Guest review by Graeme Fife: EMPEROR OF ROME - RULING THE ANCIENT WORLD by Mary Beard

 

"In this age of fake news, media trolling, flummery and misinformation it seems to me most salutary to read such a thoroughly scrupulous examination of a time which yielded to different pressures ..."

Graeme Fife is a regular reviewer here. He has written many plays, stories, features and talks for radio, stage plays and articles for newspapers and magazines, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent. He's the author of a string of books - children's stories, biography, works of history and fiction. His novel of the French Revolution, No Common Assassin, tells the story of Charlotte Corday.

The word comes from imperator, the title with which (usually victorious) legionaries hailed their commander and derives from imperium, the blanket term for power, the official directive to rule either by applied or threatened physical force or indirect pressure, law, the full weight of empire…think imperative, imperious, imperial.

The first recognisable emperor, though not so acknowledged in his lifetime, Gaius Julius Caesar gave his name to Czars, Tsars and the Kaiser, each foremost in autocratic rule. Beard titles her study in the singular to give tighter focus to the various men who occupied the position (some of them ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’? That’s the first assumption to assess) and to the role itself – where and how did the emperor live, how was such a vast domain, or imperium, administered, the paperwork, the countless clerks, scribes, placemen and officials who managed the unwieldy bureaucracy, the day-to-day work, the communication – in a world when even relays of horse-rider couriers travelled slower than carrier pigeons. It is, therefore, a study – and a magnificent study – of the mechanics of autocracy, the main difference between what we know – or presume - about autocrats and the Roman version in that many of our autocrats are or have been elected by popular vote, in itself a chilling fact. There are parallels however, and Beard’s rigorous scrutiny brings to light much of the exhibitionism, false statement and posturing which helped to substantiate the power of men who were not elected and often came to their position by selection – largely of loyal soldiers (think Putin and the KGB … my comparison not hers, for she is firm about not drawing parallels and that’s wholly to the credit of this most readable book) or because there really was no one else and few anyway, with blood connection to the inaugural emperor, Caesar Augustus, himself the adopted son of his uncle Julius who could trace his own family connections back to the goddess Venus (you get the idea?) or else by being jostled into place by an ambitious mother.

There was a lot of loose talk and false message purveyed, much of it by writers with their own agenda – of lampoon or critique – or else by hearsay and Beard’s scepticism is welcome: how, she asks, can we know? Easy enough for us to see through the arrant stupidity of Trump declaring, in a presidential address, no less, that the reason the Americans prevailed against the British in 1812 was that they held the airports and thus controlled the skies but it’s less easy to call out slippery Bunter/Johnson lies when the bleat re-echoes: ‘But it wasn’t me sir.’ Not to make it stick, at least.

What, then, are we to make of Vespasian’s celebrated last words: ‘Blimey, I think I’m becoming a god …’ A joke or wry comment on the absurdity of the whole thing from a weary cynic? Or those of Augustus, asking friends gathered at his deathbed whether he had ‘played his part properly in the comedy of life?' implying that it had all been for show, a huge act. Hard-nosed self-knowledge or throwing the solution back at them in a political climate where protest or censure, even robust question was risky?

Again, I draw a parallel and with apology but in this age of fake news, media trolling, flummery and misinformation it seems to me most salutary to read such a thoroughly scrupulous examination of a time which yielded to different pressures of news. It all amounts, finally, to what another Roman summed up in his infamous question: ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (Juvenal Satire VI 347f)

There is scandal aplenty but Beard is resolutely cautious about the truth of what often probably amounts to little more than tittle-tattle. Perhaps it just shows that the Roman were as prurient, suggestible and avid for lurid stories about the monarchy as any people, in any time, in whatever condition – and on people, populus, the Populists depend. It is for us to be sceptical, cautious and Nell Gwynn nailed it when an angry anti-Catholic crowd mobbed her carriage in London. She pulled down the window and screamed at them: ‘No no no, I am the king’s Protestant whore.’

Beard concludes this most compelling and richly engaging book:

‘The Romans will not and cannot give us the answers [to our problems]. But exploring their world does help us to see our own differently. While I have been writing Emperor of Rome over the last few years, I have thought hard about that view of autocracy as fundamentally a fake, a sham, a distorting mirror. It has helped me to understand ancient Roman political culture better – and has opened my eyes to the politics of the modern world, too.’

Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World is published by Profile.