The History Book Club discussion

This is the Introduction thread for the book SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard.

by Mary Beard

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

Synopsis:

New York Times Bestseller • National Book Critics Circle Finalist • Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2015 • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015 • Economist Books of the Year 2015 • New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2015

A sweeping, "magisterial" history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists shows why Rome remains "relevant to people many centuries later" (Atlantic).

In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal).

Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries.

With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.

100 illustrations; 16 pages of color; 5 maps

About Mary Beard:



(BORN 1955)

EARLY YEARS

Winifred Mary Beard was born on 1 January 1955 in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, the only child of architect Roy Whitlock Beard and junior school headmistress Joyce Emily Beard. Her interest in the ancient world began at the age of five on a trip to London ‘My mother took me to the British Museum,’ Beard says. ‘I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated.’

The family relocated to Shrewsbury when Beard was young and she attended the prestigious Shrewsbury High School on a scholarship, where she swiftly became the star pupil. She was especially gifted at Latin and Greek, often completing all the school terms homework in the first week and in her summer holidays often participating in local archaeological digs.

In 1972 she took the entrance exam and applied for a place at Cambridge University. She initially wanted to join Kings College, but after discovering that they offered no scholarships for women, chose Newnham College – Beard has often mentioned that this was her first experience of institutional prejudice toward women and has informed her later feminist principles.

At Newnham College Beard experienced further prejudice as she was studying Classics – then a typically male discipline. On one occasion a male colleague expressed incredulity that she was likely to achieve a first class degree (being a woman she was expected to get a 2:1). ‘From that moment,’ Beard says, ‘I was bloody determined to show them.’ She did get a first class degree and completed her PhD at Newnham in 1982 with a thesis entitled The state religion in the late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero. Since 1979 she had been a lecturer in classics at Kings College London, becoming a Fellow and lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1984 – at the time the only female lecturer in the faculty.

A DON'S LIFE

The first Mary Beard's first book was published in 1985, Rome in the Late Republic. Praised as an accessible and innovative account of Rome’s transformation into an Empire, it remains a firm favourite with classics students. In the same year she married Robin Sinclair Cormack, a fellow classicist and art historian with whom she would have two children – Zoe and Raphael. In 1989, whilst raising her children and working she published her only non-history book, The Good Working Mother's Guide, a series of hints and tips for working Mums. In 1992 she was appointed classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, a post she continues to hold. She published Religions of Rome (with John North and Simon Price) in 1998, The Invention of Jane Harrison in 2000 and The Parthenon in 2002 (part of the Wonders of the World series of which she is general editor). In 2004 she became Professor of Classics at Newnham College.

With her book Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town she achieved wider acclaim, winning the 2008 Wolfson Prize for History and presenting a BBC documentary in 2010 based on the text - Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town. The success of the documentary has led her to be involved in a number of documentaries and programmes for the BBC including Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, Question Time and Jamie’s Dream School, making Beard arguably Britain’s most well known classicist. Her 2009 book It’s a Don’s Life collected together articles from her hugely popular TLS blog A Don’s Blog.

Honours

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) in 2005

Wolfson History Prize (2008) for Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town

Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for "services to classical scholarship"

National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) shortlist for Confronting the Classics (2013)

Bodley Medal (2016)

Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2016)

Sources: The Folio Society and Wikipedia

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Be...

University of Cambridge - Faculty of Classics

http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/directo...

The Troll Slayer
A Cambridge classicist takes on her sexist detractors.

Link to Article in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Source: The New Yorker

Mary Beard: the classicist with the Common Touch

Link to article in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/theobserv...

Source: The Guardian

Mary Beard interview: 'I hadn't realised that there were people like that'

The star classicist began by challenging sexism, and is now squaring up to internet trolls

by Christina Patterson

Link to article in Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

Source: Independent

A Don's Life - Mary Beard's blog

http://timesonline.typepad.com

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

Caligula with Mary Beard - BBC Documentary 2013

Link: https://youtu.be/L9sxqceQaDI

Source: Youtube

Meet the Romans with Mary Beard

Link for Part One: https://youtu.be/rggk_H3jEgw

Link for Part Two: https://youtu.be/9JFw8M4PBUI

Link for Part Three: https://youtu.be/1UvG0LDeYBA

Source: Youtube




Source: Youtube