Mary Beard is well known for being a very good communicator, as well as a classicist. Her style is down-to-earth and she doesn’t slow down for technicalities or academic language. While accessible, it’s not arrogant, nor do I feel she debases her exposition or arguments. She’s “here” to let most people understand a bit better how it was back then, and do it in an entertaining way. If her intent was to help a layman better understand the culture, life and way of thinking found in Rome during the period the book covers, and I do think so, then she did a great job.

This means, though, that I think that some people will expect something else from it. She does explain where lots of her evidence comes from, but that doesn’t stop her expressing her opinions and suppositions. I think that’s one of the strengths of the book, but if someone expects a more traditional re-telling of Rome (even if updated to modern historiography), then they’ll probably end up disappointed.

That said, in case it wasn’t already clear, I did like it a lot. I believe more popular history books should focus more on trying to put us in the state of mind of the people living then, helping us understand why they did what they did, than just telling what happened. If on the side I get a glimpse of the ideas in the head of a renowned classicist, well, I’ll happily take that too.

I found a couple of odd things here and there, and even if small, I feel like mentioning one. She says early on

Modern historians often lament how little we can know about some aspects of the ancient world. ‘Just think of what we don’t know about the lives of the poor,’ they complain, ‘or of the perspectives of women.’ This is as anachronistic as it is deceptive. The writers of Roman literature were almost exclusively male; or, at least, very few works by women have come down to us (the autobiography of the emperor Nero’s mother, Agrippina, must count as one of the saddest losses of classical literature).

Which by itself sounds a bit weird to me. Modern historians can lament a lot about not knowing about things. They lament it because, in this case, they don’t have those perspectives due to the reasons Beard mentions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a very reasonable complaint. So reasonable, in fact, that Beard herself comes close to lamenting it in a later chapter, when talking about the non-elite and poor Romans.

The book is narrated by Phyllida Nash. She does a great job, even if sometimes, while reading texts in Latin I felt she slipped a bit into Ecclesiastical instead of Classical pronunciation. But even if that’s so, she still did a great job nonetheless (even in these quotes I must say) And yes, in the worst case this is a level of pedantry that this book probably doesn’t deserve .

As with other similar audiobooks, though, there are no “attached” maps, drawings, graphical timelines or even suggested readings that one can find in the printed book. This is a big omission, and even though I do recommend the book and really like Nash’s narration, it leads me to recommend the printed book instead (or both together).

Big recommendation to anyone remotely curious History, Rome, or even how cultures perceive themselves and change over time.