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 all right what
are all the sources for this armor and
in the end we found um 65 accounts of it
in ancient literature by 40 different
authors so we have literary descriptions
and then we looked at Ancient Art and we
were able to identify about a thousand
images in anent art in vase paintings uh
Pottery bronze sculpture tomb paintings
all these different things showing this
armor and then using those two things we
tried to backwards engineer a pattern to
say well if this is what the end product
looked like what does it have to look
like when you make it and then we tried
to reconstruct one of these things using
only the glue and materials so we had to
use you know animal glues rabbit glue we
had to end up uh sort of making our own
linen which comes from the flax plant so
we had to grow flax Harvest it using
only techniques in the ancient world so
modern flax goes through chemical
processes no we had to do this the old
fashioned way spin it into thread so the
thread into fabric glue it all together
and then the fun part was once we made
these things we subjected them to
ballistics testing so we shot them with
arrows which again were wooden
reconstruction arrows using bronze arrow
heads that were based on Arro heads
found on Ancient battlefields uh to
determine how good protection would this
thing have been and of course the the
kind of fun one that everyone always
likes and that the documentaries always
want is at one point they're like well
can you put Scott in one of these and
shoot him yeah and we're like okay I
mean at that point we done about
thousand test shots I grew up shooting
bows and arrows I knew exactly how far
that was going to go so it's one of
these don't do this at home kids so
there's a million questions to ask here
but you know in general how well in
terms of ballistics does it work like
can it withstand arrows or direct
strikes from like swords and axes and
stuff like that bottom line is a 1 cm
thick line of thorax so laminated or
even sewn it doesn't have to be
laminated uh layer of of linen is about
as good protection as 2 mm of bronze
which was the thickest comparable body
armor of bronze at the time and we're
talking uh 4th Century fifth century BC
here um so classical and helenistic
Greece
and that would have protected you from
let's say random Arrow strikes on the
battlefield so uh you could have gotten
hit by arrows and they simply wouldn't
have gone through what are the benefits
so is there a major weight difference
yes so the benefits of this are it's
much lighter than metal armor so the
line of thorax is about 11 lb um a
bronze queer ass of comparable um
protection would have been about 24 to 6
lb a chain mail shirt would be about 28
27 pounds um it's cooler I mean you know
the mediterranean's a hot place with the
hot sun uh even today you know a linen
shirt is something you wear when you
want to be cool so it's it's much
lighter that gives your troops greater
Endurance on the battlefield they can
run farther fight longer um it's cheaper
you don't need a blacksmith who's a
specialist to make it in fact probably
this interesting any woman in the
ancient world could have made one of
these because they were the ones who
spun thread uh and sewed it into fabric
so I can easily see uh in a household a
mother making this for her son a wife
making it for her husband so it's a form
of armor you could have made uh
domestically um that would have been you
know maybe not the greatest armor but
pretty good pretty comparable to to
bronze armor and it's amazing that you
used all the materials it had at the
time and none of the modern techniques
but I should probably say maybe you can
speak to that they were probably much
better at doing that than you are right
because like you know again generational
it's a skill it's a skill that probably
is practiced across decades across
centuries I mean in terms of producing
the fabric I'm sure they could do it 10
times faster than we could just that's a
speed thing but it's still incredibly
labor intensive where I think there's a
big difference between our
reconstruction and ancient ones is in
the glue so we ended up using a kind of
least common denominator glue we used
rabbit glue because it would have been
available anywhere and it's cheap um but
in the ancient world they did have
basically the equivalent of superglues I
mean we found for example uh helmets
that were fish out of a river in Germany
that were uh had metal Parts glued
together that after 2,000 years of
immersion in water were still glued
together so they had some great glues we
just don't know what the recipes for
them were so we went the opposite attack
and said well we're just going to make
something that we know they could have
made so it was at least this good you
know what I'm saying but uh actually
this is a materials thing but I think
glue
uh aside from helping glue things
together uh it can also be a thing that
serves as armor so like if you glue
things correctly the way it permeates
the material that it's gluing can
strengthen the material the Integrity of
the material that's an art and the
science probably that they understood
deeply the process of lamination did add
something so there's actually a huge
debate among Scholars and actually a
sort of amateur archaeologist that was
this line ofor thing glued together or
was it simply sewn together was it
composite partially linen partially
leather or other materials and my honest
answer is I think it's all of the above
because again every piece of armor in
the ancient world was an individual
creation so I think if you had some
spare leather you put that in if you
wanted to make one that was just sewn
together or even quilted stuffed with
stuff you do that maybe you were good at
gluing stuff you use that so I think
there's no one answer we investigated
one possibility because we just had
limited time and money and resources but
I think all these other things existed
at the same time and were variants of it
just as a smallest side I just think
this is a fascinating Journey you went
on I love it that uh sort of answering
really important questions about in this
case um armor about military equipment
and technology that archaeologists can't
answer mhm by using all the literate so
all the sources you can understand what
it looked like what were the materials
using the materials at the time and
actually doing ballistic testing it's
really cool it's it's really cool that
it's you see that there's a hole in the
literature nobody studied it and going
going hard and doing it the right way to
sort of uncover
this I I don't know I think it's an
amazing mystery about the ancient world
I mean shifting from just sort of
roboman history in general to my
research that I've done as a scholar the
theme that runs throughout my
scholarship is is practic I stuff I'm
interested how did this actually work in
the ancient world so there's people who
are much more theoretical who look at
you know the symbolic meaning of
something I I'm simpler I just want to
know how did this work so almost all of
my books that I've written have started
with some just how did something work
and I'm trying to just figure out that
aspect of it and that's just maybe it's
a personality thing um I also have kind
of a sciency background so I think I've
used a lot of that even though I'm a
humanist and a historian I I use a lot
of kind of hard science in in my work um
I did a book on floods where I had to
get really heavy into you know vectors
of disease and you know Hydraulics and
engineering and all that stuff and I
think again having that sort of hard
science combined with a humanist
background helps with those sorts of
projects well like you said I think the
details help you understand deeply the
big picture of history and I mean
Alexander the Great wore this thing so
this is and I should say by the way um
it does drop out of use around Roman
times um and I think what's going on
there is technology that uh with bronze
it's hard to keep a sharp edge on things
but once you get into Metals which
approximate steel you can get sharper
and a key factor to penetrating fabric
is The Edge on the arrowead right so as
soon as you start to get something more
like a razor edge it's going to go
through it more easily also there's
changes in the bows that are being used
you start to get sort of uh Eastern
horse archers showing up with composite
bows which are much more powerful and so
it just becomes outdated as Frontline
military equipment what's interesting is
by the Roman period people are still
wearing it but it's now things like when
I go hunting if I'm hunting Lions I wear
this there's an actual source that says
it's really good for hunting dangerous
big cats because it catches their teeth
and stops them from penetrating um one
Emperor wears one of these under his
toas kind of like a a not bulletproof
vest but stab proof vest so again it's
not to fight in the front line of the
legions but it'll protect him from
somebody trying to assassinate him so it
still has those uses where you're not up
against Topline military equipment to
honor the uh aforementioned
undergraduate student who loves
Alexander the Great we must absolutely
talk about Alexander the Great for a
little bit uh why was he successful do
you think as a conqueror probably one of
the greatest conquerors in the history
of of
humanity yeah and I mean that is is then
one of the greatest heroes or one of the
greatest villains in humanity too um
it's like Julius Caesar he's famous for
conquering Gaul well about a million
people were killed a million enslaved in
that so is that does it make him a
horrible person or one of our heroes but
Alexander um is a combination of two
things one is he really just was a
skilled individual and he was one of
those guys who had it all he was smart
he was athletic and he was supremely
charismatic I mean it's obviously one of
these people that would walk into a room
and everyone just kind of gravitates to
him he had that magic uh that made him
an effective leader um and secondly he
was lucky because it wasn't all him he
inherited a System created by his father
Philip II so he was in the right time at
the right place and had this instrument
placed in his hands and then he had the
intelligence and the Charisma to go use
it so it's one of these coming together
of different things but often his
father's contribution I think is is not
recognized as much as it is it's his
father who reformed the Macedonian army
who came up with that system of
equipping them with the Sissa this extra
long spear that made them really
effective created the mixed Army so one
of the keys to Alexander's success as on
a tactical sense is that his army was
composed of different elements heavy
Cavalry light Cavalry heavy infantry
light infantry missile troops and he
understand that he can use these in
different and flexible ways on the
battlefield whereas a lot of warfare
before then had just been you line up
two sides smashed together so he did
clever things with this Army that was a
better tool than others did and then he
was just supremely ambitious I mean he
cared about his Fame which I guess is
ego but he clearly cared about that more
than he did about things like money um
he was indifferent to that um and he did
have a Grand Vision so he did have this
vision of trying to unite the world both
politically under his control but also
culturally and this is an interesting
thing so he was very open in fact uh
insistent of trying to meld together the
best elements of all the different
cultures so he himself was a
Macedonian but he admired Greek culture
so he pretty much adopted Greek culture
as his own when he conquers Persia he
starts adapting elements of Persian
culture he dresses in Persian clothing
he marries a Persian woman he uh sort of
forces thousands of his troops to marry
local women he appoints Persians to
positions of power he integrates pers
units into his military he really wanted
to fuse all these things together um and
some people see this as a very
enlightened uh Vision that oh he's not
just I want to conquer people and now
they're my slaves that he was really
trying to create this one culture that
was sort of the best of everything
others see it of course as a form of
cultural imperialism you're destroying
other cultures uh and trying to warp or
twist them into something but what I
think is interesting is that this Vision
he had of uniting culture
creates very problematic tensions among
his own followers because the
macedonians his original troops did not
like this on the whole they wanted the
old model where we conquer you you're
our slaves we don't want to share stuff
with you we don't want you joining us in
the Army we don't want you appointed to
positions of power we are your
conquerors and that's it and so
Alexander had to deal with a lot of
friction from his own oldest most loyal
elements at the way he was being in
their eyes too generous to the conquered
um so Alexander is one of these
interesting personalities because every
generation sees him in a new light and
focuses on different things so for some
he's this Enlighten Visionary who was
taught by Aristotle the Greek
philosopher and they say well this
influen him others see him as an
egomaniacal War bonger just I'm out to
kill and gain Glory uh there was a book
a couple decades ago it says oh he's
just an alcoholic uh what you probably
was yeah um so you get all these
competing images and the great thing is
we don't really know what the true
Alexander was or what his motivations
were it's it's a mixed message why do
you think uh the Roman Empire lasted
while the Greek Empire as the Alexander
expanded did not that's a clear answer
so Alexander's Empire fragmented the
moment he died
and so his Empire was all about personal
loyalty it was his Charisma holding it
together his personality and he
completely failed to create a structure
is so that it would continue after his
death and of course he died young he
didn't think he would die when he did
but still you should put something in
place so his was a flash in the pan it
was he had this spectacular Conquest in
10 years he conquered what was then most
of the known world but he had no
permanent structure in place he didn't
really deal with the issue of succession
it fell apart instantly the Romans are
much more about building a structure so
I mean as we talked about a little they
were very good about incorporating the
people they conquered into the Roman
project um I mean they're oppressive
they're imperialistic as well let's not
whitewash them I mean they had moments
when they would just wipe out entire
cities um but on the whole they were
much more about trying to bring people
into the Roman uh world and I think that
was one the strengths is that they were
open to uh integration and bringing in
different people to keep rejuvenating
themselves one of the most influential
developments from the Roman Republic was
their legal system and as you mentioned
it's one of the things that's still
lasted to this day in many of its
elements uh so it started with the 12
tables in 451 BC can you just speak to
this legal system in the 12 tables yeah
I mean Roman law is one of their most
significant maybe the most sign ific
Legacy they have on the modern world so
I mean just to start at that end of it
something like you know 90% of the world
uses a legal system which is either
directly or indirectly derived from the
Roman one so even countries that you
wouldn't think are really using Roman
law kind of are because all the
terminology all that comes from Roman
law um and the Romans their first law
code was this thing the 12 tables so
this is way back in the middle Republic
uh and it was a typical early law code
so most of the stuff it concerns are uh
agricultural concerns so if I have a
tree and its fruit drops onto your
property who owns the fruit if my cow
wanders into your field and eats your
grain am I responsible I mean I love
these early law codes that are all about
this like farmer problems you know um
but law codes are hugely important
because you need a law code to enable
people to live in groups so they're the
transitional thing that lets human
beings live together without just
resorting to Anarchy and most of the
early law codes are agricultural like
Hammer obi's code in Mesopotamia most of
them are retaliatory meaning uh eye for
an eye type justice so you do something
to me it gets done to you but there are
this necessary precondition for
civilization I would say and the 12
tables is that it's a crude law code it
has a lot of goofy stuff in it it has
things about you know if you use magic
this is the punishment um but it's that
basic agrarian society law code now
that's typical of many societies where
the Romans are different is they keep
going they keep developing their law
code and by the late Republic uh the
Romans just get kind of really into
legal stuff I don't know why but um and
the Romans are very methodical organized
people so maybe this has something to do
with it um but their law code just get
keeps getting more and more complicated
uh and keeps expanding to different
areas and they start to get jurists who
write sort of the thetical things about
Roman law um and eventually it becomes
this huge body both of cases and
comments on those cases and of actual
laws and in the 6th Century a so the
500s um the Roman Emperor Justinian who
is a u emperor of the Eastern Roman
Empire by this point the Byzantine
Empire compiles all this together into
something that today we just kind of
loosely call Justinian's code of Roman
law and that survives and so that
becomes the basis for almost all the
legal systems around the world and it's
very complicated and Roman law I think
is really fun because on the oneand it's
really dry but it also preserves these
wonderful little uh vignettes of daily
life so you get these great just kind of
entertaining law cases uh one of my
favorite and this may not even be a real
case this might be a hypothetical that
they would use like to train Roman sort
of you know law students is like one day
a man sends a slave to the barber to get
a shave and the barber shop is adjacent
to an athletic field and two guys are on
the athletic field throwing a ball back
and forth and one of them throws the
ball badly the other guy fails to catch
it the ball flies into the barber shop
hits the hand of the barber cuts the
slave's throat he dies who's liable
under Roman law is it the athlete one
who threw the ball badly is it athlete
two who failed to catch it is the barber
who actually cut the slave's throat is
it the owner of the slave for being
stupid enough to send his his slave to
get a a shave in a place adjacent to a
playing field or is it the Roman State
zoning a barber shop next to an athletic
field what do you think well do they
resolve the complexity of that with the
right answer we don't have the answer we
don't have the answer it's a case
without uh the answer so we know we have
various uh jurists commenting on this
one but we don't have what was actually
ruled but it's just a great little you
know sort of vignette um and that's how
complicated Roman law got that it was
dealing with these weird esoteric
questions um there's another one where
you know a cow gets loose and runs into
an apartment building goes up onto the
roof and crashes down three stories into
a bar on the ground floor and kicks open
the Taps to the wine jug and all the
wine flows out who's at fault I mean
this seems to have happened as as crazy
as it sounds um and and Roman
testamentary law is great I mean
something like 20% of Roman law has to
do with wills and what you do with the
will and what makes a will valid uh you
know you have to have seven Witnesses
and you have to have a guy named a
Lieber pren to witness it and the
witnesses have to be adult men who can't
be blind and all this other stuff um so
it's just great I mean it's fun to mess
around in this but it always contains
these little nuggets about what happens
um I mentioned I wrote a book on floods
and there were all these law cases about
if a flood strikes the city and picks up
my piece of furniture in my apartment
building and carries it out the door and
deposits it in another apartment
building does that guy now own my
furniture because it's now legally
within his apartment or can I go in
