They too were not devoid of bias or fallibility. Remember as well that it was often the medieval monks that preserved ancient literature by transcribing original texts by hand. Interpretations and reinterpretations are often contested and sometimes controversial. “Reconstructing the process, and part of the fun comes from wondering how some of the pieces of the incomplete jigsaw puzzle fit together and how to tell the difference between the fact and the fantasy.” Mary Beard, 2015, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Tiny snapshots and micro-storiesĪs Beard puts it: “we have only tiny snapshots, never the big picture”. And while modern scientific techniques such as radiocarbon dating gives us aid, much of history has happened behind closed doors – private discussions that were never recorded and forever beyond our grasp. Useable evidence is sometimes limited to early settlements that remain undisturbed. People have built and rebuilt upon Rome for centuries. The proliferation of ivory bracelets, an Indian figurine at a house in Pompeii, and the Pantheon’s use of Egyptian columns, for example, hinted at ancient Rome’s contact with the ‘outside world’.īut there are grand challenges to archaelogy. She shows us how archaeological remains in settlements, cemeteries, urns, sunken warships and so on can reveal the “long and rich prehistory behind ancient Rome”. I enjoyed Beard’s snippets into historians and archaeologists at work. Survivorship bias and unreliable narrators.This includes a look at the challenges of piecing history together, how ancient Romans shaped narratives to their advantage, and a brief case study on the Roman war machine. This post will summarise a few thematic lessons that I took from her work.

There’s a lot for us to learn from Beard’s historical method. To do otherwise is to oversimplify, a disservice to our understanding. Beard shows us the complexities, messiness and different intepretations of ancient history. Sometimes the historical evidence is weak, and competing explanations must be explored. I think this misses the point of Beard’s work. Some readers criticised Beard for not producing a compelling narrative of ancient Rome. It’s an important case study, not only for historians, but for those concerned with the future rise and fall of great nations. From Cicero’s finest hour to Rome’s great leap forward, the history of ancient Rome is rich in drama and complexity. Through SPQR, Beard takes readers on a brief tour of ancient Rome. I thought this was a good excuse to read SPQR : A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (SPQR is the Classical Latin abbreviation for Senātus Populusque Rōmānus – The Roman Senate and People). For a website with Minerva in its name, its contributors know surprisingly little about ancient Roman history and mythology.

A history of ancient rome mary beard