I finished reading SPQR by Mary Beard a few months back. In this overdue post, I share things that are important to keep in mind when casual history nerds like myself read about Roman history and ancient history more generally.
No maps or formal dating system
Maps and dates are taken for granted when studying Roman history. But Romans, at least pre-empire, had no maps nor dates. They had no visual way of measuring how far their influence stretched relative to the world. Dating was not based on numbers but rather on who held consulship at that time. They wouldn't say, 'this wine is of the 212 BCE vintage'. Instead they would say, 'wine from when Pulcher was consul'.
Inaccurate death tolls
Death tolls in ancient texts should be taken with a grain of salt. There was no formal tally system for counting how many died in battle. In addition, there was a patriotic tendency to downplay Roman casualties and exaggerate foreign casualties.
All numbers in ancient texts have to be treated with suspicion, victims of exaggeration, misunderstanding, and over the years some terribly miscopying by medieval monks.
pg. 178
Retrospective generalship can be misleading
The Battle of Cannae is one of the most famous battles in history. It's in the syllabus of many modern military academies and paints Hannibal to be a force to be reckoned with. While Beard acknowledges that it was a turning point in the Second Punic War, she's doubtful whether the battle was as grand as it's perceived to be today. Historical accounts conflict each other on the details and even basic things like location of the battle.
Moreover, encircling the enemy to capture them in large numbers was not a novel strategy. It's also unclear how a general could have a comprehensive view of the battle to inform tactical decisions. Even if he could, how effective could a general be in issuing instructions to maneuver 100,000 men in real-time?
Talk of tactics, and all the splendid military diagrams that usually accompany it, offers a highly sanitised version of Roman warfare and suggests that we know more about the face of Roman battle than we actually do
pg. 182
Early Rome controlled 'people' not 'places'
We've all seen the time-lapse video of the Roman empire growing from a small patch of red in the center of Italy to eventually cover the entire Mediterranean. But early Rome didn't control 'places'. They didn't have government officials or boots on the ground in the places which they controlled. But they had influence. They could impose their will if they chose to, through bullying, force, or persuasion. The modern day parallel is the albeit waning 'soft power' of the USA.
Beard shares a compelling anecdote describing an encounter between King Anticochus Epiphanes and the Romans. King Anticochus was invading Egypt and Egypt asked the Romans for help. The Romans sent an envoy to meet with the king. The envoy handed him a decree asking him to withdraw his troops from Egypt. Antiochus asked for time to consult his advisors. The envoy picked up a stick and drew a circle in the sand around the king. Antiochus had to give his answer before he could step outside the circle. He meekly submitted to the Roman demands.
Cicero's influence
You're probably familiar with the maxim, 'History is written by the victors'. But several times while reading SPQR, I felt 'Roman history is written by Cicero'. Before reading this book, it never occurred to me how much influence Cicero has had in our understanding of Roman history. Beard draws on his version of the events at several points and rightfully acknowledges the risks with giving too much weight to one man's perspective. It is also telling that Beard titled the first chapter of her book, 'Ciceros' Finest Hour'.
Cicero rose to prominence by winning court cases. His speeches and arguments became the foundation for future generations studying Latin and rhetoric. He also knew how to market himself. He got his slaves to transcribe countless copies of his speeches and distribute them among the populace. Notable examples are his prosecutions of Catiline and Verres.
Cicero himself probably circulated copies of all these soon after they had been delivered, laboriously transcribed by a small army of slaves... they quickly became admired and much-quoted classics of Latin literature, and prime examples of great oratory to be learned and imitated by Roman schoolboys and would-be speakers for the rest of antiquity.
pg. 40
The case over, and keen not to waste his hard work, Cicero circulated in written form what he had said at the opening of the trial, along with the remaining speeches that he would have given against Verres had it continued. The full text of these still survives, copies and recopied throughout the ancient world and the Middle Ages as a model of how to denounce an enemy.
pg. 253
Even Cicero's private letters, about 400 in all, somehow survived till today. They form a large part of our beliefs on what went on in the mind of the elite Roman man in the first century BCE.
Female voice wasn't represented
Like much of ancient history, the narrative was largely determined by the Roman male. Although women in ancient Rome had more freedom than in classical Greece, their role was still primarily centered around remaining faithful, virtuous, and having lots of children. They didn't have a political voice and most couldn't read or write. They couldn't defend themselves when their character was brought into question by an influential male. Alleged promiscuity was a common tactic to discredit a woman. Even Cicero used this tactic to defend one of his male clients.
Cicero's aim was to shift the blame from his client by discrediting a jealous Clodia, making her a laughing stock, a bad influence on his client and the principal villain. It is hard to imagine that Clodia was an entirely celibate, stay-at-home, wife and widow, but if she read Cicero's depiction of her in the comfort of her elegant Palatine home, whether she would have recognised herself is quite another matter.
pg. 307
This makes me wonder how much the myth around Cleopatra being a seductive mistress is actually based on fact vs. a politically motivated framing of the predominant Roman ideology at the time.
