Meet the Romans with Mary Beard

Wish I had seen before visiting Rome a few years back. Would have added many of these sites to my tour. Will do so if I go again. I did see the bakers tomb so there is that-had a great guidebook on food of Rome. Found this documentary interesting and engaging and educational. Did not notice any speech issues or girl powerism. Was surprised to learn this was from 2012 and looking forward to the follow on BBC documentary.

I give Mary an A for effort but she is a bit hard to take for an ordinary ole American like me. The British must have a very high tolerance for the extremely untelegenic hosts with bad teeth. I'm sorry to sound shallow but my goodness. Poor old Mary, stringy grey hair, dirty fingernails, frumpy persona, bad teeth and all...take her or leave her. I enjoyed most of the program despite how distracting Mary's bad teeth are. However in one segment Mary was apparently visiting Rome at the height of summer and was sweating like a pig. Her hair was sticking to her neck and sweat was pouring down her face and I just couldn't take it anymore. Good lord, have some self respect and tidy up before rolling the cameras. I have no idea how good the rest of the show is.

A great subject, and we have no doubt the host is an expert that could lead us to knowledge.

But Mary Beard narrates, and she has prominent speech impediments which turn the letter"S" into an irritating sensation in the listener's ear. And she uses the letter"S" (possibly, tens of) thousand of times in each episode. (count the number of "S"'s, and soft "C"'s, in this short review. Multiply by one hour)

This series also suffers from a common modern blight on documentaries, the desire to make them ultra-exciting in every second of the show.

Mary Beard is overly familiar with her audience, indulging in clumsy vulgarities, just minutes into the first program.

You also feel a sort of tension from the rapid edits, bombastic music, and a new image every half second throughout the program.

The viewer never gets a satisfying look at the marvelous Roman architecture and art that are a substantial portion of the narrative in the show.

Perhaps the producers believe that the audience does not posses enough of an attention span left to enjoy informative documentaries without pyrotechnics.

Pity, the subject matter is most interesting, but the viewer will have difficult job of relating due to the over blown production values and the constant spitting noise in the narration.

And this is typical of other recent BBC documentaries.

We need a new champion of documentaries and history based TV. The BBC used to be that, but not so much anymore.

PEOPLE OF ROME

... and here I am again, reflecting on yet another documentary show the pandemic has given me to be entertained in my forced confinement, that says (or neglects to say) important very true things but that perhaps the general public might not like or understand.

I have complained that in most shows of this kind and also in books and papers, the ancient Egyptians are often falsely represented by scholars who sort of edulcorate an ancient quite unpleasant reality.

But what do we want to portray and have people understand, a factual past or a pretty and noble one that is not really true?

After all, the sources we have are writings by members of the ancient elites, who obviously were anything but objective.

In this case I refer to Mary Beard´s Meet the Romans. Due to her expertise and ability to communicate, I sat back to listen, watch, enjoy and get in touch with the ancient Romans (more exactly, the people living in that huge metropolis) as they really were.

At the beginning she mentions slavery, the tragic consequence of wars of conquest, but also that those same slaves were frequently freed by their masters after some time and they became full Roman citizens, with all the implicit rights.

This is quite untrue, after obtaining freedom, as freedmen, they still owed allegiance and were supposed to be at the service of their former masters in their many activities, not all legit o commendable. If this was not done, they could revert to slavery as ungrateful servants.

Nothing of the sort is mentioned in the show, that would certainly put limitations to this kind of precious regained freedom.

Then Mary mentions the peasants, who, according to her, in many cases flocked to imperial Rome attracted by the opportunities it offered, like so many other outsiders.

But no mention of why many of those peasants did so and the dire consequences to the Roman empire in the long run. Those peasants ended up in Rome because they had lost their farms to the voracity of patricians and other members of the elite that were expanding their latifundia, cultivated with cheap slave labour.

It was those hardy peasants that formed the bulk of the legions that created the empire (now merging into the idle and troublesome crowd receiving panem et circenses), and their increasing replacement in time with mercenaries (´auxiliaries´) or recruited men from the conquered provinces, slowly contributed to seal the fate of the former strong empire.

One wonders why all these nuances are omitted misrepresenting the ancient past, as it really was.

I made the mistake of watching Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome Empire Without Limit (i'd score it 5/10). What a major disappointment (it's BBC, 2016, so it's newer than Meet The Romans).

What I particularly like about Mary Beard's style is that she's down to earth and easy to relate to. She does a great job of getting under the skin of the Romans in a way that almost all historians fail to do when talking of the past. Mary draws many similarities between today's people and those from thousands of years ago. This is something that has always made sense and it strikes me as odd when people say how much we have changed (when we haven't changed all that much). This is why Mary's documentaries (on the whole) are very meaningful to watch.

Where Mary lets us down is that she isn't always consistent on her facts. For example, she often re-iterates how women had little or no rights and were not allowed to be anything but a good housewife who mended clothes. She then talks about women who ran their own businesses and were quite wealthy (one young woman had the equivalent of 10 years solider pay when she died at Pompeii). She also talks about several women who freed their slaves (male) and married them. It just doesn't add up, unless you're trying to push a barrow of revising history. I really do get it. 2010s are the decade of "make bullcrap up about the past to falsely promote women today, irrespective of the truth". However, Mary (mostly) seems to be different from the pack. Why is Mary lowering her standards? She also narrated a TV show about women needing to shut up, so, maybe, Mary has developed a strong gender bias as she's aged. This is sad to see because I really, really love some of her earlier work where she presented a balanced, consistent and non-prejudiced view.

If you are fond of sexism (girl power) in your documentaries, Mary upped the stakes in her follow up series Ultimate Rome Empire Without Limit. It was borderline offensive. However, as most of us digest our local news, Mary's other work will probably seem tame compared to BBC News / ABC News / your local news outlet.

Another reviewer talked about Mary's speech impediment. I rarely notice it, but I don't have sensitive hearing. It obviously upset one reviewer quite dramatically. You do notice an impediment in one section of her newer documentary, Ultimate Rome Empire Without Limit. I think BBC forgot to edit the sound for about 2 minutes of the video where Mary has a very strong speech impediment. However, in Meet the Romans, I did not find her speech to be an issue at all. Her dialog is very natural.

If you really want to get into the heads of the Romans, Mary does a fantastic job in most instances. Just be mindful that there is some gender prejudice leading to some inconsistencies in the material presented. Despite this, it's still definitely worth 8/10. Highly recommended.