In her best-selling book SPQR, Mary Beard told the history of ancient Rome in a conventional, historical way. She has moved away from that in her latest book, Emperor of Rome. In this book, she looks at the emperors who ruled the Roman Empire, starting with Julius Caesar (assassinated in 44 BCE) and moving through 250 years of history to end with Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE).
The Lives of Roman Emperors: Separating Myth from Reality
However, Beard does not try to tell the stories of the Roman emperors chronologically. She admits at the beginning of the book that it is difficult to know, and harder to remember, the emperors in their chronological order. In any case, she thinks this a pointless exercise and, instead, tries to look at the history of these people to see if it is possible to know what the emperors were really like.
A lot has been written about the details of Roman leaders: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero fiddling while Rome burned, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Mary Beard questions how much of this is true. She challenges readers to consider the extent to which the stories of emperors can be trusted, given that many were written with the intent of either condemning or praising their subjects.
Governance in Ancient Rome: Leadership and Challenges
Beard approaches this inquiry not by focusing on the life of a single emperor, but by examining the collective lives of these leaders. She seeks to uncover what it was truly like to govern an empire that, at its height, was home to 50 million people.
Her research delves into the personal spaces of emperors and the people who supported them. Managing an empire of this size must have required a robust civil service, though the Roman system was modest compared to the Chinese Empire, which had over 20 times the administrative workforce. Beard asks intriguing questions: Where did these people work, and how did they accomplish their tasks?
These are questions to which historical records provide few answers. Nonetheless, Beard searches through all the evidence remaining to find that the patterns of leadership did not vary considerably between emperors and did not change significantly over a period of 250 years.
She also looks at the families of the emperors to find what evidence is there, but discovers that, despite the graphic tales of wives and mothers poising their way to have the person of their choosing in power, there is little to say they had a great influence. There is little historical evidence of who they were or what they actually did. There is even little evidence of them in the remaining statuary which fills yup the rooms of museums around the world. In fact, there are more statues of Antinous, the ‘boyfriend’ of Hadrian, than there were of almost all imperial brides.
Daily Life of Roman Emperors: Managing an Empire
Looking into their homes and examining g their families she tries to discover who the emperor actually was and what qualities were required to manage such an enormous enterprise as the Roman Empire. Instead of finding their days filled with fighting and challenge, she discovers that emperors’ days were consumed with correspondence. The problem with being an emperor was that everyone had something to ask of you and you were expected to provide a reply. We don’t know who wrote the replies in most cases, but we know that that was what took up their time.
Over a period of 250 years the borders of the Roman Empire barely changed. The emperors were not fighting major conquests and overpowering new lands, they were dealing with the day-to-day management of what was already theirs. In fact, the book, while providing a fascinating glimpse into what the lives of emperors must have been, tells us more about the role of the emperor as a man who, in all cases, believed they would become a god.
Autocracy in Roman History: Lessons for the Modern World
The book reveals important insights about autocracy. Beard demonstrates that, to govern effectively, an emperor needed to become a myth. This myth, perpetuated through one-sided histories written over centuries, shaped the way we view these leaders today.
Another key point in the book is how people of the time accepted this myth. Beard observes, “It is an uncomfortable fact that, throughout history, autocracy—tyranny, dictatorship or whatever we call it—has depended on people at all levels who accept it, who adjust to it, or even find it a comfortable system under which to live.” Autocracies, she argues, persist not because of the violence of secret police but through the collaboration and cooperation of the population.
This is the important lesson of this fascinating look into the lives of emperors and a lesson which, in the times in which we live, is important.
Lessons from the Past
Towards the end of the book, Beard reasserts her view that Rome has very few direct lessons for the modern historian, but she cannot deny that looking at that world helps us to see ours differently. What we learn is that autocracy is a sham.
Mary Beard is a superb writer of history, and this book is gripping, even as it moves through the centuries and the characters. It stimulates the imagination and allows us to see the way in which the people might have changed, but the essence of autocracy remains the same. As she says of her own studies, “It has helped me to understand ancient Roman political culture better – and has opened my eyes to the politics of the modern world too.”
This would be a good place to start if you want to understand the political ambitions of today.
