John Schied's INTRODUCTION TO ROMAN RELIGION is a fantastic short beginner's guide to the complicated beliefs and practices of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Scheid concentrates on the civic aspects of the religion and how the culture's dependence on rites and omens shaped the society around it. The book takes the reader through the many and often intricate steps that had to be taken in order to honor the gods, and how participation in said activities established a Roman's place in society. The book mainly focuses on practices within Rome itself stretching between the second century B.C. to the rise of Christianity, and pulls from both ancient and modern sources to paint a complete picture for the reader.

What keeps AN INTRODUCTION from being a perfect read is that Scheid's interpretation of Ancient Rome feels extremely atheistic. While he dabbles in the philosophical attitudes expressed by prominent Romans at the end of the book, he never quite establishes what the Romans as a whole believed about their own beliefs. While it's repeatedly stated that was no dogma dictating specific interpretations of the gods, it doesn't excuse the lack of a general summary of the major figures of the Roman Pantheon. An unfamiliar reader may feel lost in consequence.

S.P.Q.R. is Mary Beard's look at, not how Rome fell, which many others have taken a stab at, but at how it rose.  She covers Rome's "first millenium," ending in 212 AD, when the Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire.

The title takes its name from the Latin abbreviation (still used by the city of Rome) for Senatus populusque Romanus - "The Senate and the People of Rome" - which was the slogan of the Republic of Rome.

Rome's history is long.  The Romans themselves believed that their city was founded in 753 BC (though they wouldn't have used the Christian calendar, of course - they dated things either from the Olympics, as the Greeks did, or ab urbe condita, "from the founding of the city"), by the mythological twins Romulus and Remus, the sons of Mars.  Romulus killed Remus, and then served as the first of Rome's seven traditional kings.

Rome's kings are shadowy creatures indeed.  They were shadowy even to the Romans of the late Republic, which is the period of the Republic we know most about.  How Rome became a republic (traditionally in 510 BC), and the origin of its genuine loathing for kings, is pretty shadowy as well.

Things start to clear a little with the period of the first great rise of Rome, as it was now not fighting local battles with the neighbors ten miles down the road, but encroaching on the Etruscans to the north, and on the Greeks of southern Italy, and finally facing off with their greatest opponent, Carthage, capital of a great empire stretching from Spain, across northern Africa, and covering large parts of Sicily and Sardinia, as well.  This period, from about 300 BC to the utter defeat of Carthage, in 146 BC, seems to have been vitally important to Rome's rise from city-statehood, dominating its immediate neighbors but having no larger reasonable ambitions, to controlling the entire western Mediterranean, and having ambitions in the east, as well.

And we just don't know enough to say exactly how they did it! 

Things become clearer in the republic's last century or so, as Rome fell into autocratic rule after a series of civil wars, those of Julius Caesar vs. Pompey and then Augustus Caesar vs. Mark Antony only being the last and most well known.  (For those who are interested particularly in this period, I can recommend either Tom Holland's Rubicon or Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series of historical novels.)  Interestingly, Beard describes this period as "an empire in search of an emperor."

Finally Augustus Caesar, having defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra, created a template for Rome's imperial rule which would last some 200 years after his death, with few alterations.  This template, however, had a flaw - what happened when an emperor, himself a competent ruler, had a natural heir who was poorly equiped to rule?  In the third century, Rome found out, and it wasn't to her advantage.

I would whole-heartedly recommend this to anyone interested in Roman history, or indeed in the question of how a small city-state came to become one of the largest empires in world history.

It seems that by the time this trial came about the Roman Republic was heading downhill fast. Around this time the tension between the plebeians and the patricians was reaching fever pitch and there were a number of prominent individuals appearing that were rallying the plebians to their cause. This, as is understandable, was quite upsetting to the patricians because it meant that it would undermine the status quo, so the patricians began to take things into their own hands – through murder (though in many cases this was simply an extension of the unrest that had began around the time of Sulla). The murder at the centre of this trial was of Saturnius, and after he met his unfortunate fate Julius Caesar, who was also rising to prominence at this time, decided to bring back the perdullio, which is basically the offence of high treason.

This is the charge that Rabario was brought up on, and unlike the other trials that Cicero has participated in, this one was being held in a special court before Caesar and his cousin, and duly found guilty. However Rabario had the right of appeal (since this was basically a kangaroo court, for want of a better word). The problem was that Cicero, in this instance, was facing an uphill battle, namely because the jury was simply going to ratify Caeser's original findings. It seemed that despite Cicero being, at the time, the foremost orator in Rome, this was a case in which his brilliant public speaking skills were going to be of no use. Rabario has already been convicted, and the ratification of that decision, especially since Caesar was a man of the people, was going to happen. It was only due to outside events (and the fact that Caeser's objectives had been met) that Rabario was acquitted.

The interesting thing about this text is there is a lot of discussion about Mars hill, and crucifixion. The funny thing with crucifixion (not that it is actually all that funny because it is a pretty horrid way to go) is that many of us simply connect it with Jesus Christ, as if he was the only person in history that was ever crucified (not counting the two thieves that were crucified to either side of him, though sometimes I wonder if there were a lot more people being crucified at the same time, it is just that the thieves were the only ones mentioned). Mind you, those of us who are not familiar with Roman history are quite likely to believe that. Okay, while he may have been the most famous person to have ever been crucified, he wasn't the only one. The interesting thing is that this was a punishment that was generally dished out on people who were not Roman citizens, with the exception of high treason. This is why the topic was being brought up – this was going to be Rabario's fate. No doubt Cicero was doing his best to spare Rabario from going down that road, especially since it would have been incredibly undignified for a Roman of high standing to meet that fate (and I suspect that this was one of the main reasons that Caesar wanted him charged with high treason).

