Kind: captions
Language: en
so Rome always wins because even if they
lose battles they go to the Italian
allies and half citizens and raise new
armies so how do you beat them he can
never raise that many troops himself and
Hannibal I think correctly figures out
the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to
cut them away from their allies well how
do you do this Hannibal's plan is I'm
not going to wait and fight the Romans
and Spain or North Africa I'm going to
invade Italy so I'm going to strike at
the heart of this growing Roman Empire
and my hope is that if I can win a
couple big battles against Rome in Italy
the Italians will want their freedom
back and they'll Rebel from Rome and
maybe even join me because most people
who have been conquered want their
freedom back so this is a reasonable
plan so Hannibal famously crosses the
Alps with elephants dramatic stuff
nobody expects him to do this nobody
thinks you can do this shows up in
Northern Italy Romans send an Army
Hannibal massacres them he is a military
genius Rome takes a year raises a second
Army we know this story sends against
Hannibal Hannibal wipes him out Rome
gets clever this time they say Okay
Hannibal's different we're going to take
two years raise two armies and send them
both out at the same time against
Hannibal so they do this and this is the
Battle of Kay which is one of the most
famous battles in history uh Hannibal is
facing this Army of 80 ,000 Romans about
um and he comes up with a strategy
called double envelopment I mean we can
go into it later if you want but this
famous strategy where he basically kind
of sucks the Romans in surrounds them on
all sides and in one afternoon at the
Battle of Ka Hannibal kills about
60,000
Romans now just to put that in
perspective that's more Romans hacked to
death in one afternoon with swords then
Americans died in years in
Vietnam the following is a conversation
with Gregory aldr a historian
specializing in ancient Rome and
military history this is Alex freedon
podcast to supported please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
dear friends here's Gregory
aldr what do you think is the big
difference between the ancient world and
the modern world well the easy answer
the one you often get is technology and
obviously there's huge differences in
technology between the ancient world and
today but I think some of the more
interesting stuff is a little bit more
morphous things uh more structural
things so I would say first of all
childhood
mortality uh in the ancient world and
this is true of Greeks Romans Egyptians
really anybody up until about the
Industrial Revolution about 30 to 40% of
kids died before they hit puberty so I
mean put yourself in the place of an
average inhabited the ancient world uh
if you were an ancient person three or
four of your kids probably would have
died you would have buried your children
and nowadays we think of that as an
unusual thing and just psychologically
that's a huge thing you would have seen
multiple of your siblings die um if
you're a woman for example if you were
lucky enough to make it to let's say age
13 you probably would have to give birth
four or five times in order just to keep
the population from dying out so those
kind of Grim uh mortality statistics I
think are a huge difference
psychologically between the ancient
world and the modern but fundamentally
do you think human nature changed much
do you think this the same elements of
what we see today fear greed love hope
optimism and cynicism you know the the
underlying forces that result in war all
of that permeates human history crude
answer yes I think human nature is is is
roughly constant um and for me as as an
ancient historian the kind of documents
that I really like dealing with are not
the traditional literary sources but
they're the things that give us those
little glimps into everyday life so
stuff like tombstones or graffiti or
just uh something that survives on a
scrap of parchment that records a
financial transaction and whenever I
read some of those I'll have this moment
of you know feeling oh I know exactly
how that person felt here across 2,000
years of time completely different
cultures I have this this spark of
sympathy with someone from Antiquity and
I think as a historian the way you begin
to understand an alien a foreign culture
which is what these cultures are is to
look for those little moments of
sympathy but on the other hand there's
ways in which ancient cultures are
wildly different from us so you also
look for those moments where you just
think how the hell could these people
have done that I I just don't understand
how they could have thought or acted in
this way and it's lining up those
moments of sympathy and kind of
disconnection that I think is when you
begin to start to understand a foreign
culture or an ancient culture I love the
idea of assembling the big picture from
the details from the little pieces
because that is the thing that makes up
life the big picture is nothing without
the details yep yep and those details
would bring it to life you know I mean
it's it's not the grand sweep of things
it's seeing those little hopes and fears
another thing that I think is a huge
difference between the modern world and
the ancient is just basically
everybody's a farmer everybody's a small
family farmer and we forget this yeah um
I I was just writing a lecture for for
my next um great chorus's course and I
was writing about farming in the ancient
world and I was really thinking if we
were to write a realistic textbook of
let's say the Roman Empire n out of 10
chapters should be details of what it
was like to be a small all time Family
farmer because that's what 90% of the
people in the ancient world did they
weren't soldiers they weren't priests
they weren't Kings they weren't authors
they weren't artists they were small
town family farmers and they lived in a
little village they never traveled 20
miles from that Village they were born
there they married somebody from there
they raised kids they mucked around in
the dirt for couple decades and they
died they never saw a battle they never
saw a work of art they never saw a
philosopher they never took part in any
of the things we Define as being history
