Spqr : : a History of Ancient Rome

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	937 Be	4-week checkout	Due 05-04-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / Ancient / Beard, Mary	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / Ancient / Beard, Mary	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024

Prologue : the history of Rome -- Cicero's finest hour -- In the beginning -- The kings of Rome -- Rome's great leap forward -- A wider world -- New politics -- From empire to emperors -- The home front -- The transformations of Augustus -- Fourteen emperors -- The haves and have-nots -- Rome outside Rome -- Epilogue : the first Roman millennium.
A prominent classicist explores ancient Rome and how its citizens adapted the notion of imperial rule, invented the concepts of citizenship and nation, and made laws about those traditionally overlooked in history, including women, slaves, and criminals.

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Amazing & informative read submitted by -alex- on July 9, 2019, 1:08pm The story of ancient Rome has been written about many, many times over the centuries. Having been covered so exhaustively by so many authors, a person could be excused for thinking that there is simply no new information to glean from a new rehashing of Rome's history.

Mary Beard, however, finds fresh and interesting angles of approach. She challenges tired, conventional notions about the importance of the more tawdry, gossipy (and occasionally downright smutty) impulses of famous Romans, and draws the readers' attention to what were almost certainly more significant cultural, political, and economic forces that fueled Rome's meteoric rise to dominance, and which sparked those quintessentially Roman bouts of bloody civil disorder that we all know well.

Ms. Beard also attempts, wherever possible, to glean what we can about the lives of women, ordinary people, the 'barbarians' on the periphery of the Roman world, and many others who lived under-recorded lives and who have escaped the notice of earlier writers of history.

Definitely a good read, definitely worth your time.