In 109 CE, Pliny the Younger arrived in Bithynia (modern-day Turkey) as provincial governor, appointed by Trajan to investigate local administration. He brought his wife Calpurnia, some 25 years his junior. She returned to Italy after her grandfather’s death and Pliny likely died in the province shortly after. His correspondence with Trajan reveals meticulous oversight: inspecting municipal finances, requesting architects for problematic aqueducts and gymnasiums, and addressing legal questions about the enlistment and inheritance of enslaved people. Trajan advised against establishing a fire brigade in Nicomedia, fearing it could become a political organization.

Their most famous exchange concerned Christians. Pliny executed those who refused to recant but became uncertain when accusations multiplied. He tortured two enslaved Christian women and concluded Christianity was a “perverse and unruly superstition” (477). Trajan supported Pliny’s approach while cautioning that Christians should not be actively sought out for persecution. This represents the earliest documented non-Christian Roman discussion of the religion.

Pliny’s governorship contrasted sharply with Cicero’s chaotic tenure in Cilicia 150 years earlier: Clear imperial command structures now existed. Governors reported directly to emperors who could make detailed decisions about provincial buildings, though always reactively; emperors responded to questions but rarely initiated policy. Pliny displayed a characteristic blind spot, showing no interest in the Greek culture dominant in his province.

Roman expansion effectively ended in 9 CE when the commander Publius Quinctilius Varus lost three legions at the Teutoburg Forest. The victorious German rebel Arminius, a Roman-trained citizen and supposed ally, had lured Varus into an ambush. Excavations at the German site of Waldgirmes have revealed a half-finished Roman town abandoned after the disaster, complete with a gilded equestrian statue. Augustus instructed his successors not to expand further.

For two centuries, incompatible visions coexisted: consolidation versus the Augustan ideology of unlimited conquest. Minor additions occurred—Claudius conquered Britain in 44 CE for symbolic value despite the geographer Strabo’s economic arguments against it. Only Trajan significantly expanded territory, conquering Dacia and pushing into Mesopotamia, but his successor Hadrian immediately abandoned most eastern gains. Trajan died before returning home.

Multiple factors slowed conquest. Republican political competition ended; emperors competed mainly with dead predecessors. Boundaries gradually became more defined. Hadrian’s Wall, stretching 70 miles across northern Britain, symbolized this shift. Its precise purpose remains unclear, perhaps more a boundary marker than a barrier. Yet imperial imagery maintained the fiction of endless conquest through ubiquitous statues of armored emperors and trampled barbarians.

The empire became a territory to manage rather than conquer. Re-founded Carthage and Corinth thrived by the first century CE. Tax collection gradually shifted from private companies to local officials under the supervision of imperial financial officers (procurators), though exploitation continued. Governors were appointed by emperors for varied reasons: Nero allegedly sent Marcus Salvius Otho to distant Lusitania to facilitate his own affair with Otho’s ex-wife Poppaea. New governors received minimal briefing before being dispatched to unfamiliar provinces where they understood neither language nor customs.

Romans made few attempts to impose cultural uniformity. The empire’s eastern half operated in Greek. Local calendars and clothing persisted. They stamped out only Druids in Britain and occasionally persecuted Christians. Governance depended on remarkably few officials: 200 elite administrators overseeing a few thousand enslaved clerks managed 50 million people.

The army filled this gap. Increasingly recruited from provinces and stationed at the empire’s edges, soldiers performed extensive administrative duties. Documents from Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall reveal the details of domestic life and administration. A strength report showed 337 of 752 soldiers at a neighboring camp, 46 serving as the governor’s bodyguard in London, and numerous centurions on business elsewhere. More than half were absent from their units.

Roman administration fundamentally relied on provincial towns and their elite middlemen. In the West, Rome founded cities on an unprecedented scale. London and many British towns owe their existence to Roman planning. Some plans succeeded; some failed, like Wroxeter’s outdoor swimming pool, which became a rubbish dump after freezing winters. Provincial aristocrats collected taxes, maintained loyalty, and transformed pre-existing hierarchies to serve Rome. The British ruler Togidubnus, granted citizenship and the name Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus, continued wielding local authority after Claudius’s 43 CE invasion.

Tacitus’s biography of his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, Britain’s governor from 77-85 CE, offered shrewd analysis of Romanization. Agricola promoted Roman buildings and educated British leaders’ sons in Latin and liberal arts. Soon Britons wore togas and frequented baths and banquets. Tacitus observed that what the Britons called civilization was in fact an element of their servitude. Yet Romanization was rarely imposed from above and provincial elites actively chose Roman culture. Archaeological evidence reveals this process as British graves contained Roman goods before conquest. Early first-century BCE Gauls already preferred wine over traditional beer. By the second century CE, Gallic vintages surpassed Italian ones, and Colchester’s residents frequented wine bars rather than beer gardens. Even humble artisans created Roman identities. Potters in southern Gaul producing mass-market red tableware used both Celtic and Romanized names perhaps for commercial appeal or genuine self-identification.