Another problem with this oration is that it is not entirely extant – there are a number of sections that had been lost (probably because the manuscript has been damaged – it was not clear in the text how much of the manuscript was destroy). This makes following Cicero's argument a little difficult as it appears that it jumps about the place. This is one of the problems with ancient texts in that even if we have copies of the text it does not necessarily mean that we have the entire text, and sometimes the missing section contain some key idea or important information in regards to context. This didn't seem to be a huge issue with this text though as we do retain the opening remarks and large sections of the defense speech.

Still, one does sometimes wonder if it is possible to be able to persuade a jury who has already made up their mind about something, though we notice that these days the opposite can happen, especially in media circuses, or where public figures are involved. In one sense my mind drifts back to the infamous OJ Simpson trial, a court case that was incredibly hard to ignore since it would be dominating the headlines every night. As we all know he was eventually acquitted, though some wonder whether this was because there was a lack of evidence, or whether it had more to do with the media circus. However, in many cases all one needs is a really good lawyer (and these guys come with a very high price tag) to be able to turn an almost certain finding of guilt into an acquittal.

Lucan was a contemporary of Nero, and in fact died at the age of 25 when he slit his own wrists after he was discovered involved in a plot to overthrow the emperor (it seems as if this was a dignified way to die in the early empire). As such Lucan's poem regarding the civil war between Caeser and Pompey remains unfinished. It is clear from the text that Lucan does not like Julius Caeser, and that the translator of the version I read (Robert Graves) does not particularly like Lucan. So, if the translator does not like the writer, why does he bother translating the book. Well, he answers that question himself: because of its historical value.

The Pharasalia does give a good outline of the civil war, right up to Caeser's arrival in Egypt and his seduction of Cleopatra, however it is questionable as to whether this is what would be termed revisionist history. Considering that the other source of the civil war is from Caeser's own hand (and further sources, such as Seutonius and Plutarch, were written a lot later), there can be an argument that Caeser's account could be somewhat biased. However, it is clear that Lucan is quite biased as well as he does not paint Caeser in a particularly appealing light.

Now, interspersed amongst the text are a lot of stories relating to mythology, as well as some pseudo-scientific theorising (and I say pseudo-scientific because it seems that Lucan attributes a lot of things to the gods). There are also some interesting accounts, such as Caeser rowing across the Adriatic Sea in a row boat (and it is interesting how Lucan says that it is when he makes landfall that he regained his empire, suggesting, and there is a lot of truth to it, that while he was in the middle of the Adriatic in a rowboat he was no longer master of his own destiny, nor was he master of Rome, but then considering that he was in the middle of a civil war, he wasn't master of Rome anyway). The other story was that of Cato's march through the desert to visit the oracle that Alexander of Macedon had visited. The story of how Cato refused water, and marched alongside his troops, gives a lot of credence to his character. However, since Cato was originally on the side of Pompey, and that Lucan is an admirer of Pompey (as well as a barracker for Caeser's assassins), it is not surprising that he paints him in a really attractive light.

After Pompey's defeat, and his assassination in Egypt, Lucan raves for quite a while about how undignified a death it was, how he was denied proper burial rights, and how such a great man deserves many more honours than what he received. However, it should be remembered that Caeser was just as horrified at Pompey's undignified murder as was Lucan. However Lucan is writing very much a 'what if' book, believing that all of Rome's current troubles are the result of this one civil war, and he lays all of the problems faced by Rome squarely on Caeser's shoulders. He does forget though that Ceaser did turn down the crown, and that he had also seen major flaws in the Republican system of government, yet even though his murderers, who were appalled at the idea of a single ruler, ended up moving Rome further to the Imperial State by killing Caeser. Further, they forget Sulla, who established himself as dictator, and then stepped down once his reforms had been completed. The other thing that is forgotten is that Caeser did not proscribe (that is mark for death) any of his enemies, and it is because of this that he ended up meeting his fate.

The time that Lucan wrote in was a much different time than the one that he writes about. It was about 100 years after the events in his poem, and Rome had changed. There was no freedom, and Nero ruled the empire with an iron fist. If you disagreed with Nero, you pretty much kept your mouth shut because there was no freedom of speech. It is in a sense why the Pharasalia was Lucan's way of criticising the current regime, however he ended up not simply keeping it in his poem, but attempted to act it out in his own life, which resulted in his suicide.

At the end of the poem (or at least what he wrote of it) he seems to describe it as lasting for as long as the story of Ceaser lasted, however why this particular piece of literature was kept in the absence of other works is beyond me. I can't read Latin so I cannot comment on it's poetical value, though it does provide us with an interesting, if somewhat biased, view of the ancient world.

An overview of the last century of the Roman republic, Tom Holland's Rubicon has been widely praised for readability, insight and intelligence. I was surprised to find the prose opaque and rather over-written, devoting paragraphs to nebulous assertions e.g.

A city — a free city — was where a man could be most fully a man. The Romans took this for granted. To have civitas — citizenship — was to be civilised, an assumption still embedded in English to this day. Life was worthless without those frameworks that only an independent city could provide. A citizen defined himself by the fellowship of others, in shared joys and sorrows, ambitions and fears, festivals, elections, and disciplines of war. Like a shrine alive with the presence of a god, the fabric of a city was rendered sacred by the communal life that it sheltered. A cityscape, to its citizens, was therefore a hallowed thing. It bore witness to the heritage that had made its people what they were. It enabled the spirit of a state to be known.

Yes, there's an entirely valid point being made here but it's being made slowly and with a certain amount of circumlocution.

Rubicon has been touted as popular narrative history but that conjures up a narrative of events. This is a narrative of ideas and not to be taken at a gallop. Thought-provoking, and ambitious but not always as entertaining or as gripping as the reviews would have you believe.