um so that's what life should be and
that's representative nevertheless it is
the Emperors and the philosophers and
the artists and and the Warriors who
carve history and it is the important
stuff so I mean you know that's true
that there's there's a reason we focus
on that that's a good reminder though if
we want to truly empathize and
understand what life was like we have to
represent it fully and and I would say
let's not forget them so let's not
forget what life was like for 80 90% of
the people in the ancient world the ones
we don't talk about because that's
important too so the Roman
Empire is widely considered to be the
most powerful influential and impactful
uh Empire in human history uh what are
some reasons for that yeah I mean Rome
is has been hugely influential I think
just because of the image I mean there's
all these practical ways I mean the the
words I'm using to speak with you today
30% are direct from Latin another 30%
are from Latin descended languages um
our law codes I mean our habits our
holidays everything comes fairly
directly from the ancient world but the
image of Rome at least again in western
civilization has really been the
dominant image of a successful Empire um
and I think that's what gives it a lot
of its Fascination um this idea that oh
it was this great powerful culturally
influential Empire and there's a lot of
other Empires I mean we could talk about
ancient China which arguably was just as
big as Rome just as culturally
sophisticated lasted about the same
amount of time but at least in western
civilization Rome is the Paradigm but
Rome is a little schizophrenic in that
it's both the Empire when it was ruled
by Emperors which is one kind of model
and it's the Roman Republic when it was
a pseudo democracy which is a different
model and it's interesting how some
later civilizations tend to either focus
on one or the other of those so you know
the United States revolutionary France
they were very obsessed with the Roman
Republic as a model but other people
musolini Hitler Napoleon they were very
obsessed with the Empire Victorian
Britain um as a model so Rome itself has
has different aspects well what I think
is actually another big difference
between the modern world and the ancient
is our relationship with the past MH so
one of the the keys to understanding all
of Roman history is to understand that
this was a people who were obsessed with
the past and For Whom the past had power
uh not just as something inspirational
but it actually dictated what you would
do in your daily life and today
especially in the United States we don't
have much of relationship with the past
we see ourselves as free agents just
floating along not Tethered to what came
before and and the classical story that
I I sometimes tell in my classes to
illustrate this is um Rome started out
as a monarchy they had Kings they were
kind of unhappy with their kings around
500 BC they held a revolution and they
kicked out the Kings and one of the guys
who played a key role in this was a man
named Lucius Junius Brutus
okay 500 years later 500 years down the
road a guy comes along Julius Caesar who
starts to act like a king so if you have
trouble with Kings in Roman society who
you going to call somebody named Brutus
now as it happens there is a guy named
Brutus in Roman society at this time who
is one of Julius Caesar's best friends
Marcus Junius Brutus now before I go
further with the story and I think you
probably know where it ends um I just
have to talk about how important your
ancestors are in Roman culture I mean if
you if you went to an aristocratic
Roman's house and opened the front door
and walked in the first thing you would
see would be a big wooden cabinet and if
you open that up what you would see
would be row after row of wax Death
Masks so when a Roman Aristocrat died
they literally put hot wax on his face
and made an impression of his face at
that moment and they hung these in a big
cabinet right inside the front door so
every time you entered your house you
were literally staring at the faces of
your ancestors and every uh child in
that family would have obsessively
memorized every accomplishment of every
one of those ancestors he would have
known their career what offices they
held what battles they fought in what
they did uh when somebody new in the
family died there would be a big funeral
and they would talk about all the things
their ancestors had did the kids in the
family would literally take out those
masks tie them onto their own faces and
wear them in the funeral procession so
you were like wearing the the face of
your ancestors so you as an individual
weren't important you were just the
latest iteration of that family and
there was enormous weight huge weight to
live up to the Deeds of your ancestors
so the Romans were absolutely obsessed
with the past especially with your own
family uh every Roman kid who was let's
say an AR ristra family could tell you
every one of his ancestors back
centuries um I can't go beyond my
grandparents I don't even know but
that's you know maybe 100 years so it's
a completely different attitude towards
the past and the level of Celebration
that we have now of the ancestors even
the ones we can name is not as intense
as it was in the Roman times I mean it
was obsessive and oppressive it
determined what you did yes because
there's that weight for you to act like
your ancestors did do you think not not
to speak sort of philosophically but do
you think it was uh limiting to the way
the society develops to be deeply
constrained by the limiting in a good
way or a bad way you think well you know
like everything it's a little of both
but the bad so on the one hand it gives
them enormous strength and it gives them
this enormous connection it gives them
guidance but the negative what's
interesting is it makes the Romans
extremely traditional minded and
extremely conservative and I mean
conservative in the sense of uh
resistant to change so in the late
Republic which we'll probably talk about
later Rome desperately needed to change
certain things but it was a society that
did things the way the ancestors did it
and they didn't make some obvious
changes which might have saved their
