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... Part II I have great respect for Mary Beard’s taking on noted rhetorician Boris Johnson in this debate. I feel that Mary Beard presented a persuasive and entertaining rebuttal to Boris Johnson's colorful argument for Ancient Greece and his passionate Athenian apologia. As a Romanophile and someone who admires Ms. Beard's work, I am very reluctant to criticize her. I, however, felt very uneasy when she insisted that the events of AD 212 should be idealized. The date, AD 212, was significant for Caracalla's offering citizenship (by the Constitutio Antoniniana) to all free men in the Roman empire. Ouch. I am sure that Ms. Beard realizes better than I that the ruthless, fratricidal psychopath Caracalla did not extend citizenship for altruistic or idealistic reasons. According to Cassius Dio, he did this to increase tax revenue. Nothing noble, indeed. Whatever Caracalla’s motivation to extend citizenship, the failure to fully integrate a large unassimilated population into mainstream society was just one more step in the collapse of the Roman Empire. Caracalla’s raising taxes, debasing the currency, and corrupting the military accelerated Ancient Rome’s death spiral. Ancient Rome’s almost inevitable collapse in the third century was barely averted by some later competent and skillful emperors. Ms. Beard also promoted the greatness of Rome by mostly citing the efficiency and tolerance of the Roman Empire. I, on the other hand, agree with the American Founding Fathers who felt that it should be the Roman Republic and not the Roman Empire that should be admired and emulated. It was the Roman Republic (and to a much lesser extent, the early Roman Empire) that respected the rights and civil liberties of its citizens. By Caracalla’s time, however, the Roman Empire had degenerated into an authoritarian state that could barely maintain the façade of respecting the rights of Roman citizens. During Caracalla’s rule, the principate’s death rattle was being heard throughout the ancient world. Would Ms. Beard be as generous with her praise on the late Soviet Union? The Soviet Union could also be described as a (superficially, at least) efficient multicultural state … at the expense of civil liberties and individual rights, of course. At 1:10:00 of the video, Ms. Beard makes the interesting comment that the collapse of the Roman Empire could be better characterized as a "disaggregation," with the creation of a new set of "mini-Romes." I feel a better term for this breakup and fragmentation of the Roman Empire would be the "Balkanization" of the Roman Empire. I feel that this process partially resulted from an Empire that was either unable or unwilling to both protect the Empire’s distant provincial citizens and integrate the impoverished immigrant populations. This failure of the central government to maintain cohesiveness allowed the mounting centrifugal pressures (incessant rebellion, barbarian invasions, runaway inflation, devastating disease, etc.) to tear the empire apart. A closer look at events doesn’t allow for a sanitized and romanticized history of Ancient Roman. Nevertheless, it is always good to bring discussions about Ancient Rome to the modern audiences. guy also known as gaius