{"id":3267,"date":"2024-09-11T11:51:10","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T10:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=3267"},"modified":"2024-09-11T11:51:10","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T10:51:10","slug":"review-spqr-a-history-of-ancient-rome-by-mary-beard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/review-spqr-a-history-of-ancient-rome-by-mary-beard\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: SPQR &#8211; A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you&#8217;re like me, most of what you know about ancient Rome comes from repeated viewings of Ridley Scott&#8217;s <em>Gladiator<\/em>.  Maybe even seeing Stanley Kubrick&#8217;s <em>Spartacus. <\/em> I never received a &#8220;classical&#8221; education when I grew up in New York City.  History in my primary school began when Columbus, to the surprise of the local populations, &#8220;discovered&#8221; America.  It was time to ramp up what I know about Rome &#8212; and who better to start with then Mary Beard.  This thick book covers the period from the mythical creation of Rome up to the end of the 2nd century &#8212; about a thousand years.  The empire lasted after that, but Beard decided that the really interesting bits were all over by then.  It&#8217;s a very good book, in thematic rather than strictly chronological order, is well-illustrated and clear.  Now I guess I can watch whole seasons of <em>I, Claudius<\/em> and maybe return to <em>Gladiator<\/em> one more time &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re like me, most of what you know about ancient Rome comes from repeated viewings of Ridley Scott&#8217;s Gladiator. Maybe even seeing Stanley Kubrick&#8217;s Spartacus. I never received a &#8220;classical&#8221; education when I grew&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}