Listening to History

I've been listening to some great historical biographies over the last month. Simon Sebag Montefiore's latest book is a history of The Romanovs from 1613-1918. This is a huge subject, telling the story of all the Romanov tsars from Michael, who reluctantly took the throne in the 17th century during the Time of Troubles, to Nicholas II, whose downfall & abdication in 1917 led to the murder of his family at Ekaterinburg the following year. I've read a lot of Russian history & there are some periods I know well - Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, the Decembrist period, Nicholas II - but I knew very little about the 17th century tsars & the Empresses Elizaveta & Catherine I. Montefiore tells his story with gusto & includes as much violence & sex as possible.

The story of the Romanovs is one of excess & violence. Most royal families, at least until the modern period, found themselves at war with each other. There have been many examples of rulers & their heirs not getting along. Power is a precious thing to those who have it & an irresistible attraction to the next in line. The Romanovs were no different. Peter the Great imprisoned his son, Alexis, had him tortured & may have taken part in the torture himself. Catherine the Great wasn't exactly distraught when her husband, Peter III, was murdered, leaving her to rule. Catherine's son, Paul, was murdered as well, although his son, Alexander I, never fully emerged from the guilt he felt about his father's death.

Excess in the form of wealth & extravagant consumption is another theme. From Peter the Great's determination to build his city on the Neva, St Petersburg, to Catherine the Great's refurbishment of palaces in the city & at the village of Tsarskoe Selo, where the Imperial family could live more privately, no expense was spared. Catherine was a great collector, amassing the collection at the Hermitage Palace. The incredible wealth of the Romanovs lasted until the end, with the Fabergé Easter eggs of the last Tsars exemplifying the conspicuous consumption of the aristocracy. This excess was paid for by the labour of millions of serfs & citizens. The divide between the autocratic regime & the vast majority of Russians could only lead to disaster. The assassination of a reforming tsar like Alexander II led to the reactionary reign of his son so that even when moves were made towards modernising Russia, they were often stymied by the inherent problems of ruling such an enormous country & the logistical problems caused by the tyranny of distance.

I enjoyed Simon Sebag Montefiore's telling of the story very much & Simon Russell Beale's narration was excellent. I did wonder if we needed so many quotations from the racy love letters Alexander II wrote to his young mistress (& later, his morganatic wife), Katya Dolgorukaya, or so many descriptions of knoutings & tortures, but the book has been amazingly successful for a serious history (over 50 reservations on our copies at work) so the author knows what sells. It kept me listening for nearly 29 hours & I listened to the last 5 hours over a weekend as the compelling description of the last years of Nicholas & Alexandra was so enthralling.

My interest in the ancient world led to my other history audio, Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra : a life. The last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, Cleopatra is almost a mythic figure. I knew the basic outline of her story but this biography filled in a lot of gaps. Cleopatra was an amazingly determined woman. She was co-ruler with her father & then after his death, with her younger brother as co-ruler & husband, according to tradition because a woman wasn't thought to be capable of ruling alone. She was able to consolidate her position & survive the attempted treachery of her brother & his advisers. Several plots by this brother, Ptolemy XII, &, after his death, by another brother  & co-ruler, Ptolemy XIV, led to Cleopatra appealing to Rome's most famous general, Julius Caesar, for assistance. Egypt's enormous resources made it an irresistible prospect for Rome who were keen to have as many client kingdoms ruled by compliant rulers as possible. Cleopatra's personal relationship with Caesar, which led to the birth of their son, Caesarion, caused scandal but neither cared. I hadn't realised that Cleopatra was in Rome, living in one of Caesar's villas, when he was assassinated. She very quickly left Rome for Alexandria, where she proclaimed Caesarion her co-ruler, thereby satisfying tradition & removing the need for her to marry.

Cleopatra's relationship with the Roman general Marc Antony has become legendary. Stacy Schiff does an excellent job of picking her way through the myths & the hostile propaganda to try to explain the attraction between them. As most of the contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of the period were written by Roman historians, Cleopatra has been attacked & blamed for everything that went wrong. The relationship between Cleopatra & Antony lasted ten years & they had three children together. Cleopatra needed Antony's military assistance & he needed the wealth & resources she could bring in his battles with his rival & co-Tribune, Octavius. The personal dynamic between the two men was complicated by Antony's marriage to Octavius' sister, Octavia, & Octavius' reputation as a sickly man, not a warrior like Antony. Octavius had been adopted by Julius Caesar as his heir but Cleopatra had Caesar's son, a situation that was always a threat to Octavius' power base. The breakdown of the relationship between Octavius & Antony, complicated by Antony's affair with Cleopatra & his divorce from Octavia, led to the battle of Actium, where Octavius was triumphant. In the aftermath, both Antony & Cleopatra committed suicide.

