SPQR

"Ancient Rome is important. To ignore the Romans is not just to turn a blind eye to the distant past. Rome still helps to define the way we understand our world and think about ourselves, from high theory to low comedy. After 2,000 years it continues to underpin western culture and politics, what we write and how we see the world, and our place in it."

Mary Beard

SPQR

Rome. By 63 BCE the city was made up of more than a million inhabitants, sprawling on the banks of the Tiber. It has captured our imaginations, from the assassination of Julius Caesar to Commodus' battles in the gladiatorial arena (the movie, it turns out, isn't to far off). Marcus Aurelius is still taught in schools and the fact that we still are responsible for the sidewalk in front of our house are remnants of this time.

But how did Rome become a large and powerful state? Mary Beard examines the rise of Rome from a small town in central Italy to an extravagant empire that stretched from Spain to Syria over the course of of a millennium. In doing this, she changes our historical perspective, instead of examining the lives of the great men (and in the case of Rome, they were all men) she looks at how the Romans themselves were effected by the lives of these great men: what they thought of republic and empire, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, how their thoughts on freedom and slavery changed. She also examines the stories often overlooked in traditional history, those of women, slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side. The effect is marvelous.

Beard is extremely readable. She breaks down the history of Rome into several important events, looking at the large, overarching trends rather than the complicated events. This gives a unique and extremely interesting view of Roman history, examining the big shifts in thinking, the large changes in politics, looking at how stable society as a whole was during different times. 

This book was phenomenal. A well researched, well written history of a place that still greatly effects the way we think about things and the way we govern ourselves today. A fantastic read that I highly recommend to anyone who has been to Italy (I definitely wish that I had read this book before I went), would like to go to Italy, or who has ever uttered the word "republic."