Emperor of Rome

By Mary Beard

In this book renowned ancient historian, documentarian and writer Mary Beard takes a look at the Roman Emperors and what the role really entailed. Atypically, it doesn’t focus too much on their character, as she argues it is hard to really assess in an accurate way. Although we do have a good few primary sources for the Roman Emperors, often writers had incentives to portray them either favourably or critically. Beard notes how Suetonius has a habit of pairing ‘bad’ emperors with physical ailments, and ‘good’ emperors happening to be very healthy. Emperors cared about their legacies, and often they invested huge amounts such as Hadrian in statues and benevolent gifts to remind everyone of what they had done. Perhaps critics knew the best way to get revenge on an Emperor was to ensure everyone in the future would think of them as a madman, or cruel, or often physically ill.

This book is a generalist tome then, dipping and jumping between different Emperors from Augustus to Alexander Severus. Beard takes this as the last Emperor covered to 235 CE in the book, arguing that what it took to be emperor shifted dramatically after this date – many often just becoming regional emperors despite their titles for example.

In some ways reading Emperor of Rome  requires at least some prior knowledge – that different periods of Rome were quite different to one another, that when Constantine came in the influence of Christianity wrought significant changes, the relationships between east and west roman empire.  But this book captures very well the essence of what the Roman Emperor was expected to do, and was able to do.

Impossible Power

As Beard acknowledges, the staggering size of the Roman Empire means in many ways it was an impossible administrative task, and we don’t really know how it always worked practically. Although Roman Emperors took the credit – and sometimes the responsibility – for military victories, indicated by whom the Triumphs were dedicate to, there was also a delicate balance between the people, Senate and Emperor, and although early on Emperors like Tiberius, Caligula and Nero seemed to get away with a lot, much later on Emperors found themselves devoting huge amounts from their treasuries to ensure the army – and most famously, the praetorian guard, a constant assassinatorial thorn in the Emperor’s side – stayed loyal.

A big strength of this book is that it considers some of the more niche questions. I think it’s fairly common that military relationships, wealth, gladiatorial bouts are considered, but Beard considers interesting questions. For example she mentions how the maze of the palace worked both as a protective method but also left an emperor at the mercy of their slaves, servants and family in the event of an emergency – probably not possibly knowing or spending enough time in the palace to know it off by heart or specific escape routes. What about travel abroad, how did Emperors travel? How did important messages reach them without addresses, or knowing how far along their journey they were? Or the portraits of Emperors which clearly wanted to portray certain noble aspects, but what about when one province has deviated from the state-approved approach? It was notified that they should correct it. As you can see, we really get into some of the smaller questions, and I for one was glad as another book on the topline information would suffer from not being in as much detail as dedicated biographies to individual emperors, but also being too uninteresting whilst broad.

The typical petty, self-absorbed characters of most of the Roman Emperors comes out. The one part I never tire of reading is the cruelty or madness of some of the Emperors, and pondering where the exaggeration and facts lie. From shooting spectators to Caligula making his horse a general, most of the events you may already know of are in here and Beard tends to treat them in a balanced and of course knowledgeable way.

Stop Horsing Around

Occasionally, I don’t always agree with the interpretations. Beard notes how Marcus Aurelius’ statue might be considered differently nowadays where the barbarian is missing from underneath Marcus’s raised horse hoof, ready to stamp on the unlucky individual. And although this is true, it seems negligent to acknowledge how brutal Caesar’s campaigns, or how the Romans would have seen themselves as superior as any backwater barbarian. This is perhaps a sacrifice of a book written in this approach however. However, overall she tends to b e very measured in her analysis.

Some of the deviations are likely to be tedious for some. Personally I think she did a great job of covering interesting content. We learn a lot about the character, predilections, rumours, addictions and illnesses of the emperors, and although we, nor Beard, often don’t have the answers, it makes for an interesting read. Some sections or topics are bound to not appeal to everyone however, again because of the approach of this book covering many emperors and many specific small topics.

Lastly the production of the book and audiobook are done really well. I used both audiobook and library book, Beard reads the audiobook herself which is nice but I would recommend the book itself which is full of interesting pictures, art and detail, which is often referred to. Effort went into the production of Emperor of Rome and it is appreciated.

Final Score

This is in many ways a generalist book on the Emperors of Rome, but Beard skilfully draws together many themes to make it an illuminating and interesting read. I think that despite its mass market appeal, there’s still a lot in here for experts to enjoy too.

8/10