I loved all the detail in this book about Cleopatra's Court & the city of Alexandria. Cleopatra was an incredibly shrewd politician. She used her advantages well. Although she was not thought to be particularly beautiful, she was intelligent & witty, able to enthrall Caesar & Antony. She was also pragmatic in a very cut-throat world. She had her siblings exiled or murdered when they threatened her power; she made her son co-ruler so she didn't need to marry again; she constantly identified with the goddess Isis to enhance her prestige with her own people & put on extravagant public ceremonies - she knew the value of spectacle in politics. She seems to have been the dominant partner in her relationship with Antony, she certainly had the financial clout & she seems to have been the stronger personality. Antony almost fell apart after Actium, he apparently believed that he would be allowed to disappear into exile. Even his suicide was a mess. Cleopatra was determined that she would not become a trophy for Octavius, paraded through Rome as a captive in his Triumph. She meticulously planned her death (it may have been poison rather than the famous asp) & denied Octavius his prize. Her enduring reputation rests on a few images - smuggling herself in to see Caesar wrapped up in a carpet; floating down the Cydnus River to Tarsus to meet Antony, dressed as Aphrodite; dying from the bite of an asp in her own mausoleum. Stacy Schiff has used the available sources brilliantly to create a portrait of a remarkable woman & queen whose career was unique in antiquity & still fascinates today.

I also want to mention a history podcast that I've recently discovered. Dan Snow is a historian & broadcaster & he has a podcast called History Hit. He talks to historians, mostly British, about their latest book or a topic in the news & I'm really enjoying browsing the back catalogue. I've recently listened to Anna Keay on the Duke of Monmouth, Adrian Goldsworthy on his new book, Pax Romana, Marc Morris on 1216, Anna Whitelock on the Tudors & Janina Ramirez on the Anglo-Saxons. Of course, it's all adding to my tbr shelves but everything I see, read or hear seems to do that! You can listen to the podcast at the website or subscribe from wherever you get your podcasts.

SPQR : a history of Ancient Rome - Mary Beard

I know very little about the ancient world. My knowledge of the Roman Empire doesn't really stretch much further then Roman Britain, apart from a few famous names - Romulus & Remus, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Claudius, Nero. After enjoying Mary Beard's book on Pompeii, I was eager to read her new book about Rome in the hope of enlightenment.

The title - SPQR - is the abbreviation for The Senate and People of Rome. This book tells the story of Rome from it's earliest beginnings until 212 CE. Opening with the dispute between the aristocrat Catiline & the famous orator, Cicero, in 63 BCE, we then go back to Rome's beginnings to investigate the myths that lie at its heart. The twins, Romulus & Remus, suckled by a wolf, are the traditional founders of Rome. Mary Beard explores the origins of this story & whether there is any archaeological evidence to edge the myth towards history. Rome's beginnings were agricultural, ruled over by a monarchy, but by the 5th century BCE, Rome had become a Republic, with a class system that encompassed both slaves & free citizens, patricians & plebeians. The decision to appoint official representatives of the people, known as tribunes, was crucial & eventually the second-class status of plebeians was virtually abolished as all major offices were opened to them.

The expansion of Roman power was crucial in turning the Republic into an Empire. The successes of the Army & its Generals led to a period of civil war & political assassinations that ultimately led to autocratic rule being re-established. The triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Pompey & Crassus, instigated to consolidate their power in the Senate, deteriorated as Caesar increasingly tried to shore up his own position at the expense of the other two. Julius Caesar's attempt to become a dictator ended with his assassination but it was his heir, Octavian, who renamed himself Augustus & became Rome's first Emperor. The story of the Julio-Claudian Emperors is probably the best known part of the story. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius & Nero, their wives & families are notorious figures. The stories of excess, cruelty & betrayal are familiar through film, books & television. The empire continued on after them, with another ten emperors after Nero until 212 CE.

