Senate and the People of Rome
If you have any interest in Ancient Rome but don’t know where to start learning about it, Mary Beard’s SPQR offers an extremely readable general history written by a genuine expert.
What is SPQR?
SPQR stands for the Senate and People of Rome, which are the twin arbiters of political legitimacy in the Republic. For as slanted against the average citizen as Rome’s elections were, it did have the concept that the people, not just the elite, had a say in official policy. And it is the people of Rome who are the main theme of this book. Who they were, how they viewed themselves, and how the concept of who counted as Roman changed over time.
SPQR Background
Beard spends a lot of time on the myths of early Rome, and how they can shed light on later Roman practices. For instance, Unlike the Athenians, who had very strict laws limit citizenship, Rome had an ever-expanding pool of people who considered themselves Roman. They believed themselves descended from the Trojans, and that the founder of their city, Romulus, opened citizenship to fugitives and slaves from the surrounding area. He then orchestrated the kidnapping of the women of a local tribe, the Sabines, and after a war with their brothers and fathers, brought the two sides together to form one community. This odd story prefigured a long tradition in Roman history of extending Roman citizenship to defeated enemies. This was done haphazardly over centuries, starting with the elites in allied cities, but after the brutal social war in the first century BC to all of Italy. This trend continued in the growing empire outside Italy in the following centuries until the point at which Beard ends her history, with the emperor Caracalla’s extension of citizenship to all free subjects of the empire in 212. The distinction between Roman and subject had disappeared.
The Empire Before an Emperor
As Rome had an empire long before it had emperors, Beard traces the development of one-man rule before Augustus. A major figure was Marius, who was elected to an unprecedented number of consulships by the assembly over the objections of the senate and expanded the pool of recruits to the army to include landless citizens. As a consequence, the armies he led in Africa and Gaul became dependent on him to obtain pay and lands when the wars were over. This trend of armies more loyal to their commanders than the state intensified under Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. Beard’s description of Pompey as a sort of proto-emperor, awarded many of the same honors and at times powers of an emperor, at least outside of Rome itself, was interesting. He may have died leading the Senate’s armies against Caesar, but his career both prefigured and actively encouraged Caesar’s rise to power.As I have said, this is a history of Rome and its people, not of the Roman Empire. The people they conquered are generally mentioned only when they can illustrate a point she wants to make about Rome. Further, by limiting her time frame, she passes over some subjects that you might expect to find in Roman history. Christianity and its early history for instance are mentioned but not in any detail
SPQR’s Famous Romans
In SPQR, many famous Romans are covered. She discusses the life and career of Cicero, the great orator, and politician who lived during the Republic’s final years at length, aided by the many speeches and letters he wrote. The ups and downs of Cicero’s career, as a new man with no great family history whose talents brought him to the height of Roman power and prestige as consul, then was exiled for the extralegal actions he took in breaking up the so-called Catilinarian conspiracy, to his later years flailing about, unable to cope with the civil wars that destroyed the Republican system he admired provides an interesting counterpoint to his more successful, and brutal, contemporaries. As Caesar marched on Rome, Cicero was as much concerned about obtaining an ovation for himself from the Senate for a minor battle he won as a governor and prodding his poet friends to memorialize his fight with Catiline as the emergency at hand.Likewise, Caesar’s nephew and adopted son Octavian, later Augustus, is a central subject. Her description of his transformation from a brutal and sadistic warlord to a restrained elder statesman is quite good. Augustus established himself in power through cunning and extreme violence, raising private armies to wage a civil war and joining with Marc Antony in condemning thousands of prominent citizens to death in their proscription lists. Once all his rivals were killed, he gathered all real power into his own hands while simultaneously showering the senate with new honors to replace their lost power. He magnified his power with the deification of his adopted father and approved the beginnings of the imperial cult in the provinces. His close ally Maecenas supported poets like Horace and Virgil to celebrate him in their works. Later emperors get less attention, but this is understandable. As wild as the scandals surrounding men like Caligula, Nero, and Domitian are, they are far less important to the development of Rome as was its first emperor.
SPQR and It’s Focus on Normal Citizens
Beard does not only focus on famous names and large historical trends. She also focuses on the lives of ordinary Romans whenever possible. One fascinating section discusses the tombs left behind by modestly successful laborers and tradesmen and depicts their crafts: Bakers, dyers, and even a small child with the tools of a miner. These tombs were put up either individually, or on behalf of larger trade associations called collegia. She also examines the signs and slogans left behind in Pompeii’s many food and gambling establishments to get a sense of life for the ordinary Roman, as well as the many graffitied phrases left behind there and at other places.Her focus on Rome and Italy does lead her to pass over some of my favorite writers from the imperial period: Apuleius, author of The Golden Ass, the most complete novel to survive from Roman times, and Lucian, a Greek poet who wrote satirical dialogues of the gods and other fantastical stories. She does spend some time on Petronius‘s Satyricon, large fragments of which survive, parodying the excesses of Nero’s Era. As I said before, Beard ends her history with Caracalla’s extension of citizenship to all free subjects in the empire in 212. From then on, the distinction between the Romans and the people they had conquered disappeared. Coincidentally or not, Rome soon lost prominence within its empire. As the barbarian threat grew, emperors soon stopped living there, only visiting on special occasions, and Italy would lose the exemption from taxes it had enjoyed for centuries. But more fundamentally for Beard, the relationship between the city and the concept of Roman-ness had been severed, and new types of distinctions came to dominate the Roman world. Instead of Roman vs non-Roman, the distinction between the upper-class honesties and lower-class humiliores became the focus, with the lower-class citizens increasingly becoming subject to restrictions and punishments only previously reserved for non-citizens and even slaves.
Final Thoughts
Beard weaves in memorable anecdotes throughout her discussions of serious topics. At one point she mentions a speech to the Senate by the emperor Claudius which was inscribed in Bronze in the city of Lyon and includes references to the heckling he had to endure from the senators present, a humiliating lack of editing for such an official document. As a general history of Rome, this book is impressive both in how much territory it covers and how much of a pleasure it is to read.
