authors:
- Beard, Mary
content: 'Mary Beard has written a very good history of the first 1000 years of the
  Roman empire, from Romulus to Caracalla. She attempts to write not only about the
  kings, consuls and emperors, but also about what is known about the lives and circumstances
  of citizens and slaves. It is a good read, and I recommend it. I learned a lot and
  gained a better perspective of events that I knew of since before. She writes in
  a more-or-less chronological fashion about the events up to Augustus, and after
  that in a more thematic way, and she gives good reasons for this approach.


  One minor complaint I have is that Beard, in a few cases, mentions certain events
  as if assuming that the reader already knows about them. To be sure, she often comes
  back to those events later in the text, and explains them more fully. But still,
  it makes for some mystification.


  The other complaint concerns the discussion of the methodological problems about
  what we can now, given the fragmentary and biased evidence we have. I''m not entirely
  sure why, but the discussion left me a little unsatisfied. Maybe because it was
  too theoretical or vague, or that it bordered on the trivial? Anyway, this is a
  minor issue. The presentation of the concrete problems of the evidence for certain
  events is satisfactory, as far as I can tell.'
date: '2018-01-14'
edition:
  published: '2016'
  publisher: Liveright
goodreads: '28789711'
html: '<p>Mary Beard has written a very good history of the first 1000 years of the
  Roman empire, from Romulus to Caracalla. She attempts to write not only about the
  kings, consuls and emperors, but also about what is known about the lives and circumstances
  of citizens and slaves. It is a good read, and I recommend it. I learned a lot and
  gained a better perspective of events that I knew of since before. She writes in
  a more-or-less chronological fashion about the events up to Augustus, and after
  that in a more thematic way, and she gives good reasons for this approach.</p>

  <p>One minor complaint I have is that Beard, in a few cases, mentions certain events
  as if assuming that the reader already knows about them. To be sure, she often comes
  back to those events later in the text, and explains them more fully. But still,
  it makes for some mystification.</p>

  <p>The other complaint concerns the discussion of the methodological problems about
  what we can now, given the fragmentary and biased evidence we have. I''m not entirely
  sure why, but the discussion left me a little unsatisfied. Maybe because it was
  too theoretical or vague, or that it bordered on the trivial? Anyway, this is a
  minor issue. The presentation of the concrete problems of the evidence for certain
  events is satisfactory, as far as I can tell.</p>

  '
isbn: '9781631492228'
language: en
lastmod: '2018-01-14'
path: /library/beard-2015.html
published: '2015'
rating: 5
reference: Beard 2015
reviewed: '2018-01-14'
subjects:
- history
title: 'SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome'
type: book
year: 2015