SPQR, Mary Beard, 2015

SPQR Review

About

Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015) is both a grand narrative and an intimate portrait of one of history’s most enduring civilizations. Beard strips away the marble grandeur to reveal the people—citizens, slaves, emperors, and outsiders—who built and questioned Rome. Her writing is witty, skeptical, and deeply humane, making ancient history feel startlingly alive.

Overview

Rather than retelling the familiar story of emperors and battles, Beard asks larger questions: How did Rome grow from a village to an empire? How did its citizens define freedom, identity, and belonging? With sharp humor and modern parallels, she dismantles myths of Roman exceptionalism while showing how their world shaped ours. The book spans over a thousand years yet never feels distant; her Rome is loud, political, and vividly real.

Summary

(light spoilers) Beard begins with Cicero and the late Republic before looping backward to Rome’s origins. Through archaeological finds, graffiti, and letters, she reconstructs daily life alongside power struggles. The narrative ends not with decline, but transformation—Rome as an idea that outlived its empire. What emerges is less a linear story than a conversation between past and present, reminding us that Roman questions—citizenship, democracy, migration—still haunt us today.

Key Themes / Main Ideas

• Power and citizenship — who counts, and who decides.
• Empire and identity — Rome as both conqueror and idea.
• History as debate — questioning the stories we inherit.
• Everyday voices — graffiti, tombstones, and satire as history.
• Continuity — how Rome’s arguments still echo in ours.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths — Lively, irreverent, and deeply researched.
• Strengths — Makes scholarship accessible without dumbing it down.
• Weaknesses — Dense in parts for casual readers.
• Weaknesses — More thematic than chronological, which may disorient newcomers.

Reviewed with focus on themes, audience, and takeaways — Mary Beard