S.P.Q.R.

Beard surveys the city and empire of Rome from its foundation stories through the Republic and the first emperors to Caracalla's grant of citizenship in 212 CE. She asks how Romans governed, who counted as a citizen, how the poor and the enslaved lived, and what can be known from inscriptions, coins, and literature as well as from later myth. Romulus, Cicero, Augustus, and ordinary Romans recovered from writing on walls share the stage. The book is a thematic political and social history, not a reign-by-reign chronicle of the later empire.

Bound in maroon print blocked cloth. Gilt blocked black cloth slipcase.