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lilith89ibz 's review for:
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
by Mary Beard
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.