there and repossess it because the flood
took it out of my apartment you know
this is the stuff laws handle and that's
how sophisticated Roman law got did kind
of corrupt unfair things seep into the
law oh yeah I mean it it's biased in
favor of the wealthy obviously and I
mean um you know Roman um law cases are
interesting because they became linked
to politics so one of the way that
politicians upand cominging politicians
aspiring politicians could sort of make
their name or become famous was by
either Prosecuting or defending people
in Roman Law Courts and especially
during the late Roman
Republic uh you get a lot of really
Sensational what today we' call
celebrity law cases so this is where
some of the biggest politicians were
accused of very melodramatic kinds of
things um and I mean the most famous
Roman order of all time Cicero is a guy
who made his entire career in the Law
Courts and that's how he made his
reputation was able to Parlay that into
political power and eventually was
elected to the highest office in the
Roman government but it's purely because
of his skill his facility at using words
um at at giving speeches in public so
they loved the puzzle and the game of
law the the sort of uh untangling really
complicated legal situations and coming
up with new laws that help you tangle
and untangle the the situation and law
cases again especially in the late
Republic also became a form of public
spectacle right so Rome did not have uh
Law Courts in a building locked away a
lot of these cases were held in the
Roman Forum in the open and audiences
would just come to be entertained and
the people presenting the speeches there
were playing as much to this audience as
they were to let's say the jury or a
judge and that became a big part of the
cases so that that's all tied up in
Roman oror too we're talking a bit about
the
details uh of the laws is there some big
picture laws there are new Innovations
or like profound things like uh all
Roman citizens are equal before the law
kind of founding fathers type of in in
the United States in the Western World
these big legal ideas I think maybe one
of the things that was really stressed
in Roman law early on even as early as
the 12 tables is the notion of Roman
citizenship
so if you were a Roman citizen it came
with a set of um both Privileges and
obligations so the obligations were
you're supposed to fight in the Army you
were supposed to vote in elections the
Privileges were you had the protection
of Roman law and at least in theory if
not in practice everybody was equal
under that law now of course keep in
mind we're talking about men here and
even at the height of the Roman Empire
so let's say 2 Century ad there were
about 50 million human beings living
within the boundaries of the Roman
Empire
maybe 6 million were actual citizens so
you know this is we tend to go oh it's
so great if you're a SZ and you have all
these things well adult free men who are
not slaves who are not resident
foreigners they have this great stuff
and that's always a tiny minority of all
the human beings who existed in this
Society but still the notion the notion
of citizenship is huge and citizens for
example early on you had to be tried at
Rome if you were accused of something um
and there's this very famous moment uh
in Sicily where an abusive governor
who's corrupt uh is is uh punishing a
citizen
arbitrarily and this person Cries Out KS
romanum meaning I am a Roman citizen and
it really was this hugely loaded
statement that that gives me protections
it is wrong WR for you to do this to me
it's wrong for you to beat me because I
am a citizen and that gives me certain
protections so that notion of
citizenship is something that I think uh
the Romans really emphasize and becomes
a legacy to a lot of civilizations today
where citizenship means something it's
it's a special status so you mentioned
slaves slavery that's something that is
common throughout human history what do
we know about their relationship with uh
slavery well Roman slavery couple just
reminders at the beginning first of all
it's not racial slavery so for people
you know in the United States you tend
to think of slavery through this kind of
racial lens so PE slaves in ancient
Roman society could be any color
ethnicity gender you know origin
whatever it it's an economic status now
having said that slavery is is
fundamentally horrific to human dignity
because it is defining a human being as
an object object uh and very famously a
Roman agricultural writer who's writing
about Farms just as a kind of a side
says you know on your farm you have
three types of tools you have uh dumb
tools and by dummy means can't speak so
that's like shovels you know picss
things like this wagons you have semi
articulate tools which are animals and
you have articulate tools which are
human beings slaves and for him these
are all just categories of tools you
know it's it's it's so intensely
dehumanizing to view people in that way
so Roman slavery is odd and that it
doesn't have this racial component it's
horrible in the way all slavery is
horrible but the other thing about is
it's not a hard line it's a permeable
membrane and many people move back and
forth across it so you have many people
in the Roman world who were born a slave
who gain their freedom through one means
or another and you have many others who
were born free and become slaves and you
have some who go back and forth um
there's a great Roman Tombstone of this
guy who says I was born a free man in
Parthia I was enslaved then I gained my
freedom and I became a teacher or
something and I had a life and now I'm a
Roman citizen so it's this whole like
back and forth uh across all these
boundaries multiple times oh so there's
probably a process like an economic
transaction the most common source of
slaves in the Roman world was war so
wherever the Roman army went in its way
would be literally a train of slave
Traders so you're in war you capture an
enemy City you whack the people over the
head and you turn around if you're a
soldier and you sell them to one of
these slave Traders that's following the
Army around literally so that's probably
the biggest source of slaves another big
source is just children of slaves or
slaves
um and some people could literally sell
either themselves or their children into
slavery due to economic uh you know
necessity or privation or something so
as terrible as that sounds a father
could sell a child uh if he needed money
um once you were a slave though the
experience of slavery varied a lot
because a lot of the slaves were
agricultural slaves so they would work
sort of like in the American South big
plantations um they might be chained
they were probably abused that's very
similar to slavery as we think of it in
you know let's say the Caribbean in
South America or the United States prior
to the Civil War that kind of slavery
but a lot of Roman slaves were also some
of the more skilled people and this
seems a little weird so if you're a rich
person you have slaves it's actually a
good investment for you to train your
slaves in a profession so a lot of Roman
doctors uh scribes um accountants sort
of all this sort of thing uh Barbers
were slaves because if you train this
person and then they produce a lot of
money for you you get that money um and
those slaves would sometimes be given an
incentive to work hard where they could
and this is just sort of an agreement
between the master and the slave if they
earned a certain amount of money x
amount of money they could then buy
their own freedom from the master so
this was your incentive to work harder
if you were trained let's say as a
doctor I work really hard I can buy
myself out of slavery or a lot of
Masters would free their slaves and
their Wills um so when they die that
would say I manumit this slave and that
slave so it was a weird institution and
that it was elements were just as
horrible as what we think of a slavery
and just as exploitative and like I say
the overall notion of slavery is is
intensely
dehumanizing but yet there was this wide
range of types of slaves um and the odd
thing is in the city of Rome many of the
worst jobs so if you're you know uh just
a labor hauling crap around you know the
docks or you know things like that you
might well be a free person and a slave
would hold a skilled job and that seems
a little strange or counterintuitive to
us but you see how in the Roman economy
it it sort of works and that could be
one of the things that would be
surprising to us coming from the modern
day to the ancient world is just the
number of slaves so you mentioned one of
the things we don't think about is that
most of the people are farmers yeah and
then the other thing is just the number
of slaves there's a big debate how many
slaves were there um you know what
percentage of the populace let's say in
the city of Rome were slaves and this is
something historians like to argue about
a lot and we keep coming back to this
theme of you know sometimes it's the
little things that illustrate stuff well
and and for slaves the the one that
always gets me is some slaves and these
would be sort of the more abused slaves
they would literally put little bronze
collars on them with a tag that said you
know hi my name is Felix I'm the slave
of soand so I run away if you catch me
return me to the Temple of so and so and
you'll get a reward so just it's a dog
tag right except this is a human being
and you can see these in museums I mean
you can go to Museum today and see this
little bronze collar with a tag on it
that's talking about a human being as if
they're this kind of animal that's run
away and and this is very telling too
we're talking about Roman law under
Roman law Technically when a slave runs
away the crime that he's committing is
theft because he's stolen his himself
from his master so again it's it's this
very dehumanizing view of it and just a
reminder to people in America are
thinking about this we have a certain
View and picture to what slavery is a
reminder that all of human history most
of human history has had slaves of all
colors of all
religions that's within us to select a
group of people call them the other use
them as objects abuse them and I would
say as a person who believes the line
between good and evil runs to the heart
of every man all of us every person
listening to this is capable of being
owner of a slave if they're put in the
position of capable of hating the other
of forming the other of of othering
other people and we should be very
careful not to uh um to look ourselves
in the mirror and remind ourselves that
we're human it's easy to kind of think
okay well there's there's these slaves
and slave owners through history and I
would have never been one of those but
um just like as we would be Farmers we
could be both if we go went back into
history we could be both slaves and
slave owners and all of those are humans
I mean just to build on that I'd say the
othering of others is a morally
corrosive thing to do
yeah uh so this fascinating transition
between the Republic to the Empire can
we talk about that how does the Republic
fall oh boy okay
so the Roman Republic on the one hand is
incredibly successful right in a short
period of time is expanded wildly it's
conquered the Mediterranean world it's
gained tons of wealth the contradiction
here is that Rome's very success
has made almost every group within Roman
society deeply unhappy and boiling with
resentment so this is the contradiction
enormous success on the surface you end
up with this boiling pot of resentment
and unhappiness so let's break this down
who's unhappy
well the people fighting Rome's Wars the
common farmers who went off to fight
they they join the army they went and
fought they've come back they've seen
Rome get wealthy they've seen their
generals get wealthy they've Ed all
these areas all this money and stuff is
flowing back to Rome but when they're
discharged from the army they don't get
that much so they feel like I spent the
best years of my life fighting for my
country I deserve a reward I haven't
gotten it so you have a lot of veterans
who are now unemployed or underemployed
many of them have sold their small
Family Farms when they went off to join
the Army and now they don't have them so
that group's unhappy the veterans you
have um The Aristocrats who on the
surface the the ones who are doing well
they're the politicians and the generals
But as time goes on the ones who get the
plum appointments who get the good
General ships starts coming from a
smaller and smaller subset of the
aristocrats the skios and their friends
start to dominate so you end up where
most of the aristocratic class is
feeling hey I I'm left out I didn't get
what I deserved what about the half
citizens and the Allies the Italians who
have fought for Rome who stayed loyal
when Hannibal invaded they didn't go
over to his side well they feel
rightfully we stayed loyal to Rome we
fought for them we deserve our reward we
should be full citizens but the Romans
are traditional they're conservative
they don't like change they don't give
them that uh what about all the slaves
well they've conquered all these
foreigners they've sold them now many of
them are working these plantations big
plantations owned by rich people that
used to be little Family Farms the
slaves are obviously unhappy so you end
up with a society where it's incredibly
Successful by about 100 BC but almost
every group that composes it feels like
I haven't shared in the benefits of
what's happened or I've been exploited
by it so they all end up intensely
unhappy and the next 100-year period
from 133 to 31 BC is called the late
Roman Republic and it's a time of nearly
constant internal strife ultimately
culminating in multiple rounds of Civil
War so Roman society literally breaks
apart turns on itself and and goes to
war with itself over not equitably
sharing the benefits of conquest and of
vempire so it's it's it's a lesson about
not sharing the benefits of something in
a society but concentrating it in one
little group and the other thing that
happens is among the aristocrats they
start to get more and more ambitious so
in the past there was a lot of ideology
of the state is more important than the
person if you were a little Roman kid
you have been told these stories of
Roman Heroes and they're all about
self-sacrifice putting the state before
you about modesty about these sort of
you know values well by the late
Republic you have a succession of strong
men uh and it it is a chain so it goes
you know Marius Sully pompy Julius
Caesar where each one pushes the
boundaries of the Roman Republic a
little bit pushes at the structures of
the institutions of the Republic and
their motiv ated by personal gain
they're putting themselves above the
state so at the same time you have lots
of groups unhappy in society and you get
these strong men who are now undermining
the institutions chipping away at the
things that have been shared uh things
holding the state together and in the
end they just become so ambitious
they're like I don't care about the
state I'm going to try and make myself
ruler of Rome so I mean this is going to
culminate obviously in Julius Caesar who
does succeed in making himself dictator
for life of the Roman Republic which is
tantamount to King and he gets
assassinated for it but he's the end
point of this progression of people who
uh really undermine the institutions the
Republic through their own personal
greed so the resentment boils and boils
and boils and there's this person that
puts themselves and they exploit it
they're demagogues they exploit it but
Caesar puts himself above the state
and that I guess the the Roman people
also hate well I mean it's it's a love
hate because Caesar is very successful
at playing to the Roman people so he
becomes their hero where he says you
know I'll be your Champion against the
state who doesn't care about you you
know so Caesar will do things where
he'll put on big shows for the people um
and it's cynical I mean he's doing this
to further his own political power but
he's presenting himself as a a populist
in essence um even though he aspires to
be a dictator right um but it's a way of
winning the people's support because
that's a tool for him and his struggle
with other Aristocrats so a uh dictator
in populist clothing yes uh so but he
get went convenient other times he play
to the aristocracy uh and when he gets
assassinated another civil war explodes
that's an interesting moment because all
these things have been leading up to
Caesar and it really is a chain of men
so it starts with this guy Marius who is
one of the first to start making armies
loyal to him rather than to to the state
that's a step in the wrong direction
right the Army should be loyal to the to
the state not to an individual General
they shouldn't look for him to rewards
Marius kind of breaks that makes a
precedent one of his proteges is a guy
named suah suah comes along and he ends
up marching on Rome with his army and
taking it over and he says well I'm just
doing it for the good of the state but
that's another prent now you've had
someone attacking their own Capital City
even if they say they're doing it for
the right reasons um then pompy comes
along and pompy just breaks all kinds of
things he starts holding offices when
he's too young to do so uh he raises
personal armies from his own wealth um
he disobeys commands he manipulates
commands he does all kinds of stuff but
in the end he sides with the Senate when
when sort of forced and finally Caesar
comes along and Caesar's just
shamelessly no it's about me I'm I'm
going to push it and he is the one who
wins a civil war against the state and
pompy takes over Rome and says now I'm
going to be dictator um and dictator is
a traditional office in the Roman state
but dictators were limited to no more
than six months in power and Caesar says
well I'll be dictator for life which of
course is King he gets killed for it so
Caesar succeeded in taking over the
state as one man but he couldn't solve
the problem how do you rule Rome as one
person and not get killed for for
looking like a king that's the The
Dilemma the Riddle That Caesar leaves
behind him he did it he sees power as
one guy but how do you stay alive how do
you come up with something that the
people will accept and Caesar did some
other things which are bad he was
arrogant he didn't even pretend that the
Senate were uh his equals he just kind
of you know railroaded them around he
didn't resp ECT them you know he named a
month after himself July Julius um he
did egotistical things so that pissed
people off they didn't like it and when
Caesar dies it's this interesting moment
the Republic's sort of dead by then it's
you're going to have a hard time
Reviving it you you've broken too many
precedents but there's a power vacuum
now Caesar's gone what's going to happen
next and you have a whole group of
people who want to be the next Caesar so
the most obvious is Mark Anthony who is
Caesar's right-hand man his Lieutenant
he's a very good General he's very
charismatic everybody kind of expects
Mark Anthony to just become the next
Caesar but there's also another of
Caesar's lieutenants a guy named lepidus
sort of like Anthony but not quite as
great as him there's the Senate itself
which wants to reassert its power kind
of become the dominant force in Rome
again there's the Assassins who killed
Caesar uh led by Brutus and another guy
cases they now want to seize control and
finally there's a really weird Darkhorse
camp candidate to fill this power vacuum
and that's Julius Caesar's Grand nephew
who at the time is a 17-year-old kid
named
Octavian who cares he's nobody
absolutely nobody but when Caesar's will
is opened after his death so poly read
in his will Caesar poly and this is a
little weird POS humously adopts
Octavian as his son now again who cares
Anthony get the troops Anthony gets the
money the other people get everything
what does Octavian get he gets to now
rename himself gas Julius Caesar
octavianus who cares well around the
Mediterranean there's about 12 Legions
full of hardened soldiers who are just
kind of used to following a guy named
guas Julius Caesar and even though it's
not quite logical this 18-year-old he's
now 18-year-old kid inherits an army
overnight so he comes a player in this
game for power and the next 30 40 years
