depiction at the time.
- The roman concept of the "citizen" became more universal than simply a resident of the city of Rome, which greatly increased Rome's capability of aggrandizing itself after conquest.
- Rome achieved hegemony over Italy and became a major figure in Mediterranean politics.
Republican Meltdown
- After winning its contest with Carthage, Macedon and Syria, Roman power became supreme in Europe. This was in large part due to its large pool of manpower, which stemmed from its rather inclusive notion of citizenship.
- The republic failed to adapt its institutions to govern such a large territory in a centralized manner. The ad-hoc solution was to give provincial governors an absurd degree of autonomy; most notably: Armies were drafted, paid for, and pensioned by individual citizens.
- Internal strife was rampant.
- This period was concluded by Augustus's success in establishing a new autocratic form of government.
Empire under the Augustan model
- From the death of Augustus (14 A.D, 1931 B.B) to the death of Emperor Commodus (192 A.D, 1753 B.B) the Augustan model of governance prevailed under 14 emperors with relative stability.
- Although there were refinements to the bureaucracy of imperial administration, the large patterns of imperial rule remained fairly static: large scale public works are energetically pursued, the military was placed under direct control of the emperor
- rate of territorial acquisition dropped dramatically, military intervention in succession became a rarity (just one very short civil war and two verifiable assassinations).
- Significant numbers of people from outside Italy became senators and emperors.
- Legitimacy of rule was held together by unwritten conventions of the imperial office and its relationship with the senate and the military. A convention which broke down shortly after the period covered in this book.

Mary Beard depicts a state which demonstrated a remarkable agility in adapting its institutions to meet new challenges, creating a template for the modern western state which was expanded upon by European peoples centuries later. She also highlights the institutional problems which the Romans tried (and ultimately failed) to handle in the late republic, as well as the new set of unaddressed problems with the state under autocratic rule.

Her narrative does not just focus on the politics of Rome, which is what ancient sources focussed on almost exclusively. Through the excerpts from countless surviving records she also paints vivid pictures of the concerns of people living at the time across all the strata which left much records, and gives a lot of archaeological information that fills in much of what doesn't lie in written record. In so doing, she not only makes the great men of Rome more understandable, she breaths life into this world with details about: women facing the perils of motherhood in the gruesome pre-industrial world with the infant mortality and personal danger that entails, an artisan celebrating the establishment of a chain of renowned bakeries, a slave giving his master the slip (successfully), and a slave turned freemen siting traveling thousands of miles over the empire, returning to his native town a wealthy man.

Another aspect of her work is that she reads between the lines of ancient accounts, and gives very plausible reasons why the records of early Rome are most certainly psychological projections and myth rather than reliable history. She also makes a good case to regard the legacies of Roman emperors (especially the "bad" ones like Caligula or Nero) with a grain of salt: imperial government fit basically the same patterns regardless of who held the throne, and records of the excesses of failed reigns could very well have been at least embellished by those succeeding them. Such sceptical analysis is a much needed accompaniment to surviving ancient sources, which seems to lack explicit introspection of accepted premises and prior works.

Final Impressions

The end result of SPQR are the following observations.

Although the modern West is vastly different from Ancient Rome, we really are the inheritors of their legacy: it is through dialogue with their copious volumes of writing that we made our common institution and it is through their vocabulary and modes with which we interact with the world.
The instabilities which ended the republic were due to fundamental problems in the state which were to some degree recognized. There simply was no workable solution found to these problems that preserved the republic. Change was inevitable, the solution was autocracy, and in many ways the result was a vast improvement to the chaos that existed.

As for myself, I think I can put down my scroll for a good spell. SPQR has given me a treatment of roman history which will likely satisfy me for years. To anyone else who may also be familiar with roman history (especially from ancient accounts) you will almost certainly appreciate this work. To those less familiar this topic, it is also a wonderful stand-alone introduction.