Cultural interaction produced diverse hybrids. Egyptian temples depicted Roman emperors as pharaohs. Bath’s Temple of Sulis Minerva combined classical architecture honoring a Celtic-Roman deity with a bearded central figure that defies easy categorization. In the Greek East, Roman rule sparked a literary renaissance. The quantity of surviving imperial-era Greek literature dwarfed all earlier periods. Plutarch alone—biographer, philosopher, essayist, and Delphic priest—produced as many pages as all the extant fifth-century BCE Greek literature combined.

Greek writers responded variously to Roman power. In 144 CE, Publius Aelius Aristides delivered effusive praise before Emperor Antoninus Pius, proclaiming Rome surpassed all previous empires. Pausanias wrote a Greek guidebook systematically omitting Roman-sponsored buildings, literarily recreating a Rome-free Greece. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives paired Greek and Roman figures—Romulus with Theseus, Cicero with Demosthenes, Caesar with Alexander—systematically evaluating both cultures’ strengths.

The empire witnessed unprecedented mobility. People and goods moved vast distances. An Indian ivory figurine found at Pompeii and Far Eastern pepper sold at Vindolanda hinted at global connections. The musician Menophilos migrated from Asia to Rome, dying young far from home. Exotic materials flooded the capital.

Hadrian’s Pantheon exemplified imperial ambition. Its porch required 12 granite columns each 12 meters high, quarried as single blocks at Mons Claudianus, Egypt, 2,500 miles from Rome. Excavations have revealed a military-run operation with villages housing workers, complex supply chains for food (sometimes failing), and rationed water for 917 workers.

Trade also thrived. One mid-second-century CE papyrus listed a single Indian ship’s cargo as worth over six million sesterces post-tax, equivalent to multiple senatorial estates. Rome’s supply networks fed a million people requiring annually 20 million liters of oil, 100 million liters of wine, and 250,000 tons of grain, almost entirely imported.

People circulated within and between provinces. Skeletal analysis of Roman Britain suggested substantial numbers grew up in different climatic regions from where they died. The Hadrian’s Wall garrison was largely recruited from Gaul and Germany, not Italy. Individuals came from the empire’s opposite ends, such as Victor, a formerly-enslaved person identified as a “Moor,” and Quintus Lollius Urbicus, Britain’s governor 139-142 CE from northern Algeria. Barates from Palmyra, Syria, settled near the Wall and married Regina, a formerly enslaved person born in Britain. Her tombstone depicted her as a Palmyrene matron with her name in Aramaic beneath Latin text, encapsulating the empire’s cultural mix.

Open rebellion against Rome remained rare. Authorities often reframed political resistance as simple crime; the Arch of Titus presented Jewish revolt suppression as foreign conquest. Rebellions typically occurred when elite collaboration broke down, led by provincial aristocrats like Arminius and Julius Civilis—both Roman citizens and ex-soldiers. Boudicca’s 60 CE British uprising followed Roman brutality after her husband Prasutagus’s death: soldiers beat Boudicca, raped her daughters, and seized property. She destroyed three Roman towns before the governor returned from Wales and annihilated her forces, allegedly killing 80,000 Britons against 400 Roman casualties. According to Roman sources, Boudicca ended her own life by taking poison. No authentic rebel voices survive. Roman historians crafted their speeches, with Tacitus placing powerful critiques in enemies’ mouths, culminating in the famous accusation that Romans “create desolation and call it peace” (516). This imaginative sympathy distinguished Roman culture, as writers articulated opposition to their own imperial power.

Christianity’s conflicts differed entirely from this. Christian sources dominate the evidence, with Pliny-Trajan correspondence among rare non-Christian discussions. Christianity remained small, diverse, and urban for two centuries, with perhaps 200,000 adherents by 200 CE. Persecution was sporadic, not systematic. Nero scapegoated Christians for Rome’s 64 CE fire; Pliny and others executed refusers. As a Christian, the 22-year-old Vibia Perpetua of Carthage refused to sacrifice for the emperor; she and her infant child were sentenced to death by the beasts in the amphitheater. The account of her trial in 203 CE reveals Roman incomprehension at Vibia’s refusal to accommodate Roman polytheistic and imperial traditions alongside her religion: Christianity’s exclusive monotheism clashed with Roman religious inclusiveness. Unlike Judaism rooted in Judaea, Christianity appeared rootless and universal to the Romans, seeking converts through unprecedented spiritual transformation. Some Christian values—honoring poverty, rejecting the body—threatened fundamental Greco-Roman assumptions. Yet Christianity’s success depended entirely on Roman imperial infrastructure: territorial extent, mobility, communication networks, and cultural mix enabled its spread from Judaean origins.

