I finally finished it today. Ask me anything about Roman history up to 212 AD

I finally finished it today. Ask me anything about Roman history up to 212 AD.

>written by a bearded woman

trash it goes

>up to 212 AD
lmao who cares

The book ends in 212 AD because that is when the Edict of Caracalla took place, granting universal citizenship to all men living in the empire and thus erasing the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered.

How accurate is this?

Please tell me roughly what proportion of the Republic was made up by the capite censi in the Late republic (150-50 BC).

This would literally be so fucking helpful

And? Roman history only gets interesting after the crisis of the third century.

Absolute idiocy. Muh family unit didn't dissolve and even if it did it pales in comparison to the actual empire killing problems like constant civil war due to flimsy succession laws and massive inflation because of said civil wars.

Infidelity was always an issue in Rome. So much so that Augustus passed laws on the virtues of women, to which he was considered an autistic prude. The empire would go on to reach it's peak and thrive for another 200 years.

And in no meaningful way did the power of the patriarch diminish between 100 and 400 AD. What did change drastically was financial stability, leading into proto-feudalism.

Tldr; that post is your brain on /pol/ ignore it.

I'm not OP but that's fucking bullshit.

>Citizens did not need to work
They needed work but couldn't get anything because all of the arable land was owned by Aristocrats, who were farming it with slaves.

"The men of olden times believed that above all moderation should be observed in landholding, for indeed it was their judgment that it was better to sow less and plow more intensively. Virgil, too, I see agreed with this view. To confess the truth, the latifundia have ruined Italy, and soon will ruin the provinces as well. Six owners were in possession of half of the province of Africa at the time when the Emperor Nero had them put to death." (Pliny's Natural History 18.7.35).

The urban poor suffered terribly, and were only placated slightly with grain handouts.

>Romen women used nannies
Does this retard things plebs in the suburrua had nannies? The only people who used nannies were the rich, who wouldn't have looked after them anyway - ever.

>Extreme economic, political and military instability.

This is because the empire couldn't expand anymore, meaning it lacked the plunder it needed to keep things running; the internal economy was a fucking long-running disaster due to the wealth-gap from slavery.

The legions were loyal to their commanders, so the commanders just became warlords once again like they were in the 1st century BC.

There's so much wrong with this post; Edward Gibbons needs to get off /pol/

Are you serious?
>muh rome collapse because of weak family institution and lzck of birth
Never mind any other factors and variables,also the line about vice and prostitution increasing and homosexuality bring something new is laughable

In the book, the author discusses a roman historian who was himself writing about early Roman history. This roman historian was complaining that in the early days, a man could execute his wife for drinking wine, and that it is a shame that this practice has gone out of style. However, the author attests that there is no actual record of a roman man ever having actually executed his wife for such a thing, and concludes that this story was probably just imaginary. Roman women generally had more rights than women in other societies at the time, but they were still pretty firmly controlled. It was pretty normal for a woman to have 7 - 9 children during her lifetime to compensate for the fact that many of kids wouldn't make it to 10 years old. And there was a very real risk of the woman dying during childbirth. Women with a LOT of money could be somewhat more independent, but that was limited to the upper-class. Generally speaking, any woman who wanted to engage in any sort of business had to have an appointed "guardian", a male relative who would have to approve of any transactions before they would be legal. So if a woman wanted to buy a house, she couldn't just buy it herself. Her "guardian" would have to look at the house and approve the purchase.

That falls outside the scope of this book.

She actually isn't bad. Quit your bias and bitching about "muh feminists" she is very much interested in the political, cultural, and military history of the Romans. Not just "muh women's experiences. " Though she does talk about of obvious points of straight up Roman misogyny.
I recommend her 1long documentaries on Roman civilization called meet the Romans if you're ever board and want to kill some time.

I've got that book on my shelf.
Is it worth reading if I already know quite a bit of Roman history from my studies? Will there be anything new, revealing?

