History
Book Club
Wednesday,
January 27, 2021
The Empire of “United”
Rome
Downtown Rome, 63 BCE
Wednesday, January
27, 2021. The Empire of “United”
Rome. Over the years and then
the centuries, much of Rome's population came from outside Italy -- this even
included some of the later emperors, such as Hadrian, who was Spanish, and
writers like Columella, Seneca, and Martial, also Spanish-born. Celts, Arabs, Jews,
and Greeks, among others, were included under the wide umbrella of Romanitas.
This was the inevitable result of an imperial system that constantly expanded
and frequently accepted the peoples of conquered countries as Roman citizens.
Not until the end of the first century B.C.E., with the reign of Augustus, do
we begin to see signs of a distinctively 'Roman' art, an identifiably 'Roman'
cultural ideal. Read any book on the origin or life of Rome, from Romulus and
Remus to Augustus. [Proposed by Sam
Coulbourn]
Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome;
New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Co., 2015. 537 pp.
Mary Beard tells the
story of Ancient Rome, starting at the height of its Empire, in 63 BCE. SPQR=Senatus
Populusque Romanus, The Senate and the People are Roman. It appeared on plaques,
documents, on coins of the Roman Republic.
This republic in 63 BCE stretched
from modern France, down to Spain and North Africa, including Egypt, across to
Syria and Turkey and the Aegean, Croatia and of course Italy.
Dr. Beard is a professor of classics at Cambridge University,
UK. In this very readable history she starts at 63 BCE then goes back to Rome’s
mythological beginning about 753 BCE and forward to Emperor Caracalla, 313 CE.
When I got to high school, we needed
to choose a foreign language. My mother,
a language scholar, urged me to take Latin, under the stern tutelage of Miss
Burdette Smyth, who had taught her, a generation before.
Miss Smyth opened up Latin and
ancient Rome to us kids. We recited
words from Julius Caesar, reporting about his ten-year tour of duty in Gaul
(France) for Rome. We sang familiar songs in Latin. Others passed off Latin as a “dead language”,
but I’ve used it every day, because it is the backbone of English. Latin words explain the basis of most English
words and open up not only Romance but also Germanic languages and more to the
learner.
Mary Beard takes us into Rome, with
rumbling chariots, prancing senators in their togas, and poor people living in
streets filled with trash, and human and animal excrement. She centers her
story on 63 BCE, as the peak of Rome’s civilization. It was six centuries
before that Rome was growing, as a monarchy, but in 63 it was becoming a
republic. The annual consulship that
year was assigned to Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius
Antonius Hybrida.
It is Cicero, or Kee-ker-o, in what we believe was
the Roman pronunciation, who opens up ancient Rome for us in a way that we have
not found for ancient Greece. His
letters tell us not only about the major events and important players, but about
the little stuff that is all around us, and affects all of us, most of the
time. Cicero’s writings, and those of others have been eagerly read by scholars
over the centuries. Many of the writings
of our Founding Fathers often referred to Roman leaders and ideas, and they
compared their situations to those of Ancient Rome.
That may explain why teachers in
American schools since the Revolution have taught Latin and made frequent
references to Rome and Roman topics. By the time I was studying Latin in the
late 1940s that was waning, but we still had to memorize a good bit of Latin.
Rome had it’s blustering, bragging
leaders, it had hatred, deceit, cheating and greed, magnificent grandeur, and
luxury in the homes of the wealthy, and starving masses, often worse off than
the slaves. In other words, nothing we
haven’t seen in our national government.
They did tend to kill one another more often. From the killing of Julius
Caesar in 44 BCE, 34 emperors of Rome up to 392 CE were killed or executed.
Julius Caesar was indeed a star in
Ancient Rome. He spent nine years with thousands of troops “running” the Roman
province of Gaul. This meant frequent battles with the Belgians, the Germans,
the Celts and the Helvetians. He even took two legions across to Britannia, in
his first invasion of the island. The next year, 54 BCE, he used 628 ships to
carry five legions, 2000 cavalry, and one war elephant. Rome never successfully conquered Britannia
until 45 CE. At that time, Britons were iron age people, naked except for leather
skins. They must have been amazed when that war elephant came ashore!
Caesar and his legions were also
impressed when the Britons attacked with 4000 war chariots. Rome had not employed chariots in combat, and
they were very effective.
Caesar wrote a lot of letters back
to Cicero. One of them was a geography lesson for readers, and it has been
preserved and published for centuries. The first sentence is one we memorized
in school:
Gallia est
omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani,
tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.
All Gaul is
divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani
another, and the third, those who in their own language are called Celts, in
ours Gauls.
Caesar hemmed and hawed about when to return to Rome, but he
finally crossed the Rubicon river, then the northern boundary of Italy, with
his troops on January 10, 49 BCE. This precipitated the Roman civil war, and
Caesar became Dictator, beginning Imperial era for Rome.
Cicero invited Caesar to visit him at his summer home on
the Bay of Naples, and he may have regretted it, because Caesar brought 2000
troops with him, as well as slaves. Caesar set up camp on Cicero’s estate,
bringing his own bathtub, masseuse, slaves and ex-slaves and all the other
things a general needs. Cicero set up three dining rooms for Caesar’s senior
officers. Mary Beard adds that Caesar had a remarkably large appetite because
of the custom of wealthy Romans of emetics, or regular vomiting as they
reclined at dinner.
Finally, Senators had had enough of Caesar, and in a
dramatic attack on the Ides of March, 44 BCE Brutus stabbed him, assisted by
several others, in a scene recreated for all time by Shakespeare, in Julius
Caesar.