Republic so that's the downside is that
it locks you into something and you
can't change but to get us back to the
brutus's so 500 years after that first
Brutus got rid of Kings Julius Caesar
starts act like a king one of his best
friends is Marcus Junius Brutus and
literally in the middle of the night
people go to brutus's house and write
graffiti on it that says remember your
ancestor uh and another one is I think
uh you're no real Brutus and at that
point he really has no choice he forms a
conspiracy and on the Ides of March 44
BC he in 2 other Senators take daggers
stick them in Julius Caesar and kill
them for acting like a king so the way I
always pose this to my students is how
many of you would stick a knife in your
best friend because of what your great
great great great great great great
great great great great great
grandfather did that's commitment that's
the power of the past yeah that's a
society where the past isn't just
influential but it dictates what you do
and that concept I think is very alien
to us today we can't imagine murdering
our best friend because of what some
incredibly distant ancestor did 500
years ago but to Brutus there is no
choice you have to do that and a lot of
societies have this power of the past
today not so much but some still do
about a decade ago I was in uh Serbia
and I was talking to some of the people
there about the the breakup of
Yugoslavia and some of the wars had
taken place where people turned against
their neighbors basically murdered
people that lived next to for decades
and when I was talking to them some of
them actually brought up things like oh
well it was justified because in this
battle in 12 whatever they did this and
I was thinking wow you're citing
something from 800 years ago to justify
your actions today that's a modern
person who still understands the power
of the past or maybe is you know uh
crippled by it is another way to view it
so this is an interesting point and an
interesting perspective to remember
remember about the way the Romans
thought especially in the context of how
power is transferred whether it's
hereditary or not which changes
throughout Roman history so it's
interesting it's interesting to remember
that the value of the ancestors yep and
and just the weight of tradition the of
Trad the Romans the the most myor is
this Latin term which means the way the
ancestors did it and it's kind of their
word for tradition so for them tradition
is what your forefathers and mothers did
and and you have to follow that example
and you have to live up to that does
that mean that class Mobility was
difficult so if your ancestors were
farmers there was a major constraint on
remaining a farmer essentially I mean
the Romans all like to think of
themselves as Farmers even Filthy Rich
Romans it was just their national
identity is the Citizen Soldier farmer
thing right but it it did among the
aristocrats the people who kind of ran
things um yeah it was hard to break into
that if you didn't have famous ancestors
and it was such a big deal that that
there was a specific term called a novas
homo a new man for someone who was the
first person in their uh family to get
elected to a major office in the Roman
government because that was a weird and
different and new thing so you actually
designated them by this special term so
yeah you're absolutely right so if we
may let us zoom out it would help me
maybe it'll help the audience to look at
the different periods that we've been
talking about uh so you mentioned the
Republic you mentioned maybe maybe when
it took a form of Empire and maybe there
was the age of Kings what are the
different periods of this uh Roman let's
call it what the big Roman history Roman
history Y and a lot of people just call
that whole period Roman Empire Loosely
right so maybe can you speak the
different periods absolutely so
conventionally Roman history is divided
into three chronological periods the
first of those is from 773 BC to 509 BC
which is called the monarchy so all the
period get their names from the form of
government M so this is the earliest
phase of Roman history it's when Rome is
mostly just a a fairly undistinguished
little collection of mud Huts honestly
just like dozens of other cities of
little mud Huts in Italy so that early
phase about 750 to around 500 BC um is
the monarchy they're ruled by Kings then
there's this revolution they kick out
the Kings they become a republic that
lasts from 500 BC roughly to
about either 31 or 27 BC depending what
date you pick is most important but
about 500 years and the Republic is when
they have a republican form of
government uh some people idealize this
as Rome's greatest period and the big
thing in that period is Rome first
expands to conquer all of Italy in the
first 250 years of that 500e stretch and
then the second 250 years they conquer
all the Mediterranean Basin roughly so
this is this time of enormous uh
successful Roman conquest and expansion
and then you have another switch up and
they become ruled by Emperors so back to
the idea of one guy in charge though the
Romans try to pretend it's not like a
king it's something else and anyway we
can get into that but they're very
touchy about Kings so they have Emperors
Roman Empire the first emperor is
Augustus um starts off as Octavian s is
the name to Augustus when he becomes
Emperor um he kind of sets the model for
what happens and then how long does the
Roman Empire asked that's one of those
great questions um the conventional
answer is usually sometime in the fifth
century so the 400s ad so about another
500 years let's say it's a nice kind of
even division uh 500 years of Republic
500 years of Empire but you can make
very good cases uh for lots of other
dates for the end of the Roman Empire um
I actually think it goes all the way
through the end of the Byzantine Empire
and 1453 so another 1500 years but
that's a whole another discussion but so
that's your three phases of Roman
history and in some fundamental way it
still persists today given how much of
its ideas Define our Modern Life
especially in the western world yeah can
you um speak to the relationship between
ancient Greece and Roman Empire both in
the chronological sense and in the
