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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
A good read, albeit very dense at times. I LOVE Mary Beard and I have always been a huge fan of her documentaries. First book I have ever read from her and I am extremely impressed (however not surprised) at how much dedication and detail is in this book If you want to know ancient Rome, this is the book for you! 4 stars it is!
informative
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
I had to listen to this book 3 or 4 times because I kept falling asleep. Not because it was bad, there was just alot of information and it wasn't really given in a chronological order.
Mary Beard never disappoints.
Mary Beard never disappoints.
medium-paced
SPQR is a good book, but it struggles to be an honest claimant of a “history of Ancient Rome” due to a few major faults.
1. SPQR does not include any history past 200 CE because the author, Mary Beard, claims that the Roman Empire had changed substantially by that date. This would be like writing a history of the United States, but stopping before FDR became president because the government had changed from what it was beforehand. It is an incomplete account of the Romans.
2. The first half of the book focuses on Cicero, the legends of the Kings of Rome, and other important Senators and their letters, while avoiding common topics that would interest a reader like, “What was Roman culture like?” and “How did the Romans decide on democracy?” Instead, Mary Beard often stops her narrative to explain that history is written by the victor, so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about any one person or event. It becomes rather tiresome to read this over and over again. I wish she had mentioned that in the prologue and then spent considerable more time explaining Rome like she did in the last half of the book.
If the entire book had been written like the last half of the book, this book could easily earn four or five stars. The latter portion focuses on Roman expansion, the bureaucracy of the Empire, and the life of the average urban and rural Roman.
1. SPQR does not include any history past 200 CE because the author, Mary Beard, claims that the Roman Empire had changed substantially by that date. This would be like writing a history of the United States, but stopping before FDR became president because the government had changed from what it was beforehand. It is an incomplete account of the Romans.
2. The first half of the book focuses on Cicero, the legends of the Kings of Rome, and other important Senators and their letters, while avoiding common topics that would interest a reader like, “What was Roman culture like?” and “How did the Romans decide on democracy?” Instead, Mary Beard often stops her narrative to explain that history is written by the victor, so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about any one person or event. It becomes rather tiresome to read this over and over again. I wish she had mentioned that in the prologue and then spent considerable more time explaining Rome like she did in the last half of the book.
If the entire book had been written like the last half of the book, this book could easily earn four or five stars. The latter portion focuses on Roman expansion, the bureaucracy of the Empire, and the life of the average urban and rural Roman.
Covering the mythic founding of Rome through around 200 CE when Caracalla granted citizenship to everyone in the Roman Empire, Mary Beard spans the centuries of the city of Rome, discussing its impact and the lives of its people.
If you don't know me well, I'm a big Latin nerd. I've loved Greco-Roman mythology since I was around 7. I took 4 years of Latin in high school, which also doubled as a history class. I visited Rome a couple of years ago. The more I learn about ancient history, the deeper I want to dive.
This book covers a lot. It's basically a crash course in the Roman Empire because it has to talk about hundreds of years of complex history and how we know about it in less than 600 pages. I understand why this is becoming a definitive text (they literally sell this in gift shops in Rome); it's a great way to introduce somebody to the Roman Empire. For the most part, I think this was organized well. I liked that this did decide to cover the 99% of Romans, the people we have the least information about since their words didn't get passed down. That's always the most interesting bit to me. Who would have thought they had takeout in ancient times? However, reading this at my typical fiction speed was a mistake, so I really hurt my reading experience by trying to do that.
This gave me a lot of information on Rome the Empire over Rome the Republic (the latter of which is what is taught in my state's curriculum) and has made me more interested in picking up more nonfiction about ancient history. I think I've learned from this, however, that I'd probably prefer something that covers a smaller era in depth.
If you don't know me well, I'm a big Latin nerd. I've loved Greco-Roman mythology since I was around 7. I took 4 years of Latin in high school, which also doubled as a history class. I visited Rome a couple of years ago. The more I learn about ancient history, the deeper I want to dive.
This book covers a lot. It's basically a crash course in the Roman Empire because it has to talk about hundreds of years of complex history and how we know about it in less than 600 pages. I understand why this is becoming a definitive text (they literally sell this in gift shops in Rome); it's a great way to introduce somebody to the Roman Empire. For the most part, I think this was organized well. I liked that this did decide to cover the 99% of Romans, the people we have the least information about since their words didn't get passed down. That's always the most interesting bit to me. Who would have thought they had takeout in ancient times? However, reading this at my typical fiction speed was a mistake, so I really hurt my reading experience by trying to do that.