is going to be those groups all Ving
with one another there's another
candidate to pompy's son pompy was
Caesar's great rival he has a couple
sons and one of them a guy named sexus
pompy uh basically becomes a warlord who
seizes control of Sicily one of the
richest provinces has a whole Navy he's
vying to be one of these successors too
so for the next 40 years it's as you
said another civil war to see which guy
Emer verges uh is it going to be the
Senate is it going to be the Assassins
is it going to be Anthony is it going to
be lepidus is it going to be sexist
pompy is it going to be Octavian so now
looking back at all that history it just
feels like history turns on so many
interesting accidents because Octavian
later renamed Augustus turned out to be
actually dep depends how you define good
but a good king/
Emperor different than Caesar in terms
of humility at least being able to play
uh not to piss off everybody MH uh but
like it could have been so many other
people it could that that could have
been the fall of Rome that so it's it's
a fascinating little turn of History
maybe Caesar saw something in this
individual it's not an accident think he
was in the will yeah it's it's I mean
Caesar clearly did see something in him
and Octavian I mean to cut to the end is
the one who emerges from all that as the
Victor we can talk about how he does it
but he's the one who s of ends up in the
same position as Caesar it takes him 30
years but he defeats all the foes he's
the so guy he now faces Caesar's riddle
how do you rule Rome as one guy and not
get killed and Octavian what makes him
stand out what makes him fascinating to
me is he wasn't a good general fact he
was a terrible General he he lost almost
every battle he commanded but what he is
is he's politically Savvy and he's very
good at what today we would call
manipulation of your Public Image and
propaganda so he basically uh defeats
Mark Anthony partially by waging a
propaganda war against him I mean
Anthony starts out as a legitimate rival
and they're two Romans vying for power
at the end of this war propaganda War
Octavian has managed to portray Anthony
as a foreign aggressor allied with an
enemy king or queen in this case
Cleopatra and who is an official enemy
of the Roman State and that's all
propaganda so he takes what's a Civil
War and makes it look like a war against
a foreign enemy and when Octavian
becomes the soul ruler he looks at what
Caesar did wrong and he very carefully
avoids the same mistakes so the first
thing is just how he lives his life he's
very modest he lives in an ordinary
house like other Aristocrats he wears
just a plain toeg gun nothing fancy he's
respectful to the Senate he treats them
with respect he eats simple Foods I mean
he's someone who cared about the reality
of power not the external trappings
clearly there's some rulers who love I
want to dress in fancy clothes I want to
be surrounded by gold everything this is
what makes me feel good octavian's the
opposite he doesn't care about any that
he wants real power and then the other
thing is how is he going to rule Rome
without looking like a king and his
solution to this is brilliant he
basically pretends to resign from all
his public offices not pretends he does
so he holds no official office but what
he does is he manipulates so that the
Roman senate votes him the powers of the
key Roman offices but not the office
itself so the highest office in the
Roman state is the consul consuls have
the power to command armies do all sorts
of things uh run meetings the Senate
Octavian gets voted the powers of a
Consul so he can command armies control
meent do all this but he's not one of
the two consules of elected for every
year so he's just kind of floating or
drifting off to the side of the Roman
government um he gets the power of a
Tribune which has all sorts of powers he
can veto anything he wants but he's not
one of the tribunes elected for any one
year so the state the Republic appears
to continue as it always has each year
they hold the same elections they elect
the same number of people notionally
those people are in charge but floating
off to the side you have this guy
Octavian who has equivalent power not
just to any one magistrate or official
but to all of them so at any moment he
can just sort of pop up and say no let's
not do this let's do something else and
he also keeps the Army under his
personal control isn't this a
fascinating story like what do you think
is a psychology of Augustus of Octavian
yeah and he later Chang his name to
Augustus when he sort of becomes first
Amper and the other thing he does is he
hides his power behind all these
different names so you know Cesar called
himself dictator for life right so
everybody knew what he was Octavian we
we even have a source that talks about
he says he wondered what to call himself
do I call myself King no can't do that
dictator for life no way maybe I'll call
myself Romulus that was the found of r
no no Romulus was a king and finally a
solution is he takes a bunch of titles
which are all
ambiguous and no one of them sounds that
impressive but collectively they are so
for example one of the titles he gets is
Augustus which is something tied to
Roman religion something that is a
Augustus in Latin has two possible
meanings one is uh someone who is
Augustus is very Pious they respect the
gods deeply well that sounds nice
doesn't it well on the other hand an
alternative me for Augustus is something
that is itself
Divine so is he just a deeply religious
Pious person or is he himself sacred
there's that ambiguity um he calls
himself prps which means First
Citizen okay what the hell does that
that mean am I a citizen just like
everybody else or am I the first citizen
which means I'm superior to all the
others so every title he takes has this
weird ambiguity he calls himself
imperator which is traditionally
something that soldiers shout at a
Victorious General who's won a battle
and now he takes this as a permanent
title so it implies he's a good good
General and by the way it's from
emperator that we get the word Emperor
uh an Empire so originally it's it's a
military title a spontaneous military
acclamation it's just fascinating that
he figured out a way through Public
Image through
branding
to uh gain power maintain power and
still pacify the the
boiling
turmoil that that led to the Civil Wars
yeah well two things I think work in his
favor as well one is he brings peace and
stability so by this point the Romans
have experienced 100 years almost of
Civil War and Chaos so at that point you
know your family maybe you had family
members die in these wars have been
prescribed your property has been
confiscated who knows what and here's a
guy who brings peace and stability and
doesn't seem oppressive or cruel or
whatever so you're like okay fine I I
don't care maybe he's killed the
Republic but at least we're not dying in
the streets anymore so that that's a big
thing he does and secondly even though C
always seemed kind of sickly his
Constitution he lives forever um he
rules for like 50 years and by the time
he dies there's no one literally almost
Left Alive who can remember the
Republic so at that point by the time he
dies this is the only system we know
that's another just fascinating accident
of History because you as we talked
about with Alexander the Great who knows
if he lived for another 40
years if that if if over time the people
that hate the new thing die off and then
their sons and come into
power um that could be a very different
story maybe we'll be talking about the
to fate but it's hugely INF flench on
History you mentioned Cleopatra if we go
back to that what role did she play
another fascinating human being
Cleopatra is interesting I mean she was
a direct descendant of one of Alexander
the Great's generals toy when
Alexander's Empire had broken up toy
this General had seized control of Egypt
made it his kingdom and she 10
Generations later is a descendant of
this Macedonian General so Egypt had
been ruled by in essence foreigners
these Macedonian dynasty of kings and
often they literally were ruled by uh
the same Dynasty because they had a
habit of marrying Brothers to sisters um
and Cleopatra is in fact originally
married to her younger brother um but
despite that she seems to have intensely
identified with Egypt um in fact she
seems to have been the first one of all
these toy kings who actually bothered to
learn to speak Egyptian um so she seemed
to really have cared about Egypt uh as
well and she was clearly very smart um
uh very clever and so she's living at a
time during the late Republic when Rome
is having all these Civil Wars
and Egypt is really the last big
independent Kingdom left around the
shores of the Mediterranean everything
else has been conquered by Rome so she
is in this very precarious position
where clearly she wants to maintain
Egyptian independence but Rome is this
Juggernaut that's rolling over
everything and she ends up meeting
Julius Caesar when Caesar uh comes to
Egypt chasing pompy his great rival
after he defeats pompy pompy runs to
Egypt thinking he'll find Sanctuary
there and the Egyptians kill and chop
off his head and when Caesar lands they
hand it to him and say here have a
present um and she of course famously
ends up having a love affair with Caesar
was that a genuine love or was she just
sort of you know using this as a way to
try and keep Egypt independent to give
it some status we don't know um after
she does have several kids with Caesar
um after Caesar's assassinated and the
Roman world is having another civil war
between Octavian and Mark Anthony Mark
Anthony is faing himself in the East he
meets Cleopatra and he has a big love
affair with her and this one seems
pretty genuine um I mean Anthony and
Cleopatra there's a lot of stories about
them kind of partying together they like
to sort of a cosplay and dress up as
different gods so Cleopatra would dress
up as the Goddess Isis and Anthony would
dress up as the God dionis and a leopard
skin and they'd have these big parties
and stuff and they end up together
fighting against Octavian and in the end
they're defeated uh by Octavian and uh
Anthony commits suicide
Cleopatra there's differing accounts of
her death she may have also killed
herself or she may actually have been
killed by Octavian um to just get her
out of the way um but she's an
interesting figure because she was
clearly a very smart uh woman who
managed to keep Egypt uh alive as an
independent state she seemed to have
actually cared about Egypt uh and
identified with it uh and succeeded at a
time with all these famous people you
know in in being a real kind of mover
and Shaker and a force in in events I
mean she's probably one of the most
influential women in in human
history she's certainly again she's
someone that her her image is incredibly
important um and I mean one of the
interesting things you know the whole
question of gender in the Roman world I
mean this gets into Roman sources but of
course it's it's a heavily
male-dominated history and I mean men
and women did not have equal in ancient
Rome it's a male dominated Society it's
misogynist in many ways but what I'm
constantly struck by is when you start
again delving into the sources you know
you always hear okay you know well there
was this one woman who was a philosopher
and she's an exception to the rule and
yeah okay she's fine and then you start
looking to oh and there's also 60 other
female philosophers well is that so much
an exception anymore or you know
Cleopatra is the one Queen she's this
strong Queen and then you look in well
there was this other Queen here there
was this queen here there was this queen
here who led armies and here's another
one who led armies and again it's like
well are they exceptions to the rule or
is just the history that was written
which is written by men a little bit
selective in how it portrays them
because the sources are all these male
Elites who have very definite ideas
about women you know the conventional
notion has always been that uh you know
business in the Roman Empire was a male
field well but then there's this woman
yumak and Pompei who actually had the
largest building in Pompei right on the
Forum named after her with a giant
statue over and she was a patron to a
bunch of the most important guilds in
Pompei okay she's the exception to the
rule oh but then there's these other
four women we have from Pompei who also
were patrons of guilds and then there's
this woman plona Magna and this other
place and she was the most important
Patron in the town and put up all these
statues so at some point when you start
to say well maybe women did play more of
a role but they just haven't been
recorded in the sources in the way that
maybe they deserve to be yeah that's a
fascinating question is it is it the
bias of society or is it the bias of the
historian the bias of the society the
historian is writing about or the bias
of the actual histor and the bias of the
historians who have written history up
to this point yeah um I I was just
writing a lecture which was about this
woman Musa who who is a crazy story um
and she ties into Augustus actually
Augustus his biggest diplomatic Triumph
that he boasted about constantly was was
that about 50 years before him uh the
Romans had sent an expedition into
Parthia this neighboring Kingdom led by
Cassis and they'd gotten wiped out so it
it's this big disaster military disaster
and the standards of the Roman Legions
the Eagles that each Roman legion
carried had been captured by the
parthians and this is the most
humiliating thing that can happen to a
Roman legion to have its Eagles captured
and Augustus desperately wanted to
negotiate with the parthians to get
these Eagles returned okay this was his
big diplomatic thing so he was
constantly sending these embassies to
Parthia on one of these embassies he
sent along as a gift to the parthan king
a slave woman named
Musa Musa seems to have pleased the king
of Parthia because she becomes one of
his concubines and then she gives birth
to a son by the king and eventually she
becomes uh upgraded to the level of
wife uh and Musa eventually uh murders
the parthan
king arranges it so that her son becomes
the king of Parthia and she's really
ruling the whole empire behind the
scenes as his mother so this is a
literal rags to riches story of a slave
someone who starts out a slave and
becomes the queen of an Empire almost as
large and Powerful as Rome okay but yet
how often do we hear about Musa um and
when you look in traditional histories
of Roman parthan relations and I went
and looked at this because I was just
writing this lecture most of those
histories didn't even mention her they
just talked about her son like he had
just come out of nowhere and become the
new heir to the parthan throne when it
was all her doing clearly now that's
that's selective editing of History by
historians to downplay the role that
this woman
played and there's a lot of examples
like that that's fascinating she got
overthrown after a few years there was a
revolution against her and we don't know
what happened to her then but it's she's
a really interesting figure oh and by
the way uh Augustus did negotiate the
return of the parthan standards and got
them back and he was so proud of this
that this is what he constantly boasted
about and the most famous statue of
Augustus the Augustus from primaporta
which is in the Vatican today um he's
wearing a breastplate and on the
breastplate right in the middle of the
stomach is a parthan handing over a
golden eagle legionary standard to a
Roman so this is what Augustus thought
of as his greatest achievement and that
Embassy that arranged that was the one
that sent Musa to
Parthia so Augustus marks the start of
the Roman Empire yep uh you've written
that Octavian Augustus would become
Rome's first emperor and uh the
political system that he created would
endure for the next half a
millennium this system would become the
template for countless later Empires up
through the present day and he would
become the model Emperor against whom
all subsequent ones would be measured
the culture and history of the
Mediterranean Basin the Western World
and even global history itself were all
profoundly shaped and influenced by the
actions and Legacy of Octavian he was
the founder of the Roman Empire and we
still live today in the world that he
created so what uh on the political side
of things uh and maybe beyond what what
is the political system that
created well I mean I think Octavian
Augustus it's the same guy is one of the
most influential people in history
because he did found the Roman Empire so
he's the one who oversaw this transition
from Republic to Empire and he sets the
template which every future Emperor
follows so just in the most obvious way
for the next either 500 or 1500 years
depending how you how long you think the
Roman Empire lasted for everyone is
trying to be Augustus they all take on
the same titles every Roman Emperor
after for him is Caesar Augustus you
know uh imperator Potter patre all these
titles he has they take twoo and so he's
hugely influential for Western
Civilization all this but beyond just
that literal thing which is already 500
years 1500 years he becomes the Paradigm
of the good ruler so of an absolute
ruler who is nevertheless sort of just
uh does good things builds Public Works
is popular so if we jump ahead let's say
to the Middle Ages the most significant
ruler of the Early Middle Ages is
Charlemagne right he's the guy who
unites most of Europe he becomes the
Paradigm for all medieval kings after
him well what is the title that the pope
gives to Charlamagne because there's
this famous moment when the pope
acknowledges Charlamagne is the
preeminent European king and crowns him
on Christmas day of the year 800 and the
title that the pope gives to Charlemagne
is Charles that's Charlemagne Augustus
emperor of the
Romans he's giving him the title of
Augustus because that's the nicest thing
he can think of to say to Charlamagne is
to say you're the new Augustus you're
emperor of the Romans yeah so that image
is hugely powerful and that persists on
and on I mean even the the literal names
of most rulers afterwards come from this
uh in Russia the Zars are Caesars that's
where Zar comes from um Prince comes
from prps First Citizen one of the
titles Emperor comes from imperator one
of the titles of Augustus um when
Napoleon becomes Emperor what does he
call himself first Consul which is kind
of like prps and then he calls himself
Emperor um I mean everybody wants to be
this kind of ruler so he's the Paradigm
of this for the rest of history and you
can see that as uh both a positive and a
negative Legacy it's kind of like
Alexander I mean everybody wants to be
the next Alexander now nobody does
become the next Alexander nobody's as
successful as him but a lot of people
try and you can see that either as oh
inspirational or awful because lots of
people killed lots of other people and
started lots of Wars trying to be the
next
Alexander um at least Augustus has this
notion of good rulership that you're not
just a great powerful person but you're
a good ruler somehow now can can you
speak to the kind of political system he
created so you've how how did he
consolidate power as you spoke to a bit
already and what role did the Senate now
play how were the
laws uh who was the executive how's
power allocated and so on yeah so uh
once the Empire begins let's say 27 BC
um so in 31 BC um Octavian defeats
Anthony at the Battle of actium so
that's kind of the moment he becomes the
sole ruler and then in 27 BC a couple
years later he settles the Roman
Republic is how it's referred to which
is basically sets up his system and in
this system on the surface it all looks
the same you still have a senate each
year there's elections all the Roman
citizens vote they elect magistrates who
notionally are in charge of Rome but as
I mentioned off to the side you now have
this figure of Augustus who sort of
controls everything behind the the
scenes and that continues so this
political system he establishes
continues and in
reality I would say Augustus at that
point is again a king it really is one
man controlling the state even if
notionally it's still continuing as a
republic they are electing magistrates
but the magistrates only do what the
