Emperors in their labyrinths

Mary Beard's book may not change conventional notions of imperial Rome, but it does prompt a cautious reevaluation of the simplistic view of imperial personalities

Emperor of Rome

Author: Mary Beard

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 492

Price: Rs 1,599

In 2015, Mary Beard wrote SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, a superb exploration of the politics and culture of the first millennium of Roman history, ending with the reign of the emperor Commodus (180-192 CE).

Why did she stop here? The fault line, she explained in that book, was the granting in 212 CE of Roman citizenship by the emperor Caracalla to all free inhabitants of the empire, from Scotland to Syria. With that “more than 30 million provincials became legally Roman overnight”. This “single biggest grant of citizenship … in the history of the world”, was “one of a wide series of transformations, disruptions, crises and invasions that changed the Roman world beyond recognition in the third century CE.”

This historical difference, she thought, was “a story for another time, another book — and another writer”. Luckily, this fine classicist changed her mind and decided to tackle the subject herself in Emperor of Rome. (SPQR stands for Senatus Populus Que Romanus or The Senate and People of Rome.)

This book starts with Augustus’ reign and ends with the assassination of the last emperor of the Severan dynasty in 235. This, then, covers Rome’s period of high imperialism, where popular rule, however limited, was replaced by one-man rule.

Emperor of Rome is not a chronological accounting of each reign but an exploration of the institution ­— hence the use of the singular noun in the title. The book, Professor Beard says, addresses the “down-to-earth questions about the everyday life of these Roman rulers, the sharp edge of politics, the demands of military security and the routine, humdrum business of governing a vast empire.” The book also attempts to present the imperial and subaltern picture of Rome, of the small change of daily life  — or “what it was like to be ruled in the Roman world”.

We meet not just emperors and their retinues, including minor ones such as the sadistic Syrian teenager Elagabalus but others who worked within the system — cooks, governors, secretaries, even jesters. In popular imagination imperial Rome stands for capricious indulgence, savage cruelty, sexual and other excesses, conspiracy, murder — all the stuff of deliciously prurient legend and Hollywood hype. Professor Beard addresses these stereotypes in scholarly fashion. This book is not so much a “new way of seeing the Roman empire” as the jacket claims but a masterclass of the historian’s craft. She examines archaeological evidence and the literary record, sifting fact and fiction to create a perceptive, deeply informative and more complex history.

One entertaining chapter on “Power Dining”, for instance, examines the elaborate decor of dining parlours and menus of surpassing excess. Then, as now, the guest list, seating arrangements and choice of food was an indicator of power equations. She asks a mundane question – what did they eat? — and reaches a less glamorous conclusion. The fact that diners reclined propped up by their elbows on long couches suggests that even the largest and most sumptuous dishes must have been “cut up into bite-sized chunks before it was served to guests….If so, the style of imperial Roman banquet was more tapas than meat and two veg”. 

The book may not change conventional notions of imperial Rome but encourages you to approach with caution (sometimes sacks of salt) the simplistic view of imperial personalities. Why, for instance, have some Roman emperors gone down in history as monsters — Nero, Caracalla, Caligula — and some considered wise and noble —Augustus, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius? That often depends on the sort of press they got from successors, whether they were assassinated, committed suicide or died peacefully in their beds and also what some of them said about themselves. Thus, Trajan has gone down in history as a “just” ruler thanks to the obsequious Panegyricus , an extravagant Vote of Thanks delivered by Pliny The Younger (the Elder was his uncle, a famous encyclopaedist).

Pliny was a provincial governor but also a member of the senate — by then an imperial appointment rather than an elected post. He had done well for himself under Domitian, who was assassinated by a palace coup, which brought Trajan’s adoptive father Nerva briefly to power. As a wealthy public servant, Pliny urgently needed to ingratiate himself with the new dynasty to erase the fact of past loyalties to a discredited predecessor, hence the desperate glorification.

We know Nero, who was forced to suicide after an army insurrection, as the unfeeling fiddler (more accurately lyre-player) while Rome burned. Lost in this possibly apocryphal hyperbole is the fact that he also set up shelters on his palace grounds for those who had lost their homes in the fire. As for Augustus and Marcus Aureleius, they recorded their achievements and thoughts in writing, shaping their own positive images  for posterity.

There’s much more in this fascinating book. The 10 chapter headings indicate the range — “One-Man Rule: The Basics”, “What’s in a Palace?” “On the Job”, “The Emperor Abroad” and so on. Professor Beard is the rare historian who combines scholarship with accessible prose. Queen Elizabeth II’s pampered corgis figure in these pages to illustrate the lasting influence of imperial Roman culture on modern sensibilities. What’s missing is a comparison with the Republican era.

But an up close and personal study of the Rome of imperial antiquity has left Professor Beard detesting autocracy as a political system, and her book shows why. It should be read, together with SPQR, by all supporters of “strong government”.