![]() ![]() She is careful to stress that this is not a matter of naively drawing "lessons" from the past. In SPQR, Beard does in an extended fashion what she was doing in her debate with Johnson: she is explaining why Rome should continue to matter to any educated person. It is a book immersed in the controversies of her academic peers, but addressed more to the general reader than it is to them. Beard is as adept at the wry aside as she is at scholarly exposition, and both qualities are abundantly evident in SPQR, a general history of Rome that can fairly be called the summation of her life's work as an interpreter of ancient civilisation. Viewers of her popular television documentaries on Pompeii would not have been surprised. ![]() The only barbs were in the witticisms, which, by all accounts, Beard delivered with a withering accuracy that Johnson, for all his oratorical gifts, could not muster. Rome had conquered Hellas once again, though this time without blood being spilled. ![]()
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