Memories of killing … the Colosseum in Rome. Beard is consistently asking the same question: what is the relationship between the ancient past and today? In the Colosseum, she falters, finding it unbearable, as any mother might, to admit to her children that killing and torture are not long-lost memories ripe for play-acting, but rather the hallmark of the world they will inherit. This latest manifesto, Women and Power, originally delivered as two lectures, in 20, under the auspices of the British Museum and the London Review of Books, is no exception.
She is a writer of exceptional erudition and biting wit, and reading her is always a pleasure. Beard is our most famous classicist, with a gift for bringing ancient Greece and Rome alive on the page like no one else. Given the relentless, vicious misogyny to which Beard has been exposed, it is not surprising that, in her books on classical life and history, such personal moments are rare.īut this one speaks volumes. A t the end of Mary Beard’s SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome of 2015, she describes taking her kids to the Colosseum in Rome, where she agrees to pay for them to be photographed with “chancers” dressed up as gladiators, buys them helmets and, “turning a blind eye to the cruelties of the modern world”, reassures them that “we do not do anything as cruel as that now”.
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