influence sense well I mean ancient
Greece
comes the classical era of Greek
civilization is around the 500s BC um
that's when you have the great
achievements of Athens it becomes the
first sort of true democracy they defeat
the Persian invasions a lot of famous
stuff happens around in the 400s um
let's say um so that is contemporaneous
with Rome but it the Greek civilization
sense is peing earlier um and one of the
things that happens is that Greece ends
up being conquered by Rome in that
second half of the Roman Republic
between 250 and about uh 30 BC uh and so
Greece falls under the control of Rome
and Rome is very heavily influenced by
Greek culture uh they themselves see the
Greeks as a superior civilization
culturally more sophisticated great art
great philosophy all this and another
thing about the Romans is they they're
super competitive so one of the things
that one of the engines that drives uh
Romans is this public competitiveness
especially among the upper classes uh
they care more about their status and
standing among their peers than they do
about money or even their own life so
there's this intense competition and
when they conquer Greece Greek culture
just becomes one more Arena of
competition so Romans will start to
learn Greek they'll start to memorize
Homer they'll start to see who can quote
more passages of Homer in Greek in their
letters to one another because that
increases their status so Rome kind of
absorbs Greek civilization and then the
two get fused together um the other
thing I should mention in terms of
influences that's really huge on Rome is
the atrans and this is one that comes
along before the Greeks so the atrans
were this yeah kind of mysterious
culture that flourished in Northern
Italy before the Romans so way back 800
BC they were much more powerful than the
Romans they were kind of a loose
Confederation of states for while the
Romans even seemed to have been under a
truscan control the last of the Roman
kings was really an at truscan guy
pretty clearly um but the atrans end up
uh giving to Rome or you could say Rome
ends up stealing perhaps a lot of
elements of at truscan culture and many
of the things that we today think of as
distinctively Roman that you know was
our cliches of what a Roman is actually
aren't truly Roman they're stuff they
stole from the rusans so just a couple
examples the toga what do you think of a
Roman it's it's a guy wearing a toga and
the toga is the mark of Roman citizen
well that's what trus and Kings wore
probably
uh Gladiator games we associate those
very intensely with the Romans well they
probably stole that from the at truskin
uh a lot of Roman religion uh Jupiter is
a Thunder God uh all sorts of divination
the Romans love to you know chop open
animals and look at their livers and
predict the future um that comes from
the at truskin uh watching the flight of
birds to predict the future that comes
from the at truskin so there's a lot of
central elements of what we think of as
Roman civilization which actually are
borrowings let's say from these older
slightly mysterious at truskin I mean
that's a really powerful thing that's a
powerful aspect of a civilization to be
able to we can call it stealing which is
a negative connotation but you can also
see it as integration basically uh yes
steal the best stuff from the peoples
you conquer or the people's uh uh that
you interact with that not every Empire
does that there there's a lot of uh uh
Nations and Empires that when they
conquer they annihilate versus integrate
and so it's an interesting thing to be
able to culturally like the form that
the competitiveness takes is that you
want to compete in the realm of ideas
and culture versus compete strictly in
the realm of military conquest yeah and
I think you've exactly put your finger
on one of the uh let's say secrets of
Rome's success which is that they're
very good at integrating non-romans or
non-roman ideas and kind of absorbing
them so uh one of the things that that's
absolutely crucial early in Roman
history when they're when when they're
just one of these tiny little mud hut
Villages fighting dozens of other mud
hut villages in Italy why does Rome
emerge as the dominant one well one of
the things they do is when they do
finally succeed in conquering somebody
else let's say another uh italianate
people they do something very unusual
because the normal procedure in the
ancient world is you conquer some let's
say you conquer another city you often
kill both of the men enslave the women
and children steal all the stuff right
the Romans at least with the Italians
conquer the other city and sometimes
they'll do that but sometimes they'll
also then say all right we're going to
now leave you alone and we're going to
share with you a degree of Roman
citizenship sometimes they'd make them
full citizens more often they'd make
them something we call half citizens
which is kind of what sounds like you
get some of the Privileges of
citizenship but not all of them
sometimes they would just make them
allies but they would sort of
incorporate them into the Roman project
and they wouldn't necessarily ask for
money or taxes which is weird too but
instead the one thing they would always
always demand from the conquered cities
in Italy is that they provide troops to
the Roman army so the Army becomes this
mechanism of romanization where you you
pull in foreigners you make them like
you and then they end up fighting for
you and early on the secret to Rome's
military Success is Not that they have
better generals it's not that they have
better equipment it's not that they have
better strategy or tactics it's that
they have Limitless Manpower relatively
speaking so they lose a war and they
just come back and fight again and they
lose again and they come back and they
fight again and eventually they just
wear down their enemies because their
key thing of their policy is we
incorporate the conquered people and and
the great moment that just exemplifies
this is is pretty late in this process
so they've been doing this for 250 years
just about and they've gotten down to
the toe of Italy they're Conquering the
very last cities down there and one of
the last cities is actually a Greek city
it's a Greek colony it's a wealthy City