emperor tells them right but it's this
sort of formal versus informal power the
formal structure is a republic the way
things really work informally is it's a
monarchy now if you asked Augustus what
did he do did you become a king he said
and he says this explicitly no no no
what I did is I
refounded the Roman Republic that's how
he phrases it D this guy's good at
framing he's he's so good at propaganda
I'll give you one more example that I
love uh Augustus actually writes his own
autobiography which is very rare and
survives so here we have the
autobiography of one of the pivotal
figures in history and if you had
conquered the world let's say starting
at the age of 18 uh what would you call
your autobiography be something like you
know how I conquered the world right
Augustus calls his the race guesty which
the best sort of literal translation is
stuff I did I mean it's the most modest
title for someone who could have given
the most grandiose title and the first
line of it is you know at the age of 18
when the liberty of the Republic was
oppressed by a faction I defended it now
the way I might phrase that sense is at
the age of 18 I fought a civil war
against another Roman and conquered the
Roman state but no he defended the
liberty of the Republic when it was
oppressed by the tyranny of a faction
that's propaganda um and it works it is
propaganda but is there a degree to
which he also lived it that kind of
humility establishing that humility is a
standard of the way government operates
so it's not an like a literal direct
balance of power but it's sort of a
cultural balance of power where the
emperor is not supposed to be a bully
and a dictator I would really like to
know what Romans of his time thought
like if if you were alive at that moment
would you honestly believe oh okay we've
got this guy Augustus but he's brought
peace he's just kind of keeping in
charge for a while till things settle
down we've just had 100 Years of Civil
War I think we still have a republic or
would you say
nah we have a king now and I don't know
what the answer to that is I will tell
you that it takes 200 years before we
have the first Roman source that bluntly
calls uh Augustus a king So 200 years it
takes the Romans 200 years to admit to
themselves and that's that's a guy who
comes along 200 years later and says hey
Augustus he looks like a king he acts
like a king let's just call him a king
because he had every aspect of a king
except the poultry title maybe I'm
buying his propaganda and maybe I'm a
sucker for humility but I suspect that
the Romans bought it and I also suspect
he himself believed it I mean there is
such thing as good Kings right there's
kings that understand the the downside
the Dark Side of absolute power and and
and can wield that power properly and
and you know to to give sort of both
sides here Augustus wasn't all nice I
mean there were moments where he was
extremely cruel so early in his career
when he's still fighting when he's for
power he he goes all in on prescriptions
which is where he and auntie and other
people uh basically post lists of their
enemies and say it's legal for anyone to
kill these people um and so hundreds are
massacred there including Cicero uh the
great order is prescribed and killed
there's moments when he's really cruel
one slave once gets him angry and he has
him tortured in a particularly sort of
cruel manner so I mean on the one hand
he had this clemency on the other hand
he he could be really hard-nosed um and
hard edged and I I think he was a very
calculating person um so the thing I
would love to know is what he was
actually like behind the mask yes I mean
that that to me is one of those like if
you could invite a historical person to
dinner or whatever I want to know what
the real Augustus was what he really
thought he was doing because he's he's
an enigma um and and he has this great
moment when he dies right what what's
his dying lines on his deathbed he says
if I've played my part well dismiss me
from the stage with Applause so he's
seeing himself as an actor that his
whole life was acting this role uh which
is again all that manipulation and
Public Image he was brilliant at that
but who's the real guy what was behind
that image and by the way uh as long as
we're talking about brutality you I
think You' mentioned in a few places
that uh there's a lot of brutality going
on at the time uh with Caesar
just killing very large nums numbers of
people um
brutally I mean Caesar his campaigns in
Gaul are interesting because for a long
time they were held up as oh genius
General look at the amazing things he
did but another way to view it is he
provoked and he truly provoked a war
with people who were not that interested
in fighting Rome and just repeatedly
attack different tribes for the sole
purpose of building up his his career
his Prestige his status uh gaining
territory making himself wealthier and
he basically conquers all of modern
France and Belgium and some of
Switzerland so this is you know a big
chunk of Europe gets conquered hundreds
of thousands of people killed hundreds
of thousands of people enslaved to
further one guy's career I mean you if
you wanted could call Caesar a war
criminal and I think that wouldn't be
unfair um but on the other hand some
people see him as a great great hero I
mean to talk about history and its
reception it's quite interesting to see
how Caesar has been viewed by different
Generations so at different points in
time the sort of you know received
wisdom on Caesar is very different so
back in the you know let's say the 1920s
or 30s uh there were a number of
scholarly things written which kind of
looked at Caesar as um an admirable
figure um he's a strong man who knows
what Rome needed and you know was was
going to give it to them um and of
course that's the era when fascism was
kind of trendy and was seen as a
positive thing and then you get you know
Hitler and World War II and all of a
sudden fascism is not so so favored
anymore and then in that postwar
Generation all of a sudden Caesar's
terrible you know he's he's a dictator
he's destroying the Republic so it you
know often histories that are written
tell you a lot more about the time
they're written than they do about the
subject they're written about do we know
what did Hitler or Stalin think about
the Roman Empire I mean certainly they
borrow a lot of the trappings I mean you
know Nazi Germany borrows a lot of
iconography from ancient Rome you know I
mean They Carried around little military
standards with eagles on them just like
the Romans um but then everybody does
that I mean the US has Eagles as their
standards musolini had them Napoleon had
Eagle standards for his um you know
military so a lot of people like that uh
imagery you uh you mentioned Cicero he's
a fascinating figure on the top of of
Roman oratory who was
Cicero Cicero was a new man so he's
someone who didn't have famous ancestors
um so he was a disadvantage and I think
CIS is really interesting for a couple
reasons one is he wrote an incredible
amount I think we have almost more words
from Cicero than any other author that
survive and it's all kinds of stuff it's
philosophical treatises it's books about
how to be a good public speaker he
published you know volume after volume
of his personal letters to his friends
he published these things um so there's
tons of stuff from him and secondly he's
interesting because he lived at this
incredibly important time in the late
Republic when things were falling apart
but he seems to have been born with none
of the natural advantages that all these
other people had so he was a lousy
General uh he didn't come from a wealthy
family he didn't come from a famous
aristocratic family um you know he
didn't have a lot of these advantages
but yet he ended up being right at the
center of things Rose to the highest
elected office in the Roman State on the
basis of one skill and that was his
ability with words his ability to get up
in front of a crowd and persuade them of
what he wanted them to believe an
oratory public speaking was absolutely
Central to life at Rome there were just
all these events where people had to get
up and and give speeches so in
courtrooms at funerals um you know in
the Senate uh to the people of Rome um
at games I mean just constantly there
were these opportunities for giving
speeches so if you were good at this
that was a huge uh advantage in your
political career and Cicero was the best
he
was arguably the best public speaker of
all time some people claim um and he
lived right in this era and he parlayed
that skill with words into this very
successful political career he was one
of the guys involved with all this stuff
with Caesar and pompy and all the things
going on Octavia Mark Anthony and you've
uh you've written which is fascinating
it's fascinating when The Echoes of
people from a distant past are seen
today the same stuff is seen today not
just like some of the the beautiful
legal stuff that we've been talking
about but the the the tricks the the you
know let's say the the the shitty stuff
we see in politics so many of the
rhetorical tricks you wrote such as
mudslinging exaggeration Gil by
association and hominum attacks name
calling fear-mongering us versus them
rhyme and so on and so forth so I'm
guessing it worked given that we still
have those today yeah I mean one of the
things ciso did is he wrote at least
three of these sort of handbooks about
how to be a good public speaker so we
know a lot about that um we have his own
speeches that survive and then we have
later people after ciso who wrote about
what ciso did too so we know a lot about
what he did and the key to Cicero's
whole Enterprise about persuading an
audience let's say either it a speech to
the people or in the courtroom is Cicero
believed that people are fundamentally
ruled by emotion mhm so if you can touch
their emotions all sorts of other things
become less important if you can get a
jury emotionally worked up and fear
anger are particularly powerful there
then the facts might not matter the
truth might not matter evidence might
not matter uh reason might not matter
emotion is the key to everything so
cisero used what I would arguably call a
lot of tricks to get his audiences
emotionally riled up and you can just go
through these and they're all the stuff
you were saying you know name calling um
you know U mudslinging Us Versus Them
arguments um you know add homonym
attacks um I mean incredibly
sophisticated all the stuff that we
think of today is oh very sophisticated
techniques for um you know propaganda
and persuasion it's not new PE people
are aren't coming up with that much
that's new outside the realm of
Technology human nature is the same CIS
understood human psychology he knew how
to play on people he knew how to play on
their emotions and he would do just I
mean I want to say hilarious but they're
sort of depressingly hilarious things
like uh he thought it's important to use
props so he said you know people are
visual uh they will respond emotionally
to visual things in a way that just
words alone won't work so he says uh in
order is just like an actor and like an
actor he has to prepare his stage and
use props and and you know things as um
you know visual cues to stir up the
audience so for example once he was
defending a man in a court case who had
just had a new baby born to him and
Cicero literally delivered the defense
oration for this guy while cradling his
newborn son in his arms you know you can
imagine oh cute little baby jury how
could you find him guilty and leave this
cute baby without a father to take care
of him um another time he was defending
a guy who had a photogenic son a kind of
a young boy and ciso literally propped
up the kid behind him while he was
giving the speech and again said look at
his eyes brimming with tears thinking
about his father you know being punished
how could you leave this wonderful boy
without you know uh a father to care for
him another time someone didn't have
photo Jack kids so we propped up his old
parents in the courtroom and said look
at this nice old couple you won't want
to take their son away
um you know that kind of stuff I mean
it's it's manipulative um cister by the
way I should say also had um
philosophical beliefs about defending
the Republic and such but he wasn't
above using these things so even though
he may have had altruistic or high
Notions of you know uh what he was doing
he also wasn't above using these kind of
rhetorical tricks and also you mentioned
to me that you studied the
gestures they used like this is one of
those like on the theme of extreme
extremely interesting
details of life this was actually my uh
dissertation and it was my first book
amazing well that's amazing is again I
tell you I like practical stuff and this
all started with I kept reading about
people like Cicero giving speeches okay
in ancient Rome lots of speeches and
they would give a speech in the Forum
with 10 20,000 people and the thought
occurred to me well in ancient Rome you
don't have microphones you don't have
loudspeakers so how does someone give a
speech outdoors in a windy place not
acoustically sound to 20,000 people they
just can't hear you and the answer part
of the answer turns out part of it's
oratorical training you learn how to
project your voice but some of it too is
that the Romans actually had the system
of gestures that ERS like ciso would use
to accompany their
speeches and what I ended up doing is
combining two types of evidence again so
I looked at the rhetorical handbooks
like ciso and also there's this guy
quintilian who lived about 100 years
after Cicero who wrote this long thing
called The Institute oratoria which has
a a description of all types of
oratorical stuff including about 40
pages on gestures so he actually says
when you put your fingers like this it
means such and such and it turns out
Roman orders had a system of sign
language that they would use to augment
their speeches but here's the fun part
it wasn't like modern American Sign
Language where a gesture means the same
thing as a word instead and this goes
back to cisero a certain gesture would
indicate a certain emotion that you were
meant to feel when you heard the words
so it's like your body is adding an
emotional gloss to your speech you're
saying words and then you're indicating
how you think those words should make
you feel and even more fun the Romans
believed that if I make certain hand
gestures you will almost involuntarily
feel certain emotions so if you're
skilled you can manipulate your Audience
by playing on their emotions and this
might sound you know kind of weird or
improbable but the metaphor that Cicero
himself uses is he says think about
music everybody knows that certain
musical tones will make you feel a
certain way so you know think of movies
today in a horror movie you know they're
going to play strident tense music in a
romantic scene you're going to have
strings and it'll make you feel a
certain way when you hear the Jaws theme
you feel tense right CIS said the 's
body is like a liar a liar is a musical
instrument and you have to learn to play
on your own body as a musical instrument
to affect the emotions of your audience
I think he might be on to something
especially given how Central Public
Speaking was in Roman and a lot of the
Roman oratorical gestures like I could
probably do some and you could probably
guess what emotion they're meant to be
so for example there's one where like
you hold up your hands to the side and
kind of push like this MH so this is the
gesture and what that means is kind of
mild aversion I don't like something now
if I couple this with turning my face to
the to the side like that so pushing off
to one side turning my face away it's a
strong aversion that's like fear or
something if I clench my fist and press
it to my chest that's anger or grief if
I slap my thigh again that's an
indication of anger so a lot of these uh
Mak sense I mean they're kind of natural
gestures now some are really weird and
artificial um I mean one of my favorite
of these is if you like hold your hand
up uh open and then curl the fingers in
one by one and then flip it out so uh
this sort of thing that to the Romans
meant
Wonder um which you sort of see but
again if you've been raised in a
societal context where you're used to
the notion that this gesture means this
emotion when someone does it you're
probably going to feel that emotion it's
like memes today is if it becomes viral
you know what it's supposed to mean that
and has power I mean it and it's
actually interesting that we don't use
gestures as much in modern day well I
mean for me I I just love analyzing
modern political figures in terms of
their body language yes um because how
you deliver a speech is often more
important than what you say uh in fact
in the ancient world uh the most famous
Greek oror was a guy named
demosthenes um and once a guy came up to
deases and said deases tell me what are
the three most important things in
giving a speech and deasi said well they
are delivery delivery and delivery that
even the most brilliant speech if
accompanied by a boring delivery is
going to be less effective than a
terrible speech given in an engaging and
exciting or funny way speaking of modern
day and gestures what do you think of uh
uh Donald Trump who has these very
unique kind of gestures I think there's
uh I don't know to degree to is true but
he kind of uses these handshakes when he
pulls people in that kind of stuff what
what do you make of that I mean Trump
gesticulates a lot but it's a fairly
narrow set of gestures I mean if you
watch him for a bit he kind of has the
same small set of gestures and they're
not I want to say they're not natural in
that they're not kind of illustrating
what he's saying it's more just
punctuation points I think of his as
more kind of these punctuation points
for just going along with what he's
saying there are speakers who truly can
use their hands and arms and faces
creatively um and you watch them and
it's really enhancing the speech um I
mean just historically uh you know
Martin Luther King he's famous for a lot
of good speeches content he was a good
jtic too um he knew how to use his body
on the other hand Adolf Hitler was a
phenomenal justicul if you watch some of
his speeches even just like turn off the
sound and watch them he's doing all
kinds of stuff and he's really
emphasizing his points in a very
creative way and this is what's
fascinating about oratory in public
speaking is it's this two-edged sword
you can use these techniques for good or
you can absolutely use them for evil you
know yeah um so the very same techniques
in the hands of you know MLK you say
this is wonderful this is fantastic in
the hands of Hitler you say this is
awful look he's persuading a nation to
commit atrocities I encourage people to
watch the speeches of Hitler the oratory
skill there to be able to
channel uh the resentment and the
frustration of a
people and uh control it and directed
any direction he wants yes through
speaking alone yeah it's the visual
embodiment of the words where he's
talking about you know vmar Germany
being taken advantage of supposedly and
all this stuff um you're right he's
channeling the resentment uh of the
people and and using that to his
personal advantage and and for cynical
uh evil really purposes um but orator is
like that you know it's the question I
always end up asking my students is
after studying uh cicerone and all these
techniques I say okay this is great
oratory but do you like this is this
good that this works on human beings uh
I remember no chamski once was asked why
do you speak in such a monotone way and
he said well I want the truth of my
statement the contents of my statements
to speak that uh I don't want you to uh
get deluded by me because I'm such a
carismatic and eloquent speaker uh the
more monotone I speak the more you will
listen to the content of the words right
I want you just focusing on the content
and not being distracted I'll tell you
also with Cicero uh one of the things
that he and other uh people who write
about Roman oratory do is to say and you
can do this stuff badly in which case it
backfires horribly so you can have
people who attempt to gesticulate again
modern politicians you'll see this
sometime where they feel like I'm
