Join Dr Rad and Dr G as we discuss, spar, and laugh our way through different aspects of the ancient Roman world! Our main series 'From the Foundation of the City' follows Roman history year by year from the traditional foundation date of 753 BCE. We also interview academics and specialists from around the globe for their insights into history and the representation of Rome and the ancient Mediterranean in popular culture. Dr Fiona Radford is an expert on Rome on film and wrote her thesis on Kubrick’s Spartacus. Dr Radford is exponent of not only Ancient History, but also Reception Studies. Dr Peta Greenfield is an expert on the Vestal Virgins. Dr Greenfield’s research interests include: religion and politics in Rome, the late republic and Augustan period, and the role of women.
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Join Dr Rad and Dr G as we discuss, spar, and laugh our way through different aspects of the ancient Roman world! Our main series 'From the Foundation of the City' follows Roman history year by year from the traditional foundation date of 753 BCE. We also interview academics and specialists from around the globe for their insights into history and the representation of Rome and the ancient Mediterranean in popular culture. Dr Fiona Radford is an expert on Rome on film and wrote her thesis on Kubrick’s Spartacus. Dr Radford is exponent of not only Ancient History, but also Reception Studies. Dr Peta Greenfield is an expert on the Vestal Virgins. Dr Greenfield’s research interests include: religion and politics in Rome, the late republic and Augustan period, and the role of women.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We are thrilled to sit down with Dr Francesca Fulminante to chat all about the development of settlements in central Italy from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Period of Rome. Dr Fulminante shares insights from her recent monograph: The Rise of Early Rome - Transportation Networks and Domination in Central Italy, 1050-500 BCE (2023) (Cambridge University Press).
This is a period where archaeological investigation reigns supreme requiring researchers to get into the nitty gritty layers of settlement patterns and trading networks. We’re thrilled to learn from Dr Fulminante as her research involves the investigation of complex societies in central Italy during the Bronze Age, looking at things like social stratification, settlement organisation, and craft community practices. Dr Fulminate is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Bristol, and is an Associate Professor at University Roma Tre. Her work also involves offering continuing education training at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Coming to grips with the early evidence for Rome and central Italy involves understanding some of the overlapping terminology used by archaeologists and historians, who are coming to the evidence from different perspectives. Terms like the Bronze Age and Iron Age come to us from archaeology and anthropology while specific periods like the Archaic period and Early Roman Republic are much more society specific and tend to come from historians. This overlap can create a little bit of confusion, so here’s a rough breakdown (including some of the overlapping terms):
Dr Fulminante takes us through the early settlements of the Bronze Age and the transition to permanent structures in stone rather than perishable materials that occurs in from the 8th century BCE onwards. What does the evidence suggest for the development of ancient cities and the interconnections between them? Tune in to find out!
Things to listen out for:
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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391 BCE is jam-packed with action, but the event that stands out is the arrival of the Gauls in centre stage. It’s time to surf the Celtic Wave!
Revenge is Sweet… and Easy
The year began well for the Romans as they recovered from the pestilence that had caused such havoc the year before. Finally, they were strong enough to take down the Sappinates and the Volsinii who had tried to take advantage of their illness. Scoundrels! And it wasn’t hard at all – these guys barely put up a fight!
Portent for a Pleb
In spite of their success on the battlefield, there were signs of trouble ahead. A humble plebeian, Marcus Caedicius, heard a god speak to him in the dead of the night whilst he was on the Nova Via. The god (Aius Locutius, the speaking voice) told him that the Gauls were coming and that he had to let the magistrates know right away! The magistrates showed zero interest in anything this lowly pleb had to say. Um, why was this lowly man even talking to them? Didn’t he know they were patricians? And the Gauls? They were so far away, the Romans had barely even heard of them! Ridiculous.
Ciao, Camillus!
Arrogance continued to be a problem for the Romans. Having ignored a message from the GODS, they now turned on the best man who ever lived, Camillus. The last thing Camillus needed was drama as his young son had just passed away. However, the tribune of the plebs, Lucius Apuleius, cared not. He was coming after Camillus over the way he had handled the spoils captured from Veii. Rather than wait around to be convicted, Camillus went into exile – but not before asking the gods to make the Romans rue the day they had driven him away! Pretty please, gods of Rome, prove his innocence and put them in a situation which only Camillus could fix. Then they’d have to come back on their knees!
Getting Close to Clusium
Envoys from the Etruscan city of Clusium now arrived in Rome, seeking help against some troublesome Gauls who had arrived in their neighbourhood. This seems like an odd turn of events for so many reasons. The Romans did not have a strong relationship with Clusium. This was an Etruscan city quite some distance to the north. Perhaps they had been inspired by Rome’s performance against Volsinii? Although the exact details are questionable, there is no doubt that Gallic tribes had migrated into northern Italy. There are many stories associated with this Celtic wave, including some family intrigue, the lure of Etruscan fruits, wine – oh, and land! We wish we had more accounts from the Gauls/ Celts themselves, but we have to let the archaeology speak for them. The evidence confirms Celtic migration over the Alps and into northern Italy from the 5th century BCE and Livy seems to have been inspired by Herodotus in his own account of the varied Celtic peoples who crossed the Alps. Livy believes that it was the Senones tribe who rocked up at Clusium in the early 4th century, one the last to make the move. Although there is little archaeological evidence to suggest contact between these groups, let’s not interrupt Livy’s narrative. The people of Clusium were freaked out by these strangers and decided to turn to Rome. Surely the Romans would remember that they had not helped Veii out during the recent war? That must count for something? The Romans were not so sure. They decided to send the three sons of Marcus Fabius Ambustus as ambassadors to have a wee chat with the Gauls. They would issue a stern warning and hope that the new arrivals went on their merry way. No one wants a war, guys! In fact, the Romans would love to make new friends. How did the Senones respond? You’ll have to tune in for our epic multi-episode coverage of 390 BCE!
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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In this special episode, we tackle the second half of the 1963 epic, Cleopatra.
In the first part of this double-header, we tried to keep our focus on Cleopatra and Caesar and the initial challenges faced by #TeamCleo. However, today we get to delve into the second half of the movie when Cleopatra and Antony get it on. This means we finally get to discuss ‘Le Scandale’, aka the Taylor-Burton affair that developed on the set once these two clapped eyes on each other. Their passion would result in two broken hearts, a publicity sensation and not one, but TWO, marriages (and divorces).
Cleopatra (1963) is a classic example of how the context of a film can shape how the history was received. It’s hard not to see some weird parallels between Taylor & Burton and Cleopatra & Antony. We need to work on some couple names before this gets too confusing. Cleotony? Antra? Tayton? Burtay? We’ll keep workshopping these ideas.
Things to listen out for:
· Unexpected feline births
· The casting couch makes an unwelcome appearance
· Studio coups
· Editing wars
· Broken hearts (#JusticeforSybil&Eddie)
· Odd similarities with the production of Spartacus
· MORE production problems than you can every imagine!
One thing we have concluded after three hours of discussion: don’t start shooting a movie without a finished script.
If you enjoyed this discussion, you might be interested in checking out The Plot Thickens, who are doing a whole season on Cleopatra (1963).
Our Sources
Drs G and Dr Rad discuss ancient sources such as Florus, Cicero, Appian, and of course, Plutarch’s Life of Antony.
Brodsky, Jack, and Nathan Weiss. The Cleopatra Papers : A Private Correspondence. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Geist, Kenneth L. Pictures Will Talk : The Life and Films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. New York: Scribner, 1978.
Humphries, Patrick. Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood : How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios. Cheltenham: The History Press Ltd., 2023.
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, and Daniel Ogden. “CELLULOID CLEOPATRAS or DID THE GREEKS EVER GET TO EGYPT?” In The Hellenistic World, 275-. United Kingdom: The Classical Press of Wales, 2002.
Royster, F. Becoming Cleopatra : The Shifting Image of an Icon. 1st ed. 2003. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07417-1.
Southern, P. Cleopatra. Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2007.
Taraborrelli, J. Randy. Elizabeth. London: Pan Macmillan, 2006.
Wanger, Wanger, and Joe Hyams. My Life with Cleopatra: The Making of a Hollywood Classic. New York: Vintage, 1963.
Wyke, Maria. Projecting the Past : Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Sound Credits
Our music is by the wonderful Bettina Joy de Guzman.
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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392 BCE, the year that went down in history for “a campaign in no way memorable”. Ah, that Livy, he paints quite a picture, doesn’t he?
All About the Consuls
The campaign in question involved our consuls for the year. Yep, consuls! The plebeians were still in a blissful mood after receiving some of the land from Veii in the previous year and so they didn’t fight for military tribunes.
The consuls took care of a few domestic matters, such as holding the Great Games promised by Camillus during the siege against Veii and dedicating the temple to Juno (another of Camillus’ promises).
Once the gods had been satisfied, the Romans were off to fight the Aequians at Mount Algidus in the titular “campaign in no way memorable.” Come on Aequians, put up a proper fight! The decisive victory (and possible capture of the city of Liphoecua) earned the consul Valerius a triumph as he slaughtered so many of the fleeing enemy. His colleague, Manlius, was given the lesser honour of an ovation. Guess he didn’t kill as many men who were running away in terror! You can’t reward that kind of behaviour in Ancient Rome.
Kicking the Romans when they were really down
War found the Romans again in 392, this time with the Etruscan people of Volsinii and the Sappinates (which we presume was near Volsinii). The Romans could not respond with their typical vigour as they were hit by a horrific plague. Famine and pestilence were rampant in their part of the world, thanks to drought and a heatwave. These are the same environmental crises and disease mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus for the previous year, which goes to show how the dating for this period is a tad confused.
With the Romans too ill to fight, they send angry messages to their new enemies that they will get their revenge… just as soon as they can stop vomiting.
Good Censors are like Waffles
No one was immune from the pestilence. Censors had been elected in 393 BCE, but now one of those elected, Gaius Julius, died in office and was replaced with Marcus Cornelius. Spoiler alert, but we are only a couple of years away from the Gallic sack of Rome. This happened in the same lustrum as events such as the death of Gaius Julius. Livy asserts that the way he was replaced caused issues with the gods, and that the Romans would ensure the partner of deceased stepped down from office and two brand new colleagues would be placed in office in the future. This may not be accurate, but it certainly shows that the Romans were committed to the idea of collegiality.
The Scourge of the Plague
When the consuls also fell ill, they decided the Romans needed some fresh auspices. It was time for an interregnum! The consuls stepped down from office, and power was shared amongst the interreges until military tribunes with consular power were elected.
We know what you’re thinking – why interreges? This was a position created to deal with the transfer of powers between kings. It’s interesting that the Romans continue to use this position long into the Republic. The last time we saw interreges was only a few years earlier in 396 BCE.
We do mention a couple of Latin terms in this episode, so here is your handy glossary in case you need it!
· The pomerium – the sacred boundary of the city. This was religious in nature. The pomerium set the bounds within which the auspices could be taken.
· Reference to the lustrum – a lustratio was a purification ceremony. The lustrum condere was conducted at the end of a census by one of the censors.
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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Cleopatra was released in 1963 and has gone on to herald the end of the golden age of the historical epic in Hollywood. Known as one of the most expensive films to ever be made, its troubled production and the on screen connection between Taylor and Burton have both cemented its place in cinematic history.
We have a look at some of the issues that led to production delays and there were a lot! From tricky weather conditions, Taylor’s health troubles, to issues with the script, there wasn’t an issue that this film didn’t face in the journey to release. Dr Rad delves into the details of the factors that influenced the production including:
The historical pedigree of Cleopatra is based on a few different sources including credit given to Plutarch, Appian, and Suetonius! The impetus for the film was also based on the book published in 1957, The Life and Times of Cleopatra by Carlo Maria Franzero. There’s a depth of references throughout the film that have support in the ancient sources. Dr G considers:
Keen to delve more into Cleopatra? Check out our conversation with Yentl Love about the reception of Cleopatra over time.
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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We’re still in the year 394 BCE and we’ve seen Camillus has had a run in with the Falsican Schoolmaster. In this episode we move on further into the action of 394 BCE and look at 393 BCE as well. Is Camillus learning how to keep a low profile? He is praised from his success over the Faliscans and he doesn’t rush for a triumph this time. But the challenge remains, that Camillus’ forgotten vow to Apollo might be about to bite him on the bottom.
Rome is pretty intent on fulfilling Camillus’ forgotten vow to Apollo and this means a boat trip is in order. But sailing to Greece is not for the faint hearted, especially when you have such precious cargo as a golden bowl in tow. Tune in for adventures on the high sea!
The Aequians, a thorn in Rome’s side? Yes indeed. Do our sources agree? Of course not. It’s Diodorus Siculus against Livy, duking it out with Siculus having just a mention of trouble, while Livy comes packing details. We take you through the chaotic details. The conflict centres in the town of Verrugo but watch out for mention of Tusculum as well.
It’s time for the Roman census! We also see a return of the consulship in 393 BCE! The tussle about moving some of Rome’s population permanently to Veii is back on the agenda. There’s a faction in favour of a move to Veii and a faction against. Our sources seem to position this as a patrician/plebeian divide, but it might be more confusing or complicated than that.
Somehow, the Aequian forces, that were absolutely devastated in 394 BCE are BACK baby but their appearance seems only a flash in the pan compared to Rome’s troubles at home. There’s tribunes of the plebs to worry about, factional infighting over what to do about Veii, and some trials to contend with as well. It’s an exhausting time to be in Roman politics! Enter scene right: Camillus… How important was the tribune of the plebs right of veto? The question is raised in Livy’s narrative.
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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In this episode, we continue to follow the adventures of that most amazing of Romans: Marcus Furius Camillus! This is one of his real shining moments of virtus.
Although the Romans have just conquered Veii, there was tension on those mean city streets. The patricians and plebeians were locked in a disagreement over what they should do with this new territory.
However, Camillus had military matters to attend to. He was placed in charge of subduing Veii’s allies, the Faliscans. This was no easy task as the enemy was well-prepared and the city of Falerii was easily defended.
Camillus was making some headway, but it looked as though this conflict was going to turn into another length siege. Boo!
Fortune sided with Camillus as the leading school teacher in Falerii decided to betray his people. He was in charge of the children of all the most important families in town, and what better way for kids to get exercise than to be marched right into the Roman camp?
We don’t want to give too much away, but what Camillus does next will make you swoon like a love-sick teen. Oh, and it also gave us our next idea for a T-shirt, so thanks Camillus! You sure are a swell guy!
M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 401, 398, 386, 384, 381
L. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Medullinus (Pat) Cos. 413, 409, Mil. Tr. c. p. 407, 405, 398, 397, 395, 391
C. Aemilius TI. F. TI. N. Mamercinus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 391
L. Valerius L. f. L. n. Poplicola (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 389, 387, 383, 380
Sp. Postumius – f. – n. Albinus Regillensis (Pat)
P. Cornelius -f. -n (--------) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 397 or 395
[?] Catlus Verus
Q. Pomponius
T. Sicinius
A. Verginius
L. Valerius Potitus (Pat) Cos. 393, 392, Mil. Tr. c. p. 414, 406, 403, 401, 398
L. Sergius (Fidenas) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 397
A. Manlius (Vulso Capitolinus) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 405, 402, 397
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
Support the show
Read our books
Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
Support the show
Read our books
Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire
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In our latest special episode, we were positively tickled to be able to chat to Dr Jane Draycott about her latest historical biography Fulvia: The Woman who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome (published with Atlantic Books).
For the uninitiated, Fulvia is one of the more notorious characters from the Late Roman Republic. If you’ve heard of her, it is probably as the wife of Mark Antony – the one he first cheated on with Cleopatra. What an honour.
However, in this episode, you will get to hear why Dr Draycott thinks she is so much more than that. Join us to hear all about Fulvia’s other husbands, her many children and the rhetoric that destroyed her reputation.
Dr Jane Draycott is a historian and archaeologist and is currently Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests are extensive and include: displays of extraordinary bodies in the ancient world; the depiction of the ancient world in computer games; and domestic medical practice in ancient Rome.
In 2023, Dr Draycott published Prosthetics and Assistive Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome with Cambridge University Press.
2022 was a huge year for Dr Draycott in terms of publications!
We know that you will be running out to get yourself a copy of Fulvia once you have heard the fascinating details shared in this episode.
And for keen listeners, rest assured that Dr Rad was keeping a tally throughout the interview of all of Augustus' hideous crimes :)
Our music is provided by the wonderful Bettina Joy de Guzman.
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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It’s 395 BCE and we explore the events that are the result of the epic year of 396 BCE. The Romans ended 396 BCE on a high with their military success against the southern-most city of the Etruscans, Veii. But is all well in the Roman world? That may depend on which god you talk to…
The defeat of Veii leaves the northern peoples - the Capenates and Faliscans - open to Rome’s wrath. Their resistance to Rome means that war is on Rome’s agenda. This may also explain why we see military tribunes with consular power.
Despite the threats to the north, Rome seems intent on setting up a new colony down south towards Volscian territory. Does Rome really have the resources to spare for such an endeavour after a ten-year siege and problems north of Veii? Well, historians have some questions about that!
Camillus’ glorious leadership in taking Veii seems to be undermined by the his vow to Apollo which he had apparently forgotten. This creates real problems as the 10th portion to be offered to Apollo was not collected when the booty was distributed and now people OWE the gods… Will Camillus’ reputation emerge unscathed?
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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Rounding out our trilogy of special episodes on Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, we are joined by gladiator expert, Alexandra Sills.
Alexandra holds a BA in Classical Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London and a MA in The Classical Mediterranean from the University of Leicester. Alexandra’s MA dissertation was awarded the Mark Pluciennik prize in Archaeology & Ancient History. Alexandra has published outreach articles for Bad Ancient and Working Classicists and recently published an academic article entitled ‘The Tropification of Hollywood Heroes Thrown Into the Arena’ for Melita Classica in 2023. Alexandra’s current research focuses on gladiators in the ancient world and their reception on film and television. We’re thrilled to have her on the show to discuss all things gladiators.
We start with a history of the development of the gladiator in the Roman world including:
Are there things that Gladiator II gets right from the perspective of the ancient evidence? We discuss the possibilities with Alexandra.
Things to listen out for:
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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We return for the final instalment on the fall of Veii in 396 BCE.
In our previous episode, we witnessed the actual conquest of the great Etruscan city.
Now it’s Camillus’ time to bask in the glory!
Camillus has managed to secure victory for Rome, and one of the advantages now that it’s all over is that sweet, sweet booty. Everyone knew that Veii was wealthy, but Camillus is staggered (pun intended) by the number of captured spoils. As he offered detailed thanks to the gods, he stumbled. The Romans were a superstitious bunch, so although Camillus tried to gloss over this trip, it was seen as an omen. Camillus, and perhaps Rome herself, were destined to take a mighty tumble. Foreshadowing!
But that all lay in the future. Camillus had to decide how to divvy up the booty. He tried to take the sensible path and consult with the Senate, but he failed to please most of the populace with his choices. Ingrates!
The fate of Veii’s tutelary deity, Juno Regina, was an even more delicate matter. The Romans hoped they could persuade her to switch her allegiance and residence to Rome. Juno agrees to make the move and was initially established in a new temple on the Aventine. That little minx!
This is the first example of the ritual of evocatio, which we sometimes see pop up when Rome conquers Etruscan cities. This may have something to do with the fact that the rite probably originated in Etruria. We wish we knew more about this fascinating practice, but as usual, we have more questions than answers. The religious calendars of Rome indicate that the cult of Juno Regina did begin at around this time, so this may lend some support to our historical narrative. Either way, Veii has now not only been conquered, but stripped of divine protection. OUCH.
Back in the city, the Romans are thrilled with this military victory.
Camillus was mobbed by crowds upon his return. No one will be surprised to hear that Camillus was awarded a triumph. EVERYTHING about it was OTT. Not everyone thought this triumph was in good taste. After such an important victory, Camillus was eroding those warm fuzzies in record time. That is, of course, if we can believe the details. It’s hard to know what the norm was for a triumph in the early 4th century BCE.
Camillus ignored the haters, and busied himself with all the vows and promises he had made to various deities. There were temples to build for Juno and Mater Matuta, and then there was also the matter of gifts to Apollo. Camillus had pledged one tenth of the booty seized. The pontiffs decided that this needed to come from the people, who were less than impressed with a request to return some of their share of the spoils.
The year wrapped up with peace being secured on multiple fronts. Perhaps after seeing Veii’s defeat, the Volscians and Aequians decided to sue for peace themselves.
396 BCE truly was an epic year. We think you’ll agree once you’ve listened to all parts of our trilogy that it deserves to be known as ‘The Year That Had Everything’.
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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WARNING! This post and episode both contain spoilers!
We are back to discuss Gladiator II, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s smash hit Gladiator (2000). Gladiator II is set in the joint reign of Caracalla and Geta. These emperors were brothers in real life, but not the creepy twins shown in the movie. However, let’s not get caught up in historical detail! After all, Lucilla should have been executed by Commodus in the first film if we were sticking to the facts.
In Gladiator II, we learn that Lucilla’s precious son, Lucius Verus, was hidden away in the provinces after Commodus’ death and became alienated from the imperial family. He clearly inherited the military skills of his real father (Maximus or Russell Crowe), as Lucius is something of a local hero in his new home.
But no one can resist the power of Rome forever. After a military defeat, Lucius ends up in the arena and spends the film wrestling with his past, his trauma and the corruption of Rome. Just like his dad!
Whilst Lucius Verus is the hero of this film, as is so often the case in movies about Ancient Rome, the villain steals the show. Macrinus (Denzel Washington) is a master manipulator, skilfully playing a dangerous political game. Will the ghost of Maximus past allow Lucius to finally set Rome on a virtuous path? Or is Rome doomed to be dominated by corrupt politicians?
And boy, do we have a treat in store for you all! We were privileged to talk to a giant in the field of classical reception, a man who has spent many decades studying Roman history on film.
Martin M. Winkler is Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Classics at George Mason University in Northern Virginia. His research interests include classical mythology, Roman history, classical literature, the classical tradition, and classical literature, history and myth on film. Professor Winkler’s list of publications is long indeed, but we will cite a few of our favourites. The Roman Salute: Cinema, History and Ideology (2009), Ovid on Screen: A Montage of Attractions (2020) and most recently, Classical Antiquity and the Cinematic Imagination (2024). Professor Winkler has edited and contributed to volumes on the films Troy (from 2004), Kubrick’s 1960 Spartacus, and importantly for today, Ridley Scott’s original 2000 Gladiator.
We hope that you enjoy our conversation with Professor Winkler in which we discuss:
For our full show notes and transcript, head over to our website: https://partialhistorians.com/2025/04/03/special-episode-gladiator-ii-with-professor-martin-m-winkler/
For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/
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The Fall of Veii is finally upon us – or perhaps we should say it was finally upon them! After a shameful defeat early in 396, the Romans decided to appoint a dictator. It is time for a Republican hero to burst into the spotlight. Welcome to the stage, Marcus Furius Camillus!
Episode 159 – The Fall of Veii: Part II
Camillus is a legendary figure of Rome, possibly in more ways than one. He was held up as an exemplar for generations. Even the emperor Augustus was a fangirl. We have mentioned him before, but it is his service as dictator during the siege against Veii where we get to see him shine for the first time.
Bronze Sculpture of Marcus Furius Camillus ca. 1st century AD from the Capitoline Museum. Courtesy of Ancient Times Blog Spot.
The appointment of Camillus restored a sense of optimism to Rome and people were literally queuing up to serve under him. With suspicious ease, Camillus dealt with Veii’s allies, the Faliscans and Capenates, before turning his attention to breaking the siege once and for all. Through clever use of tunnels and military distractions, the Romans defeated their enemy – at last!
Rome has been engaged in almost constant warfare with neighbouring towns and cities for an exceptionally long time, but it is hard to overstate the importance of this conquest. Not only was Veii a wealthy and serious rival, but this acquisition also doubled the size of Rome’s territory. To quote Camillus as he surveyed the battlefield, “Cha-ching!”
However, Camillus made some promises to the gods both before and after this final battle, promises that will have various impacts for our hero and for Rome….
Stay tuned for the next instalment on 396 BCE!
Need to catch up on the first part of 396 BCE? Check out Part One on the Fall of Veii!
Our music is provided by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of Orange Free Sounds.
Dr Rad 0:15
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.
Dr G 0:18
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,
Dr Rad 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr Rad and
Dr G 0:33
I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Dr G 0:58
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians. I am Dr G
Dr Rad 1:06
and I am Dr Rad,
Dr G 1:08
and we are in the middle of what is a chaotic time for ancient Rome. It's the year 396, BCE, and oh, boy, are they not having a good time, as far as we can tell so far,
Dr Rad 1:26
indeed, 396 is a very big year for Rome. However, the start of it was not great. Mm,
Dr G 1:33
not great at all. It seems like there were some reversals in the field. There were some poorly planned ambushes and some confusing dealing about with Father Son combinations in the military tribunes with consular power.
Dr Rad 1:48
Yeah. Just for those who didn't listen to our last episode A) I'd probably go and do that, because this is a bit of a narrative that we're building here. However, we're dealing with the end of the siege of Veii, an Etruscan city just to the north of Rome. Rome has had a somewhat complicated relationship with over the years, extending all the way back. And whilst the ancient sources make reference to the fact that, oh yeah, there was this truce from the second big conflict between Rome and of Veii, and it run out, and then there was a king, and he was a bit of a douche bag. And not only did the Romans not like the king of A, but the Etruscans didn't like the king of Veii, and that's why all of this happened. In spite of that, as Dr G rightly pointed out in our previous episode, it's probably really about resources, trade influence in the region, because these are two increasingly important places, I would say, in the previous century that we've been looking at. Now we're entering a whole new century.
Dr G 2:54
It does seem like they is the Southern tale of Etruscan influence in the fifth century, BCE. And so the big power base that is through central to North Italy is the is a true area, the Etruscan people, and Rome is now this sort of growing player in the center of Italy. And they seem to want a slice of the Etruscan pie. They've decided maybe they has to go to make way for the growth of Rome itself into a grander place.
Dr Rad 3:28
And we've got some allies of ve who have realized that a growing Rome is no good for them. That's true,
Dr G 3:37
and Rome itself has been cultivating a whole bunch of their neighbors into being, variously allies or enemies, depending on how they've been treating them to the east and to the south. So there is a kind of a sense that there are a couple of blocks of power developing. The Etruscan block has been around for a long time, and it seems like maybe it might be on the wane in various ways, particularly when it comes to this southern edge where Rome is butting up against it. But there's also this sense that there are now growing disputes amongst Rome and her other neighbors, some of which are turning violent. The Volscian The Aequians, have been long on the radar. But there's also the
Dr Rad 4:22
turning violence.
Dr G 4:25
There's also the Hernicians and the Latins that seem to have come together with Rome. Now, before we get too much further into the action of this year, I want to hark back to something that came up a couple of episodes ago now, where you were talking about the Roman electoral process and the concept of the praerogativa. Yes,
Dr Rad 4:49
this is how Calvus was apparently chosen for election to be one of the military tribunes with consular power in 396 even though he was not running for said election.
Dr G 4:59
How. Could it be possible to get elected in when you're not even running? Well, no, the power of the praerogativa may be the answer to this question. Now we don't know too much about it. In this very early period, like many things to do with ancient Rome, we only become more sure about stuff when we hit about the mid to late third century BCE. So we're about 150 years away from having any good information to work with.
Dr Rad 5:28
So probably be in our 60s for the time we get to that.
Dr G 5:31
But those problems aside, this comes out of the concept of the comitia centuriata, which is this idea that some voting took place in a military style setup, where people were organized into centuries at some point in Rome's history, the idea of the electoral centuries deviates very wildly from the military setup. That's not our problem right now. We don't know what's going on, really, but we have this group, the comitia centuriata. They all turn up in their little groups. In their centuries, they head to the Campus Martius, and they get involved in a voting thing. Now, the prey rogativo Part of this is a invention that we don't know when it starts, but it is an innovation where they change who gets to be the first entry to vote. And it used to be the case that it always followed the same order. You would start with the equestrians, strangely enough, and then you'd get into the other groups. But with the concept of the prerogative of what you could do is that you could have a nominated group from one of the higher echelons of society be the first one to vote. It was kind of like a lucky draw, but only the best of the best got to be put into the draw to be selected in the first place, and then they would kind of set the tone for how the rest of the vote should go. Now it wasn't the case that all the other centuries, necessarily immediately would fall in line with what was voted for by that first group that was chosen as the prey rogativo. There seems to be some ideas that come to us in our very much later sources of the Republic like Cicero, that there was a bit of an omen component to all of this. So it was read as a bit of a sign of how the electoral result was going to go. So there was a persuasive factor in it that for the Romans would have been quite important, because they hold a lot of importance in things that relate to the gods and omens and signs. But that didn't necessarily seal the deal. But if you had a group that came out and decided that they wanted somebody in to be voted, like this situation with calvis, who hadn't been nominated, hadn't put themselves forward, hadn't canvas or any of that sort of thing, that could really turn the tide for something, because all of a sudden everybody like, yeah, we need that guy, yeah. Why wasn't he running? And that might have a cascading effect. I
Dr Rad 8:05
think it definitely did. Everyone decided they wanted a taste of that vanilla bean plebeian.
Dr G 8:13
And so this is how you might get somebody voted in who didn't stand for a position, absolutely,
Dr Rad 8:19
unfortunately. Dr G, he hasn't got much longer in this position that we're talking about. We did list our magistrates in the previous episodes. By the way, everyone I know you're used to us listing out who all the magistrates are. So if you want to know the full details, please go and listen to the previous episode.
Dr G 8:36
I was going to say, I'm not going to put myself through that again. Yeah,
Dr Rad 8:40
definitely not. It's way too much Latin for anybody to have to repeat. So we were up to this point in my narrative of Livy, where a rumor had gotten out of hand after the Romans had suffered a military reversal in the field against these allies of they, the Faliscans and the Capenates, who, by the way, were not themselves Etruscans, but were allied with they, because they were geographically and presumably politically tied to they, and they understood that the Romans were going to be coming for them, so they had managed to secure this success. Everyone's panicking in the city. Women are praying. The Romans feel like it really is time for Veii tofall because they've done everything that the gods wanted them to do. They have drained that stupid album Lake, which had too much water. They have also made sure that the issue in the previous year where you had the magistrates elected improperly, that's been resolved. So they've repeated whatever rituals or held whatever festivals or sacrifices needed to be held again, so they're ready. They're like now is the time God's to show us that you've been paying attention. Have you been paying attention to all the things that we have done to please you? And it turns out, Dr G. That maybe they just have, however, before we get to that moment, it's time for a dictator to be elected. Because clearly, with one military Tribune with consular power, dead in the field, and the other one disgraced, because this defeat is so embarrassing, you need someone with real chutzpah.