and so when the Romans show up on the
doorstep and are about to attack them
they do what any Rich uh Greek colony or
city does they go out and hire the best
mercenaries they can and they hire this
guy who thinks of himself as uh the new
Alexander the Great a man named purus of
aus so he's a mercenary he's actually
related Alexander distantly um he has a
terrific army top-notch army he's got
elephants uh you know he's got all the
latest military technology the Romans
come and fight a battle against him and
purus knows what he's doing he he wipes
out the Romans he thinks okay now we'll
have a peace treaty we'll negotiate
something I can go home but the Romans
won't even talk they go to their Italian
allies and half citizens they raise a
second army they send it against purus
purus says okay these guys are slow
Learners fine he fights them again wipes
them out thinks now we'll have a peace
treaty but the Romans go back to the
Allies raise a third Army and send it
after purus and when he sees that third
Army coming he says I can't afford to
win another battle I win these battles
but each time I lose some of my troops
and I can't replace them and the Romans
just keep sprouting new armies so he
gives up and goes home so Rome kind of
loses every battle but wins the war and
purus one of his actually his officers
has a great line as they're kind of
going back to Greece he says fighting
the Romans is like fighting a Hydra and
a Hydra is this mythological monster
that when you cut off one head two more
grow in its place so you can just never
win that's fascinating so that's the
secret to Rome's early success that's
not the military strategy it's not some
technological asymmetry of power it's
literally just Manpower mhm early on and
and later uh the Romans get very good
when we're into the Empire phase now so
once they have Emperors into the ad era
of um kind of doing the same thing by
drawing in the best and the brightest
and the most ambitious and the most
talented local leaders that of the
people they conquer so when they go
someplace let say they conquer a tribe
of what to them is barbarians they'll
often take the sons of the Barbarian
Chiefs bring them to Rome and raise them
as Romans damn and so it's that whole
way of kind of turning your enemies into
your own strength and the Romans start
uh giving citizenship to areas they
conquer so once they move out of Italy
they aren't as free with the citizenship
but eventually they do so they make
Spain uh lost cities in Spain they make
all citizens and other places and soon
enough the Roman emperors and the Roman
senators are not Italians they're coming
from Spain Spain or North Africa or
Germany or wherever so you know as early
as the 2 Century ad of the Roman Empire
so the first set of Emperors the first
hundred years were all Italians but
right away at the beginning of the 2
Century ad you have Tran who's from
Spain and the next guy Hadrian's from
Spain and then a Central Area you have
septimia Severus who's from North Africa
uh you later get guys from Syria so I
mean the actual leaders of the Roman
Empire are coming from the provinces
that's it's that openness to
incorporating foreigners making them
work for you making them want to be part
of your Empire that I think is one of
this Rome strengths yeah taking the Suns
is a brilliant idea and bringing them to
Rome because it's a kind of generational
integration and and the Roman military
later in the Empire is this giant
machine of half a million people that
takes in foreigners and turns out Romans
so the the Army is composed of two
groups you have the Roman legionaries
who are all citizens but then you have
another group that's just as large about
250,000 of each 250,000 legionaries
250,000 of the second group called
auxiliaries and auxiliaries tend to be
newly conquered warlike people that the
Romans enlist as auxiliaries to fight
with them and they sered side by side
with the Roman Legions for 25 years um
and at the end of that time when they're
discharged what do they get they get
Roman citizenship and their kids then
tend to become Roman legionaries so
again you're taking the most warlike and
potentially dangerous of your enemies
kind of absorbing them putting through
this thing for 25 years where they learn
Latin they learn Roman Customs they
maybe marry uh someone who's already a
Roman or a Latin woman um they have kids
within the system their kids become
Roman legionaries and and you've
thoroughly integrated what could have
been your biggest enemies right your
greatest threat that's just brilliant
brilliant process of integration is that
what explains the rapid expansion during
the uh late Republic no so there it's
more the the indigenous uh Italians who
are in the Army at that point they
haven't really expanded the auxiliaries
yet that's more something that happens
in the Empire so yeah so back it up so
we have that first 250 years of the uh
Roman Republic so from about 500 to
let's say 250 BC um and in that period
they gradually expand throughout Italy
conquer the other Italian cities who are
pretty much like them so they're people
who already speak similar languages or
the same language have the same Gods
it's easy to integrate them that's the
ones they make the half citizens and
allies then in the second half that
period from about 250 to let's say 30 BC
Rome goes outside of Italy and this is a
new world because now they're
encountering people who are really
fundamentally different so true others
they do not have the same gods they
don't speak the same language they have
fundamentally different systems of
economy everything and Rome first
expands in the Western
Mediterranean and there their big rival
is the city state of Carthage which is
uh another city founded almost the same
time as Rome that has also been a young
vigorously expanding aggressive Empire
so in the Western Empire at this time
you have two sort of uh rivals groups
and they're very different because the
Romans are these Citizen Soldier Farmers
so the Romans are all these small
farmers That's the basis of their
economy and it's the Romans who serve in
the Army so the person who is a citizen
is also really by main profession a
farmer and then in times of War he