supposed to be making hand gestures and
they're terrible at it and it undercuts
it and and Cicero and quenan giv some
very amusing examples from ancient Rome
so like he says there was this one guy
who when he spoke looked like he was
trying to swat away flies you know
because there were just these awkward
gestures or another who looked like he
was trying to balance in a boat like in
a in you know choppy seas and my
favorite is there was one order who
supposedly was prone to making
I guess kind of languid Supple motions
and so they actually named a dance after
this guy and his name was uh tius and so
Romans could do the Titus which is this
dance that was imitating this order who
had these you know kind of comically bad
uh gesticulation so not enough
gesticulation is a problem too much
gesticulation is a problem you have to
hit the sweet spot it has to seem
natural it has to seem varied uh it has
to conform to the meaning of the words
not distract from it yeah natural to
your like authentic to who you are which
is uh when people try to copy the gestur
of another person it usually doesn't go
well you have to kind of uh yeah you
have to interpret integrate into your
own personality and so on but gestures
is is a really fun I I enjoyed my
dissertation a lot doing that because
what I was trying to do there was to
literally reconstruct them so to say
what were the actual gestures and I did
that by comparing uh the literary
account the handbooks with again Roman
art looking at statues of Romans and
things and just trying to say okay what
what were some of the gestures they
actually used here and in that way the
people from that time come to life in
your mind and your work which is is fasc
it's this pragmatic thing I want to know
okay how does this
work uh could we talk about the role of
religion in uh the Roman
Empire what's the story there I mean
religion's interesting because
in my mind the uh rise to dominance uh
in a lot of the world of monotheistic
religions is one of the huge sort of
turning points um because it's just such
a different mentality I mean it's it's
very very different where you say
there's one God and it's my God versus
okay I believe in this God but there's
an infinite number of legitimate gods
and nowadays particularly in the west we
tend to view the monotheistic
perspective as the norm um but for you
know more than half of human history it
was not um you know it was the used to
be the notion in a lot of Roman history
up until about 300 ad uh the idea was
well there's just a ton of gods floating
around and you know maybe you worship
that one and I worship these two that I
like and the guy across the street
worships the oak tree in his backyard
and it's all good um they're all
legitimate things versus oh no no no now
there is one God and only one God that's
the correct answer and as soon as you do
that religion becomes foregrounded in
your decision making much more I mean
the Romans had religion but it wasn't
really driving anything if you know what
I mean it it was it was auxiliary to
things rather than a central Force so
for a lot of uh Roman history you had
standard kind of you know I guess Pagan
polytheism where there's a bunch of gods
there's certain Gods who are associated
with the Roman state um and there would
be prayer said to those Gods on behalf
of the Roman state but it wasn't really
you know you weren't trying to execute
the will of Zeus or something or of
Jupiter or Mars or anybody else and in
your private life it was the same thing
you might ask certain gods for help but
it wasn't as much of a dominant thing in
your own existence um so I think that's
a real transition point where religion
started to become so foregrounded and as
soon as you get the monotheistic
religion
um Judaism Christianity and Islam in
particular it really shifts how people
start to think about themselves and
relationship to the world around them so
Jesus was born during the rule of
Emperor Augustus yep which is kind of
neat that you know really influential
people in the realm of political events
and religious events coexisted uh what
are the
odds I mean yeah there's certain moments
in history where just a lot of
interesting powerful people come
together and make history um so and he
was crucified under Emperor tiberious
rule yep um why were the ideas of Jesus
uh seen as a threat by the emperor the
thing that causes conflicts um between
the Romans and Christians is is a little
bit strange it's it's all with
this where the Romans had a tradition of
on the emperor's birthday sort of saying
a prayer basically wishing him good luck
but technically it's in the form of
sacrificing to that part of the emperor
that might become Divine after his death
so to the Romans this is the equivalent
of a a patriotism act uh saying you know
the Pledge of Allegiance or something to
the country but of course to Christians
this is worshiping another God and I
think there's almost a failure of
communication here that the Romans just
at least initially didn't quite
understand this is really problematic
for these people because they're coming
from a polytheistic perspective where
yeah everybody every body has different
gods so what this isn't a a religious
problem this is a um a political one
that why AR why won't you wish you know
send good wishes to the emperor if
you're a loyal Roman this is something
you should want to do um and many of the
early Christians I think would have been
fine with that but it took the form of
what they were asked to be do was to
basically worship another God um and
that was the sticking point and this is
where I think movies have kind of warped
some of our images of Roman history that
Hollywood loves to depict very early
Christians and I'm talking like first
200 years here after uh the ministry of
Christ as um you know a group that all
the Romans were obsessed with that they
were constantly trying to persecute and
all this and honestly I think the Romans
at that point were more just sort of
indifferent or didn't know what was
going on and if you look at some of the
primary sources of that time I mean
there's this very famous letter by a guy
named plenny who was a Roman governor of
a province in the East and he has the
habit of writing letters to the Roman
Emperor the time Who was traun every
time he had a problem with being
governor and so this is great this is
the two highest governmental officials
in the Roman World sort of hammering out
policy between them right the emperor
and one of his Governors and so this is
about a 100 years uh 100 AD about and
plenty says Hey Emperor I I had this
issue I had these people come before me
called Christians I don't know what to
do with them what should my policy be
and here's what I know about them and
what he knows is almost nothing I mean
it's it's this almost comic like
garbling and you know they have this
weird thing where they get together on
somay of the week and they they sort of
swear Oaths to one another not to do bad
stuff which is of course his garbled
understanding of the Ten Commandments
you know um and then they have breakfast
together and they eat food and this is
communion but he doesn't get that that's
what's going on and so he he's really
ignorant but I think that the broader
point is okay this is one of the best
educated best traveled Romans who has
the most experience in the Empire has
been all over the Empire and what does
he know about Christianity basically
nothing so if if one of the best
educated most widely traveled guys
really doesn't know much about them that
kind of suggests that not many people
did at this point in time at this time
was a fringe movement that very French I
mean it was one of you know hundreds of
little mystery religions the Romans sort
of thought him as and these are you know
religions that have some sort of
revealed knowledge and that appealed
make more personal appeals to people now
stepping back from this in a broad way
um I think you can say that Christianity
really was different in some ways and
had some things that maybe the Romans
should rightfully have viewed as a
threat I mean you know the Romans are uh
people very focused on this world right
citizenship what you do Christianity in
essence has a focus on the next World so
this world isn't as important as what
you're setting yourself up for and even
worse from a Roman perspective I'm kind
of saying okay if I were a Roman Romans
are all about making distinctions
between people citizen non-citizen uh
man woman free slave Christianity comes
along and says in God's eyes you're all
equal now that's a pretty problematic
idea if you're deeply invested in in
Roman hierarchy and I think it is no
surprise that among the earliest
converts to Christianity are women and
slaves and in particular female slaves
now who are they they're the people at
the rock bottom of the Roman hierarchy
of status right which the Romans are
obsess with status but here's a religion
that says that doesn't matter and in
that same letter to plenty um plenty
says okay and this group of Christians
I've heard about their leaders are two
female slaves they call deaconesses now
this is really early this is before the
CHR the C the church exists right
there's no church structure yet and who
is leading the local Congregation of
Christians to slave women um so that's
an interesting moment you know and
that's not necessarily the image we get
of early Christianity but you can see
how for people in this social structure
that would be very appealing to them and
in some ways yeah it is sort of a threat
to the Roman system because they're
challenging it now the irony is of
course 300 years after the Life of
Christ the emperor converts to
Christianity and another hundred years
later under theodosius it becomes the
official religion of the Roman Empire so
all of a sudden you have this flip-flop
where now the state itself is not just
converted to Christianity but actively
promoting it um and now persecuting
pagans
um and the reason the Emperors do that
is one of the biggest problems for
Emperors at that point in time is
legitimacy that there's tons of Civil
Wars where you have lots of different
people saying I'm Emperor so lots of
generals declaring themselves Emperor
now under a
polytheistic religion it it's that's
just you're all just fighting it doesn't
matter but if you say there is only one
God then if that God pick someone to be
his Emperor they're the only legitimate
Emperor right so there is a real
advantage to Emperors now becoming
Christian because if they can say we're
now a Christian Empire and there's only
one God and I'm the guy that God picked
to be emperor that means all these other
people claiming to be Emperors are
illegitimate do you think that or is
there other factors that explain why
Christianity was able to spread well I
mean that that's why it's appealing to
the Emperors and and we're talking here
you know I mean the the religious answer
is people see the light right it's it's
a faith-based thing I'm looking at this
as a historian so uh putting aside you
know religious feeling and saying okay
if I'm doing an analysis of this as a
social phenomenon what would be
appealing to people and there is that
very compelling reason for Emperors to
want to go to Christianity because it
helps them with their biggest problem
which is legitimacy now if you're an
ordinary person what is the appeal of
Christianity well we already looked at a
couple of them one of them is that you
know it promises you a reward in the
afterlife um I mean the Roman and Greek
Notions of the afterlife aren't that
appealing um either you just sort of
turn into dust or at best you turn into
this kind of ghost thing that floats
around something that looks like a Greek
gymnasium which is like a bunch of
grassy Fields it's not so hot um so here
you're offered the idea of like oh you
go to paradise forever that sounds
really good and second for a lot of
people in Roman society that notion of
here's something that says I'm valuable
as a human being it doesn't matter
whether I'm free or slave it doesn't
matter whether I'm Roman or non-roman it
doesn't matter if I'm a man or woman
here's something that says I have equal
value that's enormously appealing and
finally early Christians I mean they
honestly allow them do good works they
take care of the sick they feed the poor
I mean if you look at Jesus in The
Sermon on the Mount that's the stuff he
really Hammers If we look at you know
the words of Jesus when he says what do
you do to be a Christian a lot of it is
take care of the unfortunate um you know
take care of people who are sick take
care of people who are starving um and a
lot of the early Christians really take
that seriously so they are helping
people out so that's appealing they're
the good kind of populist and populist
messages
spread let me ask you about
gladiators switch a pace here what role
did they play in uh Roman
society I mean okay Gladiator games
obviously become a popular form of
entertainment and they're one of the
ones that's captured people's
imaginations for all sorts of reasons I
mean it's dramatic but also I think it's
that apparent contradiction that in so
many ways Roman society seems familiar
to us uh in so many ways it seems
sophisticated and appealing uh law is
wonderful all this but yet for fun they
watched people fight to the death so how
do you reconcile these things um
Gladiators I find very interesting
because they're an example of what
historians call status
dissonance so it's someone who in
society has high status in some ways and
very low or despised status in another
so Gladiators most of them were slaves
the lowest of the low in Roman society
right
also they're fighting for other people's
pleasure and dying sometimes for other
people's pleasure and the Romans had a
real thing about this like your body
being used for others pleasure uh even a
humble working person who hired thems
out for labor the Romans thought that
was innately demeaning because you're
you're you're using your body for
someone else's benefit or pleasure so
they they didn't have this notion of you
know the Dignity of hard labor or
something they thought the only Noble
profession was farming okay cuz there
you generate something and you're
producing it for yourself but if you
work for someone else you're demeaning
yourself and Gladiators is the worst of
the worst right you're performing for
someone else's pleasure so on the one
hand they're very low status but on the
other hand successful Gladiators get
famous people admire them uh women find
them
attractive uh you know they're
celebrities and so this this is the
status dissonance right you have these
people who on the one hand formally are
very low status and Society but yet are
very popular on the other hand another
kind of myth about gladiators is that
they were just dying all the time I mean
you watch you know movies and again
they'll always throw a bunch of
Gladiators and they all die uh I think
some scholar did a study of there's like
a hundred fights we know of um where we
know some details and I think 10% of
those ended in the death of one of the
people so Gladiators are a lot more like
boxing matches where you're watching a
display of skill between two people who
are more or less evenly matched in terms
of their abilities and probably they'll
survive though there's a chance that one
of them might get injured in fact one
might die um having said all that in the
end you really are having people fight
and potentially die for the pleasure of
an audience and anthropologists and
Roman historians like to speculate why
did the Romans do this um the Romans
address it I mean there's a famous uh
thing where Roman says we Romans are a
violent people we're warlike people and
so it's fitting that we should be
accustomed to the site of death and
violence kind of works um there's a more
symbolic interpretation that says the
amphitheater is an expression of Roman
dominance a symbolic expression because
what you have are all segments of Roman
society gathered together to control the
fate of others
so you have foreigners you have wild
animals you have criminals uh you have
other people and we are symbolically
asserting our dominance over those
groups by determining do you live or do
you die and that kind of works too and
the cynical one is humans like violence
I mean when people watch a hockey game
what gets the most excited the fight
when people watch car racing there's a
crash what's going to be shown on the
news it's the crash trash so there's
something dark in human nature sometimes
that that likes violence and maybe the
Romans are just being more honest about
it uh than we are I think Dan Carlin has
a really great episode called painful
tainment MH and uh I think in that
episode He suggests the hypothetical
that if we did something like a
Gladiator games today to the death that
like the whole world would tune in yeah
if as especially if it was Anonymous
right we have a kind of like thin veil
of civility underneath which we probably
would still be something deep within us
would be attracted to that violence yeah
I mean yeah there are is is it human
nature um you know why do people slow
down when there's a car wreck and try
and see what's happening on the other
hand to be fair I mean there were Romans
at the time who morally objected to them
and said this this is you know morally
degenerate to to take pleasure in this
and that's wrong so I think at all in
all eras you have a diversity of
opinions there's no unanimous know take
on on what this is or what this means so
what who usually wore the Gladiators was
it slaves was it well the most common
source again is prisoners of waron so uh
if you conquer some people and they seem
to be warlike uh you might well consign
some of them to fight in the arena and
the other thing about gladiators is they
were highly trained professionals so you
know you're the the Gladiator schools
who train them were spending a lot of
money to train these people and it
wasn't just we take some guy and throw
him in into the arena like you see in
movies all the time uh these were people
that you'd invested a lot of money in
that's why you don't really want to see
them killed um but yeah mostly they're
they're prisoners of War I mean in very
rare instances you might have a free
person volunteering or even selling
thems uh to fight as gladiators but um
much more common was that and what's
interesting is some people um wouldn't
do it I mean there's a lot of instances
of Gladiators refusing to fight and
committing suicide which you don't here
um so like there was one uh German who
was supposed to fight as a gladiator and
instead he stuck his head between the
spokes of a wagon that was spinning and
snapped his own neck um there were a
group of 29 Germans who all sort of said
we're not going to fight for the Romans
pleasure and they strangled one another
the night before they were supposed to
fight um so I mean you have people sort
of objecting to being uh complicit in
this kind of performance as well and
they also had interes in animal yes so
humans fought animals exotic animals and
animals fought animals um the Romans
were a little weird with their animal
thing they loved exotic animals but
mostly they like to see the exotic
animals die so I mean they there was an
enormous industry collecting wild beasts
transporting them to Rome which is no
easy matter to transport elephants and
giraffes and rhinos particularly in you
know this era of Technology but they
they were like draining Africa and
bringing lions and all these things and
sacrificing them and what about the
different venues I mean there's the
legendary Coliseum what uh what is the
importance of this place uh well the
Coliseum it's real name is the flavan
amphitheater uh is interesting because
for a long time Rome Rome always had a
chariot racing Arena the circus Maximus
but it didn't have a permanent
gladiatorial venue until relatively late
till about 80 ad so during the reign of
emperor of
theasian and he built this thing um so
he built the flavian amphitheater he was
from the flavian family of Emperors and
he did it as a deliberate um Act of
propaganda so uh before him had been
Nero who was uh sort of seen as a crazy
or bad Emperor and one of Nero's uh
indulgences is he had built this
enormous Palace for himself called the
golden house so it was kind of this
pleasure palace with $50 dining rooms