Dr G 10:20
Well, it does make sense, because everybody in Rome, as we noted in the previous episode, is in a bit of a panic. People have rushed to the temples being like guards, help us out. People have run to the walls of the city to look over and be like, can I see the enemy approaching? Like, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the Etruscins. So that level of panic is the kind of thing that sets the stage up really nicely for the ultimate panic move that Rome has, which is put a dictator in charge, and
Dr Rad 10:56
are you ready to meet him? Dr G my name is Marcus Furius Camillus, father to other people with a similar name, related to people who are Spurius Furius and
Dr G 11:08
I will have my vengeance
Dr Rad 11:12
in this life all the next. I'm part of the Furii clan, but I'm always very calm. Actually, I
Dr G 11:17
feel like we could both be a pretty good Russell Crowe. Maybe we should do that one time.
Dr Rad 11:21
Well, Rusty, if you're listening, love to have you on the show, mate. Let's collaborate. So Marcus Furius Camillus is part of our favorite gens, the fury eye, however, lacking the praenomen that we prefer.
Dr G 11:37
He is no Spurius. That's true, he's
Dr Rad 11:39
no Spurius. But you know what, it seems like, the ancient Romans didn't care as much about the alliteration of their names as we did, because he is definitely, I'm gonna get a limb, the most famous of the Furii clan. I'm not gonna go into all the details about him right now, because that will obviously unfold as we go into this. But the whole fall of a that is about to happen very much tied up with this particular figure.
Dr G 12:04
You've given away the game too soon. I'm
Dr Rad 12:06
sorry, but I feel like I've said it at least 100 times by now, everyone should know. So there's a few important elements to the story of the fall of a which, as we've said, is so crucial to the way that the Romans view their own history. They say this is such a big thing that happens to them, and Camillus is a part of that. Now, we've talked in the previous episode about the fact that people like Livy are writing much later. They're building on a variety of sources. You know, family Chronicles, epic poetry, archeology, presumably like some remains and stuff that they see around and one of the things that they would probably have seen people like Livy. I mean, when I say they there's a statue of Camillus that was erected and still around, I would say, in his time period. And Camillus actually becomes a really important figure for the way that the Romans think about themselves and what makes a virtuous citizen. You know his story has huge resonance throughout the ages. He's someone who inspires later, people like the scipios, who we'll hear about during war with Carthage, Sulla and even your favorite Dr G Augustus, yes. So
Dr G 13:18
Camillus ends up having this incredible reputation. That means that he has a type of fame that within Roman society is pretty rare. It's ongoing. People refer back to him. He gains a whole bunch of prestigious kind of epithets that are associated with him. This is the start of his journey in some respects that we're going to be looking at in this particular episode. And I think it's going to be the culmination of his career as a whole, which I reckon we'll we'll do a wrap up episode where we we look at all of that in detail, because this is going to be part of his story, but not the whole of it. And this is the start of the sorts of things that will make his reputation. But it's not like he gets off to like a fantastic start now, obviously it is an amazing thing to be made dictator. That doesn't happen to most Roman politicians. There is only a select group of these people that end up in this role, and the idea of the dictator is really a product of need. So Rome has found itself in a desperate situation. They think that everything is looking terrible, and they turn to a single individual and say, can you take charge of everything? Carte blanche while you're in power, look after this problem and solve it for us. And they choose Camillus in this moment. And it would be amazing if we knew what it was about Camillus that made him the preferred choice. And maybe Livy talks about this, but certainly none of my sources reveal that to me.
Dr Rad 14:57
I was going to say I'm so glad you asked.
Dr G 15:01
I've set you up so well, gonna give you
Dr Rad 15:03
a bit of foreshadowing here about Camillus, there is a bit of doubt about whether he actually existed
Dr G 15:10
or, Oh no, he's
Dr Rad 15:13
one of those people. Look, I think a lot of people agree that he is a historical figure. However, like with a lot of things from this time period, including the fall of they he's been so mythologized, and there have been so many layers added to him, including, again, by Augustus, the fact that Augustus is like, hey, who am I going to put in my gallery of heroes when I'm working on the forum of Augustus, I know. I'll put Camillus in there. It's hard to untangle all of those different layers, because we don't see a clear emergence where the Romans are gradually adding things. So it's really hard to know exactly who Camillus was, where he came from, but certainly the fall of they has become an important part of his great story as a citizen of Rome. I think I would say that in the scholarship, most people think that this particular part of his story, this fall of a part of his biography, is probably one of the earlier events that are attached to Camillus and his legend. So whether that makes you feel more secure or not, dear listeners, let us know.
Dr G 16:30
Can I tell you some of the things related to this incident that come up in the source material that I have so you can verify against what Livy might be telling us. So it seems that he becomes dictator. And I don't have heaps of details about how that comes about, but I suspect it's the usual way. And then he's basically in charge of the siege of they and that that seems to be the main thing that he has to take care of. They're like, solve that problem for us, buddy. Yeah, it's only been 10 years that have been great to have a solution. And he's like, Sure, I'm your man. And then I get a various sort of combination of things where he either deviates from that plan slightly and does some things with the Faliscans, or he remarkably
Dr Rad 17:18
Dirty.
Dr G 17:20
He does something for Faliscan. I don't know if you're into that sort of thing, but, uh, yeah, something's going on there. And I can talk about a bit more of that detail later if it indeed fits in this year. And that's the other thing that I'm struggling with with my source material, is I'm not sure what sits in what year for some of this stuff. But the other story that gets told about the siege of Veii is that he wraps it up quite quickly with a series of tunnels.
Dr Rad 17:44
How dare you ruin the end of my story. I'm sorry, Livy, you're totally on path. I don't have much information either about why Camillus is the one who's chosen. However, lest we forget, Dr G he was one of the elected magistrates for this year, and he is from the Furii who have been very much a part of our narratives for the past 100 years. So one can only assume it's because he is part of a fairly prominent, influential, powerful Roman Gens. I will say one thing I have noticed whilst reading about Camillus, and made me reflect, because, as I say, he is held up as this Roman general par excellence. He is the fatalis Dux, the fateful leader, the one who comes when Rome needs it the most and turns things around in a really spectacular fashion. It made me realize that, like with movies, often the good guys are more boring than the villains. I mean, look with Roman history, as we talked about, because certain families are thought to have certain character traits. Sometimes it just feels like you're meeting the same person again and again, because they seem to be very similar to each other if they're from the same family, like with the happiest Claudius of the world that we have met, but there's still something kind of fantastic about how evil those sorts of people are in our minds, by our standards, whereas someone like Camillus, I don't get a strong sense of his character. And maybe this is because he's been a little bit mythologized. Hmm, maybe it's also because the Roman virtues for someone to be considered an exemplar, because Camillus definitely becomes an exemplar. So that's where the Romans tell a story about a person and hold it up so that other Romans can learn from their example about how to behave politically, how to behave as a citizen, how to behave militarily, because that's part of their whole idea of citizenship. And being a good Roman, Camillus is definitely one of those. And it's been a little while since I feel like we've had one of these figures who is an exemplar for others to follow well,
Dr G 19:48
but it's not like he is a clean, straight laced exemplar that you can just hold up and be like, Look at this heroic figure who does everything right, because he seems to get. Whole bunch of things wrong.
Dr Rad 20:01
Well, does he or did the Romans get it wrong and then they felt really bad about it? No, wait
Dr G 20:05
for it. I mean, I I assume that Livy would have this story about Camillus. But part of the problem for Camillus with the siege of they and however he takes it and the complexities of this tunnel system are outside of my source material, but I'm excited that they're there, because I always think tunnels are highly unlikely in the ancient world as a system. But you know, how long does it take you to dig a tunnel? I don't know. And how many tunnels did you have? I don't know. Have they been working on them for nine years? And it's just that Camillus finished the tunnels. I don't know that could be believable, but there is this story that is also told in companion with this story about how great he is, and how he is this sort of exemplary leader, where he seems to have a bit of a mixed relationship with the gods.
Dr Rad 21:02
Should we save that for later in his story? I
Dr G 21:06
don't know. I mean,
Dr Rad 21:09
look, I tell you what I'm gonna say, let's save it, because I think I know what you're going, where you're gonna go, and that's like the end of the narrative that Livy gives me. Oh, you reckon okay. I reckon so. I reckon so. Look, I do think I know what you mean, and I'll just say at this point in time that, yeah, you're right. But Roman examples, I don't think have to be perfect. It's more that, I suppose it's more that they are thought to teach something important in at least the majority of their life. And look, I think his failings also say something that's important too. It's not that they can't make mistakes. To me, they tend to be a little bit robotic, almost in the way that they behave. But anyway, we will see. So we have our dictator Camillus, who we will go into later. We also obviously need a master of the horse, every dictator's assistant,
Dr G 21:58
Yeah, gotta have somebody to do the paperwork. I mean, exactly.
Dr Rad 22:02
Can't expect the dictator to do it. He's got way too much to do. We've got Publius Cornelius Scipio. Now this is a name that might ring some bells to people. So the scipiones come from the malukinensis, that horrible name that we hate to say. And he is actually listed in the Fasti as Publius Cornelius Maluginenses. Now, what does that say to you? Dr G,
Dr G 22:28
that says to me that the scipios are trying to borrow his story from later on. Yeah, they decided they wanted to hop on that bandwagon. There might be two branches of that family. And yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. But I mean, the Cornelii are a very exceptional, well known foundational partition family as well. So yeah, the layers of the way that these families will then branch out is going to become important to understanding how Roman political structures operate, because it the family thing is huge. So, yeah,
Dr Rad 23:01
look, it's not impossible that there is somebody from this family at this point in time which will become a very big deal. But we don't have someone that we feel super confident about from this family until the 350
Dr G 23:17
I was gonna say, I feel like, yeah, it's too early for scipiones. This
Dr Rad 23:21
is the general feeling, but nonetheless, here they are again, potentially showing us that the analysts or Livy are using sources from this family, and that's how they end up in earlier periods than they perhaps should be. How convenient? Yes, with the dictator, chosen master of the horse, chosen Rome, apparently, like they've had a makeover. They're feeling wildly optimistic. All of a sudden, their morale is through the roof. I mean, Rome is just literally bursting with possibility at this moment in time. Dr, G, it's
Dr G 23:56
a quick turnaround. It's the like the highs and the lows. Rome is having a very emotional roller coaster ride right now. They've they've had that huge dip where they're like, the ambush and the tragedy, and now they're like, and now we've got the best guy in as dictator, and it's going to be great. I
Dr Rad 24:12
love the way that the Romans work. Now the first thing that Camillus does as dictator is he decides he needs to dish out punishment for anyone who ran away from the encampment at they during all that horrible panic. Oh, no, yeah. He's like, you found that scary? You found the Falsicans and the Capenates coming at you scary. I'll show you scary, my friends. So he deals with that situation because he can't have cowards, right? Certainly not involved in a siege. Can't have that, Okay, fair enough. He also needs to set a levy. Gonna need some troops, obviously. So he sets a levy. He then rushes out to they, because He wants to spread that optimism to the encampment in front of they. Then he's back to Rome. Him for the levy, which he had set before he left. He's just zipping all over the place. And because Camillus is so amazing, there are no problems at all with this Levy. In fact, everyone is super keen to get in line and serve Camillus. I was
Dr G 25:15
gonna say this is why they made him dictator, because obviously he's charismatic, and it's like, it's hard to resist. And you're like, sign me up if I have to die, I want to die under Camillus, exactly
Dr Rad 25:27
what the Romans are feeling at that point in time. In fact, not just the Romans. Dr G, the Latins and the Hernicians, who you alluded to earlier, also said, Rome, we're totally behind you in this my friend, Sign me up. What a man and Camillus gives official thanks to their allies in the Senate. He's like, thanks very much, guys. Presumably this means that there were envoys who had been sent from the Latins and hanisians who made some sort of official presentation. Got my slideshow here. Sorry, the PowerPoints just on the on the fritz. Just wait one second. So
Dr G 26:02
this is the location of Veii. This is Rome. And as you can see, we just down here. And so what we're going to do is we're going to send some of our men up to Rome, and then they're going to join with Rome, and then they're all going to move north, you see, and that's how we're going to do it.
Dr Rad 26:16
Bob's your uncle, mate, sweet as. Camillus' also makes some large promises. Dr G he says that there will be great games, not just games, great games celebrated if they is taken, and this is apparently in pursuance of a senatorial decree, which seems anachronistic, because we don't think the Senate issued senatorial decrees at this moment in time. But let's ignore that and pursue our narrative. He also says that he will restore and rededicate the Temple of Mater Matuta, which had been originally set up by my favorite King Servius Tullius. Yes,
Dr G 26:58
yes. Now this does come up in some of my source material as well. So this also is Plutarch, who also insists that the master of the horse is Cornelius Scipio, which I did nothing with in my notes originally, because I was like, yeah, that's not a thing. But now that you've mentioned it, I can, I can confirm that that is an idea that continues. But yes, this idea that there will be a dedication to the Goddess mata matuta and the great games is something that Plutarch definitely goes into. And Mater Matuta herself is a pretty ancient kind of deity. So she's known in Italy. She's known in Rome. And the matuta name has a couple of different meanings, the idea of in the right moment. So she's the mother of the right moment. This is also translated as the good mother. And so there's this sense in which she is also has bears resemblance to later Christian figures as well. So she's often depicted holding a child with a solar disc around her head. And might be giving some people some imagery. How
Dr Rad 28:11
suspicious,
Dr G 28:13
and we know that she has an archeological record that goes back to at least the seventh century BC. So there's some votive offerings that are found in Latium that are connected to her. Hers is one of the oldest temples that we know about archeologically in Rome as well. So her temple is right near the forum boarium, which, if you've been to Rome, or you plan to go, is right across the road from where you've got the guy that you can put your hand in the Mouth of Truth, the Mouth of Truth just across the road. And there's a very impressive circular temple there that you can see that's to Hercules Victor, which is a much later temple. But below that there are some foundations for a temple to mata matuda, so she's considered quite ancient, even within the archeological record of Rome. So for Camillus to heart, back to her, there is some good evidence to suggest that that's not a crazy thing to do, that she is a goddess that the Romans are already very interested in and have been interested in for a long time. And maybe this is a moment of potential renewal for her cult, which is kind of exciting.
Dr Rad 29:25
Of course, it's not crazy. It's Camillus that we're talking about here. He's going to do everything to inspire the Romans and make sure that they get this amazing victory, which is right there, Dr G, right
Dr G 29:40
so close, so close, we can almost see it. We
Dr Rad 29:43
can almost see it. So Camillus and his army, freshly gathered, march out. They fight those darn Faliscans and Capenates in the country of the Nepesine, which I believe refers to the town of Nepi which. If you were going to Italy nowadays, would be known as nepi and as you might expect, is to the north of Rome. Everything's to the north of Rome at moment.
Dr G 30:10
I mean that. I mean that, obviously this is their big deal at the moment, everything to the north.
Dr Rad 30:16
So as you would expect, Camillus is very prepared. He has thought things through, unlike titanius and gaucius from the previous year. And so everything goes to plan. The Romans completely trounce the enemy. They take their camp. They take loads of booty. And I can't emphasize enough loads of booty. How
Dr G 30:40
big is the booty? A lot.
Dr Rad 30:42
Yes, exactly. It's very, very impressive. Most of it is given to the quaestor, though not directly to the soldiers. That's going to become an important detail later. I think remember
Dr G 30:55
this detail, the quaestor has all the booty
Dr Rad 30:59
they're off to find ve itself, and this is where they start to take a different approach, because Camillus is a genius. So previously, because it was a siege, you've got men on both sides, and they're constantly engaging in minor skirmishes. 10 years of minor skirmishes. Oh god, yeah, I'm gonna throw this at you, and you're gonna throw a stick at me, and I might throw something sharp and pointy, and
Dr G 31:29
your mother smells of elderberries.
Dr Rad 31:31
Yeah. I don't know what a skirmish looks like in a siege, but you know, particularly between the town walls, where the Romans have set up this. Okay, that's obviously where the action has been concentrated for the past 10 years, but we can all say it's not really going anywhere fast. So Camillus says to the people who are assembled there, no one is to fight unless I personally give you a specific order that you are allowed to fight. So no fighting whatsoever. I don't care what names they call you. I don't care if they're giving you the stink eye. I don't care if they spit in your general direction. Not happening.
Dr G 32:08
All right, so if the population of they were to decide to make an attack under these circumstances, are the Romans just to lie down and let it happen to them?
Dr Rad 32:20
Look, these are questions I don't have time for. Look, I presume if they were attacked, obviously, that would be a different story. But he means no more skirmishing. Just lay low. You don't need to fight. Just walk away. Just walk away.
Dr G 32:35
Don't think you're in charge of this siege. And start your own skirmishes because you're feeling in a bad
Dr Rad 32:40
mood. Instead, it's time to dig, send down 30 feet of rope. Now this is what is where we come back to what you were talking about, the tunnels. The plan is they're going to dig a mine that will take them right to the Citadel of they and for those of you who don't watch enough fantasy stuff, or aren't into ancient warfare, when we're talking about the Citadel, we're talking about the heart of they also
Dr G 33:08
don't think too hard about this from a geographic perspective, because the city of they, as we know, is sitting on a plateau of tufa. So it's going to take some time to hack away at the sheer rock that this city is sitting on to create a whole series of tunnels.
Dr Rad 33:26
Camillus is way ahead of you. Dr G, he has a plan. Okay? He knows that in order to get through this as quickly as possible, he needs someone to be digging at all times. So he splits the men into six groups, and each group has to work for six hours at a time, and then they rotate. So that way the digging is happening day and night, night and day.
Dr G 33:52
This is a Okay. So we've got a workforce that is operating 24/7, for however long it takes to cut through all of that rock. Yep, cool.
Dr Rad 34:05
And now this is an interesting point, because we've been talking a lot about tunnels when it comes to things connected with Veii. So obviously we've talked about the tunnel that was built in order to drain the excess water from the Alban Lake, which apparently needed to happen in order for the Romans to secure victory against Veii, and that would be the moment when they became vulnerable, the vulnerable Veieans, that's right. Yep. We also, lest we forget, Dr G had a tunnel mentioned in a previous conflict with Veii when Fidenae was the bone of contention back in the 430s or the 420s who knew when that was taking place? But definitely earlier than this. I
Dr G 34:49
think the thing to keep in mind here is that once Livy has introduced the idea of tunnels into his narrative, it's just going to keep going. So. Once we have this concept of tunnels being used for military purposes, everybody gets excited, and now you can use them all the time. It seems challenging. Like Veii is a city that is sitting in a reasonably hilly area. It is a volcanic area. It gets its water not just from the nearby river, but also from the spring systems, which are endemic in this region of Italy because of the volcanic activity. So there is a lot of natural sort of water courses that are happening underground. You could follow some of them potentially and open them up more. That might be a way to build some tunnels, but it does seem like a tricky business. I'm not saying that the Romans aren't capable of it, but I do have some questions, and I'm not sure that we've seen archeologically that there's any evidence for tunnels underneath they although I'm happy to stand corrected, please atroccologists, get in touch with us and help us out with this thorny question of the siege of Veiiand the tunnels that are apparently associated
Dr Rad 36:04
with it. Well, I can't class myself as an Etruscanologist. However, it is possible, as you've said, that this seems to be part of the narrative in multiple ways. And we know that there is actually some sort of tunnel with the Alban Lake situation. So there is some proof there. It's possible that, obviously this became an older part of the story, that people like the analysts and then Livy had to weave the narrative around it and incorporate it somehow. It is an entirely out of the question, because we know that the Greeks did use siege mines. So for example, there is one used at the siege of platea by the plateans. So that does happen. We do also know that there are these things, these cuniculi, which are drainage tunnels, which are found throughout the landscape in this area. It is possible that rather than, say, digging it, which, as you say, might be tough, maybe the Romans found a drainage tunnel that had been blocked up or closed off, and they just emptied it, and that's what they were doing. However you are quite right. I believe that at the moment, we haven't found one where you might expect to find one. So there definitely are some questions about this, but I don't want to discredit Camillus, because the Romans certainly think he is the ants pants.
Dr G 37:32
Yes, I was going to
Dr Rad 37:34
say the bee's knees. Yeah, as you say, it's all very quickly turned around. You know, Camillus can tell that victory is near because of his genius digging program. They're digging for victory.
Dr G 37:48
They're digging, yeah,
Dr Rad 37:51
and he knows that he is getting very close to being able to seize they. And he also understands just what this will mean for Rome. This is such a big deal. They is really their only big competitor in this region, as we've talked about, in spite of the political reasons that we're given for this conflict, there's an awful lot of other stuff at stake here too. So Camillus knows that this is going to be really, really big. In fact, he's expecting that there will be more booty in the capture of a wealthy Etruscan city like they then. The Romans have perhaps ever captured before, if you put everything that they've done all together,
Dr G 38:25
especially considering they're often like just exchanging booty and finding refining their sandals that they lost last time, this would be a chance to actually acquire new stuff.
Dr Rad 38:35
I'm telling you, you know, laundry markers could have changed everything for them. Now, thinking ahead, because Camillus is a planner, as we know. He's no titanius organucius. He's worried about, what is he gonna do with all this booty? What are you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?
Dr G 38:54
That's a good question. What is he gonna do? Well,
Dr Rad 38:57
he understands that the soldiers might turn against him if he's not seen as being generous enough to them with this booty. So there's obviously an expectation that, given that they have put aside their weekend plans to help him conquer they there is an expectation that they will be rewarded for their efforts. However, the Senate might be angry if he's too generous to the average soldier. Now I should say Livy actually says the fathers, but as we know, he uses these terms very interchangeably, so I'm presuming he means the Senate, because he immediately writes to the Senate and says, Look, victory is getting near. It's going to be amazing. What should I do with all the stuff that I'm about to capture so brilliantly? The Senate had different opinions, and this is where we get into my favorite part of this narrative. We go back to our friend old puble. Licinius calvis, Oh, Mr. Moderate himself, all right, Mr. Moderate himself, who was apparently too old to be magistrate, and yet his son says to him, Dad, I want you to take the floor. Hmm, why would this happen? You ask good question. Dr, G, there is absolutely no reason why this would happen. It would be extremely odd for someone who is not a magistrate and a plebeian to boot, randomly be asked to be the first to speak on such an important matter over all the patrician senators who apparently are staring daggers at him right now. Why is he considered so senior in the Roman state right now that after being the first plebeian military Tribune with consular power, after coming out of nowhere in 400 all of a sudden, four years later, he gets elected without running for office when he doesn't want to do it. He's like, Oh, take my son. And everyone's like, Yeah, cool. And then in a moment of great, important public debate, and his son's like, Dad, I want to hear from you. Everyone's totally fine with this look. I
Dr G 41:12
think I am incredulous, and I hear the incredulity in your voice as well. So I think we're on a similar sort of emotional wavelength here. But I also wonder about the nature of what characterizes the Senate, because this is true. Age is definitely a huge factor. Of considerable years
Dr Rad 41:36
old and his memory's going asides going exactly
Dr G 41:38
this is guy's bit deaf, having trouble seeing doesn't seem like he's up to the gig. Is old enough that he feels like he should nominate his son to do most of the work. But when push comes to shove, his son is like, actually, I think my dad needs to take the floor and have something to say. There is a very conservative tradition amongst the senators about who gets to speak and when. Sure, and we know a lot of that from later periods of history, not so much this period. But if this group of fathers, which for so long we just assumed was all patrician, but as it has turned out now, seems to have always had at least one Levy.
Dr Rad 42:23
It's this guy and his family the whole time, the
Dr G 42:28
whole time, maybe they've been there for a while. So he may actually be in a position of quite seniority within the context of the Senate itself, and often asking the oldest to speak first is less about monetary capacity or other ways that you might measure somebody's worth within the context of Roman society, and is actually that idea of the fathers and the wisdom that comes from your elders. And potentially, this is what's going on for calvis In this moment, where they're like, he is really old. Maybe he's got something to say.
Dr Rad 43:08
Look, I hear what you're saying. I totally get it. You're right. He is very elderly. But the idea that there aren't equally old patricians who I mean, think about all the times we read out the list of magistrates and we're like, oh yeah, this guy's had about eight. You know, I just find it hard to believe that the one military tribuneship With consular power that he's held somehow makes him outrank everyone else. Just considering that we had not heard of this guy up until a few episodes ago. It just seems so funny. And again, it kind of indicates that Livy must be leaning on Licinius Macer or Macer, depending on your preference, as a source who wrote about his family's achievements when he was writing his work. So I just kind of feel like that maybe has something to do with it. On top of which, as we said last time, most of our sources, apart from Livy, agree that the dad is the one who's the magistrate. So this would indicate that if he's the one who's speaking first, he's speaking, because he's an old magistrate in power. That would make sense this whole idea that his son held the office in his place. And then thought, You know what, this is my moment to shine, but Dad, you take the floor.
Dr G 44:27
Look. I could still believe that. To be honest, the idea is not so much that Calvus is not the preferred candidate in flavor of his son. He's delegated some of the job to his son. He may still very well be the magistrate, and even if he's not, and technically, his son is fulfilling the role. Everybody knows that it was Calvus The elder that people wanted in the position, so they're still going to defer to him, because he's got all of the cache. That has been built up through everything else. We're missing the incidents that's Yeah,
Dr Rad 45:07
totally. Anyway. Look, there are some questions. There are some questions clearly, but we will proceed.
Dr G 45:12
And like many things, we do not have the answers. So
Dr Rad 45:17
Licinius Calvus Senior, he stands up and he says there should be a public proclamation issued where anyone who wants some of the spoils that are going to come from, they need to get up and go to the camp at Vay right now. That's the way you stake your claim. You get up and you go, wow. Strange system. But okay, I guess it dips. It's basically ancient Roman. Dibs.
Dr G 45:42
We are not carrying it back for you. You won't have to go yourself
Dr Rad 45:47
too much stuff. It's a wealthy city like come on, guys, unreasonable. Now our old friend Appius Claudius is now going to take the floor in opposition to Calvus. For those of you who haven't listened to the past million episodes that we've released, appias Claudius, the Appii Claudii, they're known for being Uber patricians, very conservative. So no shock that this particular Appius Claudius thinks that this is an outrageous suggestion, far too generous, not at all fair. In fact, indicates that this dude is too old. He's gone crazy, lost his marbles. No. Thank you.
Dr G 46:25
This is a bullock suggestion. Yeah.
Dr Rad 46:27
Now, you know, I hate to side with someone from this family with my natural leftist leanings. However, once again, there is a little bit of sense to what he says, If we believe this whole narrative, which is that Rome has been going through a lot of warfare lately. In case no one's noticed there's a siege going on, that's kind of why we're having this conversation. The Treasury is drained because of all this conflict. They should instead use whatever booty comes from the capture of a to pay the soldiers once again. Dr G, they the siege of a it all comes back to this question of military pay. Okay,
Dr G 47:09
well, that would make more sense in many respects, absolutely, let's pay the people who have done the job.
Dr Rad 47:15
On top of which he actually points out that this would be of benefit to the plebs, because, whilst they're not getting the booty in their pocket immediately, it would mean that less war tax is required to fund military pay, which apparently is something else that exists at the moment, and we've had discussions about the reality of that, but I'm not going to get into it again. So everyone would benefit in one way or another, if they just were sensible and put the booty in the bank.
Dr G 47:45
All right. Well, okay, so that means somebody's definitely going to have to carry it from they to Rome, because how did it? Can't just stay in Veii. That's not how gaining wealth works. It's all based on the physical stuff you've you've got to move it.
Dr Rad 48:00
Look, I hear your practical sense coming through. Miss Virgo, but I don't think that this is what Appius Claudius is most worried about. His big concern is that lazy city slicker types are going to swoop in and take the rewards won by others and the real fighters, the real heroes, Dr G the men who've been on the front lines would miss out. So this is another very important point that he makes, that noble fighters from Rome always are the least greedy, and therefore they're going to miss out if the Romans don't take some sensible steps here. Wow.
Dr G 48:41
This is just a moment where Rome is like, we're about to be more successful than we've ever been, and we do not know how to handle that.
Dr Rad 48:50
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's their lottery day, and they're like, oh my god, we're gonna be millionaires. What do we do? A new house. We put in a pool.
Dr G 48:57
I need a financial planner. They haven't even won yet. They're getting well ahead of themselves. It's
Dr Rad 49:04
a shoe in Dr G. I mean, this is the funny thing, right? After a 10 year siege, I love the fact that everyone keeps saying, Oh, they're trying to build it up to be like the Trojan War. Like this is nothing like the Trojan War in the sense that it seems like a foregone conclusion at this point in time. We all know it's really hard to tell the story of the siege of a without giving away the ending, because we all know where it's going, because they knew before it happened that it was going to happen. But anyway, now Livy is doing his thing here, where he has very contrasting speakers. You know, Calvus, obviously, is our vanilla bean plebeian, very moderate. Appius Claudius, once again, going in hard like his family always does, being able to play the plebeians like a fiddle and the patricians, to be fair, everybody loves a good speech from one of the Appian Claudius. However, Licinius comes back. Licunius Calvus comes back with another attack. He's. Says, Look, this money is going to cause huge problems. Let's be honest, the plebeians are going to arc up if we don't look after them, and it's going to lead to them making outrageous demands, like laws that might be to their benefit outrageous. Why not take this moment to get the plebs on side by being very generous. They are extremely tired. We can all see that they've been very cranky every morning. They're not in a good mood. They're teary all the time.
Dr G 50:32
10 years of a siege will do that to you? Yeah.
Dr Rad 50:36
They're also broke, after so many years of having to pay this apparent war tax, which obviously is paid by everybody. It's not just something that's peculiar to the plebeians. However, obviously it's toughest for the poorer people who are apparently the plebeians, at this moment in time to pay this particular war tax. It would mean so much to them as well, in a symbolic sort of way, if they were able to take something from the enemy rather than have decisions made for them and then be divvied up to them, is some form of payout or some sort of benefit, it would mean more to take it with their own hands, to be like, Aha, I'm taking this vase, and I don't care What you have to say about it, person from Veii, you're my enemy. The Senate would also come away from this looking like the coolest dudes. They'd be Mr. Popular all over the place, and we could all use a little bit of that.
