Mary Beard - More Secret Histories of Ancient Rome
Mary Beard's enthusiasm for decoding scabrous faded Latin knows no bounds
As Reg, the leader of the People's Front of Judea, once famously asked, "What have the Romans ever done for us?" For Mary Beard, they've provided an illustrious academic career, a prolific literary output and several acclaimed TV series. While her focus on Roman life might seem narrowly focused, she's been unafraid to speak her mind on a broad range of contemporary subjects, leading to astonishingly personal attacks that were as bewildering as they were vile. I can only imagine the leap of faith it must have taken to enter the public arena after such a barrage of abuse.
She was, of course, amongst admirers at the Theatre Royal, an evening she announced was also being streamed as the first night of her tour. Nonetheless, hats off to her for unapologetically getting back out there, resplendent in a sequined shawl, as she wandered from stool to armchair, backlit by illustrative images.
The evening commenced with a curious diversion, no doubt prompted by Christopher Nolan's film version of Homer's Odyssey. Written 800 years before Augustus was emperor (a span as great as our relationship with the Bayeux tapestry), Beard acknowledged it was a stretch to discuss Odysseus's dalliances with Circe and Calypso in a talk about Rome. However, she argued, it was instructive to examine how playfully the Romans tinkered with Homer's poem, showing a side rarely explored amidst talk of conquest and empire. Beard's central thesis is that Roman life is best seen through the lens of ordinary folk, their lives as humdrum, as dramatic, as eccentric as our own today.
To hammer home the point, she had playful plans of her own, inviting the audience to participate in a multiple-choice quiz on our phones. Is the object displayed a wine cooler or a chamber pot? This was just one of the many questions I got wrong, so perhaps my impatience was coloured by my uselessness, but it felt like the quiz went on just a bit too long. Lord knows what the online people made of it.
In fairness to Beard, each illustration was subsequently integrated into the anecdotes she told, as tombstones and legal documents offered an insight into a violent society, a world away from the picturesque ruins left to us. Whether it was death through a bungled jewellery heist or murder by chamber pot, the thinking was that things could get nasty pretty quickly back in the day. It's a selective reading of primary sources, of course, which doesn't reveal the extent of criminality, but Beard's point was well made. There is a wealth of material about Roman life that simply goes unnoticed and therefore unread.
How many people, visiting the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, realise that the shady Herodes Atticus was buried underfoot? How many people, walking uphill to the Parthenon, barely notice the theatre built by him to commemorate his wife Regilla? Still in use today, it's a monument to overcompensation, given he probably orchestrated her murder. In a rare name drop, Beard revealed Martin Scorsese was of that opinion. It was a fascinating observation, and the point where we saw more of her personality emerge. I would have liked to have heard it further developed.
Instead, we moved onto amusing graffiti. Preserved on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum, we learned that Atimetus got me pregnant and Apollinaris, doctor of the Emperor Titus, had a good shit here. Fun though this was – her enthusiasm for decoding scabrous faded Latin knows no bounds – it didn't really lead anywhere. Beard is an unrivalled expert in her field, and her illuminating insights into the lives of ordinary and forgotten Romans is without parallel. I was looking forward to an evening that had an overarching trajectory that led to meaningful conclusions. I'm confident that she has exactly that locked in her head. Instead, however, an evening of disconnected ideas teetered to a close with a brief Q&A – her favourite TV version of I, Claudius is far better than Robert Graves's book – and a Roman joke that hasn't aged well.
Mary Beard left the stage, it should be said, to great applause that felt as much about affection as appreciation. "Come see me after at the merchandise stand," she offered. "You don't need to buy anything." She seems a lovely person, and much loved by an appreciative audience. I wish I could have been more engaged, not least as I suspect that had she trusted the intellect of her audience more, she would have had a lot more to give.
