Rome and European Civilization

Melvyn Bragg assesses the role Rome has played in European civilization. The myths that surround the foundation of Rome are a potent brew. Romulus and Remus, the sons of Mars, raised by a she-wolf in the woods of Latium, the Sabine women raped by the Latins, Aeneas the Trojan General, wrecked off Carthage, loved by Dido and finally founding a new civilisation on the Tiber’s banks. According to William Shakespeare, after Brutus slayed his friend Caesar he claimed, “Not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more”. But what was the idea of Rome that demanded such devotion? And how was an identity forged that exported its values to the greatest Empire the world had ever seen? Rome has meant Republicanism, as well as Imperialism; it has stood for Pax Romana and also for the machinery of war, it is an eternally pagan city that still beats as the Catholic Heart of the Christian Church.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Mary Beard 11 episodes
  Reader in Classics at Cambridge University
• Catherine Edwards No other episodes
  Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, London University
• Greg Woolf 8 episodes
  Professor of Ancient History at St Andrews University

Related episodes

• Romulus and Remus
  
  24 Jan, 2013 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Aeneid
  
  21 Apr, 2005 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• The Roman Republic
  
  30 Dec, 2004 930 History of the Ancient World
• Roman Britain
  
  1 May, 2003 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Augustan Age
  
  11 Jun, 2009 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Roman Empire’s Collapse in the 5th century
  
  5 Apr, 2001 930 History of the Ancient World
• Byzantium
  
  19 Jul, 2001 940 History of Europe
• Roman Slavery
  
  5 Apr, 2018 930 History of the Ancient World
• Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
  
  10 Jul, 2008 930 History of the Ancient World
• Is Shakespeare History? The Romans
  
  18 Oct, 2018 820 English and Old English literatures

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: p00547ms

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00547ms

Auto-category: 937 (Ancient Rome)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The myths that surround the foundation of Rome are a potent brew.