and all this stuff and it was basically
wasting a ton of money on him right so
right on the site where Nero had his
Golden House vaspian says I'm going to
erect a new building on top of it that's
going to be for the pleasure of the
people so it was very much a political
statement that my Dynasty is going to be
about serving Romans not serving
ourselves and so that's why he uh builds
the the flavian amphitheater and he the
funds he uses from it is basically from
from uh looting Jerusalem because the
other thing he had done just before this
is he had sacked Jerusalem and destroyed
the temple there in fact um he and his
son
Titus and so this is what he uh now
builds in Rome is his gift to the people
of Rome but it's interesting to think
about that place to think about their
relationship with
violence um across
centuries for spectacle watching people
fight and you like you said you know
only like 10% of the time it to the
death but I read that still a lot of a
lot of people died a lot of gladi AED
were killed oh yeah there's numbers are
just crazy mean I I read uh
400,000 dead so this includes Gladiators
slaves convicts prisoners and and so on
that's a lot of people the the Flaming
amphithe is really interesting too just
as a piece of technology and as
influence on later world I mean almost
every sporting Arena today owes
something to the amphithe Coliseum in
terms of construction and it was
amazingly sophisticated building I mean
it had you know retractable awnings and
elevators and ramps that things could
just pop up into the arena from below
and um you know it had very
well-designed passages where everybody
could file in and file out very
efficiently and they were all numbered
so I mean it's it's one of I think the
most influential buildings in history uh
just because of the way that you know
all these buildings we go to today
they're all kind of variant on it and
using some of the ideas from it and the
Romans took their construction seriously
oh yeah they were good at that so they
were excellent Engineers um and and the
Romans were excellent Engineers
especially when it came to what you
might think of as humble stuff I mean
today we tend to think of oh a Roman
building is shining White marble right
well the core of that building was
probably concrete and the marble is just
a superficial facade and if you think
about the Coliseum in Rome today all the
marble has been stripped off that
building and what you see is the
concrete core the structural core that's
left and the Romans I mean they didn't
invent concrete but they just used it
more creatively than anyone had before
and if you look at buildings like the
Greeks built they're all rectilinear
they're all rectangles or squares and
they always have a lot of columns
because you need to hold the roof up the
Romans because of their use of concrete
could build wooden frames they could
have curves they could have domes they
could have all kinds of stuff and it
just explod the architectural
possibilities they also made a lot of
use of the The Vault so if you cut rocks
and arrange them so they form a curve
you can have big vaated spaces um and
they were just brilliant with their mix
of things I mean the pantheon is the
best preserved Roman building and it's
another brilliant building incredibly
influential I mean every every capital
building in the world or museum is is an
imitation of the pantheon you know the
capital in Washington DC uh the capital
in Madison I'm from Wisconsin Austin
Where We Are are now they're all
pantheons um you know it's a big dome
with a triangular pediment and some
columns on the front um so it's just
amazingly influential building but it's
brilliant because the way it's
constructed is you know the the concrete
at the bottom of the Dome is both
thicker and has a denser formulation so
it's heavier where it needs to Bear the
weight and then as you get further up
the Dome it gets narrower and narrower
and they mix in different types of rock
so at the top you're using pumis that
very light Volcan Stone so where you
want it to be light it's light and it's
here 2,000 years later I mean look
around you how many buildings that we're
building now do you think are going to
be here in 2,000 years um I suspect not
many and it's not only that they lasted
but they were beautiful or at least in
our current conception of beauty yeah I
mean you know vitruvia you know his
principles are things should be
functional and they should be
aesthetically pleasing so that that
that's a winning combination I think
yeah they pulled that off pretty well uh
if you could talk about the long line of
Emperors that made up the Roman Empire
uh how were they selected oh boy this
this is uh we've been talking about uh
augustus's great achievements and how
his clever he was with propaganda and
all this is his great failure so his
great failure is that he did not solve
was the problem of succession how do you
ensure that the next person who follows
you is is not just the best person but
is qualified um and he he fails to do it
so so the the principle he settles on is
heredity so the nearest blood relative
and he goes through all these people all
these young kids in his family die he
keeps trying to make the heir and he
ends up making his Heir Tiberius who he
never liked it was his stepson he didn't
like him but he ends up inheriting it
and the next set of Emperors the Julio
claudians um which is the family that
Augustus starts they all basically are
who is the nearest male relative to the
previous Emperor and that's how we get a
lot of crazy Emperors like Caligula or
Nero um and then the next family the
flavians uh the first guy is kind of an
Augustus it's vaspian the one who builds
the flavian amphitheater and then one of
his sons takes over Titus who's okay and
then the next son takes over demission
who's nuts again so heredity just isn't
working yeah and Rome fights a couple
Civil Wars and in 98 ad were're 100
years now into the Empire and they look
back at this track record and say okay
we've been picking our ERS by heredity
and it's been a we've gotten some real
Duds here some real problematic people
is there a way to fix this and this is
one of the few instances where the
Romans who I keep saying are very
traditional and resist change I think
actually make a change and realize we we
got to do something different and so the
next guy looks around and says okay
forget who's my nearest male relative
who's the best qualified to be Emperor
after me I'll pick that person and then
I'll adopt him as my son
so they kind of stick with the heredity
but now it's this fake adoption and you
end up with a lot of old guys adopting
middle-aged adults as their son which is
a little strange but it works and so for
the next 80 years you have only five
Emperors and they're often called the
five good Emperors um they're not
related necessarily by Blood they sort
of pick the best qualified guy and
they're all sound competent good
Emperors and the 2 Century ad from nurva
to uh Marcus aurelus is often regarded
as the high point of the Roman Empire
and a lot of that comes from you have
political stability you have a
succession of decent guys being Emperor
who rule relatively wisely promote good
policies there's other things working to
Rome's Advantage but that's good and
then where it falls apart is where the
last guy Marcus aurelus looks around and
says hm who's the best qualified guy to
succeed me H what a coincidence it's my
own own dear son who turns out to be a
psycho and then it all goes downhill and
uh some people place the sort of the
collapse of the Roman Empire there at
the end of Marcus ear rule yeah so 180
ad is one common date for an early date
for the end of the Roman Empire when you
because from then on it's a mixed bag of
good and bad Emperors at the very least
this period is when it the Roman Empire
is at its height on all different kinds
of perspectives certainly geographically
I mean at this point stretches from
Britain to Mesopotamia from Egypt up to
Germany you know like I said probably
about 50 million people within its
boundaries within those boundaries
there's relative Peace So I mean
sometimes people talk about the Pax
Romana I mean the Romans are fighting
lots of people but within the boundaries
you have relative peace there's relative
economic Prosperity I mean nothing in
the ancient world is that prosperous
it's just a different sort of economy
but it's pretty stable there's no huge
disasters happening yet some plagues
start in Marcus aurelius's Reign um but
yeah this this is pretty much uh seen as
the high point of the Roman Empire and I
I think it is I think that there's uh
truth to that uh let me ask the
ridiculously oversimplified question but
uh who do you think are is the greatest
Roman Emperor or maybe your top three
greatest
Emperor
H I tell you what I'll tell you my
favorite Roman who wasn't an emperor
and that's Marcus agria who was
augustus's right-hand man so agria is
this interesting guy who is extremely
talented he's a terrific General he's a
terrific Admiral he's a great Builder he
um you know is is kind of like the
troubleshooter for Augustus he's the guy
who wins the Battle of actium for
Augustus so literally Augustus would not
have become the first emperor without a
grippa um when Augustus rebuilds the
city of Rome it's a grippa that he gives
the job to a gria rebuilds the campus
marshes he builds the first version of
the pantheon he personally goes through
the sewers to clean them out um and he
just has this great set of qualities
that he's very self-effacing you know I
think he likes power he wants real power
but he realizes I don't have that kind
of clever politician's ability to to be
the front guy so I'll just serve my
friend Augustus loyally they were
childhood friends uh I'll win the
battles for Augustus I'll let him take
all the credit but I'll be his number
two guy and that's what I'm good at and
he realizes his limitations I mean so
many people don't so many people are
like oh I just want to keep you know
grabbing for more and more and more when
it's not something they're good at and I
think Agrippa says I'm good to this
point and I'll play that role and no
more and that'll give me a lot of power
but I'm not going to press it and he's
yeah he's just very hardworking he's
modest he's
self-effacing uh he's highly competent I
wonder how many people in history there
are that are like the drivers the COO of
the whole operation that we don't really
think about or don't talk about enough
to where sort of uh they're really The
Mastermind or the ones who make
something possible I mean even this
conversation today you would not have
Alexander the Great without his father
Philip II having built that Army and
handed it to him on silver platter uh
Octavian would never have become emperor
without a grippa um so it's it's they
play Central roles sometimes but if I
had to pick an emperor I'd probably pick
Augustus just because of his influence
um and because I admire his his the
thing AG gria didn't have his political
Savvy his manipulation of image and
propaganda all that uh I I find very
fascinating though I'm not sure he's a
great human being but he's a really
interesting figure whether whether he's
good or bad he was extremely influential
UND defining just yeah the entirety of
human history that followed probably one
of the most influential humans ever uh
nevertheless if you ask in public who
the most famous Roman Emperor is would
that be Marcus aurelus
potentially I don't know um question he
he's real famous because he was a stoic
philosopher and he wrote this book The
meditations I mean it's interesting
stoicism had uh as a philosophical
ideology had had a role to play in
during that time I mean there the the
tragic fact that did did uh did Nero
murder Sonica uh yes well he drove him
to Suicide let's say there's a lot of
interesting questions there but one is
like the role especially when it's her
hereditary uh the role of the mentor the
like who advises who with Aristotle and
yeah uh Alexander de great like that
that that dance of who influences and gu
the person as they become and gain power
is really interesting well I mean one of
the big questions with the Roman
emperors and we've been talking about
some of them is why did so many seem to
be either crazy or just kind of
sadists um and and that's I don't know
that there's a good answer to that I
mean people have theories oh you know
Caligula got a brain fever and changed
after that or something but I I think
there's a lot of maybe truth in the
notion that the ones who seem to go
craziest quite often are the ones who
become emperor to young age M and there
is something about that old cliche that
absolute power corrupts absolutely
especially if your own personality isn't
really fully formed yet you know what
I'm saying I mean I think take anybody
when they're a teenager if you all of a
sudden said you have unlimited power you
know what would that do to you how would
that warp your personality I mean look
at all the what do they always have to
say like the Disney stars who sort of go
wrong or something because they get rich
and famous at this very young age yeah
Fame power and even money if you get way
too much of it at a young age yeah I
think we're
egotistical narcissistic all that kind
of stuff is
babies and then when we clash with the
world and we figure out the morality of
the world how to interact with others
that that other people suffer in all
kinds of ways understand like the
cruelty uh the beauty of the world the
the fact that other people suffer in
different ways the fact that other
people are also human and have different
perspectives all of that in order to
develop that you shouldn't be blocked
off from the world which power and money
and fame can do and conversely a lot of
the emperor we regard as you know quote
good Emperors are the ones who become
emperor at a you know middle-aged or
something um where their personalities
are fully formed where they're not going
to really become different people um and
so that that works in that theory too I
mean I don't think it's absolute and of
course the greatest exception is
Octavian Augustus who you know starts
his rise to power is a teenager somehow
doesn't seem to go nuts yeah history a
lot it's not an absolute but it it
doesn't help to get that much power at
at a young age I think what does it take
to be a successful Emperor would you say
so you say what what's what does it take
to be a good Roman Emperor um you know
if you were going to draw up a you know
a job description seeking Roman Emperor
what are the qualities and
qualifications you would put on it um
obviously you would put you know
responsible good understanding of
military economics whatever ability to
delegate but just to be fun let's
consider how much does it matter whether
the emperor is good or bad because in
the ancient world what does it affect
really if you're say uh a peasant in
Spain if the emperor is crazy Nero or
good
Vespasian I mean how does that affect
your day-to-day life how does it affect
you if you're a peasant in Italy um
which is the average inhabitant I mean
the crazy
Emperors mostly affect the people within
the sound of their voice so yeah they go
crazy they murder Senators they murder
their members their own family they do
wacky stuff but a lot of that is
constrained to the immediate
surroundings around them and meanwhile
the mechanism of the Roman Empire is
just grinding along as it would anyway I
mean the governors are running their
provinces stuff's happening you know I
mean I guess an emperor can start a war
he can maybe raise taxes um but that
would be the ways that he's affecting
the whole empire and and here we get
into technology does matter we're
dealing with a world where let's say
you're in Rome and near the emperor and
you want to send a message to um a
province far away let's say um
Judea that message might take one or two
months to get there and one or two
months to get a reply so how much
influence as Emperor are you really
having over that province I mean those
people pretty much have to make their
own decisions and then kind of just say
to you this is what we did I hope that's
okay because otherwise nothing gets done
if they're waiting four months for a
decision even in the realm of ideas they
can't they can't get on TV and uh on the
radio yeah communication broadcast so
slow and so uncertain in ways that today
with the ability to instantaneously talk
to people across the world we can't even
imagine and the Roman Empire is huge I
mean it is months to send a mess message
and get an answer so here you have the
emperor in Rome yeah he affects who's
around him and and he can affect even
common people I mean there's crazy
Emperors who are at the games and
they're bored and they say well take
that whole section of the crowd and
throw them to the Lions or something
there you're being affected by the
emperor but if you're outside his the
the range of his sight and voice do you
care who the emperor is so the big one
most of the time that's a really
important idea to sort of uh to remember
uh same with US president frankly uh uh
in terms of the grand Arc of History
like what is the actual impact uh but I
would say the big one is probably
starting Wars yeah uh major Global Wars
uh or ending them in both directions and
then uh taxation too as you said uh what
was the taxation what was the economic
system what was the role of Taxation in
Roman the Romans are really weird with
this so in the Republic once they
started to acquire overseas provinces
right um they had to decide well what
are we going to do with these
provinces um and they in the end settled
on this notion of we'll put a Roman
governor in charge we'll collect some
sort of taxes but they often didn't
collect the taxes directly instead they
would sell contracts to private
businesses to collect taxes so the
private businesses would bid and say all
right if you give us the contract to
collect taxes in Sicily we'll give you X
number of money up front and then we go
out and try to collect enough to make
back that money and make ourselves a
profit and this is a terrible system
because obviously they're going to go
and try and squeeze as much as they can
out of Sicily um and these companies
were called publicans
publicani um and in the Bible there's a
phrase publicans and Sinners and that
should give you an idea how they're
viewed um so everybody hated these tax
collectors and it was a really kind of
dumb system because you know the the the
publicans were going out and squeezing
way more than they should in an
unhealthy way from the provinces and the
Roman state was doing this kind of weird
thing that they should have been doing
themselves and over time that shifts a
bit and it becomes more like your
standard Taxation and a lot of the
taxation ends up being in kind too so
it's like okay we're taxing you you pay
it in wheat if you're a farmer or
something not necessarily in cash so it
was in many ways the Roman economy is is
under
underdeveloped um they didn't have a lot
of the sophisticated systems that we
have to day and it probably held them
back in some ways um and again they have
that resistance to change uh the Romans
also had weird Notions about um just
business and profit making that at least
originally there was this notion that's
shameful again the only thing that's a
worthwhile profession is
farming um so you know Rich Romans would
get involved in what we would call
business you know manufacturing
particularly longdistance trade with
ships but they would often do it through
sort of front companies or employees who
did it on their behalf officially and
then they sort of funnel the profits to
the guy funding it because they don't
want to be soiled with you know business
which is beneath them so the Romans had
a lot of weird attitudes about the
economy um that I think in some ways
didn't help but nevertheless they had
many of the elements of the modern
economic system with with taxation the
recordkeeping they were good at
recordkeeping so the Romans I mean the
census is is a Roman word they're the
ones that came up with that so and
obviously the laws around everything yes
so in certain ways yes they were
extremely sophisticated and of course
the you know the biggest thing about uh
people in the ancient world and today is
that they weren't stupider than us I
