Mary Beard on Populism
Hello dear readers,
Mary Beard here, retired prof. of Classics at Cambridge, occasional broadcaster and a relatively recent recruit to podcasting (with Charlotte Higgins I host a show called Instant Classics, about all things classical from 2000 BC to now).
I have just published a new book, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old about the excitement, pleasure and sometimes (really) shock of delving into the ancient world and why the Greeks and Romans are still worth thinking about.
In a way that book sums up almost half a century of writing about all kinds of ancient topics from the Parthenon to Roman emperors, Roman religion (that was my PhD subject way back) to the murderous games in the Colosseum.
The ancient world doesn’t have many simple lessons for us. We can’t go there to find ready-made answers to our own problems. But I do think that arguing about the deep past can help us see ourselves and the modern world more clearly – and in a new (old) light.
I have got a lot out of arguing with Tom Holland on and off for a few decades now. We sometimes agree, sometimes don’t, but it’s always an eye-opener.
I’m taking over this newsletter to bring you some new/old thoughts about populism, Roman and modern.
Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator assassinated in the name of “liberty” in 44 BC (“Et tu Brute?” and the rest) is the grandfather of populism. Crucially he was a man who spoke directly to the Roman people, attacking the metropolitan elite in the name of the ordinary citizens, while at the same time using their support to gain power for himself (although, in his case, that power didn’t last long).
To be honest, there isn’t a huge overlap between the political manifesto of Caesar and the manifesto of modern populists. There was some similarity in his projects for popular housing (Caesar planned a whole series of new towns to give the urban poor a new start in life). But the most recognisable themes of our own populist agenda are notable for their absence in the ancient world.
Apart from some clichéd prejudices against incoming foreigners (along the lines of “these Greeks reek of perfume and they pluck their underarm hair”), immigration wasn’t an issue in the first century BC. Nor was unemployment, which was obscured anyway by the vast labour force of enslaved workers. Only occasionally did any Roman writer even notice that free agricultural labourers were being laid off and displaced by slaves. And later the emperor Vespasian (69 – 79 AD) – the canny old politician who made a packet out of putting a tax on urine – was one of the very few who seems to have given a toss for job opportunities. He apparently rejected a clever labour-saving invention (for speedily erecting marble columns) on the grounds that it would take work away from the poor citizens.
It is Julius Caesar’s methods, not his policies, that give him what we might call the populist brand. Most important of all, he seems to have found a way to communicate directly with the people without going through all the official, cumbersome, elite channels. No playing by the rules of the Roman senate for him (or in our terms by the rules of parliament or congress). He by-passed all that – as we see in his so-called Commentaries on his wars in Gaul, which he fought in the 50s BC, to bring what is now modern France (and beyond) into the Roman empire, and to bring glory on himself.
These detailed accounts of his successes on the battlefield, and – let’s face it – of his massacres there (a million casualties is a reasonable guess), are not now one of classical literature’s greatest hits. They are written in relatively easy Latin and so over the last couple of centuries they were fed to early learners of the language at school, who did not always thrill to the long, triumphalist stories of war and conquest. Most recent readers have tended to find the resistance of the plucky Gauls, Asterix and his friends, more appealing than Caesar’s boasting. But that is to miss the point and to miss how extraordinarily novel these Commentaries were.
For they are all about popular communication in (for Rome) a new way. They weren’t written just as long and sober narratives, to be after dinner reading for Roman aristocrats. It’s almost certain that they were composed in instalments and taken to Rome from Gaul to be read out on street corners to tell the populace what Caesar had achieved, addressing them directly, without the official spin, outside official government channels.
If you think that sounds a bit like a certain US president, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Whatever you think of him, one of President Trump’s tactics has been to find a way of speaking to the American people directly on social media (first on Twitter and then Truth Social), paying no attention to the official government line or government language. It’s a tactic that goes back to Caesar and his street-corner orators.
And both Julius Caesar and the President, like other populists through history, had (and have) a strong line in blaming the traditional, metropolitan, holders of power for the mess the poor are in. “Drain the swamp” was Trump’s slogan. When the clashes in ancient Rome had descended to civil war, Caesar notoriously looked at the dead bodies of the traditional elite on one of the battle fields, and simply said “this was their fault” (hoc voluerunt, “they wanted this”).
But there has always been a problem in working out the motives of a so-called “populist”. It is hard to be sure whether his aims are genuinely to support the aspirations of the under-privileged outsiders or to fire up their discontents in order to launch himself into power (or some murky combination of the two). Already almost a century before Julius Caesar, there was a disagreement in Rome whether the aristocratic politician Tiberius Gracchus, who distributed land to the poor, was a genuine social reformer or a would-be king (he too ended up assassinated). Even more controversial were Caesar’s motives, as they still are: was he responding to justifiable grievances or exploiting them to launch his own power bid and carving out a place for his own dictatorship. That’s the problem.
And it’s the problem with our own populists too. We can’t ever quite decide whether they are ultra-democrats correctly diagnosing the ills of the world, or self-interested power-seekers who will stop at nothing.
Five Quick Questions...
What’s a historical event you don’t think people talk about enough?
The moment in 212 AD when the Roman emperor Caracalla gave full Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire, about 50 million of them. It was the biggest grant of citizenship anywhere in the world ever.
What is your biggest historical pet peeve?
(i.e. something you hear misquoted or misunderstood all the time) That the emperor Caligula (37-41 AD) made his horse a consul. No, he his said to have threatened to (and it may have been a misfired joke).
What was your favourite age to be so far and why?
I always like the age I am at, but I could wish that my knees weren’t so stiff.
What is your next strongest talent after Classics?
I’d love to be a restaurant critic, though I’m not sure I’d be any good at it.
What are you reading at the moment?
At the moment I am judging the Booker Prize, so it’s a novel a day for me.
What is your favourite The Rest Is History series?
There’s too much choice on the Rest is History. I am not here recommending the Roman mini-series I did with Tom, but it was great to see the podcast from behind the scenes.
Cultural Recommendations
I really loved the exhibition Legion: Life in the Roman Army at the British Museum in 2024. You perhaps wouldn’t expect me to be keen on an army show, but it was partly brilliantly focussed on the army life of the ordinary squaddie.
I haven’t seen Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey yet, and so I am reserving judgement. But it will be great, whatever, to see people talking about Homer. Of films I have seen, full marks to Gladiator 1, but nul points to Gladiator 2.
The Villa at Oplontis, near Pompeii, is a great site for exploring the life of the super-rich in the Roman empire. It is billed as the villa of the family of the emperor Nero’s wife Poppaea (it may or may not be), but it gives you a brilliant glimpse of a wealthy Roman ambience. And, best of all perhaps, it is not usually crowded with other visitors.
Robert Harris’s “Cicero” trilogy is a particular favourite. I am a bit jealous, because my PhD thesis (on Roman religion) was based on the writing of this first-century BC orator, philosopher and theorist – and I had always wanted to make Cicero popular again. I have to confess that it took a novelist to do that!
Going back a bit, it was the BBC’s I, Claudius from the 1970s that intrigued me about the Roman imperial family. It was based on the Robert Graves’s novels, and I don’t buy Graves’s historical line. But I will always see the emperor Augustus as Brian Blessed and his wife Livia as Sian Phillips.
Anyone who wants a brilliant analysis of political corruption should read Tacitus’ Annals. Written at the start of the second century AD, it dissects the nature (and faults) of one-man-rule at Rome between the reigns of Tiberius and Nero (14 – 68 AD).