And it's completely untrue, but it is such a marvelously slightly camp version of Roman empirical power. How?īut I think if I was going to have anything I'd have that old I, Claudius television series, which was shown both in the U.K. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Beard says it's "one of the most famous quotes in the whole of Roman history - except it certainly isn't what Caesar ever said."Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title SPQR Subtitle A History of Ancient Rome Author Mary Beard Take, for instance, "Et tu, Brute?", William Shakespeare's version of Julius Caesar's final words. "The historical texts and the historical evidence that you use is always somehow giving you different answers because you're asking it different questions."īeard notes that history is a shifting discipline, and that many of our popular notions of ancient Rome are based on culture rather than fact. "One of the great things about history is that it sort of isn't a done deal - ever," Beard tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. She has written several books on the subject - including her most recent work, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - but she doesn't feel like she's close to being done with the topic. Historian Mary Beard has spent her career working through the texts and source materials of ancient Rome. Still, she says, "I loved Gladiator and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done." Historian Mary Beard says real gladiator competitions were probably not as brutal as the film Gladiator (starring Russell Crowe) would have us believe.
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