HAIL CAESAR! (and the other ones...)

ANCIENT Rome produced the long-est-lasting empire in human history.

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It wasn’t the biggest — that was the British Empire. It wasn’t even the largest in terms of land mass — that was the vast sea of grass under Genghis and Kublai Khan. In terms of influence though, in the Top Trumps of empires, it is the card that wins the game.

From languages like English, Italian, French and Spanish, to architecture, philosophy and the American Senate (Senate meaning “old men” in Latin) it continues to influence cultures today.

We can read Seneca or Emperor Marcus Aurelius on how to live a good life.

Those voices can speak to us across 2,000 years and still be understood.

While the Romans revered courage and self-sacrifice, love and personal honour, some of their attitudes were very different to ours. There was a great deal of good in the Roman Empire — but some parts were so completely bonkers they’re hard to believe.

Luckily, they were recorded, by eye-witness scribes and clerks, sometimes by the men and women themselves, such as Julius Caesar.

They wrote things down, the Romans.

And thank goodness for that.

It forms a record of a vast and complex culture: 10,000 stories that are both infinitely strange and completely recognisable.

Tiberius and the Fisherman, for example.

When I speak at book festivals, I don’t tell many stories about Tiberius. He was an absolute monster and did incredible damage to the reputation of Rome. He is at least partly responsible for Caligula, an emperor who terrified the whole empire for years.

No sources speak well of Tiberius, or suggest any redeeming features.

One short tale serves to show the man.

Tiberius spent a lot of his reign on the island of Capri, ignoring his responsibilities.

He left a friend in charge of Rome and spent his time in palaces on the cliffs, staging increasingly decadent parties.