For a long time being a classicist didn’t exactly make you a hit at a party. Then along came Donald Trump and suddenly everybody wants to know: Which Roman emperor is he most like?
In this inaugural episode of Instant Classics, Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins confront the question they are asked the most. And, as ever when Mary Beard is involved, the answer isn’t always as simple as you might think.
Mary and Charlotte explain how most of what we know about the emperors is unreliable. We do get some extraordinary glimpses behind the palace walls (Suetonius, the biographer of the first “12 Caesars” was a real insider – having worked as palace archivist and librarian). But almost all our accounts of them come from after their reign and are part of “posthumous reputation making”. Often, the way to keep bloke in power pleased was to trash his predecessors. Did Caligula really have all his soldiers pick up every shell on a beach or plan to make his favourite horse a consul?
These stories may be fanciful, but they are hugely important nevertheless and were repeated for generations. They are some of the best evidence for Romans thought of their emperors, about their fears of imperial power and how it falls.
So one to one, real life comparisons are always misleading (insists Mary!). But the wider patterns of political power can be similar then and now. Donald Trump plays many of the tunes that you find in the emperors’ playbook: capriciousness as a political tactic (they’re always changing their mind); Julius Caesar was one who made a point of speaking directly to the people to bypass political institutions (Trump does it through social media); wanton cruelty mixed with sudden acts of generosity.
Charlotte doesn’t let Mary off the hook. Yes, it’s hard to draw direct comparisons, but - come on Mary! - which emperor is Trump most like?
Answers are given!
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Mary and Charlotte’s recommended reads:
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars. Written in the second century CE. There’s a new translation by Tom Holland, but plenty of others are available. It was written to be read from start to finish, but new readers might choose to start with the lives of Caligula, Nero or Domitian.
The Lives of the Later Caesars (available in Penguin translation: its Latin title is the rather more opaque Historia Augusta). Much less well known, this is a series of ancient biographies of emperors after Hadrian that make Suetonius look very “proper”, with lurid anecdotes that no one has ever thought were true. If you want a good start, go to the life of Elagabalus (also called Heliogabalus).
For those wanting to explore Elagabalus, there’s an awful lot of modern gossip-mongering masquerading as history. For a more reliable start, try Martijn Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus (this is great on how he was represented in later art and culture), or Harry Sidebottom, The Mad Emperor.
Advert alert: Mary discusses the stories told about Roman emperors, and how we can understand them in her book, Emperor of Rome.
Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci
Producer: Jonty Claypole
Executive Producer: Jo Meek
Senior Producer: Natalia Rodriguez Ford
Video Editor: Jak Ford
Theme music: Casey Gibson
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