As interesting as the stories of the elite were, I was just as fascinated by the stories of ordinary Romans. These stories of ordinary people are difficult to find but Mary Beard has done just that in her previous books & TV series like Meet the Romans. In this book, she shows us what it was like to live in Rome. The diet, the houses (the rich lived on the ground floor with the poor at the top of the house. The bars, shops, baths & workplaces. In ancient Rome it was the poor who went out to eat as they had no way of cooking in their tiny apartments. She discusses marriage, the status of women, family relationships, the treatment of children, the ways of becoming a citizen & the entitlements that came with that status. These chapters give a real depth to the story of Rome & a feeling of what life was like then, in a period so long ago that it's difficult to grasp. It also reminds us that, no matter what the Emperors or Senators were doing, life went on for the vast majority of Romans. Did it really matter which Emperor was on the throne? The plots & conspiracies, the foreign wars against rebels & enemies, impinged very little on the lives of ordinary people.

SPQR is engaging & absorbing. It's the perfect introduction to the history of ancient Rome & it's made me want to read more about the Empire in the works of the ancient authors like Tacitus & Suetonius as well as modern interpretations.

Pompeii - Mary Beard

I first came across Professor Mary Beard through her blog, A Don's Life. Then, I watched her TV series, Meet the Romans. I enjoyed the way she talked about the lives of ordinary people 2000 years ago. So, knowing very little about Pompeii, I borrowed her book about the city & prepared to be enlightened & entertained. And, I was!

The word Pompeii conjures up images of a decadent society with a brothel on every corner until the gods retaliated by destroying the town in the shape of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. The plaster casts of the victims of the eruption & the objects & paintings revealed by over a century of archaeological exploration have coloured most people's ideas of Pompeii. Mary Beard begins her book with an account of one group of people trying desperately to escape the disaster & failing. Most of the book, however, is more concerned with the living than the dead. The subtitle is, after all, The Life of a Roman Town.

The book explores the way ordinary people lived in Roman times. The street life, the way houses were decorated, how people earned a living & where they went to experience the pleasures of life - food, wine, sex & baths. Along the way, Beard demolishes or at least questions some of the more prevalent myths about Pompeii, particularly about the sexual life of the city. The myth that there were brothels everywhere depends on the standard of identification used by historians & archaeologists. Some believe that one erotic painting or example of sexual graffiti indicates a brothel. On this basis, there were a lot of brothels in Pompeii. Other historians have set the bar higher. A building must have a bed in a room easily accessible to the public, explicitly erotic paintings on the wall & a cluster of sexual graffiti on the walls. On this basis, there was just one brothel in Pompeii.

Mary Beard continually emphasizes the random nature of what has survived & that's what I find fascinating about any book written about the ancient world. There's a running joke on Time Team that an archaeologist will call any unusual object or building "ritual". If they don't know what it is or what it was used for, it must have a religious purpose. In Pompeii, the purpose of unidentifiable objects has often been seen as ritual or sexual. We all have a desire to stick a label on an object & have some certainty about its use. Archaeologists are no different. Beard examines the various theories about a place or an object & gives the reader her own opinion which is always more common sense than fantastical.

I found the chapter about religion & the gods fascinating as well. The Romans were happy to allow a multitude of gods into their pantheon. The Temple of Jupiter Meilichios is just one example of the temples rediscovered in Pompeii, structured in the usual way - a room to hold the statues of the god & an altar outside where sacrifices were performed. The clean emptiness of the temple gives no idea of how it would have looked originally. The statue of the god would have been surrounded by offerings. There might have been other works of art or the objects brought home by victorious armies. The animal sacrifices took place outside on the altar, performed by priests in the accepted manner. The identification of the Emperor with the gods meant that religion was very much part of Roman society & political life. Rome was happy to appropriate the gods of conquered people but not if they were seen as a threat to the Emperor's power.

It's hard to know how typical a Roman town Pompeii was & Mary Beard doesn't try to make the experience of someone living there stand for life all over the Empire. Pompeii's survival under the layers of pumice & mud has made it a fascinating source of material for scholars. The attraction of catching a city in the moment of death & destruction is undeniable & this book is an excellent way to explore the Roman world.

I've also been dipping into the second collection of posts from Mary Beard's blog. The collection is called All In A Don's Day. Mary Beard writes about Cambridge, academia, the Ancient world as portrayed in the media & anything else that takes her fancy in a direct, conversational style, much like the style of Pompeii. The posts are often accompanied by the wittiest or most pertinent responses from her readers - & a very erudite lot they are. Although these posts are a few years old, the subjects are timeless & were probably chosen because of this. Blogs must be one of the more ephemeral forms of writing but it's interesting to see what a Cambridge don's day is like albeit a don who's now a bit of a media star, always asked for a quote when anything from the Classical world hits the headlines.