mean sometimes you get this assumption
oh well in the ancient world they just
weren't as smart or something no no no
they were fully as intelligent as we
were they didn't have access to the same
technology as we do but that doesn't
mean they were any less
smart can we talk about the crisis of
the 3rd century and uh the a for
mentioned Western and Eastern Roman
Empires how it split yeah so I mean
after uh Rome starts to go downhill as
you enter the 3 Century so the 200s so
we're moving out of the Golden Era now
um I mean a a famous Roman historian
cashes Dio who lived right at that
moment uh very famously wrote at of the
transition of Marcus Aus to what follows
our kingdom now descends from one of
gold to one of rust and iron
so even people who were alive at the
time had a distinct sense something is
going downhill here and that that's
interesting because you know usually
great historical moments are retroactive
and I mean here's a guy who said oh
something's going wrong something's
really going badly now um and a lot of
it becomes that the secret is out that
what makes an emperor is who commands
the most swords and so you start to get
rebellions by various Roman general each
declaring himself Emperor so you'd
always had this to a certain degree but
they had kept it in check during the 2
Century ad but in the third Century you
sometimes get three or four Generals in
different parts of the Empire all
declaring themselves Emperor and then
they all rush off to Rome to fight a
multi-way Civil War and of course while
they're doing this the borders are
undefended so barbarians start to see
opportunity and come across and start
raiding they start burning and pillaging
Farms The Civil Wars are destroying uh
cities and Farms so the economy is kind
of tanking um then there's less money
coming in his taxes so when one guy
finally wins he jacks up the tax rate to
try and make up for it but now there's
fewer people able to pay and it's all
just a vicious cycle uh the Romans start
to debase the coinage which means you
know you take in a gold coin you melt it
down mix it in with 10% something less
valuable and then stamp it and say it's
worth the same well people aren't stupid
they're going to know that's only 90% of
that gold coin invented inflation
inflation and you get horrific inflation
uncontrolled so you know the economy
goes downhill barbarians are rating you
have internal instability in one year
you have something like eight or nine
different guys go through his emperor in
238 so it's a mess and it looks like the
Roman Empire is going to fall in around
the mid3 century so this is the crisis
and then the kind of shocking
development is late in that third
Century they actually stabilize the
Empire so you have a series of these
kind of army Emperors who are just good
generals who managed to push the
barbarians out reestablish the borders
um it's actually a whole group of them
but often they get clumped under the
most successful the last guy who is
Dian um who comes in and he tries to
stabilize the economy uh one of the
things he does is he issues a new solid
gold coin that he guarantees a solid
gold and he calls it a solidus a solid
coin he famously issues a price edict
where he says this is the maximum it's
legal to charge for any good or service
so it's attempt to curb inflation and
that's not going to work but it helps uh
kind of amusingly on dian's price EDI
can you guess what the most expensive
sort of item
is hiring a
lawyer so some things never change right
oh that's interesting I mean
in that system there's probably a huge
amount of lawyers yeah I mean even
lawyer isn't quite the right word Romans
didn't have true lawyers but they had
people you would hired to do legal stuff
or give you legal advice but anyway no
the price edict is actually is really
fascinating because it's this long list
of stuff and you can see you know a good
pair of shoes a bad pair of shoes how
much each cost and you can see the
relative value of things so you know
what was food versus clothing what was
you know going to the barber versus
hiring a doctor all that kind of stuff
so it's a really fun document to just
mess around with um but anyway so Dian
stabilizes basically the Empire and
these other guys as well and gives it a
new lease on life um so it seems by the
end of the 3r century that Rome is is
going to continue and then as we go into
the fourth Century you have the really
dramatic thing where Constantine comes
along and converts to
Christianity and at the time he converts
you know the percentage of Christians in
the Empire is small you know 10% of most
something like that who knows but it's
it's quite small and all of a sudden you
have this weird thing where now the
emperor belongs to this new religion
what does this mean um you can debate a
lot how sincere Constantine's conversion
was um it's a little bit of a weird
thing where he clearly is using it as a
way to fire up the troops before a
crucial battle to say hey I just had
this dream and this God promised us
Victory if we put his magic symbol on
our Shields and this would be okay
except that he had done this a couple
times before so one time it was Helios
the son God one time it was another God
um even after he converts he continues
to mint coins and stuff with other gods
on them he continues to worship other
gods but he also kind of seems sincere
in his conversion it's just I think the
question is how much does he understand
his new religion maybe more than is it
sincere but that's a real turning point
so now as we go into the fourth Century
we have this thing with Constantine the
new religion and the other thing that
happens is the Empire is really just too
big to govern effectively it's that
thing we're talking about it's it's too
large the communication is too slow and
it starts to naturally
fragment um and at times they try
systems where they they split it into
four so under Dian he tries the
tetrarchy where he splits the empire
into four and you actually have sort of
four Emperors working together as it
team uh more commonly it just splits
East West so from that point on you
really start to have the history of the
Western Empire going in One Direction
the Eastern Empire in the other you tend
to have two Emperors though there are
moments occasionally where they reunite
so that's a big development as well and
that's a a turning point so the most
common date that people say uh maybe you
can correct me on this that the Roman
Empire fell as uh 476 ad they're
referring to the fall quote unquote of
the Western Roman Empire so why did the
Roman Empire fall yeah this this is a
real game pick your favorite date for
the fall of the Roman Empire um 476 is a
very common one and what happens in that
year is a barbarian king comes down into
Italy and
deposes a guy named Romulus Augustus
which is an amazing name uh it's
combining the names of the founder of
Rome Romulus with Augustus the second
founder of Rome uh and so some people
say that's the end of the Roman
Empire sure but others say it's 410 when
uh Aller sacks Rome for the first time
others say it's 455 when uh the vandals
come and Sack Rome and do a much more
thorough job of it this time uh some say
it's 180 when Marcus aurelus picks
poorly in succession some say it's 31
when octavien wins the Battle of actium
and kills the Roman Republic um or you
can go past that date and say it's 1453
when the Eastern Roman Empire finally
Falls and I mean the Eastern Empire is
legitimately the Roman Empire if you
were go and ask them who are you they
wouldn't say you know we're the
byzantines we're the Eastern Roman
Empire they would just say we're the
Romans um and and they have a completely
legitimate claim to do that so this
whole game of when does the Empire fall
is problematic and the other thing is
all those dates about invasions that
cluster around the 400s so 410 455 476
you have to ask yourself who counts as a
real Roman by that point because for a
while now the Romans themselves are
often coming from
barbarians um you know are crossing that
boundary Roman generals they might get
raised as a hun then serve with the
Roman army for a while then not or
visigoth or not that's been going on for
a long time so what what makes someone a
real Roman how do you tell that the guy
kicked out in 476 was a quote real Roman
and The Barbarian King who took his
place wasn't um that's a very arbitrary
decision there's so many interesting
things there so of course you describe
really eloquently the decline that
started after Marcus aurelus and there's
a lot of competing ideas there and
thetion just interrupt you I hate
wishy-washy answers which is what I kind
of said so I I will give you this I
think by the end of the fifth century ad
the Western Roman Empire has transformed
into something different yeah so I I I
don't know what dat I can pick for that
but I I can say by The End by around 500
I don't know that we can call whatever
exists there the Roman Empire anymore
and of course the barbarians make
everything complicated because they seem
to be willing to fight on every side and
they're they're like fluid yes which
they integrate fast and it it just makes
the whole thing uh really tricky to say
yeah what who's a Roman who is not and
at which point did it like and
barbarians have been forming large parts
of the Roman army for centuries you know
um yeah it it it's extremely fluid and
not at all just clear sides here so it's
it's a mess from um military perspective
perhaps what are some things that stand
out to you on um the pressure from The
Barbarians the the conflicts whether
it's the Hans or the uh Visigoths there
was a a military strategist guy named
Edward lvoc who wrote this book The
Grand strategy of the Roman Empire which
was basically about Frontiers and how
did the Romans Define their Frontier and
everybody's jumped on this and argued
about and says it's wrong and all but
started this debate among Roman
historians about yeah what what does
frontier mean to the Romans did they
conceive of their Empires having a
border or was it always expanding or or
what and did they have a grand strategy
I mean today militaries have a strategy
where we we want to achieve this we want
to you know exert Force here we want to
protect these areas did the Romans even
visualize their empire in that sort of
grand strategic way and it it's a real
debate I mean there's some things that
suggest oh here they tried to
rationalize the border and short it by
taking or shorten it by taking this
territory other people see as just kind
of random so that that's an interesting
take is how do the Romans conceive of
Empire I mean if you look back at
someone like Virgil at the time of
Augustus he said well the gods granted
Rome Empire Without End so it's that
open-ended thing but even under Augustus
he seems to be pulling back and saying
well I'm going to kind of stop at the Ry
I'm going to kind of stop at the danu we
don't need to keep expanding forever in
the way we've been doing so I mean
that's that's a an interesting concept
of how do the Romans see their empire
does it have a boundary what are those
boundaries what does that mean and then
barbarians were very much uh making that
boundary even more difficult to kind of
Define it even if you wanted to right
and again the other fun debate is were
these invasions you know when the Visos
cross the danu and come into the Roman
Empire is this an invasion as it was
originally described or is it a
migration as some Scholars have started
calling it um because the Visos were
fleeing pressure from another Gothic
group and they were fleeing pressure
from the Huns and I mean a lot of the
early uh Gothic peoples who come into
the Roman Empire are basically seeking
Asylum they're saying will you give us a
piece of territory to live on within the
boundaries of the empire ire and in
return we will fight for against
external enemies and the Romans make
these deals with some of the Goths in
fact they they made a pretty good deal
with the go some a go one group of Goths
to do exactly that like you can settle
within the boundaries we'll feed you
we'll give you a certain amount of stuff
and you fight for us and then the Romans
treated them really badly they they kind
of didn't Supply what they had promised
and so they turned against the Romans uh
with good reason so the Romans blundered
in these things too so is it correct
that the Visigoths fought on the side of
the Romans against a the Hun some of
them did okay so again that there were
various groups on both sides of those
battles so Atilla is the the famous Hun
um and he comes into the Roman Empire
and seems to be heading right for Rome
to you know knock it off um and
everybody is so scared of the Huns that
this weird Coalition comes together of
the Romans plus various Barbarian groups
against Atilla in League with some other
Barbarian group groups and they fight a
huge battle and it's more or less a
stalemate so a Tilla gets stopped and he
says all right we're going to just rest
up for a year next year we'll go finish
off the Romans next year comes he heads
down into Italy he's heading straight
for Rome and the pope goes and meets
Atilla and they have lunch together at
this River and at the end of the lunch
Atilla goes back and says eh I Chang my
mind we're going to go back up to France
hang around for another year we'll
finish off the Romans later and you know
Christian sources say Saints appeared in
the sky with flaming swords and you know
scared away Atilla uh some other sources
say well the pope gave Atilla a huge
bribe to go away for a while believe
whichever you like um but then Atilla
ends up dying on his wedding night uh
before he comes back under mysterious
circumstances and so that never
materializes and The Hun's kind of
fragment after his death so what was the
definitive blow uh by The Barbarians by
the VIS gos The Barbarians are so many
different groups um and and weirdly I
think an important one that sometimes
people tend to focus on the Huns and the
Goths the vandals end up going to Spain
conquering Spain and then crossing over
into North Africa and kind of conquering
North Africa as well and Spain and North
Africa were some of the
main uh areas that food surpluses were
collected from and sent to Rome to feed
the city of Rome and it's after those
Vandal uh invasions of the Takeover of
those areas that the population of Rome
plummets so I I think that's an
interesting moment where you know the
city of Rome had always been this symbol
and already it was no longer the capital
uh the Emperors had moved to Rena a
little bit north because it was
surrounded by swamps so it was more
defensible but there is something
important about that old symbolic
Capital now just collapsing in terms of
population numbers really no longer
having importance because literally its
food supply is cut off uh by losing
those areas of the Empire and of course
the
capital Constantine had founded a new
second capital uh at what used to be
Byzantium a Greek city on the Bosphorus
which becomes Constantinople he names it
very modestly after himself uh and that
now is really the dominant City for any
of the Roman Empires Eastern or Western
so if you're actually living in that
Century the fifth century it's kind of
like the Western Roman Empire dies with
a whimper it's not like a it's a bunch
of Str there's a lot of moments you can
pick there's an earlier one in the 300s
when the Roman Empire uh the Romans lose
a big battle to you know some barbarians
that symbolically is important but yeah
I don't think there's one clear-cut
moment and again I don't know that it is
The Barbarians that cause quote the fall
of the Roman Empire I mean this is the
other game as people like to say when
did the Roman Empire fall the other big
question is why you know why did the r
Empire fall um if you define it as
falling and I mean Barbarian invasions
was the traditional answer so there's a
a French historian famous said the Roman
Empire didn't fall it was murdered you
know it was killed by barbarians but I
mean there's other
explanations um you know I mean some
people say it was Christianity some say
it was a climate that uh the Roman
Empire flourished during this moment of
luck when just the climate was good and
then you get this sort of late Roman
little ice age and everything goes
downhill and that's what caused it um
there's some that say things like
disease there were a whole series of
waves of plague that started to hit
under Marcus Aurelius and continued
after him which seemed to have caused
real serious death and economic
disruption I mean that's a decent
explanation another popular one is moral
decline which I don't think really works
well you even get the people saying you
know lead poisoning but that's not true
cuz they were drinking out of the same
pipes when the empire was expanding
right yeah that's fascinating that's
fascinating but often we kind of
agree uh that's something that you've
talked about quite a bit is the military
perspective is the one that
defines the rise and fall of
Empires uh you have a really great
lecture series called the the decisive
battles of world history which is
another fascinating perspective to look
at world history
what makes a battle
decisive the easiest definition is it
causes an immediate uh change in
political structure so who's in charge
so the classic uh decisive political
battle is Alexander beats King Dias III
at the Battle of Gaga and in that moment
we switch from the ruler of the entire
huge Persian Empire being dasas to now
being Alexander from it being Persian to
being controlled by the macedonians so
there is a one afternoon has this
dramatic switch over a enormous
geographic area right so that's a
decisive battle and that you see that
immediate change um other types of
decisive battles are ones that might
have more unforeseen long-term effects
you know you may not realize this is
decisive at the time but uh from a
longer perspective it is um and often
those are ones that either allow some
new people or idea or institution to
either grow or have its growth curbed MH
so at various points we have you know
Empires that were expanding and
basically were stopped at some battle
and so you say well if they hadn't been
stopped there they might have gone on to
dominate this whole area or conversely
you know um you know you could say Rome
wasn't they were one place before the
Second Punic War after the Second Punic
War they were its dominant Force so you
could pick one of those battles and so
that was decisive in setting them on
this new path it's also an opportunity
demonstrate a new technology and if that
technology is effective yes it changes
history because that that was demon
either uh tactical or literally the
technology used uh so how important is
technology that technological advantage
in war huge I mean the history of
warfare is basically the history of
technological change often so I mean
there's all the great moments of
transition for a long time we fought
with you know hand toand uh with metal
weapons um then you start to have the
gunpowder Revolution which causes all
sorts of shifts there um you know
there's big changes U planes when they
become a huge Force I mean World War II
is this crazy time where planes go from
literally byy planes you know string and
wood to Jets four years later um so
that's this moment of incredibly fast
technological change you know going into
World War II everybody thinks it's all
about battleships who's got the biggest
battleships
four years later battleships are Just
Junk let's just scrap them it's all
about aircraft carriers and that's
that's everything War at Sea so you have
these moments of of particularly in
Warfare almost accelerated technological
change where things happen very rapidly
and the civilization or the nation or
the army that adapts more quickly to the
new technology will often be the one
that wins and we've seen that story over
and over and over again in history
it's also interesting how much geography
that you mentioned a few times affects
uh Wars the result of Wars the the rise
and fall of Empires all of it as silly
as it is it's not the people or the
technology it's like sometimes like
literally that there's Rivers I I think
there's there's a real geographic
determinism to civilization itself I
mean you know if you look at where
civilization arose it's in Mesopotamia
and sort of a swampy Land Between Two