Dr G 51:38
Goodness me, what a time to be alive as a Roman watching.
Dr Rad 51:44
I feel like I have to tell you where this debate ends up.
Dr G 51:47
Please do. I mean, I have some details, but I'm just not even sure where they fit at this point in time. So I'm really waiting for the end of this debate so I can figure out what to tell
Dr Rad 51:55
you next. I told you, this is a long 396, it's a big year. Yeah, it's amazing. I'm enjoying it. In the end, they go with Licinius, and a public proclamation is made that if you want a payout, you need to go to they and get it yourself. Oh, boy,
Dr G 52:12
after Appius Claudius was so reasonable and everything
Dr Rad 52:14
I know. Look, I have to admit, there is something annoyingly pragmatic about what he says, and that was the case the last time we had a big speech from somebody from this family. I can't actually remember if it was the same guy. It probably was. Wasn't that long ago. So lots of Romans do indeed hit the road and go to the camp because they want to get their pair out.
Dr G 52:35
I want my booty. They open the walls.
Dr Rad 52:39
Now, I know we are getting to a bit of a long point with this episode, but we're so close to they actually falling I feel like I have to take you there. Dr G, take me there. I'm ready. So in the camp Camillus Is there, like a good general and a good Roman, he takes the auspices to make sure that everything is in their favor now. Dr G, do you want to tell us a bit about why he'd be doing this. What are the auspices?
Dr G 53:01
Well, it's very important you can't undertake any military action without consulting the gods first. So the auspices is when you look at the patterns of bird movements, generally speaking. So if you have been in Europe, you will have probably been lucky enough at some point to see a muration of starlings. For instance, the patterns that these birds make when they move around the sky can be incredible. Now, it's not just starlings that you might be interested in. It could be eagles. It could be vultures, whatever's out there, but reading and interpreting those signs gives you an indication of maybe how the gods are feeling whether it's a good time to do a bit of an attack where it's time to open up those tunnels and burst out of your Trojan tunnels, slash horse, is it time? Nobody knows. So consulting the birds can really help with something like that. So Camillus undertaking that duty, it does make sense. As a dictator, there is a sense in which there is a religious element to the role, and he could be very well in charge of looking after that side of things as well. So he may have some people on hand to help with the interpretation, but definitely he would be allowed to lead something like that, and it would be important for him to do so in the eyes of everybody from the Roman side, to make sure that everything is okay for going ahead with whatever happens next.
Dr Rad 54:29
Well, he clearly got the green light from the birds, and so he goes out, prepares the soldiers. He also chooses this moment to make a vow. Now, I know you're going to want to jump in on this, but I'm I'm just going to tell the narrative and then we can unpack it later. So he makes a vow that he was led by Pythian Apollo. So probably because of the connection the Romans have had in recent years with this whole siege the lake Delphi. And with this God on his side, he is going to be able to conquer they and as a token of his appreciation, he is going to send Apollo the most gigantic box of Lindt chocolates. No, I'm just kidding. He's going to send a tithe of whatever spoils he captures to Apollo. He also asks Juno, a very important goddess in ve to switch sides and come and live in Rome once they have totally trashed the city where she currently is hanging out. And he promises he would set up a really lovely temple with a white picket fence and a slide in the backyard, if she would agree to come over.
Dr G 55:44
He's like, hey, girlfriend, you want to come over to my place? Forget these guys.
Dr Rad 55:49
Yeah. Now there's a moment that we're going to have to talk about with that later, but for now, I'm going to proceed. So Camillus now makes his advance against fair that much anticipated moment. He's many soldiers on his side, because the Romans could not be more enthusiastic about this. And they attack. They on every side. However, this is not the key to victory. Dr G, this is a mere distraction from the real attack, which is, of course, through the tunnels. That's right, we've seen the Romans do this many times, where they have a distraction and then the real thing going on elsewhere. This is a popular military tactic. Now the people of they did not know that the odds are totally stacked against them at this point in time. Of course, we know that there's been an old soothsayer from they who's totally betrayed his people by telling the Romans everything, maybe under torture, to be fair, but they don't know that. They don't know all the stuff that the Romans know at this point in time. They don't know that the Delphic Oracle has said that they is going to fall. They don't know that the gods had been made these promises if they switched sides and desert them so they have no idea of what is coming. They also have no idea about the mine. Apparently, all that digging was incredibly quiet. They had silences on their pickaxes. So they just do what they would normally do. They run to the ramparts. They've got their weapons. They're wondering why? All of a sudden, after being pretty Quiet on the Western Front for a while, No, I shouldn't say that pretty quiet on the Northern Front for a while, the Romans are being incredibly energetic in their attack. They're like, Oh, what is going on? That's been very, very tame, and now all of a sudden it's like, they're mad men, and we're being attacked on all sides, what is going on. Now, I do love this next part, because Livy tells me specifically, and I quote my translation at this point, men introduce a tale. For those of you who love historiography, this is history being made before our eyes. People, this is Livy telling me that he doesn't believe this story for a second, but he's going to include it anyway, because it's become a part of the folklore of the fall of they, and that is that the king of they, the douchebag that barely started all of this, just because he wasn't very well liked, was making a sacrifice. Now, the Romans in the mine have dug so deeply into they that they can actually hear what is going on, because they haven't broken through the wall yet. But you know, they can hear it. They hear the soothsayer that is with the king say that whoever cut up the innards of the animal that he's about to sacrifice would win this war between Rome and they. So they instantly seize their mermaid. They're like now, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. They break through the wall, they grab the entrails, they race back through the mine, and they present Camillus with the entrails so that he can be the person who cuts them and wins the war. Sounds tasty and not at all slippery. I know delightful, just the kind of thing you want to hear before a meal. However, Livy knows he's talking about something that happened a really long time ago, and I love what he says about it. He says this story more fit to be displayed on the stage that delights in wonders than to be believed. It is worthwhile neither to affirm nor to refute. He's like, You know what this is for the movies. I'm not even gonna talk about it. It's not worth my time. What
Dr G 59:31
a tricky moment in Roman history, bursting in on a sacrifice. And, yeah, you know, stealing the entrails.
Dr Rad 59:41
You can see why. You know, I said in the previous episode that this part of Livy, where he's talking about the fall of Veii is often something that people like to capture. This is where I think you can get that sort of cinematic feeling from Livy, even he knows it. Let's get back to reality in the mind filled with soldiers and all of us. Sudden, they break through into the temple of Juno, which was on the Citadel of a which was their target point. So all of a sudden they are attacking some of the people from they from behind. You know, they're not expecting this. Obviously, they had no idea that the mind was there. Even though the Romans can hear them, they can't hear the Romans naturally intriguing others. Others race off to break down the gates. Women and slaves inside, they are apparently throwing stones and tiles at the Romans from the roof, and some of the Romans then retaliate by attacking them with fire. Interesting little detail there. We do know some things about roof tiles. They are often thrown.
Dr G 1:00:41
They can be deadly. Yeah, those things are
Dr Rad 1:00:44
heavy. The horrific sound of war fills the air. Women are screaming, children are crying, men are shouting. It did not take long for soldiers to be thrown over the walls of their city and the gates of they to be opened. The Romans are able to storm this enemy city. Battle is taking place literally everywhere. It's
Dr G 1:01:14
happening in the streets. Now, the weakness of the tunnel coming from within, it's not looking good for they
Dr Rad 1:01:21
and so Veii is taken. Dr G, it falls, just like we knew it always would, thanks to that trait of this there and the lake and the Delphic Oracle. And as it all starts to wind down, because the Romans have secured their victory, Camillus has his heralds proclaim that anyone without weapons will be spared, because, being an all round nice guy, he wants to prevent a lot of unnecessary killing from taking place. So those without weapons handed themselves over. The Romans, however, now turn their eye to the really important part of this mission, and that is booty, and that might be a good place, I think, to pause, because they has now fallen, but there's a whole lot of stuff that we're going to need to unpack about that next episode, I think. And as we get into the question of booty,
Dr G 1:02:18
yes, I think so. Now, one of the things that is common in the sources that I have is a prayer that Camillus makes to the god Jupiter, amongst others. And I'm not sure about where that happens in this timeline either, because it hasn't come up in Livy's account yet. So there is this one thing about Camillus journey this far as dictator and into the heart of they, which I think is worth mentioning because it's going to start to have some consequences for him. And this is the moment where he offers a prayer to the gods, and in the moment of doing so, he makes some promises, like, I want this to all go really well. I'll do whatever is needful to make sure that the gods are kept happy. I'm willing to accept personally any blame for stuff that doesn't go well with this whole situation. So as dictator, and also fulfilling that kind of religious service function in this role, he's really trying to make sure that everything gets pulled off really nicely. And the weird detail that continues to come up about this moment is that, as he's doing this whole prayer thing and being like, let's make this whole situation as great as possible. I'll make this as good as I can. I'll do whatever is needful. I'll make the sacrifices. I'll give you the things later, if as long as we can pull this off, God's help me out. At the end of the prayer, he has a bit of a fall down. He has, yeah, he stumbles. So he has this moment where he's like, I'm going to make this go as as well as I can be in right relationship with the gods. But the moment where he turns around, because apparently he's veiled his head, which is a very traditional and appropriate Roman thing to do in this context of addressing the gods, to appear veiled as he turns around, slipping seems to be a pretty bad sign about how all of this is going to work out, either for Rome or for him, and I feel like that leaves us with another little bit of a cliffhanger, even though we seem to be in a really successful moment for Rome and its siege of a which seems to be in the midst of concluding now in a very successful way for the Romans. But this little religious stumble is perhaps going to be a problem for old mate Camillus. Yes.
Dr Rad 1:05:00
Now look, you are totally right in Livy's account. It's when he's looking at all the booty that the Romans have just gathered after they've finished the fighting part of this evening's entertainment, and he it's just more than he could ever imagine. And that's when he starts doing that thing where he gives thanks to the gods. And it is an interesting prayer, and it is one, I think, that repeats in Roman history. We might talk about that a bit again another day. But it's certainly that idea that he says, Look, if any of the gods or any other men thought that he was being given too much good fortune and would get jealous of him, then he would personally sort that out and deal with that, hopefully without damaging his own prospects and life, and without any damage to Rome itself and the Roman people, which is a really weird thing to say, if you think about it, it's not that. He's not just saying thanks for the booty he's making this really weird thing. And as you say in Livy's account, he does fall over, which everybody sees as an omen, apparently. But I agree with you. I think it is more indicative of the fact that in Camillus' life there are going to be some low lows as well as some high highs. Oh
Dr G 1:06:18
boy. Well, strap yourselves in. Listeners, Camillus, wild ride has only really just begun, it would seem, oh
Dr Rad 1:06:26
yes. And so, dr, G, I think it's time for the partial pick.
Dr G 1:06:37
Okay, the partial pick? Well, Rome, let's see how you stuck up against your own credentials. We have five categories of which they can earn up to 10 golden eagles in each one. So if Rome is being as Rome as it possibly could be, they could end up with 50 golden eagles. So let's see how they go. Okay,
Dr Rad 1:07:00
so for this part of 396, military clout. Dr, G, what do you reckon? Wow.
Dr G 1:07:06
I mean, top notch military clout. I mean, they're wiping the floor. They're taking a whole city. It's all going really well. There's tunnels, there's wall assaults. Everybody's having a great time. People sign up willingly to the levy.
Dr Rad 1:07:21
Going, great, go to the plebs. Insight,
Dr G 1:07:25
it's basically as good as it could be. Yeah, I feel like, you know we're we're nine or 10 territory here. I think
Dr Rad 1:07:31
so too, because, you know, it's not just they obviously remember, Camillus has dealt with the Faliscans and Capenates with zero trouble. I mean, so little trouble. We don't even get an account of what exactly happened. We just get told that it's done dusted. Well,
Dr G 1:07:44
I might be able to tell you some more details about what happened, at least with the Philistines next episode. Oh, yeah.
Dr Rad 1:07:50
No, that. We'll get to some stuff about them. But I mean, the the initial, the initial, putting them in their place, that's just effortless, done
Dr G 1:07:57
and dusted. Yeah, yeah. Military clout, 10 out of 10. Golden Eggs.
Dr Rad 1:08:03
Remember the last time we did that? In fact, I don't know if we've
Dr G 1:08:06
ever given a 10. Yeah, this is impressive stuff. The second category is diplomacy.
Dr Rad 1:08:13
Okay? I feel like this is not as good. I mean, we do have the Latins and Hernicians coming to Rome and saying, Whatever you do Rome, we're there for you. And Camillus being like, Thanks, guys. I tip my hat to you. I tip my laurel wreath,
Dr G 1:08:31
yes, but it's not at all clear that the Romans necessarily went out of their way to source that support in this particular instance, or whether the Latins and hanushe came to Roma, were like, Well, looks like you could use some help. Or, you know, so it's not the details of it is not clear. So the idea, the central question here is, how much negotiation is being employed by the Romans in order to reach their goals? And since I'm not sure about that, but they do have some help, so we have to assume there's some negotiation, even though we don't know what it was. Then maybe we're looking at like a four or five.
Dr Rad 1:09:11
Oh, wow. That's way more than I was going for. I was gonna give them like a two.
Dr G 1:09:16
I'm clearly having a good day where I'm being very generous.
Dr Rad 1:09:20
You know what? You've been infected by Camillus spirit, just like the Romans were. You're feeling wildly optimistic. I am being way too generous.
Dr G 1:09:29
Well, how about a three then, okay, three, it is expansion. Yes.
Dr Rad 1:09:35
I mean, this is a really big deal. We will talk about this, I'm sure, multiple times. But just to give the listeners some sort of perspective, dr, G, now that they falls under Roman control and remains there, estimates vary a little bit, but we're thinking that this basically doubles the territory of Rome, maybe even more than double, maybe adds like another. 60% to what they currently possess. It's a really, really big deal. They is a very prosperous Etruscan city.
Dr G 1:10:07
This is a massive moment. So yeah, if you think about it on just a scalable level, like Rome, is nothing like this sort of Imperial Rome that you see in popular film and things like that. This is a small city state that controls adjacent areas that are local to the city, and that's true for all of their neighbors as well. So Veii is its own city state, and they have more of a connection to a true area than they do to the Latins or the Romans or anybody like that. So this is effectively doubling, if not more, as you say, the capacity of Rome in terms of what they control, because they've now taken a whole major other city, yes. So this is huge, off the charts, massive in terms of expansion,
Dr Rad 1:10:59
yeah, and an Etruscan one at that. I mean, come on, we know that taking land is obviously going to mean a lot for the Romans, because we've had these ongoing issues of debt, and we've had questions about public land, which, look, they're probably anachronistic, but they're being raised so in the narrative that we're dealing with, this would definitely be a big deal. Plus, as you highlighted in the previous episode, its resources, its influence in the area. I mean, they don't really now have another major rival in this Tiber Valley area. Yeah,
Dr G 1:11:33
Yeah, it's pretty impressive. So in terms of expansion, I think we're also looking at a nine or a 10.
Dr Rad 1:11:40
Let's give them a nine. I think.
Dr G 1:11:45
Are they ever going to expand as much, percentage wise, upon themselves as they I was
Dr Rad 1:11:50
gonna say yeah, there are Yeah. There are some other victories and expansions that are obviously going to be very important. But in terms of percentage, I feel like this is a big one. This is huge, okay, so maybe 10, yes, proportionally, it's all proportional. Rome, don't get too
Dr G 1:12:07
my Camillus enthusiasm continues, indeed, all right, that leads us to the category of virtus. Ooh.
Dr Rad 1:12:18
This is a bit of a tricky one, because Camillus is obviously a very impressive, important figure, as the Romans think of him. But would you say we've really seen an act of virtus? Dr, G, no, yeah, I don't think so either, not in this moment I think comes later in his career.
Dr G 1:12:38
Yeah, it's not like so for Camillus to be participating in, like a classic virtus moment, we'd expect things, something like leading from the front, so him actually popping out of the tunnel first, for instance, could have been a thing. It wasn't he clearly sent people ahead. Other things that might constitute weirdos for him is him facing off with the king of they and having a one on one combat. We don't hear anything about something like that happening. So whoever that guy is, he seems to really fall off the radar. And we don't get that sort of really personalized commander on commander thing that you would also definitely classify as a weirdos moment. So yeah, in that sense, like it's not that Camillus isn't doing a great job. He clearly is. He's encouraging everybody. But those things aren't considered traditional Roman weird tours. No,
Dr Rad 1:13:32
exactly. And also, I'm not so sure I subscribe to this idea of the king of a I mean, he pops up at the beginning of this story to get this war started, pops up at the end. We never really get much information about him, apart from everybody hates him. Who is this guy? Well,
he ain't no Lars Tolumnius, that's for sure
Yeah, okay, so not really. And surprisingly, even though we get this very cinematic description of the fall of a in Livy, where, again, he's probably going for a bit of an epic moment there. We don't get anyone who is singled out for their achievements, which I find surprising. I feel like that would surely have been a moment for somebody in Roman history, but maybe they just don't want to detract from Camillus. You know, this is his moment
Dr G 1:14:19
to shine, yeah, yeah, like kimberlius have his moment in the sun. And the other point where you might potentially have some weird to us is in the senatorial chamber with the speech exchanges and how those go down depending on what people say. But it sounds like it's a very reasonable debate, and it's not the sort of one where people start showing off their scars or anything like that. So we're not getting into like big masculine Roman energy there, either. We're just getting some exchanges of opinions, which seems pretty standard for the day. Yeah, so I'm gonna say zero for virtus, because I'm not seeing any clear examples. I'm
Dr Rad 1:15:00
not, but you did just give me a great idea for a T shirt. It's not BDE, it's B, R, M, E,
Dr G 1:15:10
well, you know, I'm happy to make more T shirts. And our last category is the citizen school.
Dr Rad 1:15:18
Well, I do feel like there's some things to celebrate here, even though normally, you and I would say that wartime is probably not a fantastic time to be wartime Rome not a great time. They seem to be extremely excited about this one, and it goes very well for them. As I say, it's almost effortless in spite of all the mining. And then also the people who weren't even involved in the siege get told to grab their stuff and head on out to the camp and, you know, take some spoils for themselves.
Dr G 1:15:57
Line up, get yourself a piece of a
Dr Rad 1:16:02
I love to think of they as being like the Berlin Wall is these days. You know how people say, you know, I have a piece of the Berlin Wall. I feel like that's what people in Rome would be saying, they, Oh, my, my great grandfather still has a piece of they. You know, he still has some jewelry that he wrestled out of the hands of a crying woman. This
Dr G 1:16:22
bowl came from the temple in Veii, you know? Yeah,
Dr Rad 1:16:26
pretty much I feel like that is something that you would be trading in if you were a dealer of antiques in Rome. So
Dr G 1:16:35
everybody has the potential to increase their wealth slightly. And so part
Dr Rad 1:16:40
of it to be part of history. Dr, G, yeah.
Dr G 1:16:43
Oh, it's great. Yeah, fantastic. Sack of a city, get in there constructed
Dr Rad 1:16:49
before our very eyes. I mean history, not the city. The city is being torn down before our very eyes. I
Dr G 1:16:54
was like, kids do not do as the Romans did. No, not cool. Okay, so, but on the citizen score level, as far as the Romans are concerned, this is a great time to be a Roman citizen. You've got this real opportunity. It seems like the fighting was pretty easy in the end, they just needed that little push off the edge, which was the tunnel system. And once that happened, it was like a house of cards, and now it's booty Central, so probably at least a five, if not more, I
Dr Rad 1:17:24
think probably more. I reckon we have to go an eight for this one. I mean, not a 10, because obviously people are still dying, but I feel like it has to be an eight. Everyone seems very excited. There's not a whiff of tribune of the plebs in this entire account. Yeah,
Dr G 1:17:42
they're not even listed as magisters for the year. That's how unimportant they are, yeah.
Dr Rad 1:17:47
And I mean, we've also got, you know, a plebeian hero as magistrate, or his son as magistrate, speaking up and winning against Appius Claudius, although, once again, it seems like class loyalty is bit of an issue, because he is talking about the fact that, hey, let's get the plebs on side, and they've been doing it tough, clearly not associating himself. I think with that particular group of people, it
Dr G 1:18:13
does sound like there's a lot of unbelievable things that are happening for this year. I'm happy for it to be an eight. Let's do it. Fantastic.
Dr Rad 1:18:19
Well. Dr, G, hold on to your hat. The Romans have actually got over 25 Golden Eagles. For the first time in a really long time. We're at the grand total of 31 golden eagles. Oh,
Dr G 1:18:36
my goodness, that is massive. I know we haven't even
Dr Rad 1:18:41
talked about the whole year. I mean last episode, because we only did the very beginning of the year. They only got one. But if you add that one, it's 32 so far and counting. For 396, BCE, very impressive,
Dr G 1:18:52
Rome, after what feels like a real sort of a desert scape of partial picks for the last few years, they're making a resurging comeback Absolutely,
Dr Rad 1:19:05
and we haven't even finished this year yet. Dr, G, I still have so much more to tell you.
Dr G 1:19:12
Well, I look forward to our next episode together.
Dr Rad 1:19:15
Indeed, you
music. Thank you for listening to this episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman. You too can support our show and help us to produce more fascinating content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon or buying us a coffee on ko fi, in return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes. Today, we would like to say hello, hello, hello to Hannah, Dillon, Karl, Aether and Not who are enjoying. Their one year Patreon anniversary with us. Thank you so much for being a part of our partial band. However, if you spent all of your money in the post Saturnalia sales, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.
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We are super excited for this conversation. Owen Rees is the founder of the website badancient.com and we’ve been lucky enough to write a couple of articles over there on some misconceptions about the ancient Romans. So when we heard that Owen had a book coming out, we absolutely wanted to have a chat.
Special Episode – The Far Edges of the Known World with Owen Rees
The Far Edges of the Known World is coming out through Bloomsbury Press February 2025 and is all about what’s happening beyond the traditional centres of power that are the focus of historians such as Greece and Rome. What becomes clear in this conversation is that the written sources produce a focus on the centres of power for historians and that the archaeological record is critical to appreciating what’s happening in areas that weren’t the centre.
We start with a little bit on Ovid’s poor attitude to being in Tomis on the Black Sea and what that reveals about Rome BUT also reveals inadvertently about that society. There are generalisations about what place is where to navigate – where was Libya or India really? There's also plenty of scope to dip into the particulars of the archaeological record. To get a sense of the breadth and depth of Rees’ work we have a chat about:
Author of The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past, Owen Rees
Our music is composed by the amazing Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Lightly edited for the Latin and our wonderful Australian accents!
Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians.
Dr G 0:19
We explore all the details of ancient Rome
Dr Rad 0:23
Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battled wage and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr Rad
Dr G 0:33
and I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Dr G 0:50
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr G
Dr Rad 0:58
And I am Dr Rad
Dr G 1:00
And we are very excited to sit down today with Owen Rees to talk about his new book ‘The Far Edges of the Known World'. Even the title sounds very impressive. I'm like OoOoo. Owen Rees is an ancient historian. He held a Leverhulme early career fellowship at the University of Nottingham, and is a lecturer in applied humanities for Birmingham Newman University. He is the founder and lead editor of the website badancient.com which brings together specialists to fact check common claims. I'll say that again, which brings together specialists to fact check common claims made about the ancient world. We are absolutely thrilled to talk with Owen about his new book, ‘The Far Edges of the Known World, which is published by Bloomsbury Press. Welcome Owen.
Owen Rees 1:57
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
Dr G 1:59
An absolute pleasure. So to get us softly into this topic, because I feel like this topic is actually huge, I'm wondering what sparked your fascination for this idea of borders and edges when it comes to the ancient world.
Owen Rees 2:16
Yeah, it's a valid question, because it's not really talked about a lot, or when it is talked about, it's often in terms of conflict. So especially in the Roman Empire, we think hard borders, conflict and wars generally. So I mean, put it simply, it bugs me that the ancient world is always done from cultural centers. So every time we talk about ancient history, we talk about Athens, we talk about Rome, Alexandria, places like this. And that's all fascinating and interesting stuff, but I'm always struck with the kind of question in my head of, well, what about everyone else? What's everyone else up to? And how do these highfalutin ideas that people are coming up with like Plato and the like. How does that play out for, shall we say, normal people around the world? So first of all, it was to kind of get away from the obvious stories and the obvious narratives of the ancient world, ones that you know, we've all read, listened to and watched and kind of grew up with. I suppose another aspect was I was I was really interested in the idea of the ancient world being the whole world. You know, we often talk about, we study the ancient world, we love the ancient world, but all we really talk about is the Mediterranean, or the Mediterranean basin, really. So, you know, Egypt, Italy, Greece, maybe a bit of Turkey
Dr G 3:39
Guilty as charged.
Owen Rees 3:41
Yeah, we all do it. We all do it. And I just, I wanted to move away from that. And I mean, ultimately, I think it also played into an obsession of mine, which is, I love underdogs. I've always loved underdog stories from, you know, sort of watching films growing up in England, you know, watching films like Zulu, and I find the Zulus much more interesting than than the British forces, you know, sort of watching westerns. And it was never the cowboys I was that interested in. My siblings used to always take the mick that I always supported the losing side, but I always just found their stories more interesting, and I found their cultures more interesting. So that's kind of like underpinning, shall we say, of what interested me in this. But otherwise it's from a historical point of view. I hate inconsistencies. And what you often find when you read about Roman culture, Roman law, Greek culture and Greek laws, is they stop applying the further away you get from Greece, from Rome. I mean, a classic example from the Roman period is the idea of the imperial army, in particular, soldiers. It's illegal for soldiers to marry, not allowed to marry, and this has influenced the way archeologists have studied numerous. Forts and numerous sites over the years. And if anyone had ever thought early on to look at places like Egypt, for instance, we have loads of evidence in the Greek language that Roman soldiers are married, and then it turns out they're just not married in the Latin language. So you get this lovely interplay of an accepted rule breaking and almost like, Okay, well, we can't officially say it, but of course you are. And as a result, like studies of Roman thoughts over the past 20 years have started realizing that perhaps you know, evidence of women or children in forts doesn't need to be explained with strange excuses. And actually, maybe they were supposed to be there.
Dr G 5:46
What. What are the women doing there?
Owen Rees 5:50
I know, what is this chaos?
Dr Rad 5:53
There's a keep out sign, very clearly on the door.
Owen Rees 5:59
So it was, yeah, it was just, I think looking at the board has just challenged a lot of what I grew up thinking I knew about the ancient world, what other people taught me about the ancient world. And I just found that really interesting. The way I often sell it to other people is from a more general point of view. If you look at the ancient world and only look at the center, you are basically committing the cardinal sin of a traveler who goes to London and thinks they've seen Great Britain, you know, goes to Sydney and so think they've seen Australia, and you just haven't. You've seen something amazing. You've seen something flamboyant and spectacular and culturally fascinating, but you have not seen everything, and you have not seen anything close to everything. And so that was kind of what inspired the idea of the book in the first place.
Dr G 6:49
Oh, that is really cool.
Dr Rad 6:50
It is. And so for people who would like to pick up a copy of your book, you're going to take them to places across Africa, the Caucasus, and Asia. But as Roman historians, we're very aware that there are the very serious limitations when it comes to the way that Roman perspectives can be imposed, and the kind of world that is created from Roman sources. So what were the challenges that you encountered when researching these edges of the world? And how did you tackle those challenges?
Owen Rees 7:21
Oh, there were quite a few. I'll be honest with you, I suppose the biggest. I'm a historian by background. So my main bread and butter are written sources, you know. So I think Herodotus, think Plutarch, you know, people like this. This is, this is where I spend my time. When you start going to the edges of the ancient world, there's a lot less of it, and those written sources are either less interested in what's going on at the edge or have a very skewed perspective of what's going on at the edge. So first thing I had to embrace very early on was that archeology was a much closer friend than sort of the standard historical text I'm used to working with. So that's the first thing, but the second thing, this kind of opens up opportunities. So we don't have large narratives from all these kind of sites. I There are no large narratives coming out of Ukraine in the ancient period that just aren't but what there is alongside the archeology in some of these sites are fascinating written sources that don't appear anywhere else. So oddly enough, whilst we we obsess over Greece and Rome, our best evidence, in terms of the amount of evidence and in terms of what it tells us about everyday life, comes in the Roman period from two places, really, to my mind, one is Vindolanda. So that's a Hadrian's Wall in the north of England, where we have surviving written tablets from a fort. So we have a remarkably large cache of letters, basically, and notes from a Roman fort telling us what's going in and out, telling us what's happening. It's really boring, but it's really fascinating at the same time. And that's what I love, because, you know, life isn't always exciting. So you know, there's lovely letters of people complaining they haven't been sent socks, and things like this. It's just amazing. If you haven't seen it, anyone listening, you gotta have a look. They're great fun. But the other site, well, the site I look at, but actually it's the entire region of the Faiyum region in Roman Egypt. So when Egypt is on Roman control, you've got the Faiyum Oasis, which is to the west of, or southwest of what is now modern Cairo. Amazing place to go. And we have just a remarkable amount of papyri. So you know, the written paper from Egypt just stored in people's houses whilst they kept them safe. So these are, like people's personal archives, really. So it's documents that they want to keep safe, things that are important to them. Some of them are like contracts. Some of them are personal letters between like themselves and their mother or their father, who might have died by that point. Some of them are just sort of family papers. So we've got all this amazing evidence just sitting there telling us about normal people, normal life, everyday life. So whilst I had to get away from this idea that history has to be grand narratives to write this book, what I get to really embrace is those small personal narratives and those little snapshots and stories of just normal people. And that's just something we don't really get to hear much about in the ancient world. But going back to, like your point on Roman writers and the world they're building us. This is such an important point, because often when they talk about the edge of the world, one the really vague, and this is infuriating. I had to, I had to work with a map illustrator, and they were like, you mentioned Ethiopia as a region. Where is it? And I was like, south in Libya. And they're like, Okay, so the country of Libya, no, Libya is a random continent. Kind of makes up most of Africa at this point, but doesn't include Egypt most of the time. And they're like, so where is Ethiopia in that? I'm like, to the south, like, where that's that's all they tell us. So, you know, you got the it's the same with you mentioned the Caucasus. The Greeks and Romans talk about Scythia, which is very vaguely north of the Black Sea, and to the east. And that's kind of it. It can be as big or as small as you want it to be, depending on what you're talking about and who you're talking who you're talking about. So they do talk about these things in general terms, because often what they're talking about is very, very far away land. So when they talk about skiffia, they mean very far away to the north and the east. When they talk about Libya, they mean very far away to the south. When they talk about Ethiopia, they talk about even further away to the south. India is my other favorite, because we think of India. India is a very clear place. The Romans, the Greeks, knew about India. They went to India. They traded with India. They must know what India is when they talk about it, and they do not. Sometimes, it includes Arabia the Arabian Gulf. Sometimes they're talking about much further east than India, you know, the unknown lands of Southeast Asia, Vietnam, maybe even China. Sometimes. So they're not always, they're not consistent in their terminology at all. And I suppose the final point, really, when dealing with this is Roman writers in particular, if they're talking about the borders, it's usually to make a point about something else. And so we're always stuck with that question, how accurate a reflection are we getting about the place they're talking about? Some of these things can be overcome with archeology. Some of these things can be overcome with other evidence. Some of it has to be left kind of open ended. Ovid is a good example of this, and his description of a town called Tomis, where we don't have loads of evidence about Tomis, but we know he's wrong, but how wrong we're not quite sure, but definitely incorrect.
