Emperor of Rome, by Britain’s most famous classicist, is a sequel to SPQR, her 2015 book that traced Rome from its founding kings to the embers of the republic. As an ambassador for the ancient world, Beard has become prima inter pares, not just as an author but an advocate for broadly based classical degrees. Trajan, Claudius, and the rest of Rome’s rulers did more than just party: according to Mary Beard’s new book, the paperwork was endless.
Dame Mary Beard’s new book, Emperor of Rome, a companion piece to 2015’s internationally bestselling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, is packed with quotable facts about the men who ruled the Roman empire. For example, did you know that after dying, the bodies of VIPs were often displayed in the Forum and occasionally made to appear to be standing? Or that Nero was so eager to compete in all the major Greek festivals — including the Olympics — that they were rescheduled to coincide with his visit and then arranged so that he would win every artistic and athletic competition he entered? Sounds a bit like the lead up to tomorrow’s election! So where will you stand in the fields of Mars!
As its election time has much changed over the centuries? Being emperor was a powerful brand, his image controlled, propagandised and promulgated by statues and coins as well as writers, but some of the rulers realised it was largely an act. “Blimey, I think I’m becoming a god,” said Vespasian as he died, wryly acknowledging the PR destiny that awaited him, as it did for 17 of the first 30 emperors. Augustus, who set the tone for the job and miraculously reigned for 40 years, longer than any of his successors, asked his friends on his deathbed if he had played his part in the “comedy of life” and desired to be sent off with applause. Marcus Aurelius, reflecting a century and a half later on how one-man rule hadn’t changed since Augustus, described it as “same play, different cast”.
Though even more interesting than the insight into the imperial elite is the light the book sheds on the modern world. I’m thinking here not just about how the western calendar marks Caesar and Augustus, in the form of July (from Julius Caesar) and August, and how Palatine Hill in Rome is the origin of the word “palace”. I’m thinking about how so many of the dilemmas faced by the likes of Caesar and Vespasian reflect modern anxieties. “Ancient Rome offers few direct lessons for the modern world, but exploring their world does help us see our own differently,” says Beard.
Britain’s most famous classicist is referring here to the fact that marble statues of deceased Roman emperors were occasionally recarved to match the appearance of successors. A practice which suggests, she says, that we could lighten up about the idea of pulling down statues of controversial figures. I also appreciate her wry academic observation that’s much more imaginative. Maybe we can turn history’s offenders to face the wall. Surely a better life lesson than destruction.
The book offers an insight into the importance of language and grammar. Augustus sacked a governor for making a spelling error, Domitian used to skewer flies with his stylus when bored and Hadrian, in a fit of temper, stabbed his pen in the eye of a slave. Struck by remorse, the emperor asked his wounded servant what he could give in compensation. “A new eye?” the man replied.
There are plenty of tales of traditional pursuits of drunkenness and debauchery in Beard’s history of Roman emperors, which covers the first 30 thematically rather than chronologically, although she warns that we should take much of what we read in Suetonius and the like cum grano salis. Good emperors may not have been as virtuous as they were painted, nor bad ones so wicked.
Nonetheless, among the less well known excesses we get the story of a banquet that Domitian threw for which the room had been covered in black drapes as if it were a funeral. The couches were black, masked slaves were painted black and each place was marked with an imitation tombstone. This memento mori must have terrified his guests, especially when they were later woken at home by a knock on their door. But it was just the emperor playing with them, for they discovered a porter bearing their tombstone and slave as a gift: an extravagant form of party bag.
Elagabalus, a Syrian-born teenager who ruled Rome from 218-222, was a similarly creative and sadistic host. He invented the first whoopee cushion in western culture — oh, how he laughed when his guests sat on that — and served fake food made of wax or glass. Some diners were smothered by an avalanche of rose petals; for others he livened up the banquet by releasing lions. Or so his critics wrote.
Few emperors died peacefully in their beds. If you weren’t being ambushed in an alley (Caligula), knifed while having a wee (Caracalla), strangled in a bath by your personal trainer (Commodus) or murdered by a plate of poisonous mushrooms (Claudius) — and those are just the Cs — high living tended to take its toll. Vespasian, a successful emperor, had a fatal attack of diarrhoea, while Antoninus Pius died from overindulging in his favourite Swiss cheese.
One of Beard’s strengths comes from her desire to use archaeology to support or debunk the fantastical claims of Rome’s writers. For instance, the lack of any substantial cooking facilities in the ruins of the imperial sites on the Palatine in Rome or at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli suggests that those exotic banquets, such as Vitellius’s Shield of Minerva from which guests were served pike livers, peacock brains and flamingo tongues, were at best occasional treats.
She also tries to bring to life the people who worked for their emperors, from the graffiti on a toilet wall declaring that Apollinaris, the doctor of Titus, “had a good shit here” to the communal tomb for the household of Livia, the wife of Augustus, which has preserved dozens of memorials, from which we know she had a “handbag carrier”,“eye doctor”, “supervisor of purple garments” and “furniture polisher”.
This is all told in trademark exuberant Beard style. Those familiar with her TV series can hear her voice in the way she writes, her passion for the subject oozing off the page. She is an engaging writer and a valuable enthusiast for the classics. It is a pity, though, how often she feels the need to remind us how problematic the Romans are for today’s hypersensitive audience. Trajan’s fondness for young boys made him “in our terms, a predator”, dwarfs fighting in the arena would be “unpleasant to modern eyes”, and Domitian’s “casual commodification” of his blacked-up slaves by giving them away to his guests was “dehumanising”. Her suggestion that Elagabalus, who asked surgeons to give him female genitals, was a transgender pioneer “mounting a radical challenge to rigid binary stereotypes” deserves a one-word response describing what the emperor had removed.
As for the notion of “rip-off degrees” where classical studies and the humanities are drastically cut back and Universities and culture in general have fallen for the idea that outcomes must be measurable. This formidable historian despairs at the government’s reliance and societies pressure for only stem subjects. Her last words in the introduction ring very true…“I’m not saying we didn’t need the Covid vaccine. But we also need to be able to think through what pandemic means, what plague means, about how we face those kinds of things. That’s the job of the humanities. It’s an essential part of a democratic culture.” Rome at least knew this much!