The narration of everything that happens or has happened — what we call “history” — has been done in various ways over time: see Guy Martin, The historic schools (Akal, 1992). There is only a very clear difference between the way Herodotus narrates the events – he seems more of a mythographer than a historian – and Thucydides, who is much closer to the “realistic” explanation of the things he explains. However, perhaps due to the influence of theocratic dignity that was granted to monarchs, popes and great men, what predominated, until recently, was the presentation of the exploits, virtues and glories of kings, ecclesiastics, armies and prohoms.
The rise of sociology, the desacralization of the world and other factors determined that, in the second third of the 20th century, with the Annals School, history began to be presented according to much more extensive parameters than the big data , milestones and events: the economy began to be the subject of history, first of all, human geography, the state of social classes, everyday customs, kinship relationships and a whole series of aspects which had not been contemplated, or barely, in the traditional way of writing “history”. If the old procedure is thoroughly analyzed, one realizes that the two great areas of what we now understand by “culture” and “civilization” were barely present in historiography. We knew that the bourgeoisie led a revolution in France at the end of the 18th century, but we did not ask ourselves how much money the monarchy robbed the bourgeois class to pay for its military actions, especially in the American war.
Many of these things are now occupied by historians, and, to give an example, the book of , culture The common heritage of Europeans (Crítica, 2006), has chapters dedicated to things so invisible long ago such as the evolution of languages, periodicals, serialized novels, the triumph of opera or the explosion of pop music. Pulling back, the books of — such as SPQR. A History of Ancient Rome (Critic, 2016) —, which have had resounding success in many countries, talk about the legal codes of the Republic and the Empire, about married and domestic life, also about the debaucheries of emperors and company.
In this line is the book that has just been published by Guy de la Bédoyère, an English historian, Populus. Live and die in the smoke, luxury and din of Ancient Rome (translation by Marc Figueras, Barcelona, Pasado & Presente, 2024). The author, who is a specialist in Rome and the Empire, reviews in this book the entire history of that period without explaining a single war or a single murder (very frequent). He did it in other books, and perhaps he realized that if we wanted to understand what was really going on, at home and in the street, at parties and in the circus, in the palaces and in the cabins of Rome, it would not be superficial, but quite the opposite. , make a book about what we ended up calling the short storythe little story, and the miscellaneous facts.
We will know, for example, that after the fire in 64 Nero promulgated new laws on the maximum height of buildings, the distance that had to be respected between houses and the width of the streets, to facilitate the work of the firemen, if there was ever a fire again; we will know the norms of decorum that presided over the relations between men and women in the public street; why cross-dressing was unacceptable outside of certain celebrations, such as saturnal festivals; we will know that the children who went to study, very few and rich, were basically taught literature and oratory, only later astronomy and philosophy; that the pedagogue, as in Greece, only had the mission of taking the children to school and making sure that, when they left, they did not devote themselves to unworthy occupations – such as sticking to thesmartphone—; that the masters whipped the slaves and the wife with the same brutality; that the proconsul Asini Céler paid 8,000 sesterces (more than twenty thousand euros) for a roger, to show that he was rich and a gourmet; that in Pompeii and Herculaneum – this is not seen in the ruins of Rome – there were as many taverns and “bars” as in the cities of our days, also catering services; that at the end of the Republic a seventh part of the year was dedicated to revelry and spectacles, but towards the 4th century AD these Roman games they already occupied half of the year. That’s how they ended.
The original sources from which La Bédoyère has started are exhaustive: from these same sources can come a history of conquests and reigns, but also the small history, which offers a much more vivid vision of what the free or enslaved Romans did, of day and night, at home and abroad, in the palace and the temple.
