I can’t exactly call the Beckham feud Roman in its nature – there is not enough real stabbing, and so far no actual poisoning to justify that. But there are familiar contours.

Ancient Rome is au courant these days. So much so that last year a book first published in 121 AD found itself on the bestseller charts in Britain – Suetonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars. It is a collection of biographies of the first 11 emperors of Rome, with the “main” Caesar himself making up the dozen. I am going to make a lofty case for this most unusual of success stories.

The political moment is fixated on that distant past. Donald Trump is regularly compared to Nero, what with all the immorality and gold. Pop-academics labour to prove the same forces that saw the decline-then-fall of the Roman Empire are alive in the 21st century – moral depravity at the top of society, hubristic territorial expansion (very topical), waves of mass migration. In Hollywood, Paul Mescal is a gladiator. When it comes to the Lives of the Twelve Caesars, perhaps there is appeal in the particular story: the old regime collapses (the Republic), and a new one is found (the Empire).

But this is not why Suetonius was a bestseller last year. I suppose it is somewhat natural to excavate the past for modern morality plays, to hope ancient analogies will make sense of........

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