Has no chronological narrative. It looks at the rulers of Rome through the prism of 10 separate themes, from “power dining” to imperial travel, as Ms. Beard returns to subjects she has treated throughout her career (imperial portraiture, Roman triumphs, deification). Each of the themes offers a vivid way to re-examine what we know, and don’t, about life at the top ... For all its detail and diverse interests, the book’s unifying argument might be that it is very hard to grasp the truth of what the emperors were actually like ... Beard punctuates her erudite but easy prose with striking turns of phrase and arresting observations ... A masterly group portrait.
An erudite and entertaining new book by the redoubtable classics scholar and feminist Mary Beard ... Beard, a consummate storyteller, finds 'ancient gossip' understandably hard to resist. Such stories also free her up to pursue her subject thematically instead chronologically, pointing not just to differences among the emperors but also similarities ... As a writer, Beard is so appealing and approachable that even the recalcitrant reader who previously gave not a single thought to the Roman Empire will warm to her subject.
It is clear that Beard...is herself deeply intrigued by the Roman emperor ... Beard treads this ground carefully, drawing on a rich plethora of literary and material evidence from both the center and the edges of the Roman world ... Beard’s writing is, as always, deeply engaging and informed by what seems to be an encyclopedic knowledge of the ancient world. Due to the sheer amount of evidence from which she draws, and the vast ground she covers, she inevitably has to condense her sources ... A book with as ambitious a scope as this one cannot, of course scrutinize all sources equally. And Beard offers ample resources, labeled 'Further Reading,' for curious readers who want to discover more for themselves. What ultimately emerges in these rigorously researched pages is an account that gives life to an often shadowy yet captivating figure.
One of Beard’s strengths comes from her desire to use archaeology to support or debunk the fantastical claims of Rome’s writers ... 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 ... That is a small quibble.
She finds in the biographical tradition and its vast store of gossip and slander about sex and dining, manners and peccadilloes, a kind of running commentary on the imperial office, indeed, on autocracy. As is her wont, Beard reads the ancient sources ever so slightly against the grain and gets them to answer questions they were only obliquely addressing ... An impressive work of social history. This occurs in part through the attention Beard pays to the careers and material conditions of work experienced by the emperor’s household ... Mary Beard gives us an astonishing, thoroughly modern portrait of this world.
By the end of this thrilling book we are no nearer to looking the emperor in the eye. But we are much closer to understanding what he was for. Leaning into all the wild stories rather than disregarding them as so much distasteful waste, Beard does a wonderful job of taking us into the maelstrom of fantasy, desire and projection that swirled around the rulers of ancient Rome.
...an extraordinary investigation into the gulf between the experience and the narrative of Roman autocracy. In one chapter, the imperial doctor prescribes suppositories to Marcus Aurelius; in another, a team of physicians pretend to assess the condition of a waxwork of an already deceased emperor. Without claiming insight into the psychology of any individual emperor, Beard reminds us that the ruler was human, puncturing old fantasies of philosopher kings, military geniuses and sex-mad sadists as she goes ... Faultlessly honest about what we can’t know, Emperor of Rome gives us an insight into the experience of doing ancient history. Beard picks apart layers of meaning in the ancient sources, struggles over the frustrations of Palatine stratigraphy, and assesses what’s left with a satisfying combination of expertise and common sense. She disregards the more outlandish stories about imperial misbehaviour, the flashy ones that initially attract so many to this period of Roman history, and in their place weaves a deliciously varied tapestry of detail drawn from across nearly three centuries. Somewhere between the mundane business of empire and the bizarre theatricality of being its ruler, we lose our cravings for tales of tyrannical mania, and we encounter something more interesting: the slippery reality of imperial Rome.
Beard analyzes both textual and archaeological evidence to describe what actually took place at the table on the Palatine Hill or at one of the villas outside Rome itself. For readers who want to see for themselves where these emperors held sway, Beard offers an itinerary of locations to visit as well as a comprehensive list of additional readings.
Beard is at her best when she overlays the testimony of Roman authors with her interpretation of the archaeological remains of the structures they describe ... Emperor of Rome offers a series of interesting vignettes presented by a masterful storyteller with a perfect sense of dramatic and comic timing. Beard knows how to introduce the lives and work of unfamiliar characters in a fashion that concisely provides both general historical background and intricate detail about their actions ... Despite the excellent qualities of this book, and it has a great many, I fear that Emperor of Rome represents something of a missed opportunity to speak more broadly to the crisis the field of classics now faces.
Bookshelves groan under the weight of accounts of Roman emperors, but when Beard decides to add another, readers should perk up ... eard focuses on the details of how emperors lived, governed, traveled, dined, and amused themselves, and the result is a mixed bag. Chapters on imperial dining rooms and imperial palaces reveal the impressive skill of archaeologists in resurrecting crumbling ruins, but they also contain more architectural minutiae than casual readers will want ... Sometimes-delightful.
