Sourdough crust. Feta. Freshly picked rosemary. Meaty green olives. Olive oil from a farm in Greece that was handed to us by a friend. The olive oil was velvety, mild, and filled with overlapping flavors of spring and vanilla.
A young British jockey is pulled from his mount by his excessively wealthy father. His new job is to assist as his father runs for a local council seat in his first political election. Someone tries to kill dad while he is campaigning. Then tries again. And again. Benedict Juliard, an amateur jockey not yet 18 years old, has exceptional sleuthing skills and then the book wanders aimlessly and pointlessly. Francis probably wrote the book in a weekend. In just a few pages about a dozen years of history fly by. Dad moves up from his local council seat to become Prime Minister of England. Benedict gets into Oxford, or Cambridge, it hardly matters, gets a job in the best horse-related company in the country and within a couple of years, and a couple of pages, moves up to a position of exceptional responsibility. Finally, the only suspect in the story shows up in parliament and at last Francis gets on with a conclusion.
It is no simple task to recount the thousand year history of the Ancient Roman empire. It isn’t even easy to determine when the empire begins or ends. Compounding the difficulty is Roman proclivity toward record keeping meaning that they have left behind an extensive written record. Moreover, Roman history has been studied and venerated by western historians for nearly two millennia. What makes SPQR stand apart is the clarity with which Mary Beard tells the tale. As a reader you sense that Beard has spent a lifetime reading original texts in Latin as well as innumerable treatises of historical analysis that followed. Rather than being muddled by what must be millions of pages of books and records, Beard has the remarkable ability to observe Ancient Rome from a drone and then zoom into examine individual artifacts. Beginning with the founding of a tiny village in the hills above the River Tiber and continuing until the wider Roman Empire made all of its inhabitants citizens near the end of the 4th century, Beard repeatedly makes clear what can be known from archaeological evidence and what must then be speculation. Readers are given the opportunity to evaluate evidence along with her, free to agree or not with her interpretation. What emerges is a living society with all its contradictions and multiple overlays of countries and cultures, rich and poor, workers and leaders, slaves and freedmen, farmers and laundrymen. It is a nice departure from the glorification and focus on late Roman emperors as if they were Rome’s entirety.