mary beard ultimate rome episode 3 summary

MARY BEARD ULTIMATE ROME EPISODE 3 SUMMARY HOW TO
MARY BEARD ULTIMATE ROME EPISODE 3 SUMMARY SERIES
MARY BEARD ULTIMATE ROME EPISODE 3 SUMMARY TV

MARY BEARD ULTIMATE ROME EPISODE 3 SUMMARY TV

When asked why, he replied: “If you’re sharing out the state’s property, I’ll come and take my cut, thank you.” This is not far from the logic of the elderly modern millionaire who claims his free TV licence or bus pass. Was this a proper use of the state’s resources and a precedent to be proud of – the first time any state in the west had decided to guarantee the basic subsistence of many of its citizens? Or was it an encouragement to idleness, and an extravagance that the exchequer could not afford? One rich Roman conservative was once caught standing in line to collect this allowance of which he vehemently disapproved and certainly did not need.

There was also endless debate over the distribution of free or subsidised grain to citizens living in the capital, one half of the infamous pair of “bread and circuses”, which, according to a hard-nosed Roman satirist, had sapped the political energy and independence of the people. Even the famously upright Marcus Tullius Cicero – politician, poet, philosopher and jokester – left one overseas posting with a small fortune in his suitcase he had apparently been “economical” with his expenses allowance. There was endless, and largely unsuccessful, legislation aimed at preventing officials lining their own pockets out of the public purse. Meanwhile the political classes worried about everything from expenses scandals to benefits scroungers. Urban living in a capital city with a million inhabitants, the biggest conurbation in the west before the 19th century, raised all the usual questions: from traffic congestion (one law tried to keep heavy vehicles out of the city during the day, with the knock-on effect of appalling noise at night) to rudimentary planning problems (exactly how high were high-rise blocks allowed to be, and in what materials to make them safe from fire?). In a particularly ghoulish twist, uncomfortably reminiscent of the sadistic showmanship of Islamic State, the head of the Roman commander was cut off and used by the enemy as a makeshift prop in a performance of Euripides’ play The Bacchae – in which the head of King Pentheus, horribly decapitated by his mother, takes a macabre starring role.īack in Italy too, Roman life had a familiar side. And one of their worst defeats, in 53BCE at the hands of a rival empire in the east, took place near the modern border between Syria and Turkey. Iraq was as much a graveyard for the Romans as it has been for us. They launched disastrous military expeditions to those parts of the world where we too have failed.

It’s tempting to imagine the ancient Romans as some version of ourselves. Their solution to the crisis of migration was to point the migrants firmly westwards, and try to make them someone else’s problem. And it was exacerbated by the calculating policy of the Romans in the east, who by this era effectively formed a separate state.

MARY BEARD ULTIMATE ROME EPISODE 3 SUMMARY SERIES

It was just one stage in a series of standoffs, compromises and military conflicts that eventually destroyed central Roman power in the western part of their empire. On one notorious occasion, uncomfortable even for some Roman observers, they sold dog-meat as food to the asylum-seekers who had managed to get across the river (dog was off limits for human consumption then as now).

MARY BEARD ULTIMATE ROME EPISODE 3 SUMMARY HOW TO

The Roman authorities had no better idea of how to deal with this crisis than our own authorities do, and, predictably, they were less humane. What we often call the “invasions” into the Roman empire of barbarian hordes (or “swarms”, perhaps) could equally well be described as mass movements of economic migrants or political refugees from northern Europe. B y the late fourth century CE the river Danube had become Rome’s Calais.

Mary beard ultimate rome episode 3 summary