You're listening to Intelligent Squared. In this week's episode, we speak to Mary Beard,

the acclaimed historian and classicist, about her new book, 12 Seasers, and she speaks to

Shahidabari about why images of Roman emperors still matter in the history of art and the representation

of power today. It's a really fascinating conversation, and if you do want to follow along

with some of the images that Mary Beard discusses during the podcast, you can do so by visiting

IntelligentSquared.com slash slides, or click the link in our podcast description, and you'll see

all the images discussed during the episode. We hope you enjoy it, and now let's go to the podcast.

Hello, and welcome to this Intelligent Squared event in which we'll be talking with Professor Mary

Beard about her new book, 12 Seasers, Images of Power, from the ancient world to the modern,

which you can see here is extremely handsome. It's an extremely handsome hardback book filled

with beautiful colour images, and I should say it's also brilliantly written, as it turns out,

by Mary Beard, the most knowledgeable and accessible guide you could hope for through the Roman world.

Mary Beard, as I imagine, many of you already know, is one of the world's leading

classicists and cultural commentators. She's a specialist in Roman history and art,

Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, and the author of bestselling and award-winning

books, including SPQR, a history of ancient Roman, also women and power a manifesto, which I

imagine many people have bought and treasured. She's also known to many of us as a familiar,

trusted and beloved TV presenter from Civilisations, Meet the Romans, the shock of the nude and

inside culture with Mary Beard, which is just back on air now. Mary, let's start at the beginning,

with the title of the book, just in case some of us are not classicists and won't be entirely sure

what that refers to. This is a very particular group of Roman emperors, isn't it? Why these guys

for this book, the 12 Caesars? Yeah, the 12 Caesars are the first 12 Roman emperors or almost

...