Which is stupid if you're going to call the book 'History of Ancient Rome' and not 'History of Ancient Rome Up To 212 AD"

Ending it with the Edict of Caracalla is arbitrary.

It's very good, and it will debunk any meme history you've swallowed up. Mary Beard is a Cambridge professor, so she's an absolute expert on this.

Thanks for all the answers.

For me, it's the first in-depth book I've ever listened to on Roman history so for me it was kind of mind-blowing. I thought it did a great job exploring the city from every possible angle: slaves, common workers, women, provincial governors, provincial subjects, senators, generals, emperors. All are discussed. And EVERY conflict is explored from both sides. Even "villains" like Catiline and Caligula have moments where the author stops and considers that they probably were not nearly as bad as usually portrayed. Now I have no idea if this information is new for somebody else or not. The book ends right about the time that Christianity has started to appear on the scene, and early Christian interactions with the empire are discussed. The end point is the Edict of Caracalla.

Thanks, I'll give it a go

Please end this meme
Marry Beard is good at her field thats it, Being on Cambridge certanily implies she can publish and she is a good scholar but she does not outdo any other scholar by "pulling rank"
One of the greatest Byzantinist alive is in Ohio State

>field
I mean research area. Any expert may read her generalized history of rome and call on errors.

>t. Mary

The only women who were ever exempt from the rule about needing a male "guardian" to approve financial transactions were the wives of emperors, which should tell you something about how firmly ingrained it was that you literally had to be married to the most powerful person on the planet to avoid it.

Mary has amassed more accolades than all of his will in thier lifetimes combined. Show some respect you cretin.

>Ending it with the Edict of Caracalla is arbitrary.

A recurring theme in the book is the question of who is truly "Roman." The edict provides effectively provided a definitive and final answer to that question, making it a logical stopping point.

>what is periodization

>Addressing misogyny
Like anybody cares

What a retarded place to end a book. Might as well end a book on the Punic wars at the battle of Ilipa

Laughably inaccurate, made by some stupid /pol/tard no doubt

Roman society got more conservative towards the end, not less. Based Majorian was probably the most conservative emperor since Augustus.

Currently reading it, too, just got to Augustus. I like it.

I was going to get this, but the reviews said she jumped around a lot and one needed a solid understanding of the entirety of Roman history from foundation to Caracalla because she never explains the events, instead assuming you just know about them.
Another complaint was that it makes the fallacy of trying to relate Rome to our own modern outlook. Is this a mistake?

She wastes like only a minute on it though...why hate all female historians on speculation? Mary is pretty based.
I like her exhibition on Pompeii.

>Why hate female Historians

Huh?

I don't hate female Historians. One of my favorite historians is Maria Aubet. Her coverage on the phoenicians is phenomenal.

I'll say this. The title of the book is "SPQR" which translates as "The Senate and People of Rome" which is where the focus of the book is. Warfare and politics do not get a lot of coverage. They certainly get mentioned a lot, I don't think you could possibly write a book on Rome without touching those topics, but they aren't the focus. The focus is on the development of Roman society over time, how they saw themselves, and what the daily lives of people were like, depending on their role in society, from slaves, to ex-slaves, to women, common workers, senators, governors, and emperors, and the interactions between such groups. The book doesn't really have a "main character" but if it did, it would be Cicero because he tends to pop up again and again in different contexts.

Read this and remake this thread

Was Caligula as batshit as people say or do you think he was trying to make a statement by making his horse as Consul.

Also was there a beetle eating at Titus' brain?

>>Why hate female Historians
>Huh?
>I don't hate female Historians.
Probably a natural assumption with your seeming unwillingness to engage with the poster instead of just memeshitting tbqh

No.

>Was Caligula as batshit as people say

The author actually spends some time discussing this, and the answer is: "No."

>Also was there a beetle eating at Titus' brain?

No, that was made up by a Jew that was angry at Titus for oppressing the Jews. I'm not making this up. The book ACTUALLY says that.

In the context of rome before 212, if someone mentions someone and abbreviated their name as JC, does your mind assume Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ

No, he was just assuming I was like the other two people replying.

