Mary Beard Quotes & Sayings

Polybius more than 150 years earlier, — Mary Beard

Action without study is fatal ... — Mary Beard

And soon, as Tacitus put it, the Britons were dressing up in togas and taking their first steps on the path to vice, thanks to porticoes, baths and banquets. He sums this up in a pithy sentence: 'They called it, in their ignorance, "civilisation", but it was really part of their enslavement' ('Humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset'). — Mary Beard

4. This silver coin was minted in 63 BCE, its design showing one of the Roman people voting on a piece of legislation, casting a voting tablet into a jar for counting. The differences in detail between the two versions well illustrate the differences in the die stamps. The name of the official in charge of the mint — Mary Beard

For several Roman observers, senatorial weakness for bribery was one major factor lying behind their failure: 'Rome's a city for sale and bound to fall as soon as it finds a buyer', as Jugurtha was supposed to have quipped when he left the city. The general incompetence of the governing class was another. — Mary Beard

in the reign of the emperor Nero, when someone had the bright idea to make slaves wear uniforms, it was rejected on the grounds that this would make clear to the slave population just how numerous they were. — Mary Beard

If being a decent soul is being maternal, then fine. I'll call it human. — Mary Beard

(those who do not exist cannot regret their non-existence, — Mary Beard

Hunting, bathing, gaming, laughing: that's living (venari lavare ludere ridere occest vivere). — Mary Beard

if they are bearded, they are after 117 CE. This — Mary Beard

Roman political culture's extraordinary openness and willingness to incorporate outsiders, which set it apart from every other ancient Western society that we know. — Mary Beard

If I have played my part well, then give me applause. — Mary Beard

That raised an issue still familiar in modern electoral systems. Are Members of Parliament, for example, to be seen as delegates of the voters, bound to follow the will of their electorate? Or are they representatives, elected to exercise their own judgement in the changing circumstances of government? This was the first time, so far as we know, that this question had been explicitly raised in Rome, and it was no more easily answered then than it is now. — Mary Beard

There's a difference between what I would like to have been and what I would have been. I always fantasized about being a reforming judge or prison governor (I think that the UK penal system is a disgrace) - but it's fantasy. — Mary Beard

Verres had Gavius thrown into prison, tortured and crucified, on the specious grounds that he was a spy for Spartacus. Roman citizenship should have protected him from this degrading punishment. So, as he was flogged, the poor man repeatedly cried out, 'Civis Romanus sum' ('I am a Roman citizen'), but to no avail. Presumably, when they chose to repeat this phrase, both Palmerston and Kennedy (see p. 137) must have forgotten that its most famous ancient use was as the unsuccessful plea of an innocent victim under a sentence of death imposed by a rogue Roman governor. — Mary Beard

It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not. — Mary Beard

Fame is fickle. If the media turn against me, I will just have more time in the library. Not bad as a fate. — Mary Beard

It doesn't much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It's not what you say that prompts it - it's the fact that you are saying it. — Mary Beard

By the mid second century BCE, the profits of warfare had made the Roman people by far the richest of any in their known world. Thousands upon thousands of captives became the slave labour that worked the Roman fields, mines and mills, that exploited resources on a much more intensive scale than ever before and fuelled Roman production and Roman economic growth. — Mary Beard