{"id":548,"date":"2005-10-31T17:43:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=548"},"modified":"2005-10-31T17:43:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-31T17:43:00","slug":"548","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=548","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

What the Romans did for us–and keep on doing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spurred by the latest spate of TV miniseries and feature films, Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard looks in the mirror of ancient Rome and describes the different images that it reflects back to us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This game of defining ourselves against the habits of the “Other” is a very old one indeed. The Romans did it against the Greeks (a load of over-perfumed intellectuals), the Greeks against the Persians (effeminate despots). We are now finding it much safer to look to the remote past–the recent past is, of course, another matter–for our anti-types. For that past cannot answer back, has no government machinery on its side (or not usually), and you can do what you like with it. If they were portraying a modern religion, the lurid, blood-soaked representations of Roman paganism in the new <\/em>Rome<\/a> would probably end with the director up before the beak on a charge of “incitement to religious hatred”. As it is, it’s only Rome, so it doesn’t count.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Tip of the classic Roman straw hat to Archaeoblog<\/a>). Tag: Rome<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the Romans did for us–and keep on doing Spurred by the latest spate of TV miniseries and feature films, Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard looks in the mirror of ancient Rome and describes the different images that it reflects back to us. This game of defining ourselves against the habits of the “Other” is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-548","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6935,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6935","url_meta":{"origin":548,"position":0},"title":"Saturnalia with the Romans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We are in the midst of Saturnalia, so consider this article by Classics scholar Mary Beard on \"Five Things the Romans Did at Christmas.\" The headline was just to grab you, because she begins, \"OK, the Romans didn\u2019t actually have Christmas. And even Christian Romans didn\u2019t celebrate Jesus\u2019 birthday on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Rome\"","block_context":{"text":"Rome","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=rome"},"img":{"alt_text":"io-saturnalia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/io-saturnalia.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=722","url_meta":{"origin":548,"position":1},"title":"Anachronisms in Rome","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Living beyond the range of cable television and not willing to pay for a satellite dish, M. and I watch HBO series with a year's delay.Right now we're working our way through the first season of Rome. And we like it, right from the starting sequence of the animated graffiti\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":329,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=329","url_meta":{"origin":548,"position":2},"title":"Secret Thrills of Teaching Rhetoric\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Secret Thrills of Teaching Rhetoric I teach a class each semester on advanced composition and rhetoric, using this book as one of the texts. The students are mostly education majors who must take the course as their last exposure to a writing class before they are turned loose on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1046,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1046","url_meta":{"origin":548,"position":3},"title":"Seeing the World with Greek Eyes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"I am a Greek born 2,381 years after my ancestors built and dedicated the Parthenon . . . . I am telling Greek history outside the conventional Christian worldview,\" writes Eaggelos G. Vallianatos, author of The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the HellenesBorn in a Greek\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9849,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9849","url_meta":{"origin":548,"position":4},"title":"Review: “The Final Pagan Generation”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A review from the most recent (20.1) issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. While the publisher does charge for articles, book reviews are free downloads. Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015) 344 pp., 29 B&W photographs, map. $34.95 (hardcover,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14050,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14050","url_meta":{"origin":548,"position":5},"title":"Will Christians Fulfill a Pagan Emperor’s Plan?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Julian \"The Philosopher,\" Rome's last Pagan emperor (mid-360s), would get chuckle out of this. (Although to me he comes across as super-serious, he must have found some things funny. I hope.) While he was force-fed Christian theology by bishops, growing up in a royal Christian household, he later studied ancient\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Julian_antioch-mint-bull.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}