Dr G 13:31
Yeah, I was going to say you've led me straight to this idea of Ovid's perception of Tomis on the Black Sea, where he gets exiled to because he's clearly not having a good time. He is most upset to be here, and he believes it's probably the worst place ever, at least that's the kind of impression you get from the letters that he writes back to the city, being like, please, please, please, guys, this exile needs to end. I cannot stand another minute here, but it seems to be at least in the way that you're describing it, is that maybe it's quite jarring for him because he doesn't get to live the life that he prefers or is used to anymore. It's not so much that he doesn't understand the place, it's just that it's not something he wants to experience. So I'm wondering like, is Ovid a bit emblematic for some of these problems we get with our bigger written sources when it comes to thinking about the edges of things?
Owen Rees 14:27
Yeah, I think is he is indicative of the issue I may so much so he bookends my book for a reason. He really sums up not only the problem we have with Roman writers, Greek writers, Egyptian all these different people. But also, I think he's indicative of the problem historians have where we're so stuck on focusing on what's not going on, or what it doesn't look like, much like he does, we kind of miss it for what it is. But Ovid's, Ovid's a fascinating guy. He comes off a bit badly in my book. I think I went for him a little bit because he's held up in this kind of canon of Roman writers, and he is a moany so and so. But I think you're right. I think what he's moaning about is things not as they are, but also it's because he wants to go home. So so much of his poetry, so much of his letters, are about convincing people to petition on his behalf, send me home from his exile. So he portrays it in the most horrific ways. And if you read this, you just think, why would anyone ever go there? It is a nasty place. It's constant war, constant freezing. They can't even grow grapes. They don't speak Greek properly, which is laughable, because it's a Greek city. You know, he's moaning about all these things, and it's just fantastic, is this idea of I'm too good for this place? That's kind of how he presents it. But on the same token, I'm not always 100% convinced. That he's reflect not just the reality of the town, but his own reality in that town. So for instance, we know he brags at one point of writing a poem in a local language. So we get this idea he is learning local languages. He doesn't need to know the local languages. Greek is a standard language. He learns like a Gatic language, but he's not in learning. He's mastered it enough to do his poetry. We know he serves in the militia. One of the things he moans about, they made me do military service, which I got out of him Rome. So there's no doubt he's actually getting quite involved in the community around him, but he will never let on these in any way enjoying it, or any way settling in. But the other thing it's the interesting one, something we get a lot at the borders when people from the center so these kind of figures go there is this idea of being forgotten, this idea of no one will know what's going on, because no one really understands the edges, and if I'm there, they'll forget me. And Ovid has this kind of paranoia that he'll be forgotten, and that mediocre poets in Rome will be remembered better than he will. And of course, that's we know in hindsight, that's not true at all. So his greatest fear of being left at the edge just doesn't come true in the slightest, if anything, his time in exile are, I mean, I think some of his best work, I don't think every academic would agree with me there, but they're certainly, historically, the most interesting pieces of work he does. So yeah, Ovid, absolutely, he is emblematic of a lot of the issues where we're seeing, but not just from the ancient world itself, but also from our own perspective.
Dr Rad 17:46
As podcasters from Sydney, we kind of get that feeling, always, you know, our timing is just always off. We're always, you know, in another day, in another time zone. It's,
Owen Rees 18:02
Yeah, but you'll never be forgotten. You know, remember that.
Dr G 18:05
That's the dream.
Dr Rad 18:07
We are writing the most epic podcast known to man, so… In scale, I mean in scale. So turning our attention away for a moment from the Romans and their world and their perspective, you also take the reader through some of the details of the borders that emerge in parallel to the cataracts along the Nile River in ancient Sudan. Can you take us through some of the details of the edges of the world as conceived in ancient Sudan?
Owen Rees 18:35
Yeah, it's an interesting one. So for the cataract. So we're talking about these kind of insurpassible parts of the Nile cataracts. So they're basically heavy rapids. There's boulders and stones. It's just sort of harder to get through. It's not just like a direct route, shall we say. And further south from these cataracts, you enter what's generally thought of as Nubia, the lands of Nubia and during, I mean, this is like second millennium, well out of our wheelhouse for Greek and Roman historians. But second millennium BCE, where Egypt, you know, has built its pyramids, have all this beautiful monuments, and the pharaohs have well and truly established themselves on the throne. But to the south, in Nubia, we have a another kingdom called the Kushite kingdom, who are growing a fascinating place. The archeology of this area and this sort of Kingdom and the towns they build are absolutely phenomenal, but like, there's no written texts to work with. So unfortunately, it's one of the kind of curses of living at the edge. Your story is told by your enemies, and Egypt is the the writer of the history of the Kush. To put this in context, they generally refer to the Kush as the ‘wretched Kush'. That's their name for them. So that kind of gives you an idea of the storyline we're getting. So Egypt keeps trying to push its influence further and further south, moving up the Nile, and it does this by building a series of forts along the cataracts, really. I mean, you can see this as expansion. You can see this is imperialist expansion. That's certainly what it becomes later in the New Kingdom. But at this point, I'll often visualize this as almost creating a buffer zone. So they're trying to create an area where the Kush are pastoralist people by origin. Even though they're now building their towns and stuff, they still have sort of this semi-nomadic underpinning to their life. So movement around is quite a common thing, and sedentary cultures, urbanized cultures, generally, do not like nomadism because it doesn't abide by the rules of borders and things like that still true to this day, let's be honest. So they build these forts, and they create this kind of middle ground within it. And what I found fascinating about this is we have a perfect example of stretch of land where the two cultures kind of mash and mesh and intermingle. And rather than look at the Egyptians from their perspective further north, and rather look at the Kush from their perspective further south, I was fascinated by what was going on here, in this in this middle ground, in this buffer zone, and ultimately what we get is Egyptian garrisons, settling, raising families. And kind of setting themselves up in just normal life. It's just normal garrison life. It's not always very exciting. There's generally a lot of raiders, bandits, but also just trade. So it's that, it's that snapshot of the everyday, which I love. But we also get some lovely characters and some lovely events for anyone who's, if you fans of ‘The Mummy'?
Dr G 22:09
Ooo yeah
Dr Rad 22:09
Ah yes
Owen Rees 22:11
Yes, what do you take me for? But also, I've just, I've just got into Assassin's Creed Origins, so I'm obssessed at the moment with the Medjay
Dr G 22:21
Yeah, beautiful. I love that game.
Owen Rees 22:23
Yeah, brilliant game. And they're brilliant characters in ‘The Mummy', where the Medjay first kind of appear at this border as a group. Historians aren't 100% sure who they are in terms of ethnicity, but the general consensus at the moment is that they are one of the nomadic Nubian groups floating about in this region, in this area. So they're not Kush, and they're not Egyptian, they're this nomadic group, or one of many nomadic groups, and they're called the Medjay, and they turn up in the the fort records, basically, of people moving about, and this is where we first start to see them used as like a rudimentary police force. And to give you an idea of the kind of complexities of what's going on and the lack of simplicity of us versus them, the Medjay who form part of this nomadic Nubian group are often policing other nomadic Nubian groups in the area. So they're like enforcing Egyptian rules on it, because ultimately the fort brings food, it brings money, well, it brings support, it brings income of some sort. And so it makes more sense for them to look to the Egyptians for basically work. So we get individuals like this, but also we see in the force themselves. We mentioned them earlier with the Roman forts, but we get these, these people. They're called women
Dr G 23:54
What?
Owen Rees 23:55
And they do, they do exist in history.
Dr G 23:57
Again? What's going on?
Dr Rad 23:59
Just break this down for a second. Wo-men. I think I might have heard of them, yeah.
Owen Rees 24:05
Have you heard of them? My academic background is military history, and you'd be amazed. Well, you won't be amazed how many books to where they don't appear.
Dr G 24:16
It's incredible.
Dr Rad 24:17
We sympathize, we sympathize, yeah.
Owen Rees 24:19
And at the forts, what we see is Nubian women, even possibly Kush women, entering the forts and living in the homes of Egyptian soldiers and men. There's no reason to not presume that they've actually intermarried. So again, what we see, you know, away from the narratives of the Egyptians, where there's ‘wretched Kush' and they can't be trusted in the region, and they should all be killed because they're animals, we see the borders soldiers who are supposed to be kind of enforcing that and epitomizing that ideology, marrying them, living with them, having kids with them. And I just, I just find that amazing. I find it beautiful. I just think it's, it's a fascinating inversion of what we expect.
Dr Rad 25:07
It's almost as though when people actually get to know each other instead of believing what they're told. They actually find that humans are quite similar and they can get along with,
Owen Rees 25:22
I mean, you said it not me. I don't want to get in trouble.
Dr Rad 25:25
These are the kind of mind blowing ideas that people come to the Partial Historians for, you know,
Owen Rees 25:30
This is it
Dr G 25:32
Oh, boy.
Owen Rees 25:34
This is it. This is beautiful stuff. It is beautiful stuff, um, but like, within the sort of historical narrative. I mean, ultimately, Egypt goes through its own periods of chaos. And during that chaos, we see the borders fluctuation. So during one of those periods of chaos where Egypt has basically an incursion from the north, the Kush push further north and actually take control of a lot of these fortifications.
Dr G 26:00
Uh oh
Owen Rees 26:01
Now, yeah. To put this in kind of perspective, these forts are enormous, like they're absolutely amazing in size, in scale. I mean, really, we see nothing like it in the ancient world until, like the Roman structures, 1000s of years later, in terms of fortifications on the borders, and in terms of the investment that goes into it, there's nothing quite like them, but the Kush basically walk into them, because the Egyptians have to focus on what's going on further north. And again, you're like, Okay, so the Kush have pushed north taking control. This is going to be a bloodbath. Are they even going to keep the forts. What's going to go on? There is no archeological evidence that there is any destruction.
Dr G 26:47
Wow
Owen Rees 26:48
At all. So it very much creates this impression they just kind of walk in. And we even have examples of Egyptians at the forts who keep their jobs.
Dr G 26:59
What?
Dr Rad 27:01
Now that's the kind of job security that I envy.
Owen Rees 27:05
Exactly, exactly. I mean, from a pragmatic point of view, if you've got an infrastructure in place and they're happy to stay in place, there's no need to change it. So you know, as long as they're not leaving and they're not constantly out to try and get you and to try and overthrow you. Why wouldn't you keep them in place?
Dr Rad 27:22
Is Elon Musk listening?
Owen Rees 27:22
You're gonna get me in a lot of trouble! So, yeah, so we, so what we basically see is people go right, like my dad was here under the Pharaoh. I'm now here under the Kush happy days. Let's just keep going. Because ultimately, what happens, this is what I love about the borders. What happens at the border is that's life. Life isn't what happens to the south or to the north. Life is what's going on there and then. And you know, they're not going to uproot themselves if they've got family there, if they've got lineage there. If they you know, they've been there six, seven generations. This is their home. This is their homeland. It's at that point where you see where loyalties really lie. Now, that's not true of all the sites I talk about in my book, and that in itself, is interesting because it gives you an idea of how, I don't know how deep people will put their roots when they come to the edge, you know, how do they see their time there? But at the fault, we see quite these kind of thoughts. We see quite clearly people that's home. So, you know, why would they leave just because another king is asking for tax rather than the previous king who was asking for tax? You know, it's that kind of perspective. So I think that was it really. I wanted this kind of fortification, boundary, these barriers. I wanted to look at it rather than through a lens of conflict and through a lens of imperial or political power. I wanted to see it through everyday life. I wanted to see it as normal and just how life went on even in places like this.
Dr G 29:04
I love this sense of pragmatism about daily life that is coming through and is a real thread through this whole book, actually, because it's kind of like, what sort of decisions do you make when you're not the powerful person, when you're not the person writing the laws? And you find yourself, you know, well, I've been sent to this for it, and I guess I'll figure out life from here. And, you know, opportunities come along, you make some friends, you meet a girl, it's kind of nice, and all of a sudden your family's been there for like, two or three generations, and you're like, Oh, it's good here. You know, we're these kind of people now.
Dr Rad 29:38
I think it also speaks to the universal human hatred of moving.
Dr G 29:45
There's nothing worse than having to pack up all those boxes.
Dr Rad 29:49
I hate it, and I'm glad to know that people in the ancient world hated it too.
Owen Rees 29:56
Well. There we go. They are just like us,
Dr G 29:58
So similar. And you touched on this idea of language with this idea of the ‘wretched Kushite', and I think this leads us really nicely into thinking about these really loaded terms that we tend to get when we think about the center versus the edge, and that idea of the ‘civilized' center and the ‘barbarian' edges. And these sorts of terms are hugely problematic, obviously been repurposed in terrible ways throughout all of human history, even recently. And I'm interested in how a study like yours can help us combat this sort of us versus them dichotomy that comes through in that kind of language use?
Owen Rees 30:41
Yeah, I think it ultimately, it rips it apart. Absolutely rips it apart. It shows it for what it is, which is a rhetoric of privilege, basically from the center, because they can think like that, because the only I mean classics, classical, Athens for fifth, fourth century. Athens, a good example of this, if you are Plato, living in, you know, walking around, Athens the only barbarian, one of the better word, the only foreigner you will meet is predominantly either a trader or an enslaved person. That's pretty much it. So you can have these kind of views, you know, of foreign peoples, because it doesn't really affect you day to day. But when you look to the edges, where, you know, like we were talking about you, you end up marrying these people. You end up living with these people. These people become your friends. These people become your colleagues. These people become your network for trade. You just can't you just can't think like that, or you can't internalize all those beliefs of well, you can definitely internalize your belief of your own superiority, but you can't really internalize the belief of their innate inferiority in every way. So the idea that the barbarian person is intellectually inferior, morally inferior in just every single possible way, it just doesn't make day to day feasible. So the distinction very much kind of falls apart when they live side by side. So we we see this in particular in the book or two sections on Greece, the Greek world and the Roman world. And it just falls apart time and again as you look at it. I mean, ultimately, barbarianism as a construct and civilization as an idea are usually. They usually appear in the ancient world to justify something or to garner support for something. So think about, you know, the anti-Gaul rhetoric just before Caesar's invasion. Think of the anti-Persian rhetoric after the Persian Wars in classical Athens. It's all to justify things that are either happening or are going to happen or have happened. So you've got to see it for the ideological rhetoric is what I find quite interesting about it is, if you, if you take it at face value, it kind of counters a lot of stories we tell ourselves about our own history, maybe not Australia.
Dr G 33:11
Oh, I think definitely Australia.
Dr Rad 33:13
Oh I don't know about that
Owen Rees 33:15
I'll leave that with you, but a classic one in Britain. So British British history. One of the key parts is the Roman invasion. We don't talk about ourselves as an invaded imperial opponent. We don't talk about stuff like that. So what we inherit, in terms of the ancient history from Roman period, is that we take the role of the Romans, which is quite odd when you think about it, because we were not the Romans.
Dr G 33:49
I don't want to say that this is a classic English move, but
Owen Rees 33:55
It definitely is. But what we don't talk about, for instance, and I love this, doing the research for the book is just how much Britain is a backwater of the ancient world, just how looked down on, just how how much it is looked down on, like to the point where, before the Roman expansion, really, the Greeks aren't even convinced it's real, because it just sounds so horrific.
Dr Rad 34:19
It rains ALL the time
Owen Rees 34:24
I know, and it's not wrong, so we know that. But the other thing is, ultimately, it's the edge of the world. I mean, even the early Roman, sort of early Roman, imperial writers talk about it as literally, the edge of the world. So it gets to this point where, okay, we accept it probably is real. But God, no human would live any further than that. And it's just, it's just amazing. So you know, what we inherit as British people is this story from the Roman perspective, about Roman power. What we don't inherit is the Roman perspective on Britain itself, which is like this is not a very great place to be, very great place to be. And I just love that. I love that I love not only the history of the ancient world, but also how the ancient world is translated into the modern day, and what bits of it we like to choose and what bits of it we like to ignore. But in terms of the barbarian civilization, yes, I mean, the ancient world is the foundation of it. To this day, you've kind of alluded to it already. I've said it outright. Britain has, for a long time considered itself the inheritor of the Roman Empire. You know, if it's not Britain, it's Napoleon. If it's not Napoleon, and it's bloody the Third Reich. Everyone wants to be the Roman Empire. Everyone wants to be the harbinger of civilization, shall we say, and make themselves the inheritor of what they consider the lineage of civilization. And when you look at the edge of the world, you just kind of see how ridiculous an idea that really is.
Dr Rad 36:00
I think somebody needs to Hollywood that, because I don't know if you noticed, but the Romans always have British accents.
Dr G 36:10
This does – as a side note – this does weird out my Italian husband, he cannot watch HBO's Rome because he is thoroughly baffled by the representation of Romanness through the English accent.
Owen Rees 36:24
Well, did you see the whole complaint about Denzel Washington and Gladiator 2, having basically the New York accent, I think it's the New York accent
Dr Rad 36:33
I think he talks like Denzel
Owen Rees 36:36
Yeah he does, it's his voice. And I just love it, because people are like, this is the wrong accent. And everyone's like, you mean British, don't you? You mean he hasn't got a British accent, which is just ridiculous. Yeah, fair point.
Dr Rad 36:48
Yeah, well, look, you know, I have to defend it, because that's what Kirk Douglas was going for with his whole casting thing. He had real issues with certain people he wanted to cast you didn't have the right accent. He was like, Oh, the British versus American accent. It's so important, it must be preserved at all costs, regardless of acting ability. Moving on, though, we really loved the chapter on the city of Olbia, which was located in what is now Ukraine. Olbia draws influences from many peoples, and the result is a layered culture. Can you take us through some of the key moments in olbia's ancient history as a city at the edges?
Owen Rees 37:30
Me, yeah, so we're looking at, literally at the very edge of what is now Crimea, and it's set up as a marketing a market city, basically, to kind of capitalize on the trade of the Black Sea and to try and push Greek trade further north into what is Scythia. So the land of the Scythians, this elusive conglomeration of various nomadic, semi-nomadic and static groups that the Greeks aren't 100% sure who they are. And Olbia goes through – like the history of Olbia is just fascinating. I fell in love with the city whilst writing about it, because, basically: it sets itself up, has to deal with the Persian expansion in the region, survives the Persian Wars, but we don't know how, in what way. We don't know if it sides with the Persians. We don't, we don't know what it did to get by. It then has to deal with ancient Athens expansion in the Black Sea. That's when the city becomes democratic, because Athens doesn't really give you a choice with this. It then basically, can't we cope with being democratic? So it relies a lot on the patronage of rich individuals. It then has to deal with the expansion of Alexander, Alexander the Great, the Macedonians. It survives that it looks to Scythian kings for one of a better term for support and for protection over time. But in the end, it's abandoned for a period. We're not a hundred percent sure why. It just kind of stops being a useful place to be. Too much conflict in the area is not worthwhile. And then, interestingly, some of the Scythian groups actually implore Greeks to come back and re establish it. So Olbia is re established, and that's when we get the Romans interacting with it. And there's a beautiful moment where one of our Roman writers is complaining because he goes there meets a Greek guy, young lad who's Greek, is very bad, apparently, and is dressed like a Scythian which is a fascinating moment, because the Scythians wear the most effeminate of clothing known to the ancient Mediterranean.
Dr Rad 39:51
Is it pants?
Owen Rees 39:52
It is pants, it is trousers, and he's described wearing them. He also described as holding a cavalryman's sword as well. Very unusual, very unexpected, and it's just the perfect encapsulation at Olbia of what's going on, which is Greek people clinging to Greek identity, but adapting and embracing Scythian or local traditions as well. And we see this in a few ways. So we see in the coinage. Coins are not always the most exciting of things, but they tell us a lot. And at Olbia, they tell us an amazing story where the first coins we see at Olbia aren't round coins like drachma and things like that. They're actually shaped like arrowheads and dolphins. There's a lot of speculation as to why it might be related to cult of Apollo. These are two symbols of Apollo in the region, but there are also two symbols that relate closely with the culture of the non Greeks in the region. Let's call them Scythians, who put a lot of stock in archery as their sort of military prowess. And the dolphins is a local symbol because of the population in the Black Sea. So there is an argument that's been made that this is possibly evidence of them trying to get local groups to embrace a financial system that they don't have. So Olbia, the Greeks at Olbia are creating a monetary system that they can relate to and use in some way, which in itself, is interesting. So by the time we get proper coinage, so the kind of round drachma in Olbia, what we see are symbols that relate to Scythian culture. So we see a distinctive bow. We see a distinctive bow case imprinted on the coins. We also see a particular axe, the sagarius, which is not Greek. The Greeks are not interested in it. This is about this is clearly about giving a iconographic marker, an image that the Scythian groups or the local groups in the area understand what it is. And I just find that amazing. And it kind of feeds into something Herodotus, so the father of history tells us about the region and about the city. He describes a group living near Olbia. In his list of Scythians, he gives a long list of different Scythian groups, and in it, there's one which he describes as Greek-Scythians, which doesn't make a lot of sense if you think of it through the perspective of barbarians and Greeks and separations. So what does he actually mean about this? And so it was, you know, maybe they're living more of a sedentary agricultural life, maybe saying, well, that's going on, but maybe it's because Greece and Scythians are actually intermingling and living together and marrying and intermarrying. And this is actually supported by a later inscription at Olbia, which talks about a group called the ‘mixellenes', literally the half Greeks who live just outside of Obia. So we have this kind of archeological verification, corroboration, really, of what Herodotus is talking about, yes, Greeks and Scythians. This isn't pie in the sky hippy nonsense. These people are actually living together, marrying, intermarrying, raising families like this is reality. This is what's going on. And to kind of come back to both your points earlier, this contrast this with the center to this point is Athens. In Athens fifth century, fourth century. Plato has a little mini rant in one of his works about intermarriage, and he refers to a group called the ‘mixebarbaroi'. So the half barbarians, and I think this perfectly encapsulates the difference between the center and the edge. So in the center, if you intermarry with foreign peoples, you're a half barbarian. At the edge, if you're intermarry with other people, you're half Greek. Don't get me wrong, you're still not Greek, you're still not quite us, but it just gives you that inverted perspective that you see at the edge. If we only listen to Plato, you would think that was all there was.
Dr G 43:52
I do like this idea that not only is there sort of, like fine, sort of definitions within this, because that speaks to like people trying to like, find their identity and position themselves in particular ways. And Herodotus seems to be picking up on that as well. But you've mentioned a couple of times now that when we get out into this sort of really eastern section, that there is a sense from people from the center that the Greek is spoken differently, for sure, and the idea that the accent is shifting, and that maybe the language is bringing in loan words and things like this from the surrounding areas. And it's not that they're not speaking Greek, but it's not, it's not the Greek of the center, for sure, by the sounds of it. And to tie this back into thinking about your own journey as an author, this book takes us through heaps and heaps of places, and I feel like the thing that you would want to do to prepare to write for this book is to do a lot of travel and get to these edges and really, really come to grips with it from in the topographical sense, you know, just feel what it's like to be in these places as well, because that would also decenter you as an author from your position in your natural center. And I'm interested in the sort of challenges that you have found in writing this book when it comes to that kind of thing.
Owen Rees 45:22
Yeah, this book was not pitched at a good time for what I wanted to do, because you're right, I had, I had real plans to be a jet setting historian. I was going to live my dream since I was a kid. I was going to go around the world, go to all the ancient sites and just write stories about them. It was going to be amazing. The first planned trip I had. So I've got chapter on ancient Vietnam, and I was like, It's the one place I've never been. I've never been anywhere like it. I've got to get to Vietnam. And I planned out the entire trip, and then the COVID lockdowns happened.
Dr G 45:54
Noo
Owen Rees 45:56
Yeah. So that was great. So that scuppered that plan. It scuppered my plans to go to Ethiopia. It scuppered my plans to go to Morocco. I had ambitions, and every time lockdown was lifted, I was like, Okay, I probably won't get to Vietnam. Now, let's try Ethiopia. Okay, next lockdown. I won't get to Ethiopic Morocco. That's just down the road a bit. Let's try that next lockdown occurrence. By the time all restrictions were lifted, my deadlines were looming, so I had to readdress my expectations and my ambitions. So I was like, fair enough. I won't be able to get to that. I've got to look but I've got to look nearer to home to get to some of these sites. I'll go to Ukraine. I've got two chapters in the book. I'll go to Ukraine. As I came up with that plan, Putin, tanks crossed the border. So that's scuppered that plan. Another idea was I'll get to Israel. That was a terrible idea, Sudan, that was never going to start. Basically everywhere I wanted to go, either terrible things that were happening started happening, or, in hindsight, went on to happen. So that was that was a bit of a problem.
Dr G 47:15
Sounds like you're a powerful figure, Owen on world history and current affairs.
Speaker 1 47:21
You don't want to appear in my books, but I'll tell you that. Tou don't, you don't want to be named in my books.
Dr Rad 47:25
It seems like not a coincidence that all these places you wanted to go are still areas where sometimes you can't.
Owen Rees 47:35
Yeah, there is something to be said for the edges of the world haven't changed that much in our own perspective, and that in itself, is very interesting, and we do not have enough time to explore that one. But yeah, it is interesting just how many of these places are still considered these sort of no go places or problematic places or difficult places, rightly or wrongly, they still hold these reputations. And as you can kind of see, some of these reputations go back 1000s of years. I mean, to get around it, I ended up having to rely on a massive network of historians around the world, archeologists around the world, many of whom I've never met, never spoken to. And bless them, they were so supportive and so helpful, because, yeah, we were all in the same boat. Anyone who wanted to write about any of these places, we were in the same boat. We couldn't travel. So as a result, I was able to tap into that and be sort of fed and guided to a lot of the cutting edge research. So a lot of academics were bored during lockdown, and so anyone who spoke to them about their own work got very excited. And so there was a lot of zoom calls because they wanted to talk to anyone, and they were like, have a look at this draft that I'm publishing in two years time. Have a look at this draft of stuff I've just found when I was last in Vietnam and all this kind of stuff. So the book, one of the things I liked about putting this book together was it was fed by a lot of the very, very current research coming out. And from my perspective, from your perspective, and all the amazing work you do, I think part of our job is to kind of translate that for the public and feed it to them in some way. So I love the idea that we're not, you know, I'm not feeding them a narrative that's been around for 10, 15, years in academia. Some academics will read some of this stuff and not know that's been discovered yet, not know it's come out, which is just beautiful, because I think the public should be, you know, as much of the forefront as everyone else.
Dr Rad 49:38
Absolutely. And that segues nicely into a question we thought we used to sort of wrap things up, which is, what questions or ideas would you like to leave listeners with when it comes to them thinking about the boundaries and the edges of the world?
Owen Rees 49:57
I suppose I'd love for you to be left with the same question that started the book. I don't like to think I've answered it, because it was an open ended question, but ultimately, my first question when it came to this book was, okay, we know Greece, we know Rome. What else is going on? So I talk about, I think it's 13 sites around the ancient world. I could have picked a completely different 13. And I just, if this book is to inspire anything, I want it to inspire inquisitiveness. There are lots of works, lots of podcasts, lots of documentaries about these other places. They're just not the big, famous ones that everyone's kind of reading and watching and listening to. So kind of, you know, follow your inquisitiveness, because ultimately, that's what history is. I mean, history literally means inquiry. It is to be inquisitive. It's not to tell narratives and have answers. It's to ask questions and to keep exploring. And that includes people who just love history. You know, it's not just academics and scholars. So I suppose the other thing, which I'm glad you two picked up on as well, so it's we read a lot about ideas in Rome, in Egypt and Greece and all these places. Lot of ideas. How does that play out in reality? How does it play out in the other sides of the world? You know, it's all well and good thinking. You know, what life is like in London? What's it like in rural Scotland? You know, as for the British example. So kind of, yeah, follow your own interests, follow your own inquisitiveness, follow your own questions. And I suppose the final thing for this, and we kind of touched on it at the end. Does any of this stuff sound familiar? You know, we're talking about life at the edge. We're talking about all these regions. We're talking about all these regions. We're talking about conflict, but we're talking about fear of foreigners, which is very easy to say when we live in the urban center, fear of migration, fear of movement of peoples, fear of nomadism. In Britain, we one of our most persecuted ethnic groups, or sort of ethnic minority groups, are the Gypsy, Romany and traveler community, the antithesis of sedentary life, constant movement. You know, we can get very focused on why people don't like them right now, but actually, are we hearing a lot of the same themes, a lot of the same ideas from 2000 plus? I mean, even easier 4000 years ago, are we just rehashing the same fears and the same concerns, and when we start to realize why they did it in the ancient world, you can then start to ask questions of rule. Is that why we're doing it now? You know, ancient history has a currency in the modern world. It has a pertinence in the modern world. And I think books like this kind of encourage us to ask those questions and to look a little deeper at our own, our own perspectives, as you both kind of rightly pointed out with me.
