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THE LATEST PROGRAMME |
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Using contemporary accounts from all levels of society, from the chattering classes to humble foot-soldiers, from senators to slaves, The Roman Way explores four aspects of everyday life, two millennia ago.
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 David Aaronovitch, the presenter of the series, gives his view on some aspects of the Roman way. Why is there a growing interest and fascination with the Roman Empire? Can we learn from the romans even in the 21st century? Read below or listen to his interview
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1. Who, or what, first stimulated your interest in Roman history?
Actually my interest in the Romans is fairly recent. I'd always preferred the underdogs in history (which the Romans assuredly weren't) or colossal individuals, like Alexander, Napoleon or Hannibal. And then, as a journalist wondering how we got to be the way we are, I gradually realised how important the Romans were even to a modern idea of civilisation. They really kicked it all off.
The Roman road, for example, seems dull to a schoolboy, compared, say, with cutting the king's head off or the Nazis. But now I find it extraordinary that this one Empire developed technology - and the social organisation to harness it - that took centuries to surpass.
2. Can you understand the growing fascination with the era?
Yes, we live once again in a world where nationality is less important. The Pax Americana, the EU, NATO - all these supra-national bodies play an increasing role. Just as the Empire did, under Augustus or Trajan.
3. Is it a period that we can learn from even now at the beginning of the 21st century?
Sure. The way in which the Roman empire stayed together, more through giving citizenship than through force of arms; the way the Romans permitted local Gods (and even embraced them sometimes) tells us something about how to keep a large structure working. 400 years (1400 if include Byzantium) is a lot of Empire. The British empire barely lasted a century and a half.
4. What do you find most fascinating about the Roman Empire?
The baths. There can be no civilisation without baths. In a world of filthy barbarians who didn't wash from Beletane to Hunter's Moon, the Romans were nipping down the baths every afternoon, soaking themselves, having massages and sitting in steam rooms. The place was full of aromatherapists. After the Romans left in 410AD, no one in Britain took a regular hot bath till the 1950s.
5. What do you loathe about the Roman Empire?
The public cruelty. How could people who enjoyed the human pleasures of the baths and of proper latrines, also enjoy the filthy spectacle of men having their limbs hacked off and their entrails torn out, in the name of entertainment? Beats me.
6. Is their dependence on slavery unpardonable?
Hmmm. Better to be a slave in a good house in Rome - with the chance of education and citizenship - than an indentured labourer of the 14th century. Or an assistant producer at the BBC in 2002, for that matter.
7. Could you have adapted to life as a citizen of the Roman Empire, or would it have been unbearable?
I would find it easier than living in almost any other time and place in pre 20th century history. Office, baths, dinner. Not such a terrible existence, really.
Listen here for a fuller version of David Aaronovitch's view of the Roman way.
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