What did it mean to be an emperor in ancient Rome? That is the question that Mary Beard sought to answer in her 2023 book, “Emperor of Rome.” She wrote, “Everyone then, including emperors, was trying ...

So asked the historian Polybius, as Mary Beard reminds us in SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. Mercifully for those not so indifferent to wonder, but idle enough to avoid exploring the topic themselves ...

Ancient Rome is important, Mary Beard tells us at the start of “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome” (Liveright, $35), her smart and exuberant survey of the first millennium of Roman history. “Rome still ...

The lives of the rulers of ancient Rome are still vivid in modern heads. According to a conversation that has gone viral on TikTok, some men say they think about the Roman Empire “every day”. The ...