INTERVIEW
Mary Beard
The classicist, 68, tells us about her joy at retiring, social media storms, using politeness as a weapon and her love of Marmite
How does it feel to have retired from Cambridge after nearly 40 years of teaching?
I have to say I’m delighted! We have a compulsory retirement age at the university which is under constant review: when I came to the university in 1984 my first contract told me when I was going to leave. It was decades away then, but it was great because I think if it wasn’t there I’d have had to think about it. Of course, compulsory retirement without good pension provision is quite a different thing, so I am privileged. Also I still have a key to the library and I can still eat in the college. What I can’t have is any power, and that’s great. It’s time for someone else to make the decisions.
Any big retirement plans?
More writing, more telly and lots of interesting things that I couldn’t have fitted in before.
You’ve written several bestselling books about Ancient Rome. Why are we so fascinated by this era?
I think it’s because the Romans are still all around us. In the UK, they’re under our feet: the reason London is where it is is because the Romans decided to put the capital there. So they still determine our history – but they also go on providing a whole set of images of power, of virtue, of corruption.
Your new book Emperor of Rome explores the fact and fiction around ancient rulers. What did you enjoy about the research?
There is something wonderful about the way stories of monarchy repeat through the ages. There’s a lovely story about Mark Antony [who almost became an emperor] and Cleopatra – an account of someone going to their kitchens and discovering that eight boars are being roasted. The guy says, ‘God, they must be expecting loads of people’. And the head cook says, ‘No, there’s only 12, but we never know when they’re going to eat, so we put boars on at different times so that whenever they decide, one will be done perfectly.’ Centuries later you have the rumours that our King has a series of eggs cooked so that he can choose the right level of runniness. I can’t imagine that’s true, but it’s the same idea that connects us through the years: outside of power we are fascinated by what unfolds on the inside.
What is better about life at this stage?
You’ve got a thicker skin. Some years ago I got death threats after a Twitter storm and one of them was specific. I reported it to the police, but I didn’t sit here anxiously because I didn’t think anything was going to happen. And my daughter Zoe said, ‘That’s great, but if you were 30 years younger, you’d be terrified’. And I wou
