Some Roman Ruminations

Amid headlines political and otherwise that have me drowning, I have taken solace in a familiar place: Ancient Rome. When the present becomes overwhelming, I retreat into the past. Part of my attraction comes from its finality. While the present and future are nigh impossible to predict, the past is waiting for us to dissect it. Plus, my grandfather, who was a history professor, undoubtedly pushed me towards Rome. As did the Catholic Church, as I was raised Catholic and Catholicism is a bit of the Roman world that has survived in 2025.

(Guys like me might be the reason why SNL made this song….)

There’s no shortage of material about Ancient Rome, more than can be consumed in a lifetime. In my hunger for new sources, I stumbled across the classicist Mary Beard at Barnes & Noble. I first purchased her overview of Roman history, SQPR, and then her study of the enigmatic rulers of the Roman Empire, Emperor of Rome.

Beard’s advantages are multiple in a crowded field. She’s both informative and accessible, a crucial combination. Many of us have encountered material that’s informative but really hard to get through. Specific to Ancient Rome, I have struggled with Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on and off through the years. There’s tons of knowledge packed into the text, as well as biases of earlier historians, but the flowery prose and organizational structure makes it a somewhat of a slog.

Likewise, much material is accessible but not accurate nor informative. While not designed to be documentaries, Hollywood movies are often the main or first way the general public engages with Ancient Rome. The 2000 drama Gladiator is reasonably accurate as far as flicks go, with a fair amount of invention and alteration. Again, its main goal was not to educate its watchers, but it’s inevitable that some of its depictions will be treated as fact when they decidedly are not.

I won’t promise you that Beard’s work is as entertaining as Gladiator or its sequel, but for a informational work, it closes the gap. She balances her information with amusing and surprising tidbits. Her prose is educated for sure but not overwhelming. Here is an excerpt with modern implications:

“Whatever their popularity among the poor or among the rank-and-file soldiers, those rulers (emperors) who successfully managed the potentially tricky relations with the metropolitan elite were likely to be given a positive spin. The interests of their successor and circumstances of their succession were even more influential. The conventional story of the Roman emperors is a very particular type of ‘history written by the winners.’” (Emperor of Rome, p. 72)

As fellow amateur historians realize, Ancient Rome, much like other ancient civilizations, has few surviving histories in the modern sense of the term. Furthermore, the vast majority of ancient Romans couldn’t read nor write. Therefore, we have a few accounts written by an elite, whether socially, financially, military or a combination whose perceptions did not reflect the population at large. Most people can recognize this intellectually, but it’s hard when biases and motives have been solidified over centuries.

Take the infamous Caligula, maligned as tyrannical and mad for centuries. Was Caligula truly awful or did he lack the skill to manage the finnicky Roman elite? He likely wasn’t innocent, but some of the stories about him, such as naming his horse consul or declaring war on the ocean, may have been inventions of those glad to see him gone.

Later historians, such as Gibbon, read the accounts of Roman elites and passed them down to us. Add in pop culture, especially Robert Graves’ novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God and their TV adaptations cemented Caligula as a madman.

It’s possible that Caligula is synonymous with tyrannical madness because he didn’t get along with Rome’s elite. But many of us, myself included, take his infamy as fact. What would Caligula’s reputation be if he got along with the senators and commanders? Would we be mythologizing him as wise ruler taken from us too soon?

Whether you care about Rome or not, Caligula and other besmirched rulers highlight a fundamental truth: always check a material’s source. Some research and a few questions will save you headache later on:

1.Who made the material?

2. What are their values and motives?

3. Is the purpose to inform, entertain or persuade?

4. Is the author and their material trust worthy?

We have an immense amount of material compared to the Romans. That means lies and distortions can spread faster than ever. We have to be vigilant of our sources than ever before.

Otherwise, the wrong people may become the next madmen and tyrants before we know it.