Libertas, or liberty, is the foundational political ideology of the Roman Republic, which Beard presents as a powerful but constantly contested concept. Beard traces the impact of this Roman ideal on the modern era, arguing that Republican Rome bequeathed to the West the “important idea of liberty” (128). She observes that “it is no coincidence that the slogan of the French Revolution—Liberté, égalité, fraternité—puts “liberty” in pride of place; nor that George Washington spoke of restoring “‘the sacred fire of liberty’ to the West” (129), cementing its place as a core principle of Western political thought.

SPQR discusses how the Romans conflated “the birth of liberty and of the free Roman Republic” (125) in their mythic-history narratives: In the Roman imagination, libertas was the innate manifestation of the citizen’s rights. The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE was carried out by a group of senators who called themselves the “Liberators,” acting in the name of libertas against a figure they perceived as a “tyrant.” That Caesar’s perceived arrogance in granting personal clementia (“mercy”) was itself seen as a threat to libertas reveals how central the concept was to Rome’s self-identity as a republic in which citizens held natural rights and dignity.

SPQR is the acronym for Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, or “The Senate and People of Rome,” which functioned as the official name and slogan for the Roman state. Beard explains that SPQR served as a “shorthand slogan for the legitimate power of the Roman state, a slogan that lasted throughout Roman history and continues to be used in Italy in the 21st century CE” (25-26). Its endurance is a testament to its power as a symbol of Roman political identity.

Throughout the book, Beard explores the often-conflicting relationship between the phrase’s two components, the Senate and the citizenry, from the early republican Conflict of the Orders to the rise of popular politicians in the final centuries of the Republic. Beard examines how the balance of power represented by SPQR was fundamentally altered by the rise of one-man rule, which added an “overweening figure” (27) of the emperor to the political equation. Beard also notes the term’s lasting cultural resonance, observing that it is “still plastered over the city of Rome, on everything from manhole covers to rubbish bins” (25) and has inspired centuries of parody, including the modern Italian joke, “Sono Pazzi Questi Romani… ‘These Romans are mad’” (25).