Dr Rad 52:50
No, well, I mean, I think this is the thing in that we've talking talking a lot about barbarism and civilization and those sorts of ideas as teachers of ancient history, I'm sure we've all encountered I know I have plenty of students who look at the past and say, Oh, how ridiculous they were. So backwards. We've got all the answers now, and I constantly have to ask them now. I'm like, Okay, if we have all the answers, then why is it this time period that's facing an existential crisis in the form of climate change, which people are still actually taking the time to argue about. I mean, do we have all the answers? If we do, I'd love to have a look at them.
Dr G 53:32
Please show me that book.
Dr Rad 53:33
Yeah, exactly. So when people, when people do, say to you, when they encounter something that's very strange about the ancient past, obviously, there's nothing wrong with laughing at the way that humans behave at any time period or in any place. But it is that idea that a lot of people have that now is the best and the past has to be there for the worst, so…
Owen Rees 53:53
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think the other thing, I suppose, one of the other drivers of this book, so you mentioned in my introduction, my lovely introduction, by the way, appreciated that where I run this website, badancient which is website dedicated to kind of debunking a lot of misconceptions about the ancient world. Now this isn't just pyramids being built by aliens and things like that. It's also perspectives. So we get asked questions from not a naive perspective, not even an ill informed perspective, but a narrow perspective. And the answer isn't that you're wrong about a question about Roman culture or Egyptian life or anything. It's not that you're wrong, but it's that you're only giving an answer based on life for 5% of the people. A classic example would be if you look at the Egyptian evidence, I mentioned in Roman Egypt all these amazing papyrus papyrological evidence we have. We've got a lot of it, which shows independent women living normal independent women lives. But you know, it's the classic, isn't it? If you pick up any ancient history. Book about Greece, Rome, Egypt, anything like that, you'll generally get this impression that women may stay at home, women have no autonomy, women have no authority, and there is some truth to bits of that, but we shouldn't limit their potential in our own storytelling of them and our own narrative of them when the evidence shows us differently. So in there's a lovely village called Karanis, which is a very poor village in Faiyum in Roman Egypt. And we have evidence of women running businesses. We have evidence of women living entirely independent of men. In one of the census records, we have all female households. So Roman history tells us there has to be a male guardian at all times. It has to be a son, if it's not a father, if it's not a husband, but we have census records. Well, that's just not true. There are still legal issues. They have to officially have a guardian. But that doesn't look the same in normal life. You know, it's a paperwork issue rather than an everyday issue.
Dr G 55:58
That's fine, you make a statue, you call it a dude, and you'll be like, that's the man, don't worry about that.
Dr Rad 56:03
I'm thrilled to hear that Destiny's Child would have been very at home in this place.
Owen Rees 56:11
So yeah, so it's – completely lost your train of thought – But ultimately, this is this is it. So when we have our laughing moments in the classroom or in conversations about the ancient world ago. They're very backwards, they're very this, they're very that. Yes, we got to ask questions about ourself. Yes, we can ask questions about how different are we really with a lot of these topics. But the other question is always worth asking, which is, well, how much of that is just an elite male perspective of what they think life should be like. Because on the edge of the world, evidence tells us differently.
Dr Rad 56:45
Yeah. I mean, if we had only left behind the blog of someone who was part of, like, a, you know, men's rights group, and that was it for for you know, a lot of civilization, I think our perspective on what was happening now would be quite different.
Owen Rees 57:02
Yeah, I love the idea that Aristotle was just a blogger, really angry blogger, in the basement of his mom's house,
Dr Rad 57:10
and that Pliny the Elder was just a kook.
Owen Rees 57:14
No one took him seriously.
Dr G 57:16
He was all over the trivial details, that's for sure.
Owen Rees 57:21
That's right, it belongs on Reddit.
Dr G 57:24
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Owen, this has been a real treat, and I'm very excited for people to get your book ‘The Far Edges of the Known World' into their hands and to get their eyeballs on the page and to do as much exploration of this kind of topic as they can, because there is so much fun to be had. I think, in coming to grips with like, what is life actually like when we don't just read elite men.
Owen Rees 57:59
There's the tagline, yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed this.
Dr G 58:12
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Partial Historians. You can find our sources sound credits and transcript in our show notes over at partialhistorians.com. We offer a huge thank you to you, if you're one of our illustrious Patreon supporters, if you enjoy the show, we'd love your support in a way that works for you. Leaving a nice review really makes our day. We're on Ko-Fi for one off or ongoing donations, or Patreon, of course. Our latest book, ‘Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire', is published through Ulysses Press. It is full of stories that the Romans probably don't want you to know about them. This book is packed with some of our favorite tales of the colorful history of ancient Rome. Treat yourself or an open minded friend to Rome's glories, embarrassments and most salacious claims with ‘Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire'.
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396 BCE is finally here! Rome and Veii have been locked in a competition for space and resources for quite some time and it seems like the tide is about to turn. The year 396 BCE is perhaps one of the most significant years for Rome’s history in the early republic. Given the events at play, this episode is considering how the year begins and it might not be quite the thrills you might expect…
Episode 158 – The Fall of Veii – Part I
The situation with Roman magistrates in 396 BCE is quite complicated. We spend some time considering some of the challenges we face with the evidence. There seems to have been some problems with the military tribunes which leads to a changing of the guard. There also seems to be great fondness for the plebeian military tribune with consular power, Publius Licinius Calvus Esquilinus, but is he really fit for public duties? We consider the details.
While Livy is providing plenty of narrative material for 396 BCE, every other ancient source seems only interested in some of the big ticket events and not the finer details of family politics in Rome. How can we reconcile these different accounts? We’ll try our best!
Rome gets off to a bad start in 396 BCE with a botched Roman ambush led by Genucius and Titinius. After waiting so long with the siege business, it seems a couple of the military tribunes with consular power decide that a little bit of action might be preferable. But things do not go according to plan… it’s only a matter of time for panic to set in among the citizens.
Our music is composed by the amazing Bettina Joy de Guzman. Additional sound effects from the BBC Sound Library,
Partial Reconstruction of a Temple at Veii – Photo credit to ArtSupp.
Lighted edited for our wonderful Australian accents.
Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians.
Dr G 0:19
We explore all the details of ancient Rome.
Dr Rad 0:23
Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battled wage and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr Rad
Dr G 0:33
And I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city. Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr Rad
Dr G 1:05
and I am Dr G and I am so excited for this episode, because we are hitting a bonanza of a year. It is 396 BCE and oh boy. After a long time of not a lot happening, except people sitting around in a siege. I think something might be about to happen, Dr Rad.
Dr Rad 1:26
I think you might be right. Dr G, oh, it's been 10 long, wintry years.
Dr G 1:31
Yeah, look, I've grown a whole fur coat in that period of time, and it's not going away.
Dr Rad 1:38
Oh, Dr G, this is a big year. And you know, I was saying to you the other day off mic, that it feels a bit like our podcast journey sometimes oddly mirrors that of ancient Rome, because during the early republic, due to locations of recordings being switched around and issues with microphones, etc, etc, we had some ups and downs in terms of our experimentation with the show, and I feel like we've got it all sorted out just in time for 396 which you could kind of see as one of the most important years in early Republican history, I think.
Dr G 2:16
This is a massive time, so we're building the hype, and I don't think that this is something that we're over hyping at all. This is actually going to be an exceptional time in Rome's history, and the Romans know it as well. Just to put that out there, maybe a little bit too much, they are well aware, and when they write their histories about this time period, there is a great consistency to the sorts of things that they talk about. So I'm looking forward to delving into that. But perhaps we should do a bit of a where are we at recap, before we dive in.
Dr Rad 2:54
You read my mind, I was going to say I know we did talk. I know that every time Veii has come up, we have talked about the relationship between Rome and Veii, but this is the last time that we're probably going to really need to do this, and it is the end of the big conflict, the big feud. So I do think a recap is in order.
Dr G 3:17
Veii? Who are you and why do you exist?
Dr Rad 3:22
Why are you so far south? Why can't you be further north, like all the rest of the Etruscan cities?
Dr G 3:27
Well, the thing about Eturia as a kind of a group of people is that they used to be much further south than they appear to be by the time we get into Roman history proper. So as far as we're aware, there's good evidence for the Villanovan culture, which is the precursor to Etruscan culture. Archeologically, as far down as Campania, which is, you know, the Amalfi Coast, Naples, Positano, Pompeii, Herculaneum…
Dr Rad 3:57
All the gorgeous places to go on holiday.
Dr G 3:59
Exactly. And so Etruria actually extended right through the region where Rome has sort of popped up like a little city state mushroom. And now we're dealing with what is a legacy of kind of a fallout of many centuries of Etruscan retreat out of the south and the more substantial investment that they've had in their northern places of influence, so all the way up to what is now modern Milan, for instance.
Dr Rad 4:30
Yes, this is true, and we have seen some really interesting dynamics between the Etruscans and the Romans over the centuries. If we go back to our beloved regal period, Dr G, although we don't know exactly what was going on with those last few things, with those last few kings.
Dr G 4:48
Oh, those guys
Dr Rad 4:49
Yeah, those guys, those things, yeah, those things, the kings, we certainly know that there's obviously an interesting relationship between Etruria and Rome at that time period. Was it an invasion? Was it a hostile takeover? Did the Romans welcome them with open arms? We'll never know.
Dr G 5:11
But there's certainly lots of parallels in terms of the cultural exchange that seems to have gone on between early Romans and the Etruscans, and the fact that this rivalry between Rome and Veii has taken the shape that it has is mostly to do with their proximity to each other and the competition for local resources. So one of the things that has been a source of conflict is control of the salt pans at Ostia as the river hits the Mediterranean Sea, there's been competition about that they used to control it. Rome eventually seems to have taken over. Veii is pretty unhappy about that. And then we do see increasing violence across the fifth century BCE, where the archeology suggests that there is ongoing raiding across both sides, and a lot of that agricultural land that sits in between these two places, which are a mere few kilometers away from each other, has produced this sort of escalation in violence across the century. And now here we are at the moment of a siege, which has been taking place for years now. Rome's been sitting outside the gates of a being like hand over the keys, and the Etruscans inside. They are like, Not on your life.
Dr Rad 6:33
Well, this is the thing ,Veii is fairly well positioned in terms of the you know, this speaks to the fact that the Romans couldn't just waltz in and take it. And so there's probably no doubt that there was really a lengthy siege between Rome and Veii at this moment. However, was it a neat little 10 years as Livy wants us to think, Dr G?
Dr G 6:57
Well, I think that's debatable. There's obviously a lot of incentive to draw that Trojan War comparison that I think Livy explicitly references as well at some point. So, yeah, good times for the Romans.
Dr Rad 7:13
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So there's some questions about the exact length of this siege, but a lengthy siege, I think would be an order, given how well positioned Veii is, and we have seen conflict throughout the early republic with Veii, Dr G, just a quick reminder of some of the biggest hits.
Dr G 7:33
Yes, please.
Dr Rad 7:34
483 to 474. That's when we had the first conflict between Rome and Veii. And the Romans weren't always beaten, but that was, of course, the time period where there was a fairly significant defeat with the fabulous Fabians, where we had a family that was almost entirely wiped out when they tried to take on they on behalf of Rome.
Dr G 8:00
Yeah, so we get this sense that we've got elite families acting as local war bands in the region, and presumably they is touching on Fabian interests in the area. But Cremera is a sad day for the Fabians. And fabulous or not, they mostly don't make it through.
Dr Rad 8:21
Exactly. So doesn't end that well for Rome on that particular point, because that becomes a pretty infamous moment in Roman history. However, when we get to the 430s we have another conflict with Veii, and this, of course, involves the possession of Fidenae, which is tossed backwards and forwards between Roman ve throughout the years. And this is where we get the murder of those Roman ambassadors at Veii. And then in the conflict that ensued, we see the king of Veii, Lars Tolumnius, slain by Cossus.
Dr G 8:58
Stabbed right through the groin. Yeah, what a time to be alive. So Fidenae, as far as we understand it from the archeological record, seems to also have been a mostly Etruscan populated area. So Rome has this real incentive as a sort of buffer zone, to take Fidenae, try to re populate it with Romans, colonialism, colonialism… and to create that sort of buffer point for themselves so that they can easily move forward towards they so the competition is really hotting up between these two by the time we get to what happens with Fidenae, and then also the devastation of they losing a king. And this feeds into a broader understanding of how are the Etruscans running themselves. And one of the narrative features of Rome's conversation about the Etruscans is that the Etruscans have a group of 12 kings, and that's kind of the leadership circle that runs everything. But it seems like what we can tell from the Etruscans is that there are a loose collection of city states that share some cultural interests. They have different leaders within the particular city states themselves who come together to talk about things. Now, whether that number is precisely 12 or some other number which isn't quite as pretty from a Roman perspective, I don't know.
Dr Rad 10:36
This is the big question. And then, of course, we've got the final conflict, the 10 year – asterix asterix – siege of Veii which is coming to an end in this particular year. Now, the interesting thing is that in this 10 years, we have seen they been continually rebuffed by its Etruscan sister, states, Sister cities. And this is something that the Romans, I think, find a bit puzzling, as well as modern scholars like ourselves. But I think that speaks to what you were just saying. The Etruscan cities are not a country or a nation in the way that we would understand it. In fact, even the way that they are represented in our sources might be a little bit questionable. We have these regular meetings where they all come together and they talk about matters that concern the Etruscan community. And this is where they says, Hey, I think I've got some remnants camped on my doorstep, little help. And the Etruscan saying, No. What some scholars have theorized is that maybe this collection was actually more religious in nature, or something along those lines, but it's been painted as more of a military or political alliance because the Romans maybe wanted to build up the nature of the threat that they were facing in taking on Veii.
Dr G 12:04
Okay. This is a classic Roman literary trope, which, like listeners, need to be aware of, because the Romans will do this at every opportunity. There is nothing more satisfying than winning against a very worthy opponent. So it's not cool to, like, just beat up your neighbors and be like, I did it, and everyone like you're a bully. So it's much better if you can be like, Look, these guys were aggressive. They're a really potent force to have to deal with. They've got lots of friends in the north, but they're not chipping in because they know these guys are on the wrong side of things, and they should just be bowing down to Rome at this point. So it produces a kind of narrative that allows Roman citizens to feel good about the violence that they do to other people. And I suppose if this was a more modern period in history, you might start to think of this as a kind of like military nationalism. This is not how the ancient Romans would have thought about it, but it certainly has that kind of quality to it where it's about justification. It's about being proud of the violence that you're able to do, and that means that the enemy has to be worthy of being conquered in the first place.
Dr Rad 13:25
Absolutely. And what you just highlighted there again is that there have been all these supernatural signs as well that things are about to happen. The game is afoot, Dr. G.
Dr G 13:37
The gods are watching.
Dr Rad 13:40
We've seen in previous years, you know, the Romans needing to consult the Sibylline Books to go to the Delphic Oracle. We've seen the flooding of the Alban lake and the fact that the Romans need to, you know, fulfill a certain act in order to, in order for Veii to fall, you know, they've, we've seen them also trying to get the gods back on side. There's been various things that they've had to do in terms of the spiritual world. And it's possibly that actually what people like the later analysts had to work with, and the analysts of the people that Livy and Dionysus are working from, we presume they might have actually been working from probably your favorite source, Dr G, priestley records, who were keeping track of these big religious moments and developments which supposedly happened at around this time, and that might be part of that important skeleton that they're working from. And then lean into epics a little bit.
Dr G 14:36
Just few details here and there. That's fine,
Dr Rad 14:38
Yeah, just yeah. We'll add in like a massive hero, and I'll throw some Trojan war on top. You know, nothing, nothing too crazy.
Dr G 14:47
Get it all in there. Yeah, let's make this a rousing read as well as an exciting time for the gods.
Dr Rad 14:55
All right, Dr G, so here we are. I think it's time to actually dive in to 396. In the grand tradition of our podcast, please tell me who were the magistrates in this most momentous of years.
Dr G 15:46
Oh, this year is full of names. My God, there are so many. First of all, we've got military tribunes with consular power. Naturally, there's six of them. Chaotic times, Siege of Veii times. This is now pretty standard for them to have so many in the field. First of all, we've gotLucius Titinius Pansa Saccus, previously military tribune with consular power in 400 BCE.
Dr Rad 16:17
Not an accident. I'm going to come back to that.
Dr G 16:22
Look, I put it to you that we've got quite the cohort of plebeians, and this guy is the first of many. He is accompanied by Publius Licinius Calvus Esquilinus, also military tribune with consular power in 400.
Dr Rad 16:42
The first plebeian one apparently.
Dr G 16:46
Apparently, except he serves with a whole bunch of others. Apparently,
Dr Rad 16:51
Shhh, your reality is ruining it.
Dr G 16:54
I'm sorry that Livy got something wrong. I really am.
I think we might have to, though. Okay, well, you can keep that position for now. We also have Publius Maelius Capitolinus, previously military tribune with consular power in 400 also a plebeian. That's three for three.
Dr Rad 17:21
Seeing a pattern here, seeing a pattern here,
Dr G 17:24
Quintus Maelius Vulso Capitolinus, now unfortunately, big brackets, patrician, then we have –
Dr Rad 17:33
There's bound to be at least one.
Dr G 17:35
You know, they can't help themselves, can they?
Dr Rad 17:36
Yeah.
Dr G 17:37
Gnaeus Genucius Augurinus, previously, military tribune with consular power in 399. Also notably a plebeian. And finally, last, but definitely not least, Lucius Atilius Priscus, also previously military tribune with consular power in 399. Also plebeian. So that's five of the six plebeians.
Dr Rad 18:06
But there are so many question marks we're going to get into this. But there are a lot of question marks about these names and who these guys are.
Dr G 18:12
And also like, does it matter if it's also the year where you get a dictator?
Dr Rad 18:17
Yes, let's roll him out. Dr G, who is our dictator for this year?
Dr G 18:23
Hold your breath, everybody. This is going to come as a massive surprise. Our dictator this year is a guy called Marcus Furius Camillus. Wow.
Dr Rad 18:32
The crowd goes wild! Now you know what? Our listeners might not be super excited to hear his name. Dr G, because whilst he's been around for a little while now, he has always kind of just been there, you know.
Dr G 18:47
Just hanging about, not, not hugely distinguishing himself, although he's done some things previously, military tribune with consular power in 401, and 398, so he's had a couple of rounds in The top gig, but now he's being given like a really special job dictator. And boy, we'll see how that goes for him. And he is joined by the master of the horse. So what happens when a dictator gets selected? The Senate usually decides that things have gotten out of hand in really particular ways. It might be a religious way. It might be a military way. There is a problem that needs to be solved. They require a dictator, somebody to take up all of the reins of power for a really finite period of time to solve this particular issue, whatever it is. And when that person is decided upon, and they accept the position and be like, Sure, I'll be dictator. Usually, the first thing that they do is select an offsider to be like their kind of like other person to be in charge of stuff. Now, the role of the master of the horse is something that I think we should definitely devote an episode to in the future, because there's some complexity there. But for now, it's sounds like a guy with a horse, very exciting. And this year we have Publius Cornelius Maguginensis.
Dr Rad 20:11
A mouthful.
Dr G 20:13
So he says. Previously, military tribune with consular power in 397. So everybody in these sort of top gigs has been around traps recently, but we also have some intereges. Oh, so finally, we're on to the last magistrates of this year.
Dr Rad 20:34
Are you sick of all this Latin?
Dr G 20:36
It's a lot, it's a lot, and they're all names. And you think to yourself, and after a while, you're like,Lucius this Marcus that? And it's like, look, we put them in here because we know the names. And apparently there's lists of these names, and you'll be surprised how little they're referred to in any of the actual source material. So it is kind of incredible, but we have three interreges which means that we've got a situation where at some point the cohort of magistrates that we have in power have to come out of power. And it seems to be not just related to the dictatorship, it may be related to other things as well. And there needs to be a new set of people decided upon. So you've got to have some interim people to look after that situation. And the interreges are those people. And we have Lucius Valerius, possibly Potitus brackets. We also have Quintus Servilius Fidenas, and also stepping into a second role for the year, Marcus Furius Camillus.
Dr Rad 21:38
Hmm.
Dr G 21:39
Hmm. What could it all mean?
Dr Rad 21:41
Curioser and curioser. Well, Dr G, I think I can clear up some of your questions around these magistrates. Oh, please allow me to use Livy,
Dr G 21:52
Please. I mean, that's the one source I haven't read.
Dr Rad 21:54
All right. So in order to understand why we have so many magistrates, and some of the details about these magistrates, we do need to backtrack a little bit to what I told you at the end of last episode, so you might remember that. Well, I'm going to call him, I guess, can I call him Calvus? Publius Licinius?
Dr G 22:15
You could. You know this, this very moderate plebeian who's completely okay for the patricians because he's such a mediocre individual.
Dr Rad 22:26
Exactly, yes, I feel like Calvus is a name that kind of distinguishes him. So that guy, the guy that was the first official military tribune with consular power in 400 BCE, the end of last episode, when they were organizing the elections for the next year. He was brought in even though he wasn't running for the position, because the Romans looked around and thought, You know what? We need someone moderate right now, things are a little tense in the city, between patricians and plebeians. This whole situation with they there's been that whole lake issue. We need someone moderate who's going to calm everything down. You know what? We'll bring him back, and we'll get the band back together, military tribunes with consular power, 400 BC, it's your time to rock and roll.
Dr G 23:18
It's retro.
Dr Rad 23:19
Only one slight problem with that, Dr, G, and you already highlighted it in your list of magistrates.
Dr G 23:25
And what is that problem?
Dr Rad 23:27
That they're not all from 400 BCE.
Well, this is the issue. Livy tells us that this is what happened that he was brought in. And they were like, yep, we'll bring back his whole little gang, because that worked really well. Let's go with a tried and true recipe here. But the names do not match. Some of them do, sure, but not all of them.
Dr G 23:55
These people
Dr Rad 23:56
Problem number one. Now the interreges come into the story because, of course, they were holding power because, you might recall, there was an issue with the previous set of military tribunes with consular power, so they were holding power until the next elections were organized, and that's why we have some interreges listed.
Dr G 24:16
Oh, okay, so they're actually related to whatever happened in 397
Dr Rad 24:21
Yes, this is probably something we should probably mention quickly. The Roman year doesn't function in the same way that our current calendar year works, where we say we begin in January and end in December. Technically speaking, Dr G and I have been misleading you somewhat. Listen in that there's always kind of two of our years that make up a Roman year because they end at a different time. So it might be September, for example, that the Roman year ends in terms of when new magistrates are coming in. And the Romans, of course, date their years by the magistrates. They don't know who Jesus is; they don't care at this moment in time, and so they just don't have the same system that we have. So yes, basically, as far as we can tell, there was an issue where the previous group of military tribunes with consular power, there was some problem with the way that they were inaugurated. I'm going to say
Dr G 25:19
yep
Dr Rad 25:20
And as a result, they had to have some interreges, and they had to organize a new set coming through. And this is where we had Calvus being mentioned as being someone who would be good for the job. So look, that is where we are at.
Dr G 25:33
Safe pair of hands. Get him in there.
Dr Rad 25:36
Exactly. Now, Calvus himself is pretty chuffed, as you can imagine, to have been brought up as the leader of this dream team. We are Dream Girls. Yeah, we'll make you happy. Yeah, yeah. However, there's a problem, there's a problem, yeah, there is a problem, yeah, in spite of the exhilarating soundtrack to this year, Calvus is getting on in years. You might remember when we first talked about him as military tribune with consular power in 400 we talked about the fact that he'd apparently served in the Senate for like yonks, and we were shocked that he'd just been in the Senate. This little plebeian guy never heard of-
Dr G 26:19
Just hanging out there-
Dr Rad 26:19
Yeah, he is the one. So he seems to be an elderly man by this point in time, okay? And he doesn't feel like he's actually physically up to the job. He actually details all the different ways that he's not up for the job. He's got issues with his sight, his hearing is worse. I sympathize. And just generally, physically, he's just about for he even says his memory is bad. I mean, I think we're dealing with Joe Biden here.
Dr G 26:52
It's a tough time. Yeah, look, look, put that guy in charge. You know, the one with the white hairover there. It'll be great.
Dr Rad 27:00
Well, it would make sense as a senator, given where we think that word comes from, something to do with old men. However, he has a plan, because he doesn't want to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. And after all, he knows why he's being singled out, and he doesn't want to ruin that for Rome, given that everyone seems to be on board. So he suggests, Hey, did you know I have a kid, Calvus 2.0 I like to call him the new and improved model. He has exactly the same values as me because I raised him. And as we all know, in ancient Rome, anybody has children, their children turn out to be exactly the same as them. That's why all their families have exactly the same characteristics. It doesn't even matter if you're talking about the grandfather or the son, they'll basically be the same person.
Dr G 27:54
Yes, so this is a way in which Roman families work very differently from the way we think of modern families. So the politics of the ancient Roman family seems to be really grounded in upholding familial tradition. So you gotta toe the line. If you don't, you're just not gonna progress with your career in any particular way, like your family won't put you forward for things. We start to see this really particularly later on in the Republic. But I suppose what Livy might be suggesting here is that there's some retrojection of those sort of ideas. Those ideas come from somewhere, and the natural sort of conservatism of the Roman family structure is on full display here.
Dr Rad 28:42
It is. And what is even more shocking than the fact that this guy was chosen for this highly contested office without putting himself forward and seemingly being on his last legs, everyone agrees that, yeah, we'll just take the sun. That's fine. We'll take the discount model we want. We want him. We want a bit of that interesting. Okay, yes, now this is where I do have to highlight a possible problem with Livy's source material, and it pains me to say it, Dr G.
Dr G 29:14
Well, I'm glad you're confessing to it, because it sounds like a problem to me as well, and I was going to mention as such. So please. What's the problem here?
Dr Rad 29:25
I shall atone for him. Shame. So Livy is drawing on, obviously, a bunch of earlier sources, which we unfortunately don't often have, or if we do have any of them, it's very fragmentary, hard to put together. We do know, though, that one of his sources that he switches around between is from a family chronicler called Licinus Macer or Macer, depending on how you like your C's. Now the name says it all, Dr G, these two guys that we're talking about, if I give them their full name, they are, of course, the Publius Licinius Calvus Esquilinus – that's the dad Publius Licinius Calvus Esquilinus – Licinius, it's right there. It seems like maybe one of Livy's sources might have been trying to add a little bit of pixie dust to his family history, perhaps.
Dr G 30:19
Ah yes. So Licnius Macer is obviously part of the broader Licinius gens, and there's a real incentive in terms of Roman family politics, to build the gens history up in various ways. So we are caught in a pretty tricky position, because we know that there is incentive in our source material to put together a certain perspective for us.
Dr Rad 30:48
absolutely it is the curated Instagram of ancient Rome, these family histories which have snuck into our source material.
Dr G 30:57
Well
Dr Rad 30:57
Dodgy.
Dr G 30:58
What else did Livy have to work with? I mean, this is the real trouble.
Dr Rad 31:01
Well, yes. I mean, if we look at the Fasti and we look at other sources, they all list the father as the magistrate for this particular year. So it's interesting that we do have this embellishment where the Romans are like, yeah, cool, just flip your son in, yeah, you're basically the same person because you're related, right?
Dr G 31:20
Yes. So the Fasti Capitolini was produced quite a bit later, as far as we assume. But yes, they do mention the father holding the position for the second time.
Dr Rad 31:32
Yes
Dr G 31:32
Not the son, which would be distinguished with a different sort of ligature.
Dr Rad 31:38
Yeah. So obviously, there are huge issues with the lists of names for this year, given that Livy's telling us, oh yeah, they got all the guys from 400 and then the father was like, No, take my son. And everyone was like, yeah, cool, sure. And none of this seems to be reflected in the records of names that we have. The names do not match up with the narrative that Livy is giving us. Now it is possible that they're trying to perhaps imitate another story from Greece, with this whole father son dynamic, that of Periander, who was the second tyrant of Corinth and ruled from around 627, to around 587 BCE, there was a whole shindig with him possibly stepping aside for a son, didn't really work out that well, but it might be that they're trying to draw on other examples here. We don't know what's going on, but this is what academics have noticed in terms of the way that the source material is developing and the kind of narrative that might be being laid over the bare bones that they would have had to work with.
Dr G 32:45
Look to me, all of this is really fascinating, because, as you know, I don't have a lot of Dionysus, of Halicarnassus right now, who was-
Dr Rad 32:54
What? This is brand new information.
Dr G 32:58
I've got a little bit, but I don't have him in the fulsome way that I would really like to be able to offer a counter narrative to what Livy is doing. But because this year is so significant, I actually have heaps of sources for this year. But you know what? None of them care about anything to do with these military tribunes, fathers, sons or otherwise, it is not on their radar. It is not the centerpiece for this year at all. And so I'm really grateful that Livy is providing a little bit of embellishment and detail, because this is making up for a more fulsome story, which I had no idea existed because I didn't have to read Livy in order to prepare for this episode.
Dr Rad 33:39
This is why you have to read all the primary source material, children.
Dr G 33:44
Let this be a lesson to you all. Now, as a good ancient historian, I would if I was studying this period for real, not within the context of this podcast, which is also studying for it, for real in another way,
Dr Rad 33:56
I was going to say – what? This isn't for real? Am I in The Matrix?
Dr G 34:00
But let's say, If I was writing an academic paper, obviously I would have also read Livy
Dr Rad 34:04
Sure
Dr G 34:04
But because that's not what we're doing here, because we're reading different
Dr Rad 34:08
We have a schtick
Dr G 34:09
Yeah, we're reading different primary source material. That's part of the process with this. So it creates these really interesting gaps for me at times, and this is definitely one of them, like I had all of this list of names that I got from Broughton. Love Broughton always thankful for the work that Broughton has done here, compiling these massive lists of magistrates for every year throughout all of the Republic. And I had this list, and then I had the source material. And look, I have excerpts from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Valerius Maximus Pliny the Elder, Appian, Florus, Aulus Gellius, Eutropius, the anonymous but pseudo Aurelius Victor, Augustine, Orosius, and Zonaras. I have. All of these sources. And you know what? None of them mention this controversy with father and son as military tribunes with consular power.
Dr Rad 35:07
Well, quite frankly, you just look lazy, now.
Dr G 35:12
What are they not telling me?
Dr Rad 35:13
I do appreciate all that different source material, because I have read… Livy.
Dr G 35:18
The suppression of information here is profound.