This gave me a lot of information on Rome the Empire over Rome the Republic (the latter of which is what is taught in my state's curriculum) and has made me more interested in picking up more nonfiction about ancient history. I think I've learned from this, however, that I'd probably prefer something that covers a smaller era in depth.
informative
slow-paced
This book was exactly what I wanted it to be. Beard carefully deconstructs a lot of misconceptions we have about how people lived under Roman rule and fills the gaps that are usually present in general Roman history books and documentaries: the lives of regular people and what society really looked like. Most of the extant texts and artwork we have were written or commissioned by the wealthy, with the notable exception of paintings made by regular people, preserved, ironically, by the ash resulting from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Most of my knowledge about the Roman empire growing up came from my father's vast collection of [b:Asterix the Gaul|71292|Asterix the Gaul (Asterix, #1)|René Goscinny|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433174923l/71292._SX50_.jpg|2150655] comics. This was, possibly, not the most accurate representation of what life was like back in the day. I've taken a couple of Ancient History classes since then, but somehow the year was always too short and we only ever managed to make it through Ancient Greece and then had to race through Rome, which wasn't conducive to getting any depth of knowledge about this period. Teaching yourself about the Roman empire comes with a high accessibility threshold. First of all, you need to be intimately familiar with Ancient Greek politics, philosophy, mythology and art. And if you don't read and understand Latin you can't learn from primary sources, and I, alas, picked biology and physics as my path in high school, only to then go into English philology in college. I will not be taking questions at this time.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, this book is a wonderful entry point, well rounded and insightful. I really appreciated Beard's comment in the epilogue about how there is a lot of factual information to learn from this period, but nothing that should be emulated in our daily lives. The Roman empire was vast and comprised regions populated by completely different groups of individuals that had been assimilated into a vague shared Roman culture but remained distinct in their beliefs, and were as ideologically divided in their opinions as we are today. As Westerners we have over-romanticised the Classical period to the extent that European art history is divided into whether it follows classical tradition (Roman, Renaissance, Neoclassicism) or whether it stands in opposition to it (Gothic, Baroque, Romanticism). We have this image in our minds of pristine marble buildings and statues, when the reality is that the Greeks and Romans were very fond of painting everything in loud colours. Paint doesn't withstand 2,000 years of weathering without some help from volcanic eruptions and they didn't have power washers. We are far removed from the way they understood life, simply because we know how the universe works marginally better and it allows us to make better choices. And we still, somehow, keep ancient politics as an ideal when they were, in essence, oligarchies that used slave labor to function. You know, like the United States.
Most of my knowledge about the Roman empire growing up came from my father's vast collection of [b:Asterix the Gaul|71292|Asterix the Gaul (Asterix, #1)|René Goscinny|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433174923l/71292._SX50_.jpg|2150655] comics. This was, possibly, not the most accurate representation of what life was like back in the day. I've taken a couple of Ancient History classes since then, but somehow the year was always too short and we only ever managed to make it through Ancient Greece and then had to race through Rome, which wasn't conducive to getting any depth of knowledge about this period. Teaching yourself about the Roman empire comes with a high accessibility threshold. First of all, you need to be intimately familiar with Ancient Greek politics, philosophy, mythology and art. And if you don't read and understand Latin you can't learn from primary sources, and I, alas, picked biology and physics as my path in high school, only to then go into English philology in college. I will not be taking questions at this time.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, this book is a wonderful entry point, well rounded and insightful. I really appreciated Beard's comment in the epilogue about how there is a lot of factual information to learn from this period, but nothing that should be emulated in our daily lives. The Roman empire was vast and comprised regions populated by completely different groups of individuals that had been assimilated into a vague shared Roman culture but remained distinct in their beliefs, and were as ideologically divided in their opinions as we are today. As Westerners we have over-romanticised the Classical period to the extent that European art history is divided into whether it follows classical tradition (Roman, Renaissance, Neoclassicism) or whether it stands in opposition to it (Gothic, Baroque, Romanticism). We have this image in our minds of pristine marble buildings and statues, when the reality is that the Greeks and Romans were very fond of painting everything in loud colours. Paint doesn't withstand 2,000 years of weathering without some help from volcanic eruptions and they didn't have power washers. We are far removed from the way they understood life, simply because we know how the universe works marginally better and it allows us to make better choices. And we still, somehow, keep ancient politics as an ideal when they were, in essence, oligarchies that used slave labor to function. You know, like the United States.
challenging