Mary Beard helps us to see more of Rome and the Romans as
she describes the role of women. Marriage was generally simple. Either partner
could declare they were married, and either could declare it was over. It was more complicated when wealthy people
and dowries were involved.
Medical practice was quite poor then, and parents tended
not to get too emotionally attached to newborns, since they might die, or
parents do not want to keep them, particularly baby girls. Often newborn
children might simply have been thrown on a trash heap. This became a means for
trash pickers to acquire free slaves.
The story of the Roman Empire went on to 330 CE, and
there are so many lessons for us. I grew weary of reading about each emperor
and layer upon layer of corruption and deceit.
There were happy stories, of course, but largely one lesson after
another for us, all these years later.
Although nearly half our American population does not
believe it, what we saw in the past four years is what went on again and again
2000 years ago. It is a tale of
organized and celebrated selfishness, cruelty, cheating and dishonesty. We came within a hair’s breadth of having one
governor, one state, stand up and declare and prove that their election was
fraudulent. What might follow, as people lost the ability to tell right from
wrong, leading to the collapse of our democracy.
Rome taught us many lessons, good and bad, but the one
thing that stands out in my mind is how susceptible we are to bluff and fakery
as we have seen in our time. May we
always have enough men and women who know what is right and true and have the
will to defend it.
Sam Coulbourn
Roman Leaders: The 10 Greatest Generals behind the Empire
1.
Nero Claudius Drusus
(38-9 BCE)
2.
Gnaeus Julius Agricola
(40-93 CE)
3.
Germanicus Julius
Caesar (15 BCE-19 CE)
4.
Marcus Vipsanius
Agrippa (63-12 BCE)
5.
Marcus Antonius (83-30
BCE)
6.
Gaius Julius Caesar
(100-44 BCE)
7.
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus
(106-48 BCE)
8.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla
(138-78 BCE)
9.
Gaius Marius (157-86
BCE)
10.
Scipio Africanus
(236-183 BCE)
List
of assassinated and executed heads of state and government - Wikipedia
-end-
HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2021
Yalta
meeting of Churchill, FDR and Stalin
Wednesday, February 24, 2021.
A History of
United States alliances with the rest of the world. From its very beginning, the United States has
forged alliances with other countries, from France, eager to oppose Great
Britain in 1776; Great Britain’s assistance for the Confederate States during
the Civil War; President Wilson’s attempt to form and join the League of
Nations; our alliance with Great Britain, China, France and the Soviet Union in
World War II; formation of the United Nations; the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. How helpful have these alliances been? Home in on an agreement in
our past, or one that exists today, and discover its benefits and costs. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, March 31, 2021. Native Americans—Looking East. When we normally think and write about the Indians that white men encountered when they first arrived on these shores several hundred years ago, it’s from the point of view of “looking west” at these red men, staring at European faces as our forefathers made their first contact with this continent. Let’s try to imagine it from the viewpoint of the Native Americans, when the strange ships appeared, and these bearded pale faces appeared. Read any book about Native Americans that will help you and us to understand if we were standing in their moccasins. [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]
Wednesday, April 28, 2021. The Quest for Truth in History. How do we know it’s true? We’ve just gone through a difficult time in our
national history, when what you may have believed may have been false, and what
was “false” depended upon your political orientation. Propaganda and deception
have always been used by governments against the outside world and for their
own people. How can the intelligent
individual figure out what is true and what is false? [Proposed by Sam
Coulbourn]
Wednesday, May 26, 2021. The Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has become a central, and
increasingly polarizing, institution in American politics. When Alexander
Hamilton floated the idea of a federal court system where judges would have
“lifetime tenure,” he assured naysayers that the judiciary would be “the least
dangerous” branch of government. However, the Supreme Court has become both a
pivotal and polarizing feature of American political and policy reform. Supreme
Court decisions are democratizing. They played a key role in dismantling Jim
Crow segregation, nationalizing marriage equality and protecting our free
press. Yet, they are also paralyzing. Supreme Court doctrine delayed
Congressional attempts to end slavery and establish civil rights for Black
Americans. Court actions have limited critical elements of the Affordable Care
Act. Perhaps because of its prominence in the nation’s most vexing policy
problems, decisions about the Court–whom to nominate, how to nominate, and what
decisions it can make–have become a location for the most visible forms of
partisan rancor and discord. The most volatile fights between Republicans and
Democrats frequently fixate on conflicts over the Court. In many ways, the
Supreme Court of today bears little resemblance to the Court envisioned by
Hamilton. Read any book about the Supreme Court, or about a particular period
or decision . [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]
Wednesday, June 30, 2021.
Famous or Infamous Court Cases. [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]
Wednesday, August 25, 2021. History of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt, and including Algeria,
Tunisia, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Mauritania and more. Pick a nation or a group of nations in the
northern tier of Africa and learn how they interact, how they came to be, what
problems are they having, or had, that attracted world attention in the
past. Some examples: The Barbary Pirates
and how America’s President Jefferson took them on; The Italian Colonial history
in Abyssinia and Somaliland; World War II—Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa;
“Carthago delenda est!” The Punic War between Rome and Carthage; Tunisia
and he Start of Arab Spring. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, September 29,
2021. The Fight for Civil Rights. [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]
Wednesday, October
27, 2021. Mass Refugee movements in History. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
There will be no later meeting in December.
Wednesday, January 28, 2022.
World War II at Home. [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]