Rethinking life expectancy
Life expectancy in the ancient world was not as low as we may believe. According to Beard, if a child lived to the age of 10, then their life expectancy was not wildly different from our own. The elderly were not as rare as you may think. The high death rate before the age of 10 significantly skews the average life expectancy figures. This had obvious consequences for women. To maintain the population, a woman had to bear five to six children during her life. If widowhood and sterility is taken into account, the figures go even higher to nine children. This burden left little room for female independence and political influence.
Letters take time
Reading Roman history in the age of instant messaging, it's easy to forget that letters took time to reach the recipient. This could have important consequences. One of Cicero's sources of worry was finding a husband for his daughter Tullia. Patriarchal customs dictated this decision be taken by Cicero, who was living in Cilicia at the time. It took 3 months for a round trip correspondence with his wife and daughter in Rome. As a result, he was unable to oversee the matchmaking process as much as he would've liked. Ultimately, his wife and daughter went with none of his top choices, which made me chuckle. One of the most influential men in Roman history couldn't influence whom his daughter married because letters couldn't travel fast enough.
Density of historical material
It surprised me to discover that we have substantially more historical material describing Rome from the 1st century CE onwards than we have describing Rome before then. My mental model of the curve was a gradual increase in material over time, but it's actually closer to a step function increase. The 1st century was special because it marked the transition of Rome from a republic to an empire. This means we know much more (and can be more confident) about the Roman empire than the Roman republic.
From the first century CE, for reasons that no one has ever really fathomed, there was an explosion of writing on stone and bronze... If the job of the historian of early Rome is to squeeze every single piece of surviving evidence for all it can tell us, by the first century CE the question is how to select the pieces of evidence that tell us the most.
pg. 335
It also gets much more difficult to apply a chronological order to events as Rome expands into an empire. For example, there is seldom evidence that links the events of Roman Britain to events in Roman Africa. This makes it hard for a historian to conclude that an event in Roman Britain happened before, after, or at the same time as an event in Roman Africa. If the Roman republic is the trunk of a tree, the Roman empire is like the branches that form as the tree matures.
How emperors are perceived
How we perceive past Roman emperors today might be shaped by the politics of regime change more than we realize. Beard lays out an interesting heuristic:
The basic rule of Roman history is that those who were assassinated were, like Gaius, demonised. Those who died in their beds, succeeded by their son and heir, natural or adopted, were praised...
pg. 404
Essentially, the person who inherits the throne has a strong incentive to rewrite history and paint the previous emperor in a way which furthers their political agenda. The revised version is what endures. This has inspired some historians to take a more balanced approach when assessing emperors who are considered to be imperial monsters. Many of them have claimed that Nero, for example, gets a lot of hate today largely due to being a victim of negative propaganda spread by the Flavian dynasty who took over after him.
This could also explain why some prudent emperors went to great lengths to document their achievements like Augustus did in his Res Gestae, which is a self-serving CV of sorts that lists all his achievements and glosses over his controversial rise of power. The content of Res Gestae was originally carved onto bronze pillars at the entrance to his family tomb. When these pillars were later melted down, the content was copied and, luckily for Augustus, preserved till the modern day.
It didn't matter much who was emperor
... to most inhabitants of the Roman empire. Most people wouldn't have seen the emperor in the flesh, only on coinage and statues. Imagine only having a vague outline of what the president of your country looks like for your whole life.
What also surprised me was Beard's claim that emperors, despite having limitless authority, didn't have a big influence on the basic template of life and governance.
And there was no sign at all that the character of the ruler affected the basic template of government at home or abroad in any significant way.
pg. 406
Why then do we study them so obsessively? I think it's partly because we're attracted to their fantastical stories, the political intrigue, and their life of extravagance which is so foreign to our own. None of this really mattered to the common peasant farmer at the time. Something we seem to care about so much today may not have even been a topic of conversation at their dinner table.
Real estate logic flipped
Contrary to today, the higher floors in a building were cheaper than the lower floors. The higher floors had no provisions for cooking and washing presumably due to lack of advancements in plumbing. But more importantly, higher floors were harder to escape from in the event of a fire, which was common.
The size of accommodations were measured by the number of roof tiles instead of floor area.
to qualify as a local councillor, one law states, you needed to have a house with 1,500 roof tiles
pg. 436
Roman historians were self-critical
One of the things which makes ancient Rome interesting to me is the sheer amount of destruction it caused while introducing many principles and technologies which form the foundation for our lives today. The irony is not unique to ancient Rome, but it's probably best exemplified by it. One thing we can be grateful for is that Roman historians didn't shy away from documenting the horrors that Rome brought with it. Some may have written about it with pride, some with shame, and some with sadness. But it got written. That the Roman empire tolerated multiple voices and perspectives makes our journey as students of Roman history more rich.
No one has ever framed a better critique of Roman imperial power than the words put into the mouths of rebels against Rome by Roman writers themselves.
pg. 516