Mary Beard

Mary Beard is a British classicist and Professor Emerita of Classics at the University of Cambridge. She studied at Newnham College, completed her PhD at Cambridge, taught at King’s College London and returned to Cambridge in 1984. She is also Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and has brought Roman history to television audiences.

Her books combine scholarly argument with an alertness to ordinary experience. Rather than accepting Rome’s familiar legends or its rulers’ self-presentation, she asks what the surviving evidence can genuinely establish. Citizenship, slavery, religion, public display and the uses of imperial power recur throughout her work.

Her books include Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, which received the Wolfson History Prize, Confronting the Classics, Women & Power, Laughter in Ancient Rome and Emperor of Rome. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2018 for services to the study of classical civilisation.

Start with SPQR. Its long view follows Rome from its early myths and political experiments to an empire spanning much of the Mediterranean world. Beard keeps emperors and wars in sight, but also makes room for drains, migration, enslavement and arguments over citizenship. It is the clearest introduction to both her subject and her habit of challenging easy assumptions.