Mary Beard

The twelve silver-gilt cups known as the Aldobrandini Tazze - magnificent examples of 16th-century European goldsmithing in size, design, and quality of execution - feature figures and scenes from Roman historian Suetonius's classic work The Twelve Caesars, all rendered in minute, intricate relief. Dispersed in the 1860s, the tazze were reunited in 2014 for the first time since the 19th century, each piece newly photographed to highlight the dazzling detail and show the works as they were originally made. The accompanying essays, written by a team of scholars from around the world, explore the persistent questions that swirl around these unique silver dishes, including where, when, and for whom they were originally made, what they were used for, and why the set was separated and scattered.

ix, 277 p. : 20 cm

A history of the first millennium of the Roman Empire.

"Spring 2018 sees an ambitious BBC re-make of Kenneth Clark's 1969 BBC series Civilisation, presented by Britain's foremost historians, embracing global civilisations and exploring different themes in the universal histories of art and culture. Focusing on the arrival of the human figure as a subject of art, Mary Beard examines the history of beauty in civilisation. In Part One she examines how the human figure was portrayed in some of the earliest art in the world. In Part Two Mary Beard turns to the relationship between art and religion. Beginning with the Jericho painted skulls from 10,000 years ago, and the extraordinary figures of Ain Ghazal, she examines in depth the creativity that gave identity to ancient Egypt, where colossi of powerful rulers were also matched by the depictions of citizens and the wider population. From there, we explore the unprecedented art of the Greek revolution, where beauty and the perfection of the human figure set a benchmark for all Western art to come, and profoundly influenced the flowering of human sculpture in Rome. Finally, it moves to China to examine the vast army of Terracotta Warriors commissioned by the first emperor, and ends with the unexpected figure of Monk Wuxia, a mummified Buddhist monk created from the body of the monk himself."--

When the aqueduct that brings fresh water to thousands of people around the bay of Naples fails, Roman engineer Marius Primus heads to the slopes of Mount Vesuvius to investigate, only to come face to face with an impending catastrophe.

Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists, an academic with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience. Here, she draws on thirty years of teaching about Greek and Roman history to provide a panoramic portrait of the classical world that draws surprising parallels with contemporary society. We are taken on a guided tour of antiquity, encountering some of the most famous (and infamous) characters of classical history, among them Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Sappho and Hannibal. Challenging the notion that classical history is all about depraved emperors and conquering military heroes, Beard also introduces us to the common people--the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? What made them laugh? What were their marriages like? This bottom-up approach to history is typical of Beard, who looks with fresh eyes at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, taking aim at many of the assumptions we held as gospel.--From publisher description.

"From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul, Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the history of art, religion, and humanity"--

"What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear-a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing-from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book-Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient 'monkey business' to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really 'get' the Romans' jokes?"--