Quotes from Mary Beard

The first qualification for most political offices was wealth on a substantial scale. No one could stand for election without passing a financial test that excluded most citizens; the exact amount needed to qualify is not known, but the implications are that it was set at the very top level of the census hierarchy, the so-called cavalry or equestrian rating. When the people came together to vote, the system of voting was stacked in favour of the wealthy.

According to Suetonius, Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: 'Oh dear, I think I'm becoming a god …' The whole process of becoming, or not becoming, a god is the theme of a long skit probably written in the mid 50s CE by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Na literatura da Antiguidade, a autoridade da profunda voz masculina, por contraste com a feminina, é constantemente realçada. Tal como um tratado científico da Antiguidade afirma de modo explícito, uma voz grave indica coragem viril, uma voz aguda e feminina, cobardia.

the simple shorthand 'Roman conquest' can obscure a wide range of perspectives, motivations and aspirations on every side of the encounter.

by referring to the conspirators as enemies of the state, he was implying that they did not deserve the protection of Roman law; they had lost their civic rights (including the right to trial).

The Spanish silver mines, for example, once part of Hannibal's domain, were soon producing so much more ore that the environmental pollution from its processing can still be detected in datable samples extracted from deep in the Greenland ice cap.

It was not all quite so simple, that real equality between women and men was still a thing of the future, and that there were causes for anger as well as for celebration.

the city of Rome, the best indication of the changed world is the arch erected in 315 CE in honour of the emperor Constantine's victory over one of his internal rivals. It still stands, preserved because it was once built into a Renaissance fortress, between the old Roman

Most Roman rulers spent longer at their desks than at the dinner table. They were expected to work at the job, to be seen to exercise practical power

the success (or failure) of armies serving overseas had direct consequences on the home front; the political ambitions of men like Pompey and Caesar lay behind some of the wars of conquest; there was never any clear divide between the military and political roles of the Roman elite.

An act of senseless Discord produces a Temple of Concord'.

se quisermos fazer um verdadeiro progresso (...), temos de retroceder a alguns dos primeiros princípios acerca da natureza da autoridade verbal, acerca do que a constitui e de como aprendemos a ouvir a autoridade quando o fazemos. E em vez de empurrar as mulheres para as aulas de dicção para ficarem com um tom agradável, profundo (...), devíamos pensar mais acerca das clivagens e das fraturas que subjazem nos diálogos dominantemente masculinos?

The name 'Romulus' is itself a give-away. Although Romans usually assumed that he had lent his name to his newly established city, we are now fairly confident that the opposite was the case: 'Romulus' was an imaginative construction out of 'Roma'. 'Romulus' was merely the archetypal 'Mr Rome'. Besides

Entre sus últimas palabras dirigidas a sus amigos reunidos, antes de un largo beso a Livia, deslizó una cita taimada de una comedia griega: «Si he representado bien mi papel, aplaudid».

My guest was not the sort to whom you would say, "Please drop by again when you are next around". Once is enough.

The more power flaunts itself in your face, the more it risks undermining its claims to be taken seriously. Ancient viewers were not all naïve consumers of any message that was thrown at them. Even if some would have looked on these statues in awe and wonderment, it is a fair guess that others would have walked by and laughed, or even spat. In the end, images of power are only as powerful as those who view them allow them to be.

Fines, exile and death made up the usual repertoire of Roman punishment. If Caesar really did advocate life imprisonment in 63 BCE, then it was probably the first time in Western history that this was mooted as an alternative to the death penalty, without success.

To ignore the Romans is not just to turn a blind eye to the distant past. Rome still helps to define the way we understand our world and think about ourselves, from high theory to low comedy. After 2,000 years, it continues to underpin Western culture and politics, what we write and how we see the world, and our place in it. The

shorthand slogan for the legitimate power of the Roman state, a slogan that lasted throughout Roman history and continues to be used in Italy in the twenty-first century CE. More widely still, the senate

SPQR takes its title from another famous Roman catchphrase, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, 'The Senate and People of Rome'.

There was the enormous disparity of wealth between rich and poor, the squalid living conditions for most of the population, and probably for much of the time, even if not starvation, then persistent hunger.

But Rome expanded into a world not of communities living at peace with one another but of endemic violence

They create desolation and call it peace' is

That raised an issue still familiar in modern electoral systems. Are Members of Parliament, for example, to be seen as delegates of the voters, bound to follow the will of their electorate? Or are they representatives, elected to exercise their own judgement in the changing circumstances of government?