Roman citizenship provided crucial identity definition across the empire. Multiple paths to citizenship existed: military veterans received it; town officials gained it automatically; communities and individuals like Togidubnus earned it through service; those enslaved by citizens became citizens when they became free. No tests or fees applied. By 200 CE, roughly 20% of free inhabitants—perhaps 10 million people—held citizenship, bringing legal rights from contracts to punishments. Saint Paul’s beheading rather than crucifixion reflected his citizen status. Some provincials entered Rome’s elite, eventually comprising over half the senate by the late second century CE, including emperors like Trajan from Spain and Septimius Severus from Africa.

Elite snobbery persisted—jokes about lost senators, Severus allegedly embarrassed by his sister’s accent—yet bilinguals bridged cultures. The formerly-enslaved Gaius Julius Zoilos exemplified this. Likely born a free man in Aphrodisias, Turkey, he was enslaved, served Julius Caesar, gained freedom and citizenship, worked for Augustus (who praised him warmly), then returned home wealthy, sponsoring theaters and temples. His tomb sculptures depicted him twice: left side in toga, orating with scroll (Roman); right side in Greek cloak and hat (Greek). His son Tiberius Julius Pappus may have become head imperial librarian under Tiberius, Gaius, and Claudius. Zoilos’s monument declared that in the empire’s culture, one could be simultaneously Greek and Roman.

In 212 CE, Emperor Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free imperial inhabitants—over 30 million people in a single decree, perhaps history’s largest citizenship grant. This completed the 1000-year process Romulus began by welcoming all foreigners as citizens. Caracalla’s motives remain debated but were perhaps about increasing tax revenues. The son of Septimius Severus, who seized power in the civil war of 193 CE, Caracalla ruled bloodily from 211 CE. He murdered his brother Geta in their mother’s arms and was himself assassinated in 217 CE while relieving himself, succeeded briefly by his Praetorian commander Marcus Opellius Macrinus, the first non-senator emperor. The decree transformed Rome forever, marking SPQR’s endpoint. Once citizenship reached everyone, it became irrelevant as a signifier. Instead, a new legal division emerged between honestiores (elite) and humiliores (common people), with unequal rights codified in law. Citizens of lower status now faced crucifixion and flogging, punishments previously reserved for the enslaved and non-citizens. The identity boundary shifted to wealth and class.

The citizenship decree was one element in the crisis of the third century CE, when transformations shattered Augustus’s political template. Compared to 14 emperors in 180 years (14-192 CE), over 70 claimed the throne 193-293 CE, amid continuous civil war. Legions openly made emperors and Rome ceased being power’s center; absent emperors stopped building there for 80 years until Diocletian’s baths in the 290s. The senate declined into irrelevance.

The causes are debated: More efficient barbarian invasions, widespread plague undermining manpower, inherent weaknesses in Augustus’s succession system. A new Rome emerged with regional capitals like Ravenna and Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The empire split into western and eastern portions. After coordinated third-century persecutions, Rome embraced Christianity and Constantine, founding Constantinople in the early fourth century CE, became the first Christian emperor, baptized on his deathbed in 337 CE. He followed Augustus’s building model but constructed churches. Rome fell to invaders three times in the fifth century CE. Constantinople’s senate house became a fossil; an eighth-century commentator thought it was built by a man named “Senatus.”

The Arch of Constantine (315 CE) symbolizes this transformation. Superficially traditional, celebrating Constantine’s victory over a rival, its sculptures were nearly all hacked from monuments to Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, with original emperors’ faces recut as Constantine. This reuse of earlier monuments underscores the historical distance between Rome’s first millennium—this book’s subject—and its second, which continued until Constantinople fell to Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE.

Beard reflects on 50 years studying these first-millennium Romans. The Romans inspire imagination and fantasy, horror and fun but direct lessons from the Romans are illusory: Generals who claim to follow Caesar’s tactics are mistaken; Roman citizenship models cannot simply apply to modern situations. Moreover, the Romans themselves disagreed fundamentally about how the world worked.

Yet engaging with Roman history, poetry, controversies, and arguments teaches us enormously about ourselves. Western culture has varied inheritances beyond the classical alone but, since the Renaissance, fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty have been formed and tested in dialogue with Romans and their writing. Cicero’s clash with Catiline still provides the language of political dissent. The idea of desolation masquerading as peace, which Tacitus attributed to Rome’s British enemies, still echoes in modern imperial critiques. Emperors’ reported vices raise questions about where autocratic excess becomes terror.

Beard concludes that the Romans deserve neither heroization nor demonization. Failing to take them seriously diminishes both them and ourselves—and closes a long conversation. This book hopes to be part of that ongoing conversation with its Senate and People: SPQR.