Dr Rad 35:24
Now let's get on to some action, because I think this is what your sources want us to get to. So Titus and Genucius some of our military tribunes with consular power, they are sent to deal with the allies of Veii. Now I know I just said that the Etruscans were later-dazing the people of They, however, not all Etruscans turned their backs on the people of Veii. We do have people from nearby cities, the Faliscans and the Capenantes, who decided that, oh, I guess if Veii falls,that means that we're probably next on Rome's plans of expansion. So we probably should help them out. So they do have some allies from up north, Titanius and Genucius are very keen to wipe the floor with these guys. However, their enthusiasm might have led them astray, Dr G.
Dr G 36:19
Oh, no, what have they done?
Dr Rad 36:21
They didn't spend quite enough time planning everything out, and they decide that they're going to launch straight into an ambush without following all the possibilities through. Now what ends up happening is that Genucius dies fighting bravely at the front of this battle. In fact, he dies in front of the standards, Dr. G.
Dr G 36:48
Oh, that's terrible news. Okay, of all of the places to die, that is from a sort of divine perspective, the worst.
Dr Rad 36:58
However, it is kind of admirable in the sense of it shows his bravery. So even though the Romans are going to be really irritated by the fact that they just launch in without much forethought, they forgive him because he's dead.
Dr G 37:15
Ah, okay, because he led from the front, so presumably his wounds are also at the front.
Dr Rad 37:22
Hell yes, they are. Actually, it doesn't specifically say, but I would presume so definitely, the point is being made here that he was brave and he was trying to do the right thing, even though completely missed that.
Dr G 37:34
And the kind of commander that is willing to put themselves at risk in the front line is you could view this as being, like, quite silly, because obviously the army needs its commander, and if you lose the commander, the army will probably fall apart, because they won't know what to do anymore. Because you need somebody strategic maybe. But from a Roman perspective, this is a huge courage as well. Like, this is the sort of thing where it's like, you can really rally the troops if you lead from the front and get them into it, if they weren't really sure about what was going on and be like, run in.
Dr Rad 37:34
Yeah, just try not to die in the process.
Dr G 38:08
Yeah.
Dr Rad 38:08
That tends to be a downer.
Dr G 38:09
Don't do a Genucius, because it's risky if you die.
Dr Rad 38:15
And there are some questions again, about the nature of this death, because there is another conucius from 362 BCE, who dies in a suspiciously similar fashion, Dr G.
Dr G 38:28
So, looking forward, in another sort of 40 years, we're going to have a similar moment. Okay.
Dr Rad 38:35
We might, we might.
Dr G 38:37
I sense problems with the chronology.
Dr Rad 38:40
Yes. Now Titinius, of course, is still alive, but the men all around him are thrown into chaos. Things are unraveling fairly quickly in this scenario, not ideal, so Titinius decides to gather all the men around, and he says, You know what? I feel like it's too much of a risk to fight our enemy on level ground. So I would imagine like some sort of open plain where everyone can see everybody. It's open season.
Dr G 39:10
There's nowhere to hide.
Dr Rad 39:11
It's wabbit season. Yeah, so things are not going particularly well, and the Romans do not feel great about this, and Titinius is going to cop all of the flat, because he is the one that's left alive after this defeat. Very disgraceful. The Romans back in the city as well are panicking, as we see so often, because rumor of what is going down has reached them, which, again, sort of shows you just how close these things must be happening. Even though they sound very grand, they're obviously not that far away, in that rumour can get back to the city pretty quickly in time enough for people to start tearing out their hair.
Dr G 39:55
All right. So, yeah, Rome's not in a great way. They're not feeling the vibe. They're having a bit of a panic. Okay, goodo.
Dr Rad 40:00
Now even worse, perhaps, there is, of course, the military encampment before they where the Romans are besieging the city. They also hear that there's been a pretty catastrophic defeat, and one of the Roman magistrates has been killed again. Not a morale booster. No, not what you want to hear in 396 BCE,
Dr G 40:03
No, not after you've been at this siege for so long.
Dr Rad 40:05
No. So they've heard that the Capenantes and Faliscans have won, killed the commanders and slaughtered the whole army, and that the remnants of their enemies are now coming for them, backed by all the men of Etruria.
Dr G 40:45
Oh, okay, well, that's a real turnaround for the books, because last I heard, Etruria was not coming.
Dr Rad 40:52
Look, it's another good lesson for our listeners, Dr G, in that rumors can get out of hand really quickly. Yeah. So in Rome, they've heard that all of the same things. So they've heard all of that, plus they've heard that the encampment before they of their fellow Romans is also being assaulted, and that, you know, there are going to be more people sent from their enemy towards the city itself. Okay, so their camp is under siege. They're going to be attacked next and again, not far away. So time is a ticking.
Dr G 41:28
It seems like the panic is really setting in, and it's becoming a bit contagious, isn't it? And everybody's story is worse than the last story, and people are believing everything that they hear regardless.
Dr Rad 41:40
It does seem that so we have this scene in Livy where the Roman citizens are racing to the walls. The women of Rome are running to the temples to pray for the protection from the gods, and they want instead for the gods to back Rome. Trash Veii. What is with this? What is with this turning of tables? Not appreciated gods of Rome. Thank you very much.
Dr G 42:03
We started this violence. We need to win to end it, not lose.
Dr Rad 42:08
Exactly. And they're like, look, we'll make sure that all the sacred rites are fully renewed. We'll make sure that all the signs are dealt with. We'll deal with all the stuff you want us to deal with. Just please, please, make sure our city stays strong and our enemies are defeated.
Dr G 42:29
Okay, that's, it's a big call.
Dr Rad 42:30
Now if this is ringing any bells it should. Once again, we have a bit of Homeric additions being inserted here. This is potentially meant to remind readers of what happened when Hector went out to battle. So it's meant to be drawing on the Iliad basically.
Dr G 42:53
Interesting.
Dr Rad 42:54
Yeah. So panic in the city, women in temples. You know? Prayer happening? People at the walls.
Dr G 43:02
Yeah, everything's getting to its sort of climactic moment, isn't it?
Dr Rad 43:08
It really is, yes. So this is perhaps the moment to pause and just talk a little bit about what Livy's actually drawing on here. So we've already talked about the priestly records, the family chroniclers, maybe drawing on later incidents in Roman history to make sense of the bare bones, and not Livy directly, perhaps also obviously his sources, the earlier analysts and that sort of thing. But we may also even have other sources, like Ennius, who I know you've spoken about a little bit before.
Dr G 43:40
Yes, so Ennius writes an epic of Rome's foundation and early history, and his text becomes the preeminent school text for many centuries. So it's only really displaced by Virgil's Aeneid, and that takes a while. So there's a good couple of 100 years where Ennius is the go to text, to learn, to study poetry, but also to learn about Rome's history. So it would make sense for Livy to be drawing upon it, for sure.
Dr Rad 44:19
Yeah, and this is exactly it we so we've got Licinius Macer. He's probably also drawing on someone called Valerius Antius, again, someone we don't have much of, but we know was a major source of Livy. But he is also drawing on these epic traditions, which would come from ennius, would come from Homer. And this passage, apparently was also then later copied by other Greco-Roman writers because they found it, you know, very inspirational scene. I think it would be like them seeing a really intense part of a movie, you know, a scene that really resonates with them and gives them a strong visual. And so they go back to it as a reference point. And they're doing their own version of something later on. So that particular passage is actually meant to be kind of iconic, I suppose.
Dr G 45:08
Mmm0mmm. Ah interesting. So, yeah, we're getting more into like, what is history and is it just literature in another form.
Dr Rad 45:19
Indeed, indeed. Now, of course, the Romans need to make sure that their relationship is square with the gods if they want to see any success against Veii, and want to make sure they escape this terrible fate which seems to await them right now, enemies of the gate, although they're not really in this rumored so water obviously had to be drawn off the Alban lake. And we know that potentially, this actually did happen, because we've got those remnants that we've talked about before, of, you know, the tunneling and that sort of thing. We don't know exactly when that happened. Does it line up with these accounts? But there's some sort of record there which is interesting, giving some archeological backing to our literary accounts. There does seem to have also been some issues with games, or some sort of festival that the Romans were meant to have held at this point in time, which would be again, connected with the gods. It sounds like, Oh, what a great moment to kick up your feet and have a great time, but that's not, obviously what it's about. And you would know more about this than I would with its religious connections, things like games and festivals.
Dr G 46:24
Well, sure, if it had cropped up in any of my sources, I would be able to tell you something about it. I mean in general terms, I assume this is going to be a reference and correct me if I'm wrong to one of the sort of Pan Latin get togethers, where people of a Latin background gather in certain locations to do some shared ritual stuff. So you have to send people out of the city, which obviously, in this at this point in time, sounds like it would be quite dangerous. Maybe it's not the time to have a festival where you send some delegates.
Dr Rad 47:01
The Festivus for the rest of us.
Dr G 47:02
Yeah, look, everybody's running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Is now the time other people would definitely argue, within the context of the city, that it is more important than ever to send a delegation to something that might be a collective kind of festival, precisely because everything seems to be in a very delicate balance, not in favor of Rome.
Dr Rad 47:28
Yes, and this is exactly why they're like, Oh, crap. We really should have dealt with that water situation on the Alban lake before all of this went down. And they talk about games and a Latin festival. So I think you're 100% on the money. Part of the issue, apparently, is that, from later sources, standpoints, they tend to use terms like Ludi and Feriae. I don't know how to say that actually properly. And that, now that I read, now that I'm saying it out loud, I've just been reading it all this time, they are both things that involve people having holidays in ancient Rome, but they're not necessarily, obviously, exactly the same thing that happened at exactly the same time. When we talk about Ludi or games later on, we are talking more about public games. You know, by the time we get into the period that's better documented. But that's not necessarily what's happening at this moment in time. We don't necessarily see games being attached to festivals this early, from my understanding, so there might be a bit of confusion there, but certainly there's some sort of, you know, festival connected with the gods that the Romans realized. Well, we better hold them again, because the gods are clearly not on our side right now, not with enemies at the gate. No, thank you. And so they're dealing with basically everything they possibly can. They're trying to put out all the fires to make sure that they are protected.
Dr G 48:53
Yep, fair enough. Send the delegation. Do the games? Do the festivals? Go to the sweet locations and do some sacrifices.
Dr Rad 49:01
Yes, and now that this is all taken care of, that the Romans think very smugly to themselves, it is time for Veii to die. Mwahahahahaha.
Dr G 49:14
Oooo boy. Okay? Well, in that case, I think as as horrifying as it's going to sound, I think this might be the moment to pause and to wrap up this episode, because I leave it on this cliffhanger, because things are about to happen and wow, what a build up.
Dr Rad 49:35
Absolutely. I mean, it shows that 396 didn't necessarily start off that well for the Romanshowever, trust us, listeners, we're building to a climax.
Dr G 49:49
Ooh, boy
Dr Rad 49:50
yeah, fun is us here with us. All right. Dr, G, well, that means it is time for the Partial Pick.
Dr G 49:58
(bird noises)
Dr Rad 50:01
Tell us how the Partial Pick works, Dr G.
Dr G 50:03
Well, we are raiding Rome against its own sort of measures of success. Now, I don't, I don't anticipate Rome's gonna do great right now, but let's give it a whirl and see. So we've got five categories, and within each category there are 10 Golden Eagles up for grabs. So the golden eagles are like the fancy things that might sit on top of your standard and
Dr Rad 50:34
Before you die in front of it.
Dr G 50:35
Before you die in front of it, yeah, or before you lose it, you know, all of those kinds of positive things. So the first category is military clout.
Dr Rad 50:45
Right. Well, so far in 396 the Romans have had a disastrous defeat.
Dr G 50:51
Yeah, they've gone for what an unplanned ambush that has led to the death of one of the military tribunes with consular power, and then the other one copping all of the blame for whatever happened next, which doesn't seem great.
Dr Rad 51:08
And the Romans themselves don't even seem to really know what is going on, because there's such chaos amongst his forces. So, yeah, not looking good.
Dr G 51:17
Look, I feel like we can't give them much of a score. It's probably I, I'd be inclined to maybe give them a one for the fact that they're still holding out at the siege area of Veii
Dr Rad 51:29
sure, yeah, well that's the thing. They haven't actually lost any territory or anything. They just were trying to take care of the allies of Veii It did not work.
Dr G 51:40
Yeah, yeah, they've suffered some military defeats, but we haven't heard anything particularly negative about what has happened outside the gates of Veii. I mean, there's been some sort of panic stations in Rome, but it sounds like they're operating on rumor rather than fact. So I'm willing to give Rome one.
Dr Rad 51:58
Fair enough, that is one.
Dr G 52:00
One point. So far so good. Our second category is diplomacy.
Dr Rad 52:08
I feel like there is not much diplomacy going on, given that they're trying to ambush their enemies. It sounds like there is no diplomacy going on. That's a zero from me.
Dr G 52:20
All right? Expansion.
Dr Rad 52:23
No, not yet. Not yet. We're tiptoeing closer, ever closer.
Dr G 52:31
Foreshadowing. Okay, so that's a zero. Virtus?
Dr Rad 52:37
Okay, now, as disastrous as this whole plan was, I feel like maybe is dying at the front of his forces is an example of virtus, and that's why the Romans are like, Well, you're a bit of an idiot, but we love you, buddy.
Dr G 52:56
It's sad and tragic, but thanks for doing it the right way.
Dr Rad 53:01
Exactly if you're gonna go out, glad you went out in style.
Dr G 53:04
Yeah. So this is where, like Roman value systems are really quite different from anything that we would be accustomed to. Because when I hear about somebody leading from the front, I think very foolish, but I think the Romans think, Wow. What a man.
Dr Rad 53:23
They do. They hear that Salt'n'Pepa, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr G 53:29
And look, if he'd come back alive, that would have been chef's kiss from a Roman perspective.
Dr Rad 53:36
Yes, exactly, leading from the front. Glorious win.
Dr G 53:41
Yeah.
Dr Rad 53:41
All would have been good.
Dr G 53:42
You can't beat anything like that. He would have been a star player for years to come as a result of that. It's just a real tragedy that he went and died instead.
Dr Rad 53:51
Yep, and left his teammate out there, going, what am I going to do now?
Dr G 53:57
Yeah, like guys, I thought we were a team, but you've left me all by myself.
Dr Rad 54:06
Poor Titinius.
Dr G 54:08
Indeed. So the last category is the citizen score. Was this a good time to be a citizen of Rome?
Dr Rad 54:17
Sounds pretty panicky. Sounds pretty sweaty.
Dr G 54:19
It sounds like everybody's scared and rushing to the temples, doing some prayers, rushing to the walls, being like is the enemy at the gate. Oh God!
Dr Rad 54:31
They're keeping eagle eyes out. They're definitely feeling paranoid and not unjustifiably, whilst we're laughing at the fact that this rumors got completely out of hand. You can understand why they would think that if the Romans have just had a catastrophic defeat, it's not out of the question that the remnants of the Faliscans and Capenantes will eventually make their way there. I mean, why wouldn't they, in some senses?
Dr G 54:57
Well, exactly. So there is a justifiable fear that the army that has just won over the Romans on the field will proceed to then March on Rome. And really, Romans sort of set themselves up for something like that, because if you've been besieging one of your neighbors for the last decade, maybe you've given your neighbors some ideas about how they could treat you.
Dr Rad 55:25
So look, it might be mythologized. Maybe the Romans were actually in the bath with a cup of tea and a scented candle burning, and they weren't panicked at all. But even if we strip away the Homeric elements, I think it would make sense for the Romans to be feeling the pinch right about now.
Dr G 55:43
Definitely. So, in this sense, and particularly when we also have to account for the facts that people who had died on the battlefield also very likely to have been Roman citizens of some kind, then this is not great, not great news at all.
Dr Rad 55:59
So is that a zero?
Dr G 56:00
I think so.
Dr Rad 56:02
Wow. We really built up this episode, and now the Romans are here with just one out of 50 Golden Eagle.
Dr G 56:07
We are not done with 396.
Dr Rad 56:10
No, I was gonna say, I feel like we should maybe add that one eagle to the other eagles that they may or may not win for themselves down the track.
Dr G 56:22
Ooo that is, that's a big call. I think we can argue about that one when we get there.
Dr Rad 56:26
All right, all right. I look forward to it, Dr G.
Dr G 56:30
Likewise. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Partial Historians. You can find our sources sound credits and transcript in our show notes. Over at partialhistorians.com – We offer a huge thank you to you, if you're one of our illustrious Patreon supporters, if you enjoy the show, we'd love your support in a way that works for you. Leaving a nice review really makes our day. We're on Ko-Fi for one or four ongoing donations or Patreon, of course. Our latest book, ‘Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire', is published through Ulysses Press. It is full of stories that the Romans probably don't want you to know about them. This book is packed with some of our favorite tales of the colorful history of ancient Rome. Treat yourself or an open minded friend to Rome's glories, embarrassments and most salacious claims with ‘Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire'.
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WARNING! This post and episode both contain spoilers!
In case you somehow missed it, the hotly anticipated sequel to Gladiator (2000) hit the cinemas in November 2024. Gladiator II follows the story of Lucius Verus, the child of Lucilla and the hero from the first film, Maximus. Nope, we did not know that was a thing either.
Poster for Gladiator II, Source: https://deadline.com
After being separated from his imperial family following the death of his uncle (the Emperor Commodus), the adult Lucius ends up in the arena. His owner is Macrinus, an actual historical figure who served as emperor briefly in the third century CE. The film follows Macrinus and Lucius as they navigate the complicated political world of Rome under the Emperors Caracalla and Geta. Will Lucius be able to rid Rome of corruption, once and for all? (Dramatic music)
Joining us today to discuss the film is the delightful Lindsay Steenberg.
Special Episode – Gladiator II with Dr Lindsay Steenberg
Dr Lindsay Steenberg is currently a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University where she co-ordinates the graduate programme in Popular Cinema. Her research interests are violence and gender in postmodern and postfeminist media culture. If you like true crime, you should definitely check out her back catalogue. Whilst Dr Steenberg has published widely and regularly presents at conferences, our particular point of connection is her interest in gladiators. She is the author Are you not entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2020.
We hope that you enjoy our conversation as we unpack:
Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Dr Lindsay Steenberg's book Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media.
We recommend it!
Dr Rad 0:00
Hello. You're about to listen to a special episode of the partial historians, which is all about gladiator two, a movie set in the reign of Caracalla and Geta
so
Dr G 0:12
so we are warning you in advance that this conversation will contain spoilers if you have not yet gone to the cinemapost haste, my friends get there soon and come back and listen. Or if you don't care about spoilers, and in fact, you thrive in an environment where you know all of the details before you see a thing, please continue listening and enjoying.
Dr Rad 0:35
And it pretty much turns out as we all expected. Dr G Maximus came back to life and married me in the future, just as I always wanted. Finally, a New Zealand man finds his Australian bride, that's right, and now on with the show you.
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.
Dr G 1:10
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,
Dr Rad 1:15
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr rad and
Dr G 1:25
I'm Dr G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories. Join
Dr Rad 1:36
us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Hello and welcome to another special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr rad,
Dr G 2:00
and I'm Dr G
Dr Rad 2:02
And we are super excited because we're going to be talking about another gladiator movie today. Dr G, just when you thought you couldn't get enough,
Dr G 2:10
I can't get enough. That's why I'm here, exactly. And
Dr Rad 2:15
we are super lucky to be joined by an expert, an international expert, Dr Lindsay Steenberg is currently a senior lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, where she coordinates the graduate program in popular cinema. Her research interests are violence and gender in post modern and post feminist media culture. If you like true crime, you should definitely check out her back catalog. Whilst Dr Steenberg has published widely and regularly presents at conferences, our particular point of connection is her interest in gladiators. She is the author of, are you not entertained? Mapping the gladiator across visual media, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. Being astute listeners, I am sure that you have all correctly guessed that she is here to discuss gladiator two with us, which was at time of recording, just released in cinemas. Welcome Dr Steenberg,
Lindsay Steenberg 3:15
thank you so much for having me and for giving me the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subject matters gladiator movies, you're
Dr Rad 3:23
in good company here. You know, it's one of the things I think that we do the most around here. So look, we are so keen to talk a little bit about gladiator two with you, and also the aspects that you have looked at in your work. So we thought we might start off with the part that people probably remember most vividly when they see a gladiator film, particularly a Ridley Scott gladiator film, and that is, of course, the arena sequences. So please tell us what is often the function of the arena in Gladiator films.
Lindsay Steenberg 3:54
Okay, again, favorite subject matter within my favorite subject, yeah. So I've spent more time than really any human should, thinking about arena fights. And I can say that when it comes to the almost the genre of gladiator movies, they're the most important part. You can't have a gladiator movie if there's not any gladiating So I have spent quite a bit of time over quite a few different films, looking at the kinds of conventions, the way that the arena works. Why we keep going back there again and again? So in terms of what the function is really, it kind of defies the logic of a lot of action movies, which is, it isn't just story or spectacle, it's both at once. So you get them in a handy little place. The Arena fights almost a movie within a movie, it has a beginning, it has a middle, it has an end. You enter the amphitheater. You have some looking around to see what's there, some spectacle over architecture and bodies. You get the quality violence in the middle. And then you sort of exit the amphitheater, and that's the end of your of your. Little mini film within a film, they often are great places where you come to understand how power works in the film itself. It's a nice little structure. I mean, if you think about the way an amphitheater is designed in that in that oval kind of shape, it means everybody can see everybody else. So the kind of layers of the way that the looking works. It's like we in the cinema are looking at the amphitheater. The people who are in the audience are looking and being looked at. You've got the sort of authority figure sitting there watching, and we're watching them. Then you've got the people down on the sands doing their thing. So it really it becomes a way to further the plot, to show who's good, who's bad, who's skilled, who's dead. It also sort of provides an opportunity to raise the stakes of the plot. So you've got sort of Concerned Women are often there in the audience, rarely on the sands, and they can kind of look and look worried, or look very desiringly at the gladiators on the sands as well. That's a bit of a spectacle, in that sense, as well. And then the Gladiator, of course, is looking at the audience as well. And that's why you get are you not entertained? He's judging us for watching him. So it kind of does all of that at once, very economical kind of spectacle,
Dr G 6:10
a bit like an ancient panopticon where viewing is happening in all directions.
Lindsay Steenberg 6:15
It absolutely is. And that and the sort of really seamless functioning of power works. You know, you don't have to work for it. The shape almost guarantees that. And you know, the movies love that. They love that shape. You can do some amazing things just with a nice little pan across the audience with a nice aerial establishing shot to see the shape of the amphitheater, so you can see, see deliberately, the way that power works in a very spatial sense. I
Dr Rad 6:39
must admit, I do love a good camera pan around the arena. It's
Lindsay Steenberg 6:45
got to be done. It's it's hard to tell who that gaze belongs to when you do the full kind of almost 360 probably to the gladiators on the sand. But it just get lets you see questions what the spectacle is. Maybe it's the audience. Because if you've seen, if you've seen the stars show Spartacus, the crowds and theaters are as much they're frequently naked. One wonders why? Well, I guess one does,
Dr Rad 7:10
yeah, they kind of
Lindsay Steenberg 7:12
look around and they're like, oh yes, look at the audience. So, you know, you get to do everything with that 360 pan.
Dr G 7:17
I think this sets things up really nicely, because you you've described it as this sort of miniature film within a film. And I do love that that kind of MIS on a beam aspect of it, and that leads us really nicely into thinking about what some of the conventions might be for these arena sequences. What are audiences expecting, and where have those expectations come from in cinematic history?
Lindsay Steenberg 7:39
Oh, I've got stuff on this. Let me tell you, it is a kind of mise en a beam. And one scholar describes it as a mise en spectacle. So, you know, a spectacle within the spectacle of the film. So the kinds of conventions that you get, it's really interesting. As somebody who studies film, I hate saying that, like, oh, it's universal. It's always the same. Because films, you know, reveal a lot about the time and place they were made and the time and place they're watched. But a gladiator fight is remarkably consistent. So the conventions are really, really sticky. We really like them. We're not giving them up as to where they came from. It's a little bit hard, you know, there's a there's a myth that may have basis in fact that when Ridley Scott was going to make the original gladiator film. Someone showed him a picture of the painting pelica verso, which has a gladiator waiting to kind of decide if he for the Emperor, decide if he's going to die. And it's, you know, so this neoclassical, sumptuous painting, and someone held it up and said, I want to make this painting into a movie. And that was how they kind of worked. So like in the Colosseum with those conventions. So the way the sort of typical, the typical arena fight goes is that you always want to have the pre fight sequence down in the backstage area, bonus points if it's in that nice little basement beneath the trap doors, kind of area that's very exciting. It always it often sounds really similar, like there's like whisperings of gladiators in the corner, this kind of metallic clangings, and then you have that beautiful from the dark tunnel into the amphitheater sequence. It's often sort of backlit, so you can see the outline, the silhouette. And then all of a sudden, you get the spectacle and that pan of of the arena and who's watching and who's there, the way that I sort of tend to shorthand describe what are the conventions of a gladiator fight. Are from the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. So Tina Turner's there, Mel Gibson's there,
Dr Rad 9:29
two men into. One man leaves, two men enter, one man leaves. You know, how
Lindsay Steenberg 9:33
do you do a gladiator fight? That's it. That's what you do. It's just two men enter. That's the scenario. That's the setup. But within that, of course, there's nuance, there's always a moment where the camera is going to spend a little extra time looking at the gladiator who wants you to have time to enjoy that he is part of the spectacle. You know, you're going to have a moment where, if the gladiator fight is between more than just one versus one, you're going to have a moment where the men bond, you know, where Maximus is like, you know, if any of you. Been in the army. Stick with me the same in the second film, like, Okay, guys, we're going to do this together. So you get the bonding, the Brotherhood of the gladiators. You sort of do that. You get that moment of the salute, which I know historians, it makes them a bit itchy, because it never happens, but Hollywood says it did, and apparently we love that. We want the gladiatorial salute. I noticed that in the second gladiator film, they don't really do that. I think they're sidestepping. They're trying not to get them themselves into some historical trouble. But the we who about are about to die, salute you is, is part of so many gladiator movies that we really like that, that part. So you normally get the salute before or the presentation of the gladiators before the fight. The fight is interesting because I am currently also writing a book now on fight scenes, so I spend a lot of time watching fighting. There's not as much fighting in an arena fight as one might expect. A lot of it is talking, planning, staring at rhinoceros, thinking about what you're going to do next, you know, giving a nice little speech to the crowd. How very dare you watch me staring at the Emperor? So, you know, the actual percentage of sword on shield action is quite small because it's, it's a narrative spectacles, whether as well as a violent spectacle. So you'll always get that talking the moment of sort of dialog in there. And then, of course, you always have the thumbs up or the thumbs down again. I think it's something that makes historians itchy, but it's something that Hollywood says, Yep, we want it. We want thumbs up, we want thumbs down. It's really easy and where it all comes from. I mean, I've probably, I've probably watched more gladiator movies than than most humans. Any human it comes from. The beginning of cinema, you get these kind of biblical or historical epics that were made in Italy. I mean, Hollywood loves a biblical epic. So you know, right down, even in the in the silent era, or the early era of cinema, that you still got these kind of conventions. You still would have somebody fighting animals inside of an amphitheater. You would still get the thumbs up, thumbs down. So it's, I'd say, that the gladiator fights on screen are as old as cinema, so they often involve Pompeii. That's that's a place we like to fight, and
Dr Rad 12:07
we like it when the volcano erupts during a gladiator we
Lindsay Steenberg 12:11
really do. If you can get gladiators fighting for their lives behind the volcano exploding, we get disaster movie. We get action movie. It's all
Dr Rad 12:17
happening exactly, and what are they going to do to finish the fight or run?
Lindsay Steenberg 12:21
I think you'll find both. They're running, fighting what's happening, and
Dr Rad 12:27
they should grab their romantic interest as they leave, because you
Lindsay Steenberg 12:31
don't want to leave her. I mean, you do. A lot of ladies have been killed in Gladiator movies. They Yeah, in movies that were we watch now. Sometimes she doesn't even get a name. Maximus, wife has no name. She she's the dead wife, the murdered wife who who prompts him to vengeance. That didn't always used to be the case in an old Italian pedlum film, you often had the ladies had names. But in the millennial sort of moment, it was all about the sort of the gladiators trauma rather than any kind of romance. It seems that, you know, after Maximus, there's no love story anymore. We've abandoned that which is one sadness and violence. We want
Dr Rad 13:14
those Wistful glances. You
Lindsay Steenberg 13:16
know, so much wistful yeah,
Dr Rad 13:18
now I am so curious to ask you now what you thought about the arena sequences in Gladiator two. Because I must admit, I really quite liked the first gladiator film, and I remember when it initially came out, there was a lot of talk, obviously, about the way that they'd staged those arena sequences, particularly the ones that involved the Tigers and that sort of thing. And there is a really curious thing that Dr G has often picked up on, which is the picking up of the arena sand and the rubbing between the hands that Maximus and now Lucius does spoilers, everybody. But yeah, so we'd love to know what you think. Yeah, we'd love to know what you think about the arena sequences in Gladiator too.
Lindsay Steenberg 14:01
I mean, I was, I was in it for the arena sequences. That's what I was there for. So glad that there were sharks involved. It was, I don't know too much, I think it was delightful. In terms of the arena sequences. I did do the kind of slightly nerdy film thing. I brought a notebook to the cinema hoping that no one would notice, because I wanted to count the arena sequences, because in the original film, there's five arena sequences, and they range from that first one in North Africa, where he fights in that wooden structure, and it's quite sort of homespun, I guess, the amphitheater, and then up into the logical Yeah, just a little a baby, baby amphitheater, and then he goes to the Colosseum, and part of the shock and awe of that fight is the structure, the architecture itself, like this is Rome. So I was quite curious to see how many there would be and where, and they echo each other so closely. We get the first fight sequence with Lucius and this terrifying CGI, apes, monkeys.