I was just stating I don't care to read about misogyny in Antiquity, there are much more interesting topics.

Women were treated as property for most of existence, gasp.

For me personally most female historians seem to care more about social stuff or correcting wrongs they see in historical study w/r/t women and shit like that which is just something I absolutely do not care for. Also occasionally they make retarded contrarian arguments like feudalism not being real because feudal society wasn't the same everywhere.

Definitely Julius Caesar, "Jesus" isn't a long name, no need for abbreviation.

>Warfare and politics do not get a lot of coverage


Any books that do?

Have you read her book on roman humor? Thining of reading it next.

Ending any history anywhere is at least somewhat arbitrary. So is beginning it anywhere.

>All events have events that precede them.
>All vent shave events that follow them.

No, it's gonna be 1 of these three. I haven't decided yet. Leaning towards Carthage.

Use caution applying words with modern political meanings to ancient societies,

>not using bookdepository

Caligula was at the least a capricious, reckless and unprepared leader.

Whether he was actually the homicidally insane loon hostile sources make him out to be s debatable -- it was certainly in Claudius's interest to paint him pretty black, so as to make his own accession seem a Good Thing.

And note how many of his "crazed" acts are cited in the sources as things he was supposedly planning to do, like making his horse a Consul, or things that the author admits are rumors.

None of which is to say he was really a Good Emperor -- he was not, if for no other reason than he had not been trained in the skills he'd need on that job. He was assassinated (so pissed off at least a few people), and the Senate, coming ut of his reign, tried to end the idea of being rule by a "Caesar" at all -- the only time I can think of where the Senate passed such a motion on the death of an Emperor. I don't know of any popular or political movement to rehabilitate him among surviving admirers, such as happened with Nero.

A good book on Caligula is the bio by Anthony Barrett. It is not so revisionist as to be irritating, but does try to gie him a fair shake.

I need my books in audio form. I tend to drive around a lot during the day.

In the book, Mary Beard makes the case that most of Caligula's must egregious acts could very well stem from mere translation errors. The thing about him having sex with his mom and sister? Translation error. The thing about sending soldiers to collect seashells? Translation error. She doesn't even used the name "Caligula" very much, instead choosing to refer to him as "Gaius" more often than not, which has the disarming effect of removing his more infamous name from the equation, allowing the reader to be more open-minded about him.

I buy her argument about translation errors, but it is at least an interesting concept. I can't find the book any more, but one revisionist bio of Caligula insisted that he had a puckish sense of humor and nobody in Rome got the funny, funny jokes he was playing, like the seashell thing, or the joke about wishing the crowd had a single neck so he could chop through it. Fucking stick-in-the-muds, those Romans.

I agree with her on avoiding Caligula -- using it in this thread since that's how he was brought into it, but it was a name he did not want used (though to complicate things, he didn't like Gaius either, he wanted to be Caesar. Of which there are too many to just call him that.)

Similarly, I never use "Octavianus," since Gaius Octavius never used the amended form of his family name after becoming (another) Gaius Julius Caesar. "Octavianus/Octavian" was a tag used by his political opponents, it was nat a name he ever used.

A good overview book is Evritt's The Rise of Rome. Goes from the earliest legends of the founding of the city through the era when mythology slowly gives way to history, and carries the story up through the Late Republic. His account of the end of the Republic is a bit cursory, as it would duplicate material covered in his excellent biographies of Cicero and Augustus. (His Hadrian is not as good, I think, but still worth a read."

>Everitt's

Romaboo present, I'll check the book out- I'd like to improve my rather surface level understanding of Roman society. Does anyone have any recommendations for books that focus more on the militaristic aspects of Rome to complement OP's recommendation? I've always enjoyed learning about ancient warfare and tactics.

I would venture to assume that any biography of Julius Caesar is going to inevitably have to spend at lot of time covering his military career in detail because that's kind of how he got famous in the first place.

Ya, any good book on Rome

>I recommend her 1long documentaries
>watching documentaries
Are you 12?