becomes a soldier Carthage is an
oligarchy of merchants so it's a very
small citizen body they make their money
through Maritime trade so they have
ships that go all over the Mediterranean
they don't have a large army of
carthaginians instead they hire
mercenaries mostly to fight for them so
it's almost these two rival uh systems
you know it's different philosophies
different economies everything um Rome
is strong on land Carthage is strong at
Sea so there's this this dichotomy but
they're both looking to expand and they
repeatedly come into conflict as they
expand so Carthage is on the coast of
North Africa romes in central Italy
what's right between them the island of
Sicily so the first big war is fought
purely dictated by geography who gets
Sicily Rome or Carthage um and Rome wins
in the end they get it um but Carthage
is still strong they're not weakened so
Carthage is now looking to expand the
next place to go is Spain so they go and
take Spain Rome meanwhile is moving
along the coast of what today's France
where are they going to meet up on the
border of Spain and France and there's a
city at that point in at this point in
time called saguntum the second big war
between Rome and Carthage is over who
gets santum so I mean you can just look
at a map and see this stuff coming uh
sometimes geography is is inevitability
and I think in in the course of the the
wars between Rome and Carthage called
the Punic Wars uh there's this
Geographic inevitability to them can you
speak to the Punic Wars what why was uh
there's so many levels on which we can
talk about this but why was Rome
Victorious well the Punic War really
almost always comes down to the Second
Punic War there's three there's three
Punic Wars the first is over Sicily Rome
wins the second is the big one um and
it's the big one because Carthage at
this point in time just by sheer luck
coughs up one of the greatest military
Geniuses in all of history uh this guy
Hannibal Barka um he was actually the
son of the carthaginian uh General who
fought Rome for Sicily Hamil car was his
father but Hannibal uh is this just
genius just absolute military genius um
he goes to Spain he's the one who kind
of organizes stuff there and now he
knows the second war with Rome is
inevitable and so the question is how do
you take down Rome he's smart he's seen
Rome's strength he knows it's the
Italian allies so Rome always wins
because even if they lose battles they
go to the Italian allies and half
citizens and raise new armies so how do
you beat them he can never raise that
many troops himself and Hannibal
I think correctly figures out the one
way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them
away from their allies well how do you
do this Hannibal's plan is I'm not going
to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or
North Africa I'm going to invade Italy
so I'm going to strike at the heart of
this growing Roman Empire and my hope is
that if I can win a couple big battles
against Rome in Italy the Italians will
want their freedom back and they'll
Rebel from Rome and maybe even join me
because most people who have been
conquered want their freedom back so
this is a reasonable plan so Hannibal
famously crosses the Alps with elephants
dramatic stuff nobody expects him to do
this nobody thinks you can do this shows
up in Northern Italy Romans send an Army
Hannibal massacres them he is a military
genius Rome takes a year raises a second
Army we know this story sends against
Hannibal Hannibal wipes him out Rome
gets clever this time they say Okay
Hannibal's different we're going to take
two years raise two armies and send them
both out at the same time against
Hannibal so they do this and this is the
Battle of kaay which is one of the most
famous battles in history uh Hannibal is
facing this Army of 880,000 Romans about
um and he comes up with a strategy
called double envelopment I mean we can
go into it later if you want but this
famous strategy where he basically kind
of sucks the Romans in surrounds them on
all sides and in one one afternoon at
the Battle of K Hannibal kills about
60,000
Romans now just to put that in
perspective that's more Romans hacked to
death in one afternoon with swords than
Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam I
mean you know the Battle of Gettysburg
which lasted three days and was one of
the bloodiest battles of Civil War I
think the actual deaths at that were
maybe like
15,000 so this is uh
Bloodshed of an almost unimaginable
scale it's also brutal yes it's just
mindboggling to think of of that so now
this this is Rome's Darkest Hour this is
why the Second Punic War is important
because there's that you know nche
phrase what doesn't kill you makes you
stronger this is the closest Rome comes
to death in the history of the Republic
Hannibal almost kills Rome um but no
it's not much of a a spoiler Rome's
going to survive and from this point on
they're going to be unbeatable but this
this is the crisis this is The Crucible
this is the furnace that Rome passes
through that is the dividing point
between when they're one more upand
cominging Empire and when they're
clearly the dominant power in the
Mediterranean so what do they do about
Hannibal well they're smart we're not
going to fight Hannibal we're not going
to give Hannibal the chance to kill more
Romans so they adopt a strategy that
they'll follow Hannibal or they ra a
couple more armies follow Hannibal
around but whenever Hannibal turns and
tries to attack them the Romans just
back off no thank you we're not going to
let you give you a chance meanwhile
though they're not scared of other
carthaginians so they raise a couple
more armies and they send these to Spain
for example and start attacking the
carthaginian Holdings there and by luck
or necessity Rome comes up with its own
brilliant Commander at this point a guy
named skipio uh and he wins victories in
Spain conquers Spain then he crosses
into North Africa and starts to conquer
that and ends up threatening Carthage
directly and poor Hannibal undefeated in
Italy has now been walking up and down
Italy or marching up and down Italy for
12 years looking for another fight and
the Romans won't give it to him they've
been attacking all these other areas and
