Episode 1
Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit Episode 1 of 4
In this first episode, Mary Beard reaches back to the myths
and legends of the origins of Rome to gain an insight into the
deep-rooted psyche of the people of Rome - a city born through
fratricide and rape. But
from the very beginning, Rome was also an asylum for outcasts and
exiles and because of this, it adopted a uniquely inclusive approach
towards its neighbours and defeated enemies. The expansion of the city
brought territory in first in Italy and Sicily, where Rome first came
head to head and eventually defeated her great rival, Carthage.
Mary
then travels to Greece, where Rome adopted a complex mix of brute force
and cultural cringe, and France, where she finds evidence of war
methods akin to outright genocide. In typical myth-busting style, Mary
argues that the period of greatest Roman expansion occurred when Rome
itself was little more than a provincial backwater, a shantytown of mud
and brick. The marble, monumental Rome we know came about because of
imperial conquest - not the other way round. And likewise, the creation
and possession of an empire transformed the politics of Rome forever,
creating the conditions for one-man rule, and ending the centuries-old
Roman Republic.link
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