Dr G 14:58
Yeah, we. CGI baboons
Lindsay Steenberg 15:01
aliens. Like, why didn't they have fur? I find
Dr G 15:05
it was a shocking choice. It
Lindsay Steenberg 15:07
was such a strange choice. And I find monkeys very frightening. So I was like, Whoa, I would I'd rather they would be, yeah,
Dr Rad 15:12
they were frightening, but also so unreal, like, so unrealistic for the first fight, like you said, like the first film. It seemed right that we started off in that sort of humble, provincial setting. Yeah, with this one, it feels like we started too big and
Lindsay Steenberg 15:28
and then with a with a strange, almost science fiction element. So yes, what I think marked the Coliseum or the the amphitheater fights of the first film was the combination of this digital spectacle like the crowd generation software was state of the art at the turn of the millennium, and people were really impressed with it, but it was also that it was rooted on the sands in that authenticity of like face punching action. So this in that fight, I thought, okay, here we're going to get that lovely combination of digital augmentation, but authentic, like corporeal authenticity. And then I don't know, crazy bald monkeys came, so I was sort of like, okay, I'm willing to I'm it was okay. But then that they was, soon as they got back to Rome, I felt okay. We can recall, we can recover this the arena fights were pretty spectacular. I'd say the choreography of the violence within the amphitheaters was probably more nuanced. It speaks to a franchise based American cinema that demands very sophisticated fighting. It doesn't just want your John Wayne walk up, punch a guy in the face and leave no it doesn't want that thing that they used to do in sort of Hollywood swashbucklers, where you sort of gently slice somebody, they bend over and they die. They wanted to have that kind of brutal realism, and it did deliver. So I haven't, I haven't crunched the numbers on the density of the violence, but I suspect if it follows the pattern that all other Hollywood movies do, there will be more violence, Less talking, more fighting. And I would say that kind of I loved the naval battle, probably just for the spectacle rather than, I don't know where the boats were gonna go. It was a pretty tight space,
Dr G 17:08
a tight space with artificial islands. So where were
Lindsay Steenberg 17:13
they gonna go and the sale? Did they need a sale? They didn't need a sale. But, you know, they crashed together. And we did get some some fighting there. And it, I kind of it felt like the sequel to 300 which was sort of 300 but in water, this was sort of like Gladiator, but in water speed. So I felt like that's, that's what they were doing, like now it's not safe to get in the water. The sharks were great. I loved them, and so were the kind of battle they had the rhinoceros, which I have to admit, I I felt very emotionally attached to that Rhino, and the little sad noises it was making, oh, poor Rhino. And then Pedro Pascal brings his mustache into the amphitheater for some quality, sort of like Oedipal father surrogate son kind of moment. And it that that sort of like that was a good kind of way to wrap up a narrative moment, but make it violent so that you get plot moved lots of violence. And then, of course, it was a little disappointing that Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal didn't fight each other in the Colosseum, but I understand that they wanted to fight in water and beyond Rome, so I forgave them for that. I just kind of wish they'd brought it back into the Colosseum for the final point. Oh, that
Dr G 18:25
would have been a moment, yeah, because it did feel like the river sequence, if we can call that body of river, is maybe the smallest tributary of the Tiber I've ever seen. It
Lindsay Steenberg 18:37
was a modest, little, very
Dr G 18:39
modest, yeah. I'm like, Guys, are you sure this is where
Lindsay Steenberg 18:44
you want to have your final fight? Yeah, I
Dr Rad 18:46
think you put your finger on something there. I actually was not that enamored of Lucius as a character. I think that you did a good job in the action sequences. There was enough brawn there and everything. But I must admit, I found Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington much more compelling to watch. And I agree. I would have loved to have seen them come together rather than what we actually got, which is, of course, is Lucius and Macrinus coming together after his confrontation with his stepfather. I'm going to call
Lindsay Steenberg 19:22
him Pedro Pascal, is the surrogate dad we all didn't know we needed. Yeah, he's always picking up something like whether it's a little Yoda or, you know, video game character,
Dr G 19:34
finding the child in all of us along the way. I want to hone in for a little moment on the nomarchia sequence, because I think this is one of those things that as a lover of Roman history, even though I'd be I'm very willing to pick up on the detail. I was super excited that this was something that was included in this film, because I feel like it's highly unlikely that I'm going to get to see a sea battle. People in the Colosseum, again, in any film in my lifetime. And I'm interested in your assessment on how well Ridley Scott is bringing that idea to life, and how his conception of it sort of compares to some of the ancient evidence we have for this kind of thing happening. Well,
Lindsay Steenberg 20:18
I was very excited about it as well, and it has been the foremost question that I've been asked, you know, by colleagues, by students, just interested, friends, going there, they didn't flood the Colosseum, how that's so unrealistic, and they kind of see it as this way over the top spectacle. And when I say no, they they did. This was a thing that happened. There were naval battles. People watched them. People are a bit astonished. Now, I
Dr G 20:41
can't, I can't
Lindsay Steenberg 20:43
testify to any evidence that sharks were involved. I think they're sort of quite how did they transport the where was the tank? There's many, many of this would mean
Dr G 20:52
that the salt the water in the Colosseum would need to be salt water. It seems very unlikely. A
Lindsay Steenberg 20:58
little tricky, a little tricky, but the fact that it's within the realm of possibility, I think that is something that is I was like, Yes, I want to see this. I want, I want all that CGI has to offer to bring this spectacle to me. Because I have seen naval battles in other gladiator films. I think I can only recall one I looked at my list before speaking to you, there is a 19 I've wrote it down, 1962 film called The Last Days of Herculaneum, or the destruction of Herculaneum, depending on the translation and they have, they stage a naval battle. Our hero is going undercover as a gladiator for reasons we we don't need to know. There is a lot, it doesn't matter. But he goes and they have this, and it is a low budget Italian- French co-production. So this is the days of those cheap muscle men, Italian films, which are kind of joyful and really fun to watch. And he goes and there's a pond, and they stage a full sort of canoe battle with, you know, all the finest that you know, homespun low budget gladiator movies had to offer. So I found that was one of the most memorable gladiator moments that I recall out of all the Italian movies that I watched, Steve Reeves, the former Mr. Universe, Breaking Chains and stuff and throwing trees. I'm like, no, no, I was in it for that pond battle. That was great. It was slightly awkward as they all tried to fight on tiny boats, but that sort of shows you the what if you just got together, grabbed a camera and some rafts and tried on the pond, versus Ridley Scott's imagining of all the tools and the toys and the spectacles and the islands and the sharks and the arrows and the fire. So I, sort of part of me, wanted it to be even more over the top. We're here. We're on the water. Let's make it happen. I mean, we know that it's a possibility, so let's just roll with that. But I expect he had to sort of temper his his shock and awe vision to be able to still tell a story, because it's hard to make the human element stand out in that kind of a naval battle. Naval battles, I think, are often quite tricky in terms of staging a fight scene. You have to be on the two sides. If they're just shooting at each other from their opposite boats. That's a different kind of scenario. If you want the stakes to be personal, they have to go on each other's boats. They have to get close enough. So I think in that sense, it did work. People who I saw the film with suggested that it was very video game like that. That moment seemed a little bit like an Assassin's Creed video game. So I think there was something kind of like, this is the next level to it as well. But I think they, I think they did a good job. I enjoyed it. I like I said, I would have liked even more just, I throw it all, throw it all at a water fight scene. I
Dr Rad 23:45
have to ask, What? What is more? What is more? On top of islands and sharks and ramming, it could have
Lindsay Steenberg 23:49
been islands. It could have been sure. I mean, we could have brought some, some women right into the amphitheater, and perhaps an emperor could have fallen at least one of them. I mean, there were two. There's a spare. Let's get, let's get Caracalla.
Dr Rad 24:00
Let's have one of them drown. Yeah, maybe
Lindsay Steenberg 24:03
some
Dr G 24:04
nunchucks falls onto a boat. Yeah?
Lindsay Steenberg 24:08
An explosion or two, like, bring Michael Bay on to consult, something could explode.
Dr Rad 24:12
You're right. You know, we've also had the Colosseum actually start to collapse and the crowds start to fall into, you know,
Lindsay Steenberg 24:21
the crowd falling in later. So that was, yeah, more, maybe more sort of Errol Flynn style, like ropes, a little, little swinging in there as
Dr G 24:31
well. Yeah, missed opportunity that one. So, yeah, it was, it
Lindsay Steenberg 24:34
was enough. It was definitely excessive. But somebody could have ridden a shark,
Dr Rad 24:38
yeah, you say Right? Because that was the main thing that people have said to me, they're like sharks gamma.
Lindsay Steenberg 24:43
I mean, yes, like I said, I don't think there were sharks, but there could have been other that they have reported, other animals, look
Dr G 24:50
but the thing that I've talked to people about, and I firmly stand by, is that if the Romans could have put sharks in there, they would have
Lindsay Steenberg 24:59
that's a. Exactly what I said. I'm like, Look, if they could find a way to get a shark into an amphitheater, they would have been 100% behind it. They've been a yes,
Dr G 25:09
very keeping in the spirit of the Romans, could
the sharks fight each other? They would have found a way to make this happen. So
Dr Rad 25:15
really, the great tragedy of this is that the Romans themselves will never see this movie. They will
Lindsay Steenberg 25:20
never see the movie about themselves, although, I mean, when it comes to sort of Rome on screen, the interesting thing is that that, of course, it is, is rarely about Rome. Gladiator is as much about America as it is about Ancient Rome and what we think it was like. So the heroism we see there is very American. Yes,
Dr Rad 25:38
it's okay. So now that you brought this up, I definitely would love to probe a little bit more about this, because one of the things I felt after seeing gladiator two, I didn't like it as much as the first film, and I felt that it was because it was kind of a typical sequel, you know, and that the villains were worse, the explosions were bigger, you know, There was more action, but I felt there was a little less heart and soul and story, and like the main character, for me, was lacking. I mean, as kind of laughable sometimes, as Maximus is, in some ways, there's something so strangely compelling about him, as characterized by Russell Crowe, which I did not find with Lucius so much as I did with fake characters like Macrinus. And I also felt that the first gladiator did have a more obvious commentary on contemporary America and that sort of thing with its I always got the impression that it was sort of talking about how the American people are distracted from politics and what is really going on by entertainment and those sorts of messages, which actually sort of stem a little bit from, obviously, what some of the critics of ancient Rome said as well about their own society. So I'm curious to know what you think about gladiator two and what it speaks to at this moment in time.
Lindsay Steenberg 26:57
Yeah, absolutely. The first one did seem to be a very kind of, you know, it's putting a toga on something, but it is commenting on, what is it like to live in a spectacle driven society? What's it like to kind of worship celebrities, to create a celebrity who becomes so powerful that even the Emperor can't give them a thumbs down. That idea, the sort of the Oliver Reed moment where he says, You know, I didn't succeed because I was the best. I succeeded because I was the most loved. I was most famous. To me, that was an excellent kind of way of thinking about how this fighter performer worked, and how celebrity can be built and manipulated. Whereas there was, I thought that there was going to be a little bit of the similar kind of thing, you know, Lucius would be built up as this celebrity gladiator and and that celebrity would be something that we could think about that seemed to have been emptied a little bit. Yes, he was famous. They were chanting. They liked him, but that didn't seem to make much of a difference. They also quite liked Pedro Pascal's character as this heroic general, but that didn't seem to be something we were thinking about. So it did seem to be a little bit emptied out of some of the more poetic, allegorical moments that the film had, which I found a bit disappointing, because, you know, a nice ancient allegory worked so well, and that idea that the barbarians are at the gate, or, sort of, you know, something is falling, we're under threat. That's something that that gladiator really wanted to think about, you know, what happens when the Empire Falls? What happens if we imagine something beyond this kind of rule? Whereas I found that sort of Lucius speeches were sort of, they don't end tyranny, which is, yes, nobody wants tyranny, but it didn't seem to be very specific. It didn't seem to speak to the moment of what would happen after. So I was a bit disappointed for that missing satire commentary. I was sad when Maximus died. I mean, he was a bit funny sometimes, you're right, he was a bit over the top, and his trauma was so over the top. My name is Gladiator, and I loved it. I loved that melodrama, and I did feel moved when he died. And you know, he was this dream of Rome. Could it ever be good enough to sort of be worthy of his death? Of course not. There was no, no real sacrifice that we were meant to mark in the second one, because Lucius didn't die. Maybe it would have been better if he died. Do I sound horrible, because then he would have fallen again for Rome, and you know, Pedro Pascal's general didn't that that moment didn't have enough gravity and weight to really make us be like, oh, oh, okay, we've lost something here. And you know, why was he there? Why did they want to stop their takeover of Rome to save Lucius? It some of the things were sort of missing in that it was, I think, standard run of the mill, mid level gladiator Movie. Yeah, what it didn't do was chew the scenery too much that I was expecting. I thought that Denzel Washington was going to go full Oliver Reed. He didn't like, like Kiefer Sutherland in Pompeii. I thought he was going to go, yes, he he sort of held a kind of emotional center in the movie that. So it didn't spin out of control. But yeah, I think I don't know whether it depends on when you see it. You know, if I saw it when I was younger, and I hadn't seen a film like it, does that make it more impactful? So maybe if I were 15 years old, seeing this film, knowing Paul Mezcal from other shows, like normal people, I would feel like I did in sort of watching the first film. I'm not sure if it is, but I do feel it was a bit a bit more superficial than the first Yeah.
Dr Rad 30:46
And it felt like it was divided between Lucius, Lucilla and the general, as he's so often called, Pedro Pascal character, gotta have a call in the game, just the general. Yeah. It just felt like it was maybe more divided between them, whereas the first film, it was really all centered on Maximus, even though there were other people who got involved, like Gracchus and Lucilla and that sort of thing. This one, I felt like it was, again, like a typical sequel. There were more distractions and rabbit holes, and there was just, there was just less to root for, I think, with Lucius, you know. And it was just Yeah, I was that was actually the main thing that disappointed me. It wasn't so much the you know, as you say, the arena sequences were executed really well in terms of their cinematography and the spectacle and that sort of thing. But I just felt I was lacking that, that classic gladiator message that films like Spartacus and glad he had to have, yeah,
Dr G 31:42
if I may, I think the reason why you might be disappointed is because the general represents the kind of vision that Maximus was attempting to pursue but was unable to fulfill through his death in the arena, and for him to exit the film so suddenly means that actually, that that narrative aspect is completely lost, and all we're left with now is what we now know is the idea of the natural Imperial inheritance that has already been laid out by Marcus Aurelius through Commodus. And we know how that goes, and it doesn't go well, so there's not a lot of optimism Fauci is coming into this. No, even though he's very angry and he's filled with rage, he's still a prince of Rome. And are we supposed to go for those guys? Because the other ones that we've got on show in this movie, Caracalla and Geta, not, not great, exactly. They're
Lindsay Steenberg 32:39
not, they're not great. They're standard Roman villains. They're, you know, excessive and effeminate, which, you know, classical Hollywood often equates with sort of perversity. Yeah, the notion that it is this ATRA lineal kind of inheritance, like he's his destiny is to be Prince of Rome. It felt like what I kept thinking, what Weren't we going for a republic was that I thought we were talking about a republic. No, yeah, we're good.
Dr Rad 33:04
And there's so much that's left unexplained about, you know, they just have this, you know, this scene where Lucille hurries Lucius out of the arena after Maximus and Commodus both die to get him to safety, to explain how he exists and how this whole storyline is possible. But there's no explanation about Well, why didn't Gracchus and the rest of the senators step up and do what they wanted to do in that power vacuum moment? How on earth did Caracalla and Geta ever get into power where did they come from? Exactly, there's a total lack of any, you know, connecting the dots there, which, which is why it's so frustrating. Because you're like, I don't understand. It seemed like Maximus was getting there. I felt like the only moment where there was a possibility for something similar was when the general dies. Although I didn't really love the timing of that. When Lucius says, Is this how Rome treats its heroes? I'm like, Okay, well, that's a little that's something a little bit different. There was maybe some possibilities there in terms of some, you know, some commentary about how, you know, people can be treated, particularly how good people are treated in more corrupt societies. But again, it never went anywhere. He just, he just died. And that was that it wasn't really followed through in any major way.
Lindsay Steenberg 34:22
I think some of it, too is down to the shorthand that Marcus Aurelius has as a good emperor, and the sort of recent movement towards sort of popular or vernacular stoicism. So, you know, there are places on the internet where it's called broicism. It is this kind of popular, populist philosophy where, you know, it's used a lot people like martial artists or MMA fighters. So you've got the sense that Marcus Aurelius is a good philosopher king, and that Lucius, you don't have to answer the questions because he is. Angry and stoic at the same time. So it isn't that you want to get rid of the kings, it's you just want a good one, not a bad one, which I think to me, even though I knew that Commodus wasn't going to die and leave a republic in his wake, because we may have studied a little bit of history here, I loved that. That's what they went for, that they were like, You know what? We don't want a good king. We don't want a bad king. We want no king, no king. So this one kind of backpedaled on that a little bit. So I thought, Oh, you could have, especially since the two emperors were awful and, you know, have this interesting moment in US leadership there, there was, there was room to do some interesting things that they sort of
Dr Rad 35:39
picked away Exactly, yeah, and Caracalla and geta don't have the backstory that Commodus does as much as Commodus is obviously Caligula 2.0 in the way that they've presented him. You understand very clearly that he has this tortured relationship with his father and never living up to expectations and so and he just has this desperate desire for love and family and connection and so. And maybe it's also partly down to how Joaquin Phoenix obviously played him, because he's a brilliant actor, but you have a certain amount of sympathy and understanding for Commodus, even whilst you totally know he's the bad guy wheras Caracalla and Geta again, there is nothing redeeming these guys nothing, and they have such interesting back stories in real life. It's crazy to me that that none of that was used a real
Dr G 36:30
missed opportunity. I
Lindsay Steenberg 36:31
was gonna say you could hear the difference in the two films too, because in the first film, the the music that you know, the scoring, had the really, meaty themes for Commodus and for Maximus. And, you know, I've read a really interesting article about how the entire film, you hear it, and it is these two motifs coming together and then moving apart. And it's this struggle between two interesting men struggling for power and paternal love, whereas the scoring in the second film, I heard the ghost of some of the classic themes from the original, but didn't quite set up its own unique motifs and identity for its characters. So in some ways, you could hear the difference in the story as much as you could see it. You didn't get those really notable kind of kind of motifs sliding through the film.
Dr G 37:23
I think, yeah, this is one of those things where it's like, do you have Hans Zimmer and his team on board, or do you not have
Lindsay Steenberg 37:31
he's some some film music. People don't care for him very much. But the score of gladiator was really and then Lisa Gerrard, I think that her contribution there, I think really raised it. It just makes a big difference for how you remember the film, and how the film kind of prompts you to feel, and for the scoring in that, yeah,
Dr Rad 37:49
I shouldn't really venture an opinion here, because I'm I cannot to be unbiased, because I actually walked down the aisle to the theme from Gladiator.
Lindsay Steenberg 37:58
It's a very memorable theme.
Dr Rad 38:00
It is
Lindsay Steenberg 38:02
the the much talked about similar melody to the Pirates of the Caribbean fight theme to the to the music and Gladiator I mean, you just have to kind of hum that, and people are ready to find their swords that it's, yeah, it's not exciting. So it was a huge part of that. And I don't recall kind of fight moment with the same musical kind of weight to it. It felt a little bit, you know, I'm not a musicologist, but it felt a lot like the kinds of scoring that you used to see in biblical epic epics from Hollywood, quite orchestral. And I was sort of like, okay, I recognize this. It's just I can't remember it once it's over. And I like to remember the music and think, okay, yeah, that makes me feel like I'm I'm ready for an amphitheater fight. Well,
Dr Rad 38:45
when you think about some of the more notable gladiator films from the past, and I am going to go to Spartacus, just because it's the one I know best, yep, but should Spartacus has that very memorable scoring all throughout it from Alex north, and I know that for some younger people these days, it's a bit much, because there is music every single moment, yeah. But they have, as you say, they've, they very clearly had themes for each character. You know, virinius theme is beautiful. It's a really lovely piece of music. And even though I can see it, I can see that, okay, yeah, that maybe it's a little too much music, but at the same time, it gives the film such a signature, and I only have to hear a few notes, and I'm I'm right back watching that movie, because it does just work like that, I suppose, in our brain. So yeah, I think that there is a lot to be said for scoring, even though it's kind of a bit of an invisible, yeah, part of a movie,
Lindsay Steenberg 39:38
the scoring. And then the other thing that's quite invisible, which I'm always paying attention to, is the stunt performance. So I'm fascinated by the way that that spectacle it, you know, it wasn't just Denzel, Washington, Pedro, Pascal and Paul mescale. It was all of the stunt performers who did an astonishing job of jumping out of boats and, you know, grappling on the sands. So you. I thought that part of it was, was pretty astonishing, but there would have been no point in fighting the twin emperors. They weren't, you know, they're not like Commodus, who we, I think we all know, or most people know, wanted to be a gladiator. So he has, like, you knew it was gonna, it was all coming to that we are gonna find this final battle in the Colosseum. Whereas, you know, not, not so much the similar kind of sort of gladiatorial backstory for the for the
Dr G 40:28
one. And to hone in a little bit, because I think Macrinus is my favorite character in Gladiator and my theory is that he's actually the protagonist of this film. Yeah, he's the one who is demonstrably acting in ways that further plot points, and we see his whole arc across the course of this film as well. And I'm wondering if when we're thinking about it, rather than focusing on our disappointment with maybe what felt like a bit of a flat Lucius, unfortunately, despite, I think, a really workable performance from Paul Mescal. Instead, we get a really sort of shining light with Macrinus, who seems comfortable in his costumes, and, you know, is owning every room that he moves into, and is finding ways to make things happen for him rather than against him, when it could go either way, really, before he gets there. I'm wondering how this might be a useful way to think about this film. I
Lindsay Steenberg 41:25
think so. And I think Denzel Washington's performance really did stand out in this film, like he was interesting, he was baffling in some ways, because at one point I thought, well, he wants the same thing as Lucius. Let's topple Rome. Let's do it. Let's go and I think that's what he wanted. We're not sure why, and I sort of like that. They never gave him a tragic backstory or tried to kind of bulk that up. It was just, this is what I'm doing. This is politics. I am the puppet master. I, you know, I will manipulate everybody to get what I want. So I think if you look at it from that journey, at first I thought he was going to be the Oliver Reed. He was going to sort of give him a pep top, be the coach, you know, get in there. But he wasn't. And he was, he was evil in a pretty great way. So I think that it was that one performance that all the other ones sort of circulated around. He did not, though, have that kind of physicality where it was going to end in a fist fight, even though it ended in a sword fight, I guess so. I think that if you look at it from he is this canny, disappointed, cynical, almost motiveless kind of angry revolutionary. I think that that makes it a much more interesting film. That makes it something to go. What, whoa, okay. What? Okay, Denzel take us along for the ride. So I do think he was the more interesting character. And he did own all the rooms, although sometimes I it did seem like he was wrestling his his clothes a little, and I was sort of like, okay, and I found that a lot of the upper class people, with the exception of Connie Nielsen's Lucilla, did seem to wrestle their clothes a little. And I sort of figured that this must be deliberate, and that, you know, the gladiators with their almost no clothes, they can move, they can stand, they can be embodied, whereas the upper class characters are struggling with togas and and trying to kind of manage themselves, whereas, you know, the Denzel mostly just sat there looking like, yeah, okay, unfold in front of me. I've made this Yeah,
Dr G 43:31
I look I feel like the toga is a bit of a constraining garment at the best of times. It's a bit awkward, it's a bit heavy. Does get in your way? So it does make the Senate an easy target if you're planning a revolution, but it doesn't seem anybody's taking real advantage of that. Unfortunately.
Lindsay Steenberg 43:48
I mean, I almost missed it that they paraded the senators with Lucilla into the amphitheater for execution. I almost missed that. I was like, Who are they? Oh, okay, those are the senators. Okay, like they seem to be less important than they were in the first one and that no, you know, nobody. None of the senators were fighting. None of them seemed very good at puppet mastering. They were outmaneuvered completely by Denzel Washington's character, by the monkey, even like they they didn't have
Dr G 44:17
a clout. Their job seemed to be to roll over when required to
Lindsay Steenberg 44:22
do what somebody said. You know, Lucilla said this, okay. You know, Denzel Washington says this, okay.
Dr Rad 44:28
You got well, Macrinus is such an interesting choice because this is not my area of specialty, this time period. But from what I am, from what I know, Macrinus is a bit of a blank slate of a historical figure. I mean, we know some things about him, but we don't know as much as we would like. So And certainly, there were problems when he became involved in Imperial politics because of his lowly background. But he certainly wasn't as low as the movie seems to indicate. You know, they've, I think they've tried to heighten the drama by I think it would be hard for a modern audience to really get. On board with the idea that, Oh, he was equestrian and not from a senatorial family, or how disgusting that he was really equally rich class.
Lindsay Steenberg 45:08
Is he middle class? Can we do that? Yeah, exactly.
Dr Rad 45:12
Whereas trying to give him this other backstory where he, you know, came from nothing, and then, you know, took himself to the top. I think that was meant to be the drama of it, the self made American man, exactly. Americans love a bit of rugged individualism, you know? They
Lindsay Steenberg 45:27
really do. And he, yeah, the hold himself up by his bootstraps. This, this is, these are heroic qualities. They've come to be villainous qualities as well, but often in action films where we're supposed to wonder about the motives of the villain. I'm thinking about Black Panther, or something like that, villains who, you know, made something of themselves from nothing in an unjust system. So he has that kind of backstory. But yes, it would not have worked if they were like, actually, he had a house like this. He didn't need to steal the other guys. Yeah, and that would have been okay for him, and he had power, just not as much. So, you know, we need the story. The underdog is a really important character archetype, and often in cinema, people have to work really hard to make their characters be underdogs. So, you know, you can just throw them in an amphitheater, and that works because they're automatically on the sand, not up in the stands, but giving them that pull themselves up by their bootstrap story is a good one that
Dr Rad 46:28
might, that might turn to our earlier conversation about America. Perhaps, maybe that was meant to be something there and just wasn't emphasized enough for it to come through.
Lindsay Steenberg 46:36
Yeah. I mean, heroic kind of conventions are so interesting, what we think of as a heroic quality and who we want to be our heroes that is very, very specific. Even if a the kind of gladiator as a man forced to fight against his will is pretty standard, who he is and what he get represents, does shift quite a lot depending on if you're looking at an Italian story from the 50s or the 60s, are you looking at like an Asian tournament film from the 1980s so much changes into in what we think is heroic that it's interesting to kind of trace it back to that, that kind of national specificity of where that hero is made and who he's supposed to appeal to.
Dr Rad 47:17
That's actually a perfect segue for us to talk about the idea of the gladiator and celebrity, which you did allude to before, when we were talking about Maximus and that sort of thing, but we would love to know a little bit more about the relationship between gladiators and celebrity on film, especially because we know that gladiators had a very interesting position in Roman society as someone who was both disgusting but also embodying certain Roman values that were much admired and were meant to kind of inspire in terms of when they were performing
Lindsay Steenberg 47:51
absolutely that that double status of them. I think that that speaks to exactly how we view celebrities, from a Kardashian to a sports celebrity. The idea that somebody is both, you know, a bit of a train wreck, but also somebody to admire and imitate is, I think, you know, a kind of quite an ancient formulation that stuck that notion that a gladiator is sort of the best and the worst of a society and somehow mixed together. I think that is also really interesting, and that's something that I've wanted to analyze and talk about, because over, you know, quite frankly, hundreds of films, television shows, adverts, the gladiator is when you see a gladiator character, you know right away that you're in a world that's corrupt and falling so you see him, you're like, oh, barbarians are at the gate. The Apocalypse is going to happen. That's Maximus. That's katnius, Everdeen, whoever it is, you see the Gladiator, like, Oh, we're forcing people to fight for fun. It's the end of the world. But they're also simultaneously the best of their world. If you're facing an apocalypse, whether it's Vesuvius or a nuclear war, you find a gladiator, you make friends with them, and they will see you through because they they say that the apocalypse is happening just seeing them, and that they're the one who can, uniquely with their particular set of skills, survive the apocalypse. So they're the best and the worst at all times. So I think that there is something that remains the idea that a celebrity is somebody who we want to imitate and admire and even who has influence over us, but at the same time we're deeply suspicious of that's really easy to talk about when we have infamous celebrities and the whole True Crime boom, and how we've come to elevate serial murderers as celebrities. That's like the tail end of that spectrum. That's way over there. Whereas a gladiator uses violence to make themselves famous, we love them. We admire them. Sometimes, maybe even the Romans wanted to be them. So there, I believe that there are records of aristocrats really wanting to try their hand at being a gladiator, but at the same time to. Put yourself and your body on display for entertainment is kind of quite taboo, and I love that they often found themselves in the same category as actors and even as sex workers, because that is something that has continued and many gladiator fictions, from the sort of television Spartacus to the Pompeii film they do enmesh the kind of sex work and gladiators as a similar category, and that's often another moment of spectacle that's layered on top of the violence is the sexuality of the believing that when
Dr Rad 50:33
I get to see it, there is an allusion to it in the first gladiator film, obviously that scene between Maximus And Lucilla. And obviously, at some point they did have relationship, although not when he was Gladiator, to be fair, as we now know, because of Lucius, all revealed. It's all revealed. I actually, genuinely did not see that coming. I didn't think that that was a thing. I mean,
Lindsay Steenberg 50:55
it, they kind of dropped it like it wasn't a thing, but it was, I mean, maybe hinted in the first movie that Lucilla and Maximus, they definitely had a relationship at some point, totally, but I don't know that we were ever supposed to believe that Lucius was Maximus son. But this one, they were just like, yippee. Is
Dr Rad 51:12
totally Yeah. No, exactly, I thought so too. I was like, Whoa. Okay, you seem very certain about this all of a sudden,
Dr G 51:17
yeah, if you weren't paying attention, yeah, exactly.
Dr Rad 51:21
There's trinkets being passed down.
Lindsay Steenberg 51:25
There's heirlooms. What? Yeah, did this happen? Just
Dr G 51:28
to recap on the first season, he's the son.
Lindsay Steenberg 51:32
Spoilers, he's the son. I mean, in some of this is when I was researching for the book on Gladiators, I came across the unrealized screenplay for a gladiator two that was written by Nick Cave,
Dr Rad 51:45
oh yes, I did see this referred to in your book, and I was so intrigued.