chipping away at carthaginian power so
finally after more than a decade in
Italy Hannibal is called back to defend
the home land defend Carthage from
skipio the two meet in a big battle this
should be one of the great battles of
all time it's the Battle of Z but you
know Hannibal's guys are kind of old by
this point uh skipio has all the
advantages he wins Carthage is defeated
so that's pretty much the end of
Carthage the city survives and then 50
years later the Romans wipe it out but
that's not much of a war but From This
Moment On from the Second Punic War
which ends in 2011 BC uh Rome is
undisputably the most powerful force
nation in the Mediterranean world and
having conquered the West they're now
going to turn to the east which is the
Greek world and the Greek world is older
it's richer it's the rich part half of
the Mediterranean it's culturally more
sophisticated uh it's the world left by
Alexander the Great that's ruled by the
descendants of his generals and the
Greeks kind of view themselves as
superior to the Romans I mean to the
Greeks uh the Romans are the UNC sort of
savage barbarians but they're going to
get a real shock because the Roman army
now has gotten really good to beat
Hannibal and when they go east they're
going to just defeat the Greeks
relatively easily one after the other
and um there's a famous um historian
named pus who is a Greek whose city was
captured by the Romans he later up
becomes a friend to the skipio family he
actually teaches some of the skipio
children about Greek culture and he
writes a history uh of Rome and his
motivation for writing this is he says
at the beginning of this book he says
surely there can be no one so
incurious as to not want to understand
how the Romans could have conquered the
entire Greek World in 53 years because
that seems unimaginable to him so he's
writing this entire history as a way to
try and understand how did the Romans do
it we were these wonderful Superior
people and they came around in 50 years
bang that's the end of us so that's his
motivation could you maybe speak uh to
any interesting details of the military
Genius of Hannibal or skipio at that
time what are some interesting aspects
this uh double envelopment idea I mean
Hannibal is good because he understood
how to use different troop types and to
play to their strengths and how to use
terrain so I mean this is basic military
stuff but he did it really well so one
of his victories against the Romans for
example is when the Romans are marching
along the edge of a lake and their army
is strung out in marching formations
they're not kind of in combat formation
but they're strung out along the edge of
this Lake it's Misty there's not good
visibility and he ambushes them along
this Lake Side so Lake TR um and it's
just using the terrain understanding
this again Hannibal is very much
outnumbered but he's able to use the
terrain and to take the Enemy by
surprise um at K he's working against
the expectations so the traditional
thing You' do in the ancient world is
the two armies would line up on opposite
sides of a field you'd put your best
troops in the middle you'd put your
Cavalry on the sides you put your
lightly armed skirmishers Beyond those
and then the two sides kind of smack
together and the good troops fight the
good troops and you see who wins now
Hannibal is hugely outnumbered by this
giant failan of heavy infantry which is
what the Romans specialized in they're
very good at sort of heavily armed foot
soldiers so he knows I don't want to go
up against that I don't have that many
of that troop type my guys aren't as
good as the Romans anyway so he lines up
some of his less good troops in the
center against the big menacing Roman
fail lanks and he tells them okay when
the Romans come you're not really trying
to win just hold them up just delay them
and even tells them you can give ground
so you can Retreat and sort of let the
line form a big kind of sea shaped
crescence let the Romans sort of Advance
into you would just hold that line and
meanwhile he puts his Cavalry and his
good troops on the side and so on the
sides those good troops defeat the
Romans and then they kind of circle in
behind the Romans and attack that big
menacing Roman failan from the rear
where it's very vulnerable and so
Hannibal catches the Romans in this sort
of giant cauldron just with people
closing in from both sides um and they
get pressed together they can't fight
properly they Panic uh and they're all
slaughtered and that strategy of double
envelopment of sort of going around both
sides becomes uh the model for all kinds
of military strategies throughout the
rest of history I mean the Germans used
this and their Blitz Craig in World War
II A lot of it was kind of that you know
go around the sides and envelop the
enemy on the Eastern Front they had a
bunch of these uh sort of cauldron
battles where they would go around and
try to encircle huge chunks of the the
Soviet the Russian army and do the same
thing uh supposedly even in the Gulf War
it was part of the us strategy for the
invasion of Iraq to do this kind of
double envelopment maneuver so it's
something that for the rest of military
history has been an inspiration to other
armies can you speak to the maybe the
difference between heavy infantry and
Cavalry the the usefulness of it in the
ancient world the ancient world sort of
from the Greeks through the Romans
there's this um consistent line of
focusing on heavy infantry so going back
to Greece when they're fighting let's
say Persia which at the time was the
superpower of the ancient world and
vastly richer vastly larger than ancient
Greece you know tons more men but the
Persians tended to be archers tended to
be light Horsemen tended to be light
infantry whereas the Greeks specialized
in what are called hotlights which is a
kind of infantry men with very heavy
body armor uh a helmet a spear and a
really big heavy shield and they would
get in that formation where you kind of
make the shields overlap and just form
this solid Mass bristling with spear
points and just slowly kind of March
forward and grind up your enemy in front
of you and so that's that sort of block
of heavy infantry the advantage is head
