The Emperors of Ancient Rome: Fact and Fiction (Or, How Bad Really Was Nero?)
About the event
*Emperor of Rome*, by Mary Beard.
From Kathryn Hughes of *The Guardian*: “By the end of this thrilling book we are no nearer to looking the emperor in the eye. But we are much closer to understanding what he was for. Leaning into all the wild stories rather than disregarding them as so much distasteful waste, Beard does a wonderful job of taking us into the maelstrom of fantasy, desire and projection that swirled around the rulers of ancient Rome.”
From Honor Cargill-Martin of the *Telegraph*: “Superb.... [A]n extraordinary investigation into the gulf between the experience and the narrative of Roman autocracy.”
Dame Winifred Mary Beard (born 1 January 1955) is an English classicist specializing in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.
Beard is the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, for which she also writes a regular blog, "A Don's Life". Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist".[\[5\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beard#cite_note-laity-5) In 2014, The New Yorker characterized her as "learned but accessible"
NOTE: Members of our Meetup Group are eligible to get a 10% discount off any books at Kramers.