Rivers it's in the
River delta where the same situation um
it's in the indis river where you have
the same thing and it's along the yellow
rivers and the yangi rivers where it's
the same thing so I mean that is
geographically determined where those
great civilizations of you know Asia um
you know or Europe are going to arise is
it's it's very much determined by that
um and often the course of history is is
has that strong geographical uh
determination I mean you can argue that
all of egyp Egyptian ancient Egyptian
Society uh is kind of based around the
cycle of the Nile flood because it was
so predictable and everything depended
on it and their whole religion actually
develops around that and Mesopotamia the
same thing the way their religion
develops is a reaction to the particular
Geographic environment uh that those
people grew up in so that's a very
profound influence on civilization uh
one of my professors once said to me
the best map of the Roman Empire isn't
any of these maps with political borders
it would be a map that shows the Zone in
which it's possible to cultivate olives
so if you simply get a map and map onto
it where you could grow olives during
this time let's say first century ad it
corresponds exactly I mean really
closely to the areas that are most
heavily romanized now I'm not gonna say
that you know
but there is something to that where
Roman culture spread successfully is
where people grow the same
crops and that's just one of those
fundamental things yeah I mean you're so
beautifully put that the perspective can
change dramatically how you see history
I mean you could probably tell world
history through what through olives
cinnamon and gold M yeah that's become
really trendy is to look at history
through objects and I mean for the
Romans the diet is huge um I mean you
know probably 80% of the people in the
Roman World ate basically a diet of
olive oil wine
um uh and and wheat right that those
three crops are are the basic crops that
they subsisted on and just the way you
have to grow those crops where you grow
them that dictates so much you know
about culture and the Romans saw it that
way uh one of my favorite uh documents
from the ancient world and and they
defined iation that way so the Romans
civilized people ate those crops and
non- civilized people ate different food
so there's this letter from a Greek who
was serving as an administrator in the
Roman government and he gets posted to
Germany okay to the far north and he
writes these pathetic letters back home
to his family saying the inhabitants
here lead the most wretched existence of
all mankind for they cultivate no olives
and they grow no
grapes so to him that was hell yeah
being posted to an area where they eat
these terrible foreign foods and of
course the cliche uh for the Romans of
what barbarians eat is red meat they're
herders so they're not Farmers but they
follow herds of cow around which is a
totally different lifestyle they eat
dairy products and they drink
beer and I I tell my students sometimes
that you know if you were to stick a
Roman in a time machine and send him to
where we live which I teach in with
Wisconsin Green Bay Wisconsin that Roman
would step out look around see all the
beer the BRS and the cheese and say I
know who you guys are you're barbarians
barbarians that that's another way to
draw the boundary between olive oil wine
wheat and meat Dairy and beer but it
it's more fundamental because it's
different forms of life because if
you're a farmer you grow certain crops
and if you're a farmer you tend to stay
in one place you tend to build cities if
you're following herds of cows around
you don't build cities you have a
totally different lifestyle so it it's
diet but it's it's more fundamental
underlying things about your entire
culture and many of The Barbarians were
nomadic tribes some of them were yeah
definitely fascinating I mean this is
just yet another fascinating way to
dietary determinism geographic
determinism yeah these things are big on
the topic of War it may be a ridiculous
span of time and uh scale but how do you
think the world Wars of the 20th century
compare to the wars that we've been
talking about of the Roman Empire of
Greece and so on I mean what's
interesting about some of the Roman
Civil Wars particularly is that they are
world wars of the time so let's take the
war um after the assassination of Julius
Caesar we've talked about that one a lot
that was fought there were battles there
fought in Spain in North Africa in
Greece in Egypt in Italy I mean truly
across the entire breadth of the
Mediterranean involving at least seven
or eight different factions of Romans
and that was the world to them I mean
that's very similar in a way to our
modern world wars where this was a
global conflict at least as they
invisioned the world they knew of and if
we sort of I don't know somehow factor
for you know Transportation time I mean
I think you can argue that that was a
bigger War than World War II I mean in
World War II if you hopped on a you
could get from the US to China in you
know I don't know a week or something
right in little hops I mean in the
ancient world if you wanted to go from
Spain to Egypt it would take you a month
so they were fighting across a larger
SpaceTime Zone in terms of their
technology to move than World War II
took place sense World War II was quite
contained yeah I mean if if we adjust
for that sort of factor so that that was
a global war and I think that would be
very familiar
uh how do you think
the the atomic bomb nuclear weapons
change
War yeah I mean that's the now we can
destroy the world and trly kind of
destroy civilizations wholesale and that
does seem to be a new thing I mean no
matter what the Romans do did they
didn't have that choice that ability to
think I I can do something that will
end uh you know life as we know it at
least on on the planet um and that's
that's a very different perspective um
and it's I think weird and interesting
moment right now I mean I'm getting Way
Beyond ancient history here but you know
for a long time we had this sort of
stasis with the nuclear standoff with u
mutually assured destruction between
this us sort of block of Nations and the
the Soviet ones um and it worked and now
we're entering this kind of time when a
lot more countries are going to start
becoming nuclear capable um we might
have a Resurgence of just building new
weapons platforms with China seems very
eager to expand their nuclear Arsenal
and all sorts of ways so it's it's a
unnerving time let's say right now and
it's a terrifying experiment to find out
if nuclear weapons when a lot of Nations
have nuclear weapons is that going to
enforce Civility and peace or is it
actually going to be a destabilizing and
ultimately civilization destroying right
I mean it it was weirdly stable when it
was a bipolar world where you had just
sort of those two blocks now with a
multi-polar world with access to these
weapons I don't know I mean we're kind
of jumping out of the ancient world but
I'll tell you one thing that's always
fascinated me in this sort of comparison
ancient modern is how people don't learn
the lessons of the past in military
history and the very specific example
that in my lifetime I've seen play out
twice is just certain places people make
the same mistakes over and over again so
uh a nice example is Afghanistan or
roughly that sort of Northern Pakistan
slash into what is Afghanistan I mean
that is a geographic region that over
and over again the best most
sophisticated armies in the world have
invaded and have met horrible failure
and that goes all the way back to you
know Alexander the Great tried to
conquer that area the Mongols tried to
do it the Huns tried to do it the Mughal
tried to do it uh you know Victorian
Britain tried to do it the Russians
tried to do it the Americans tried to do
it and they made the very same mistakes
over and over and over again and the two
mistakes are not understanding the
terrain that it's a rocky mountainous
area that people can always hide in
caves and it's not understanding the
fundamentally tribal nature of that area
that that's where the real Allegiance is
is in these tribes it's not in a
centralized government and that's the
same error Alexander made as you know
the British made in the 19th century as
the Russians as the Americans and it's
just it's so depressing as a historian
who studies history to see these things
being repeated over and over again and
you know exactly what's going to happen
for leaders not to be learning lessons
of History you co-wrote a book precisely
on this topic the long shadow of anti
ity what have the Greeks and Romans done
for us uh what are some key elements of
antiquity uh that are reflected in the
modern world yeah this a book that uh my
wife and I wrote together and it is
trying
to make people understand how deeply
rooted are current actions in almost
every way even things that we think are
just in truly uh unique parts of our
culture or things that we think are just
inate to human nature are actually
rooted in the past so there's another
power of the past thing um and this is
just a long specific list of examples
really so I mean we go through
government and education and
intellectual stuff and art and
architecture and you know a lot of the
things we've been talking about today um
language um culture medicine but even
things like you know habits um the way
we celebrate things the way we get
married our married rituals have all
sorts of things in common with Roman
weddings the calendar the calendar uh
the words we're using Julius Caesar's
calendar I mean Pope Gregory did one
tiny little twist but Caesar's the one
who basically came up with our current
calendar with 365 Days 12 months uh leap
years all that um you know so we're
living in law uh there's just no way to
escape the power of the past and what I
believe very ardently is that you can't
make good decisions in the present and
you can't make good decisions about the
future with without understanding the
past and that's not just true with your
own life but it's in understanding
others so it's not only your own past
you have to understand but you have to
understand other people what's
influencing them so you can't interact
with others unless you understand where
they're coming from and the answer to
where they're coming from is where they
came from um and what shaped them and
what forces affect them so I I think
it's absolutely vital to have some
understanding of the past uh in order to
make competent decisions in the present
well what are some of the problems when
we try to gain lessons from history and
look back we've spoken about them a bit
the bias of the
historian um maybe what are the problems
in studying history and how do we avoid
them probably the biggest problems
are the sources themselves the
incompleteness of them and this gets
more intense the farther back we go in
time yes so if you say I want to write a
book about the 19th century there is
more material available for almost any
topic you want to pick than you could
possibly go through in your lifetime if
you say I want to write a book about the
Roman world this is a very different
thing um in my office I have a bookshelf
that's I don't know 8 feet high 10 ft
wide and it contains pretty much all the
main surviving Greek and Roman literary
texts okay one bookshelf wow it's a big
bookshelf yeah but that's what we use to
interpret this world now there's a lot
of other types of text there's you know
um papy there's all sorts of things they
inscriptions there's archaeological
evidence so there's other stuff but
honestly you know 99% of things about
the world I study are lost so then you
get into all the issues are you know is
what we have surviving a representative
example we know it's not for example all
the literary texts are written by one
tiny group Elite males M um so that
that's a problem there there's the
problem of bias we know that they're not
necessarily telling us the truth they
they have an agenda you know they're
they're representing history in a
certain way to achieve certain things
then there's the problem of transmission
I mean all those texts are copies of
copies of copies of copies and everybody
knows that game where you know you
whisper a sentence to someone and then
go around the room are you going to get
that same sentence back well every
ancient text we have has gone through
that process
um so this is a real problem and that's
just with the sources right and this is
the historic era when you move back just
a little earlier to the prehistoric era
or to civilizations that don't have
written sources surviving and some of
these are ancient Mediterranean ones I
mean anything goes um I mean one of the
jokes is that museums archaeological
museums are full of objects which are
labeled cult object it's some religious
object
and I think the honest label that should
be on that thing is we have no idea what
the hell this is but I want to believe
it's something important so I'm going to
say it's a religious object but in
reality you know it's an ancient toilet
paper roll holder or something and it's
a huge problem when you try to interpret
a civilization without written texts and
and my favorite little story that that
kind of illustrates this is um in the
19th century this this German who had
gone to School in England okay one of
the best educated guys of his time goes
to North Africa and is poking around in
the desert and he finds this site with
these huge Stone monoliths 10t tall in
pairs and there's a a lentil Stone
across the top so sort of like big you
know uh two posts with a stone across
the top and there's a big Stone in front
of them too and so he looks at this
stuff and he says well what does this
remind me of it reminds me of Stonehenge
right and there's even a site where
there's multiple of these kind of in a
square so he goes back and talks about
this and an Englishman goes and studies
them and he finds a ton of these sites
and he finds some of them where there's
17 of these pairs and so he goes back
and he writes a whole book about how
clearly the Celtic peoples who once
lived in Britain came originally from
North Africa because he's found this
site and he reconstructs the religion
where obviously they practice religious
rituals here and they had rights of
Passage they squeez between the things
and the alter stones have this Basin so
they had blood sacrifice and all this
and it seemed reasonable and then you
know you ask some locals well what
what's that stuff out in the desert
there and they me oh the old Roman olive
oil factory and those are the remains of
an olive press and we're back to olives
I keep dwelling on olives olives don't
grow in England or Germany yeah so this
is cultural bias if all you have is
physical evidence you're going to
interpret that evidence through your own
cultural biases so if you're an
Englishman and you see Big Stone
uprights like this you're going to think
Stonehenge if you're from the
Mediterranean you're going to think all
of press
so that's a salutory example I think of
the dangers of interpreting physical
evidence when you don't have written
evidence to go along with it and you
know think today like if if our
civilization were to blow up in a
nuclear war and archaeologists were to
dig this up you know how might they
misinterpret things I mean if if they
were to you know um dig up a college
dorm like where I work um and that's
what you had for this civilization you'd
probably go in the dorm rooms you'd find
all these little rooms and maybe in
every room you would find this
mysterious plastic disc and so everybody
has these so it must be a cult object
and it's round so obviously there's Sun
worshippers and if you can decipher the
inscription you'll see that obviously
they all Worship the Great Sun God whmo
you know it's like what do you find in
every door room of frisbee yeah so
that's that's the level of
interpretation you have to beware of and
there's examples where we've done
exactly this so we have we have to have
intellectual humility when we look back
into the past but hopefully is if you
have that without coming up with really
strong narratives if you look at a large
variety of evidence you can start to
construct a picture that's somewhat
rhymes
yes with the truth yes I mean that's as
a professional historian that's what you
do you you attempt to reconstruct an
image of the past that is faithful to
the evidence you have as filtered
through what you can perceive of both
the biases and the problems of the
source material and your own biases and
it's a interpretation it's a
reconstruction but it's a lot like
science where you you're in a process of
constantly re-evaluating it and saying
okay hear some new evidence how do I
work this into the picture how do I now
adjust it um and and that's what's fun I
mean it is it's a mystery you know it's
it's it's you're being a detective and
trying to reconstruct and to understand
a society and it's even more fun where
it's yeah you have to try to empathize
empathy is a great human thing to
empathize with people who are not
yourself um and we should do this all
the time with just the people we
encounter but this is what we're doing
with ancient civilizations and as I
talked about earlier sometimes you'll
feel great sympathy there sometimes
you'll feel incomprehension but by being
aware of both of those you can maybe
begin to get some grasp however
tentative on the truth as you might
perceive it to ask a ridiculous question
when our time you and I we together uh
become ancient history when historians
let's say 2 3 4,000 years from now look
back at our time and uh like you try to
look at the details and reconstruct from
that the big picture what was going on
uh what do you think they'll say I would
guess it'll be something that's actually
more of a commentary on whatever's going
on at that point than on the reality of
us because that's what we tend to do
I'll tell you what I'd like to have them
say is to say in this civilization I can
detect progress that they have advanced
in some way whether kind of in moral
terms or in self-awareness or have
learned from what's come before I me
that's all you can try and do is do a
little bit better than whatever came
before you to look back at what happened
and and try to do something um Livy I
mean one of the great Roman historians
at the beginning of his work a history
of Rome which is this massive thing he
says the the utility and the purpose of
history is this it provides you an
infinite variety of experiences and
models Noble things to imitate and
shameful things to void and I think he's
right and they would perhaps be better
at highlighting which shameful things we
started avoiding and which uh Noble
things we started imitating with a with
a perspective of History they'll be able
to identify uh or maybe with the bias of
the historians of the time um well in
that grand perspective what gives you
hope about our future as a Humanity as a
civilization we have curiosity
um I think curiosity is a great thing
that you want to learn something new I
think the human impulse to want to new
learn new stuff is one of our best
characteristics and at least up to this
point what makes us special is the
ability to store up uh an accumulation
of knowledge and to pass that knowledge
On to the Next Generation I mean that's
really all we are we're we're the
accumulation of the knowledge of
infinite Generations they've come before
us um and everything we do is based on
that wise we'd all just be starting you
know Ground Zero kind of just from the
beginning so our ability to store up
knowledge and pass it on I think is our
special power as human beings um and I
think our curiosity is what keeps us
going
forward I agree and uh for that I thank
you for being one of the most wonderful
examples of that uh of you yourself
being a curious being and emanating that
throughout and inspiring a lot of other
people to be Curious by being out there
in the world and teaching and uh so
thank you for that and thank you for
talking today no enjoyed it it's fun I
obviously like talking about
this thanks for listening to this
conversation with Gregory ALR to support
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me leave you with some words from Julius
Caesar I came I saw I
conquered thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time