on against other things they tend to win
the disadvantage is it's slow moving um
it's vulnerable from the sides and the
rear so you got to protect those um but
if you can keep frontally faced it it's
pretty much invincible and that's taken
even further by Alexander the Great who
comes up with the idea well what if we
even give them a longer spear so Greek
Spears were 68 feet long uh Alexander
the Great arms his armies with the Sissa
which is this 15 foot almost a pike this
extra long Spear and so when the spear
is that long you don't even hardly need
the shields anymore so it's just this
incredibly powerful thing in frontal
attack and that's what he uses to make
himself ruler of the known world he goes
and conquers the Persian Empire makes
himself the Persian king of kings with
this uh failan of troops armed with the
Sissa so that's very powerful the Romans
go a little bit different route they
have heavy infantry but they focus more
on fighting with short swords so it's
get up close and kind of stab and the
other thing the Romans do is they focus
on um flexibility and subdividing their
army so Alexander's faank was a mass of
let's say 5,000 guys and it was one unit
the Roman army is organized in an Ever
decreasing number of subunits so you
have a group of eight guys who are a con
tuberia the men who share a tent you
take 10 of those and they form a century
of 80 men you take a bunch of those and
you form a cohort you get a bunch of
those you form a legion so the Romans
are able to subdivide their army and the
big sticking point comes at 197 BC at
the Battle of kinos when the Roman
legion goes up against um one of the
descendants of Alexander the Great who's
using his military system so this is the
new Roman system with flexibility versus
the old Invincible Alexander system with
the heavily armed Sissa with those long
15ft poles and the key moment in the
battle is where they lock together and
in a head-on Clash the the macedonians
are going to win but the Romans have the
flexibility to break off a little
section of their army run around to the
side and attack that formation from the
side and they win the battle so they
prove tactically Superior because of
their flexibility so it's always
development and counterd development in
in military history a fascinating brutal
testing ground of tactics and Technology
adaptation you have to keep adapting
that's I think the key thing one of the
fascinating things about your work uh
you you
study Roman life life in the ancient
world but also the details like we
mentioned you are an expert in
armor so what kind of uh maybe you can
speak to weapons and most importantly
armor that were used by the Romans or by
people in the ancient world I do
military history so I mean the Romans
specialized in I mean early on they they
have pretty random armor and it's not
standardized I mean remember there's no
factories in the ancient world so
nobody's cranking out 10,000 units of
exactly the same armor each one is
handmade now there could be a degree of
standardization even as early as
Alexander there was a certain amount of
standardization but each one is still
handmade and that's important to keep in
mind each weapon each piece of armor um
armor develops over time to fit the
tactics so the Greek hopl lights are
very heavy armor the Roman infantrymen
early in the Republic is lighter
eventually they get this typical sort of
you know chain mail shirt helmet Shield
uh the classic sort of Roman legionary I
would say is the one of the first and
second centuries ad so the early Roman
Empire and this is the guy who wore um
bands of Steel arranged in in sort of
bands around their body so it looks
almost like a lobster shell right and
this is a thing called the Lura
segmentata so it's it's solid steel
which is very good protection but it's
flexible because it has these individual
bands that provide a lot of movement and
then you have a helmet you have a square
Shield that's kind of curved and you
have the short sword the Roman Gladius
and that's kind of the classic Roman
legionary um later more things develop
um my personal uh sort of relationship
with armor is I got really by accident
involved in this project to try to
reconstruct this mysterious type of
armor that was used especially by the
Greeks and Alexander the Great called
the L of thorax which apparently was
made only out of linen and glue so this
seems a little odd that you know that's
not the sort of material once you want
metal or something um but we had clear
literary references that people
including Alexander and the most famous
image of Alexander is this Alexander
Mosaic uh found at Pompei that shows him
wearing one of these uh funny types of
armor the catch is none survived it's
organic materials MH so we don't have
any of them and archaeologists like to
study things that survive so we have
nice typologies of Greek armor made of
bronze roman armor made of steel or sort
of Proto steel but this thing this line
of thorax was a mystery and one of my uh
undergraduate students a guy named Scott
Bartell had a real um well an Alexander
Obsession he really loved Alex as one
should he had alexandros tattooed on his
arm in Greek and he he was a smart
student he was really smart um and so he
W summer made himself an imitation of
this thing of Alexander just for fun and
he said you know can you give me some
articles so I could do a better job so I
some scolly articles about this armor
and with typical sort of you know
academic arrogance I said why Scott of
of course I will I'll give you some
references I went and looked and there
weren't any so at that point I was like
huh tell you what why don't you and I
look into this and try to do a
reconstruction using only the materials
they would have had in the ancient world
and little did I know at the time I
thought maybe I'll get an article out of
this I mean it ended up being a 10-year
project involving you know 150 students
a couple dozen other faculty members um
you know end having three document made
out of it and Scott and I ended up
writing a scholarly book on this so this
is how you know you never know where
your next Project's going to come from
so it started with this undergraduate
turned into this huge thing but it's
what we did we first said