By uncovering this plot by Catiline, Cicero basically saves the state. The book begins at around 63BCE with Cicero uncovering the plot of Catiline. I don’t find her writing too in depth or complicated to read but find it informative, interesting and rather funny at times.īeard’s focus in this book is how Rome grew not how Rome fell. I love how Beard explains things and could easily read her books all the time. I will be honest I did not read this very quickly but I still absolutely loved it. promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.ġ00 illustrations 16 pages of colour 5 maps She introduces the familiar characters of Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Nero as well as the untold, the loud women, the shrewd bakers, and the brave Like the best detectives, Beard separates fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record. In S.P.Q.R., Beard changes our historical perspective, exploring how the Romans themselves challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation, while also keeping her eye open for those overlooked in traditional histories: women, slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and losers.

But how did this massive city-the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria-emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? But she doesn’t so much debunk legend as try to glean from it a plausible history for which the legend is a metaphor and popular image of the truth.By 63 BCE the city of Rome was a sprawling, imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants. Much of early Roman history is, of course, largely myth and invention, as Beard is not the first to point out. In the story of Catiline’s uprising, Beard defines the constant that runs throughout Roman history: a tradition of fratricide and civil strife that dates back to the mythic murder of Remus by the founding brother, Romulus. Division and violence would soon bring the 500-year-old Roman republic to an end, through civil war, assassination and, finally, the emergence of single-man rule by one emperor - who maintained the fiction that the empire remained still a republic, ruled by its senate and its people.

Spqr a history of ancient rome review