Lindsay Steenberg 51:50
I mean, I'll be honest that no gladiator two could ever live up to the absolute insanity that was part of that screenplay. And Nick Cave, I think he has said, like, I wrote it because I knew they'd never make it. I just knew they wouldn't. And Lucius was in it. He was in it. He was not Maximus son, but he was in it. And if I recall the screenplay correctly, the afterlife, there's gods, and it ends with like a 25 minute montage of Maximus fighting in every single war in history, like from the trenches of World War One to Vietnam, to the Civil War, like, just, let's give up. Let's just put this celebrity gladiator in every battle ever, and sit back and watch. And I was like, you know, and win. I would have watched that,
Dr Rad 52:34
you know. I saw Lucius being a character. I did. I thought as soon as I heard that there was going to be a secret, which I never thought there would be because of the way that the first one ended. But as soon as I heard I thought, yeah, for sure, Lucius is going to be a character. But never thought he was going to be a character in this way. I again, kind of wish they'd done something different with him. But thinking about Lucius, and again, going back to this idea that he was not quite the same as Maximus. Why is it you think that Maximus was built up so successfully as this sort of celebrity fighter, and yet in Gladiator two, it's, again, it's a little bit more muddled. You know, he is, as you say, he does earn his stripes in the arena, but it's just never quite as focused and clear as it is in the first film,
Lindsay Steenberg 53:22
I think it maybe is that they gave up on thinking about celebrity a little bit. So the first film they did have, you know, win the crowd. Win the crowd. You'll win your freedom. This is what you want, the dream of Rome. Win the crowd. In the second one, that wasn't quite as much a part of it. He was a good fighter, and that was enough, like it was, he was good at fighting, but he the kind of theatricality of what the battle was, and the fact that Maximus spectacle was that he hated them all and that he blamed them for the spectacle like that itself was a spectacle that we loved. We loved him being angry at us. That was great. Lucius was just kind of diffuse force of anger. He didn't it wasn't for a reason. It was just, I'm angry. I do all the fighting, all the fight. You just put someone in front of me, let a fight him. Whereas Maximus, I think that we often kind of read a lot of hesitation, like, I don't want to kill all you guys, or I'm protecting my friends, you know, stick with me. We will, we'll. We'll fight this battle. I saw that they wanted to build Lucius up as a leader, you know. They kept saying, you know, you need to lead your men. He gave the speeches. But that didn't seem to it didn't seem to stick as well as I think it probably did in the first film, you didn't get the same side characters, I think, like even if the gladiators, I can't recall, I can't recall all of their names, but he did have his friend, his very good friend. And then we saw, you know, a few of the same figures again and again. And we got a sense that there was a fraternity, that he was becoming closer. And that's something like in Spartacus. I am Spartacus. You have that fraternity, that crowd gathering around them, whereas Lucius had the one friend who was the doctor, but I and the one who died in the first arena fight. But I didn't get the sense of his, his family of gladiators with him in the same way that I did in the first one. And of course, in all the Spartacus, the Sparta chi, the many Spartacus films, TV shows, retellings, just that, that that brotherhood didn't seem to be quite where it could have been. I think
Dr G 55:33
they, they did definitely try to shortcut that by having a Spartacus esque moment.
Lindsay Steenberg 55:38
They so had a Spartacus moment. And when I was in the cinema, everybody giggled. It was
Dr G 55:41
like, Yeah, and I think, I think that's a reasonable response, because the back work on the additional characters in the gladiator troupe wasn't there to justify them all sort of taking part in that moment and being willing to step in and defend Lucius in that way. We didn't have a reason for that to be true. So I think that's why it felt, felt flat and maybe a little bit comedic. Yeah,
Dr Rad 56:06
whereas Maximus is so clearly someone who's earnt the loyalty and the trust of the men around him, and they clearly, they clearly adore him. Same thing with Spartacus, but yeah, you don't ever really get that with Lucius. It's kind of like, Why does everybody care about this guy?
Lindsay Steenberg 56:21
We're just gonna follow him to our Yeah. Okay. I mean, sure. Why not? Gladiator movies are written in shorthand, so I you know there's, there's often not time. I guess what gladiator the original one was, wasn't a bit of an exception. It was a bit of a gladiator movie that did offer you a backstory, that did think through things like male friendship and things like that. Whereas most gladiator movies are sort of delightfully one dimensional, it's like, what are we fighting for? For fighting? That's why we're here. You know, why do you fight? Because I can, like, there doesn't need to be too much complexity necessarily behind the fictions. So I sort of, when I came out of the theater, I was like, Gladiator two is a gladiator movie, like so many others. It has the same things. It has the same conventions, the same short hands. Everything feels familiar. It's just, I think that they're the first gladiator film was a bit of an exception. The trauma was more melodramatic. You know, there's also theorists have sort of noticed a break around that time too. The sort of the world has already fallen and we're all doomed that comes from Maximus onward. So we just, you know, we've just accepted that our hero is always sad. He's never going to get another wife. He's too sad. She's dead. All ladies don't matter to him, because he only fights. He has no time for romance, whereas the kind of pre millennial Gladiator, even Conan, even Conan the Barbarian, is kind of being raised as a gladiator, still gets a little bit of romance. He still has a bit of joy. He gets a sequel as well. So you get a little bit more playfulness and joy in the pre millennial gladiator who bite gladiate because he likes it. Why do you fight? It's awesome. I love fighting. The second sort of iteration is, oh, I'm sad, and I have to, and they're making me and then I'll die. So there is a kind of break in there. Whereas, you know, I think Paul Mescal was enjoying himself. He looked sad, but it felt like he liked fighting. So it was a bit of a throwback to the more traditional, actually, and it's
Dr Rad 58:23
interesting that you bring up the ladies side of thing, because I felt that that was, again, another aspect that was inexplicable, and that was his relationship with Lucilla as his mother, because that was the real relationship. But it went from being completely one way where he was like, Get out of my set. You were banished me. You mean nothing to me. I don't even remember who you are, mother who I'm sorry you didn't raise me. And then all of a sudden it was like, I would die for you. I would do anything for you, just like, what is happening. And that is an unusual That's an unusual turn events, because we don't often have the mother of a gladiator as a
Lindsay Steenberg 59:03
there are no mothers in Gladiator movies. They have all been killed, all of them. Yeah, she was really interesting. And I did enjoy her performance. She had a kind of, you know, dignity that's normally lacking in a gladiator movie. So I thought Connie Nielsen did a great job reprising her role. He switched with her, the way he did with the Pedro Pascal character, with the sort of, all, you know, I hate you. You replaced my father, kind of very Oedipal sort of struggle, like, how very dare you come and steal my mom. But then was like, oh, but okay, in the same thing, I hate you, mom. Okay, no, I don't. So it was a very kind of strange turn of events. And they did have her, you know, all in white on the sort of sacrificial thing, so that it was clear that she was going to be this, this sacrifice, and she was going to be the tragedy that kept him burning for some time afterwards, although I was secretly hoping. Think that the ending would have been every man was dead, and she's like, well, Rome is mine. Obviously the best person for this
Dr Rad 1:00:08
job. It looked like that's where it was going for I thought it was going there. I
Lindsay Steenberg 1:00:11
got excited. Yeah, I also found it. You know, the most unrealistic thing that Hollywood did was not the sharks in the Colosseum. It was imagining a relationship where a woman was older than a man, so Connie Nielsen is a bit older than Pedro Pascal. That never happens. It happens so infrequently, and it's always such a big deal that people commenting, you know, Anne Hathaway is in a romance film with a much younger man. Oh, they didn't comment on it, and it was just there, and I was watching, going, are they going to say something? No, they're not. Okay, Googling it afterwards, just getting a very niche difference. She's just, she's just going to be the love interest of a younger man. Oh, she died. I'm not going to say it was because of that, but I found it was, like, one of those striking moments. I was like, okay, Gladiator, too interesting. So if they had let her keep her her Pedro Pascal and rural Rome, I would have decided that that was much more exciting at the end. I agree.
Dr G 1:01:12
It's a wrap up question, because I feel like we're heading in that direction now with with this sort of alternative ending, which that's a film I would love to see, was there any particular moments in this film that did drive you crazy in terms of historical accuracy?
Lindsay Steenberg 1:01:28
I mean, I think I'm probably better than most people at being able to put that on a bit of a back burner, because I'm a film scholar, and I'm a scholar who studies a lot of historical films, a lot of historical films that are so incorrect that it's you just, you get itchy, it drives you crazy, or you give up. So I do, I do know how to, you know, healthily, give up on historical accuracy. There are some things where I felt they missed a trick, because history was more interesting. I'm like, Why? Why didn't you go into the backstories of those emperors. That was a crazy stuff happening. I would have been really cinematic. Also, the why, where was their mom? I guess Lucilla was offered as a maternal character. Like at the end, Caracalla said, you know, do we? Do we have to kill her? So maybe. So they missed a few tricks, and also the the gender politics and hierarchy of the of the actual arena, like the way things might have been segregated, who sits where i It's so interesting, the way that a hierarchy can be written in space that way. I'm like, Come on, let's do it. Let's we're those Vestal virgins. We're always thinking about them.
Dr G 1:02:41
They seem to be in the Senate House. I'm sorry, but that's where they seem to be hanging out. Yeah, I
Lindsay Steenberg 1:02:46
guess so weird.
Dr Rad 1:02:48
Yeah. We both saw that woman and the dress the way that she was in the Senate scene. And we were like,
Lindsay Steenberg 1:02:52
is that a vessel? Yeah. And there were a few women sort of wearing white in the background, looking disapproving. And I sort of wondered, I'm like, is that? Is, are they the best? Is we could use her? She would be a great character. So I just, I think that it didn't, it didn't upset me that that, you know, there wouldn't have been sharks in the Colosseum, or that I knew that the story was different in history than it was in the film. It was more like history is such a wild ride in this time and in this place. Why wouldn't you want to go there? And I know that the historical consultant for the first film, I think she worked with them, and then sort of said, Could you not put my name on that? Actually? Yeah.
Dr Rad 1:03:34
Kathleen Coleman, yeah, she absolutely did. Like,
Lindsay Steenberg 1:03:38
I'm happy to be involved in films, but you might not have listened to what I was telling you, so I can understand that the first one was more accurate, and somehow it was more accurate. But yeah, so I think that the thing that that is is sort of often a disappointment is, is not necessarily the gladiatorial salute that never happened, or the the thumbs up, thumbs down. It's more like, oh man, you missed some amazing parts of history that would have been so cinematic. I do think, though, for my students, especially, the films are so visually arresting that they will replace history in our minds as a collective. So there's always when you watch these movies, it's not a risk, it's just an interesting function and effect that if you see something that is so astonishing, it kind of sits there in your brain and it's not going to shift. So even if you know there's no thumbs up, thumbs down, or you know that they weren't saying we are the moratorium, we are about to die, it's in there, and it's part of the myth, so it can replace so I don't get too mad when the history's off, but I do think there always needs to be a place where someone says, Actually, no, or actually, yeah, you could have, you could have brought the, you know, you could have flooded the Colosseum. So, yeah, that, I guess my fundamental thing is, movies are spectacle. They're not real. I love it when they do things that are over the top. They could bring more historical over the topness and. And But effectively, we always do have to have the moment of conversation where we say that Rome is beautiful, but that's a Rome that the American imagination in 2024 built out of computers and, you know, martial arts trained bodies. It's not necessarily telling us too much about Rome. Yeah, I
Dr Rad 1:05:17
think that's the thing. I also am very forgiving of historical films, because it's also what I like to focus on. But I must admit, when I see a film like this, where I feel like the major issue was the story and the characterization, because the technology was there, the money was there, the talent was there, both, you know, both in front of us in terms of the actors, but also behind the camera and putting all the bits and pieces together. There was just so much talent actually in this film. And I'm just like, why did you make it harder for yourself? Like you obviously struggled with the story
Lindsay Steenberg 1:05:52
more than anything about plot points, you were exactly your plot is all
Dr Rad 1:05:57
over the place. So why wouldn't you use what is actually there, because, you know what, it's already been crafted into a story by ancient historians who are probably making stuff up to and
Lindsay Steenberg 1:06:07
they knew their audience wanted to hear that as well. And they they knew how to tell a good story.
Dr Rad 1:06:12
Yeah. And I was a bit disappointed, actually. And I don't, I don't think of Ridley Scott is someone who is, I don't really know how I feel about this, actually, but Caracalla and geta being portrayed the way that they were in that white face makeup, given their ancestry, I was so confused as to why those actors were cast, and that was the makeup choice they went for, especially, again, in a film with Denzel Washington playing the krius. It just didn't make sense to me.
Lindsay Steenberg 1:06:44
What yet they did make it harder for themselves, and could have kind of Lent back on some of the stories that were or the mythology that's already there. I wonder if they felt shackled to the first film, because the story, you know, had that like and then he was a leader, and then the wife died, and it was captured, and he came to Rome, and he fought for Rome. So I wondered if they were thinking that they needed to stay so close to the film that they forgot that they're telling historical story.
Dr Rad 1:07:16
Yeah. Look, as you say, it's a fascinating addition, because Ridley Scott being someone who is an older director, and someone who grew up watching the original, like golden epics of Hollywood, you can definitely see those reference points in there if you know the history of film. But I think again, that's the weird thing. Like Gladiator, to me, is just the love child of Spartacus and full of the Roman Empire, you
Lindsay Steenberg 1:07:39
know, yeah, and Anthony Mann's film Fall of the Roman Empire does not get nearly enough credit for having influenced that film and for for just being an AWESOME film, really. So yeah, it absolutely was kind of those biblical epics, sort of those those Hollywood epics stuck together, but sad. So
Dr Rad 1:07:57
you think you'd think, really, Scott could therefore take his own film turned into something good too.
Lindsay Steenberg 1:08:03
It's like, What happened, man, what were you doing? And I mean, when you watch a Ridley Scott film, you often whatever you think about what's happening, you're like, Yeah, but it was visually amazing. And I yeah, I did think this one was arresting and spectacular. I'm glad I saw it in a big screen, but I think it did miss a little bit of its own stylization, like when you watch kingdom of heaven, you were like, Whoa. You know, I don't, I don't know why Liam neesons here, but I'm enjoying what I'm watching, and it's stylish and it's interesting. For this one, it was spectacle. It was good, but I sort of felt like it. It missed a little bit of what Ridley Scott used to be really good at, yeah, Blade Runner good at, yeah, that kind of esthetic that belongs to its own world and makes its own visual language. So this, this felt like I said, mid range gladiator film, which I will always watch,
Dr Rad 1:08:58
yeah, very watchable. Yeah, very watchable. But I think, to be honest, that actually was the same issue with his Napoleon for me, because that was so visually stunning.
Lindsay Steenberg 1:09:10
Yeah, amazing. No matter what you think of what's happening in that film, you're like, well, it looks amazing.
Dr G 1:09:18
I was so angry
Dr Rad 1:09:21
about it, because the acting was terrible. And again, it came down to the plot being a total mess, trying to do way too much.
Lindsay Steenberg 1:09:29
And again, history had a great plot there. Yeah,
Dr Rad 1:09:32
exactly it's, I don't know how he made Napoleon so dull it was, it was crazy. Yeah,
Lindsay Steenberg 1:09:43
I'm gonna keep in my pocket his reaction to historians watching the film, which I think is one of the funniest things a director's ever said, is, you know, people like, oh, it's not very accurate. It's not this. And he just said, f off. It's a movie. Yeah, guys, I was like, Okay. Ridley Scott, I see where you're going. I. Yeah,
Dr Rad 1:10:00
and it's, it's not that, as you say, it's not about the accuracy, per se. It's more that. I'm like, Well, if you can't come up with something better, then why wouldn't you go to the original story, which is good. That's why people want to see a film about Napoleon. You know that that's the issue I have. I'm like, well, by all means, go. Be fictional. Make it up. But yeah,
Lindsay Steenberg 1:10:19
make it crazy. Yeah, exactly. Give us a bit of bridgerton, sure. Fine. Yeah, absolutely. Why not? Yeah.
Dr G 1:10:25
I think this draws our attention to the really important role of the screenwriters and the creation of screenplays in general, and maybe what is going on inside the Hollywood system at this current epoch with script writing and the way these things get changed and altered to suit what seems to be like a committee like structure of like what needs to be in this film. And so instead of being able to tell an original story of gladiator two, which is a natural continuation of the point where the first film ended instead, what you get is a film that is trying to hit the same notes exactly, because that's what made that film a blockbuster, and that's what that's what made it great. So we've got to do that same story again, but now we've just got to have some slight alterations to see if we can enhance that spectrum. Repetition
Lindsay Steenberg 1:11:16
with variation. Works in movies. It works in myths. It works in novels. You know that must make that's a genre repetition with variation. But you have, you have to vary. You have to surprise people, even just a little as you give them what you want. So I don't, I mean, I've spent a lot of my career studying big franchises like Mission Impossible, like John Wick, even Fast and the Furious. And they have that. They're an ecosystem. They have that committee logic, where, you know, you have the one, and then you have to have this, but more this, but more, you know, now with nunchucks now on water, so you do have the logic. You just
Dr Rad 1:11:51
got to go to Tokyo drifting. Yeah, we're gonna get gladiator
Lindsay Steenberg 1:11:55
three. Tokyo Drift would still watch the chariot. There'll be chariot. There's got to be, like, a take on this, like, I want to see that. But then you do feel like what is missed, what loses is that what made the first one special was its variation, and you haven't varied it, so you've given me tried to make literally, what is the first one. And I think you're right about the screenwriters as well. I mean, in an era where, you know, Hollywood is striking because of things like AI, an AI can write a script to gladiator two, it will not be like Nick caves. It will not it'll probably be a little closer to this film that we saw. I'm not saying that an AI wrote this. They absolutely didn't, but the notion that you feed in the kind of familiar tropes and it pops out what you wanted, I think that's often just not enough for us as viewers, even though, historically, often the sequels do make more money than the first. So I'll be curious to see how gladiator two performs at the box office, because when I went to go see it. It was sold out. I have not gone to a cinema where I've been turned away and they've said, No, it's sold out. Or since the 90s, like, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, wow. Okay, that's amazing. So I will see it. Might be enough of a same thing we wanted, but slightly different this time on water that it makes a lot of money, in which case, even if we are feeling a little disappointed that we might get gladiator three Tokyo Drift too fast to gladiator something I would 100%
Dr Rad 1:13:35
like today, Gladiator film where they're too fast and too furious. I would watch that. Well, I think that's probably a perfect note to end up on with our wishes for the future. Dear Ridley, Scott, do you have another one in you? Thank you chariot racing, exactly. Yep. Thank you so much for coming and chatting to us all about the gladiator movies, and Gladiator two in particular, it has been a complete delight. Is there anything that you'd like to tell us about that you are working on that we should keep our eyes peeled for in terms of articles or books or anything like that? Okay,
Lindsay Steenberg 1:14:07
a little shameless self promotion time. Yeah. I guess I think what has been so interesting for me that I'm working on right now is modern interpretations of gladiators that kind of stand out as metaphors for precarious workers in our kind of gig economy. So I've been very interested in things like squid game, very interested in reality TV shows where people gladiate, there's a there's a British show called Romans, Oh,
Dr Rad 1:14:35
yeah.
Lindsay Steenberg 1:14:37
Quite interested in the way that like metaphors like freelancer and stuff like that have become so entrenched in the way we talk about precarious employment. So yeah, I'm, I'm quite interested in writing about things like squid game and and finding out how gladiators have really kind of embedded themselves in our in our in our lives, in sort of like Anglo American and Australian culture.
Dr Rad 1:14:58
Well, that sounds fascinating. We are here for that excellent
Lindsay Steenberg 1:15:01
look forward to squid game two.
Dr Rad 1:15:03
Yeah, it'll come. Thank you so much for coming on the show, and we look forward to perhaps talking to you again when gladiator three eventually makes its appearance on our screens. That would be my pleasure.
Thank you for listening to this special episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina and joy De Guzman. You too can support our show and help us to produce more lively content about the ancient world by becoming our Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes. And today, we would like to thank all of our wonderful Patreons and Ko fi supporters for helping us to cover the cost of making the show and taking it in new directions. However, if you have overindulged and blown all your cash on Jaguars earlobes and Wolf nipple chips whilst watching the games, then please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. You have no idea how much that kind of stuff really helps these days, Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.
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Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire
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We were titillated to speak to the scintillating Jenny Freaking Williamson. Jenny is one of the co-hosts of Ancient History Fangirl, which we like to consider part of the unofficial but highly exclusive #ladypodsquad. Jenny and Genn have been on our show before to discuss their fabulous book, Women and Myth, which was released in 2023. However, today Jenny is here to discuss a solo venture. She has just completed her debut novel, a historical romantasy called Enemy of My Dreams, slated for release through Harlequin in February 2025 and available for pre-order now.
Enemy of my Dreams is set during the late Roman Empire and focuses on a romance between an imperial princess named Julia and a ‘barbarian’ leader, Alaric of the Visigoths. Julia was largely inspired by three historical figures: Julia the Elder (daughter of Augustus), Galla Placidia and Honoria.
It was a delight to hear about Jenny’s process in crafting historical fiction.
Special Episode – Enemy of my Dreams with Jenny Williamson
Here are some quick bios for the ladies in question!
Julia the Elder was the only biological child of Augustus, which was a nasty surprise for him. Without a son, Julia’s importance as a dynastic pawn grew. She was married off to her cousin, then Augustus’ BFF Agrippa, and finally her stepbrother, Tiberius. Although it was normal for an elite woman to marry for the benefit of her family, there was a huge amount of pressure on Julia to in these scenarios, especially as her last marriage a trainwreck. Let that be a lesson to you – don’t marry your step-siblings!
Julia was suddenly exiled for scandalous behaviour in 2 BCE… or was she plotting against her father? We will never know. All we can be sure of is her fate. Julia was exiled to the island of Pandataria before her exile was moved to Rhegium. She was never allowed to return and died of “malnutrition” early in the reign of Tiberius, her ex-husband. If Augustus intended to put his errant daughter in her place, mission accomplished.
Bust of Julia the Elder by Egisto Sani on Flickr.
Galla Placidia lived hundreds of years after Julia, in the twilight of the 4th century CE. She was the daughter of Theodosius the Great, a very capable emperor (as the name implies). Sadly for Rome, he died in 395 CE and left the purple to his sons, Honorius and Arcadius, who split the empire between them. Placidia resided in the west with Honorius
These were not easy times for Rome as there was a lot of movement around their borders, and within the empire. The Goths were looking for a new home and the Roman Empire was it! The Romans were not always so thrilled by this prospect. In Placidia’s youth, they decided to unite behind a Visigoth named Alaric. Alaric was a pretty successful guy, and in 410 CE he and his followers managed to penetrate the walls of Rome itself. It’s hard to put into words how shameful and shocking this event was for the Romans.
It became even more embarrassing when Placidia was taken captive by the Goths. She remained with them for years, eventually marrying Alaric’s brother-in-law Athaulf, who became the leader of the Gothic forces after Alaric’s death. It is one of the tragedies of history that we know so little about this time in her life. Did she and Athaulf fall in love, or did it just seem wise to marry a man of status, given the circumstances?
This could have been an interesting union that changed history as we know it, except that Athaulf was murdered soon after their wedding and eventually the Romans found the time to negotiate for her return. Placidia was married to her brother’s right-hand man, Constantius, whom she despised. Hatred is not an effective birth control method, and she had two children by this marriage. Honorius had not produced any children, so Placidia’s son was a likely heir.
Placidia was highly respected in her lifetime for her piety and for her capabilities. When her brother died, she helped to engineer the succession of her son, Valentinian III. As Valentinian was so young, Placidia acted as regent, and she never really left the imperial stage. This probably had something to due with the fact that Valentinian was as useless an emperor as Honorius. She died peacefully in 450. She did not have to witness the assassination of Valentinian a few years later.
We know very little about Honoria, the daughter of Galla Placidia and sister to the rather pathetic Valentinian III. Honoria was either born with a wild streak or developed one because she was oddly left single for too long, which was a weird status for an imperial princess. After an affair with one of the imperial stewards, she was being forced into a marriage with a rich senator. That oughtta fix this whole situation!
Honoria refused to go down quietly. She may have contacted Atilla the Hun, the latest barbarian threat on the block. She sent him a ring and asked for his help – was this an offer of marriage? Atilla certainly thought so.
We don’t know much about Honoria’s life after this treasonous act, aside from the fact that Placidia intervened to prevent her execution, and she was not given over to Atilla when he came knocking for his bride. She fades into obscurity, best known for this bizarre rebellion.
Jenny Williamson pictured with her book.
You can order Enemy of My Dreams now through your local independent bookstore, as well as online suppliers such as Amazon. Use this link! For our fellow Sydneysiders, you might consider Abbey’s Bookstore.
If you’re keen to follow Jenny’s work, we suggest checking out her blog and the wonderful Ancient History Fangirl podcast.
And if you would like to read more about the history behind this novel, you might consider consulting the following:
Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman
Dr Rad 0:15
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.
Dr G 0:18
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,
Speaker 1 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battled wage and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr rad and
Dr G 0:33
I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Speaker 1 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Dr G 0:54
Welcome to this special episode of the partial historians. I am Dr G
And I am Dr Rad
And we are absolutely thrilled to be joined today by Jenny Williamson. Now we have talked to Jenny before. She is one of the fabulous co hosts of ancient history fangirl and part of the exclusive and unofficial lady pod squad. So we had Jenny and Jen on the show to discuss their book, women and myth, which was released in 2023 which doesn't feel like that long ago, but at the same time, is actually ages ago. And we're really excited to have Jenny here today to discuss her latest solo venture. She's just completed her debut novel, which is labeled as a historical romanticy. And I love that sort of portmanteau of going on there, and it is called enemy of my dreams, and it's going to be coming out in February 2025, at the time of recording. It's a pre order situation. But maybe when you hear this episode, it'll be out and about, in which case you should just go and grab it. Welcome to the show. Jenny,
Jenny W 2:08
hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Dr G 2:12
It is an absolute pleasure.
Jenny W 2:16
So much fun.
Speaker 1 2:17
So look, enemy of my dreams is right up our alley as it takes place in the later Roman Empire. We love our things Roman, and one of the lead characters is Alaric of the Visigoths. However, we are most interested in your female lead, Julia, daughter of the Emperor of Rome, Theodosius the great. And we're here to talk about the history that inspired you to create this intriguing character today. So we believe that there are three women from ancient Rome whose lives inspired your story, Julia, the elder, daughter of the First Emperor. I'm using my little flesh rabbits there Augustus, as well as some women from the fifth century CE such as the Empress gala Placidia or plaquitia, depending on your preference, and her daughter, Honoria. So we're very excited to delve into that today.
Jenny W 3:14
Yes, I am so thrilled to talk about all these ladies.
Dr G 3:18
So I think we'd still like to start with, like, maybe the originator of bad women under the imperial system, and that would be Julia the elder. And I love this woman. She's great. I'm wondering if you can talk us through a little bit about her family connections and her character. Yeah,
Jenny W 3:40
so Julia the Elder is such a she's such a fun character for me. And I really, I think that my very early draft of this book, my Julia was just absolutely straight up Julia the elder, like she was just and Julia the Elder as a, sort of like very surface reading of Julia the Elder, who is very much just like a party girl who likes to sleep around and do what she wants, you know, which is kind of like I said the surface reading, she was the only biological child of the Emperor Augustus, quote, unquote, Emperor Augustus, you know. And listeners of our podcast will also know him as Octavian. We had a whole series about Mark Antony and Cleopatra, in which he figured very prominently. And we're gonna do a series on him later on in the year, I think, where he takes the Empire the, you know, Rome from Republic to Empire. So she was his only biological daughter, his only child, and he had her with, I believe it would have been his second wife, scribonia, and his first wife. I think, was I correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think it was the daughter of Fulvia, who he married very early on and then wound up cruelly rejecting based on the sort of wars that he was having with Mark Antony, who was her dad. So that was his second wife, Scribonia, and I think he divorced her while she was pregnant. And definitely did, yeah, embarrassing, yeah, to marry his third wife, Livia, who was also a badass. And I believe that Julia the Elder as a child, was sent to live with Livia, her stepmom, and was taught to be like a noble woman in her house. She grew up and was engaged to various people, starting at a very young age, wound up being married, I think, first to her cousin at a very early age, I want to say, like 14 or 15 or something like that. Her cousin was Marcellus, was maybe a few years older. He died, and she wound up being married to Agrippa, her dad's best friend, who was also her dad's age. Ew, yeah, gross. They were married for a little while. They had a bunch of kids together, and then when Agrippa died, her dad married her off again to his other son. Was it his adopted? I don't know. How are they related…?
Dr G 5:57
Yeah, Tiberius, he's Livia's son.
Jenny W 6:00
right? That's what it was, you're right. He did adopt him, yeah, he adopted him. So, like keeping, keeping their, you know, family trees straight in my head is always a struggle. But it was her step brother. So yeah, it was, yeah, she was engaged her own step brother. They hated each other. And I think ever since her marriage to Agrippa, there were rumors about Julia the elder, you know, sleeping around, having boyfriends. And as far as I know, this really kind of got started with Tiberius, who also had been married to somebody else, and was made to divorce that person, to marry Julia. Neither of them were happy about it. And at some point, Augustus was trying to put he was trying to take Rome from Republic to Empire. And he was doing a lot of things like trying to craft this sort of unifying story about who Rome was, and change the laws to, like, restore what he considered to be, quote, unquote, Roman greatness. And one of the problems he noticed was that the women they were just were having affairs and being slutty and horrible things. So he was like, you know, tightening these laws around women and reducing their freedoms and kind of expecting them to be more embodying of the traits of a, you know, virtuous Roman Matron. This involved a lot of spinning. As far as I know, he really expected his daughter, Julia, to embody all of these traits of like an upright Roman matron herself, and she just did not want to do it. And there were all these wild rumors about her sleeping with with men in the forum and doing all kinds of crazy things. And she got exiled to Pandatarea, where it was kind of like a prison situation. And she was there for, I don't know, several years, like very, very curtailed, and was eventually allowed to come back. I think she might have been, I'm not 100% sure, but I think she might have been exiled several times. She
Speaker 1 7:46
was allowed to return to the mainland, I believe, for some of her exile, but she was never taken out of exile, and she actually died in exile under Tiberius, yeah,
Dr G 7:58
yeah. So yeah. Part of what happens is that when Julia is exiled. So this is in around two BC, she goes to Pandataria, this island in the Mediterranean. And do you think to yourself now, oh, that sounds not so bad, but it's not ideal when you're an imperial daughter and you're used to living in the city, and now you're on like, you know, a goat ridden island in the middle of the Mediterranean. Her mother, Scribonia, goes with her, so that's nice. She's got a mum, and they do have fun, so they're able to live a modest life. But what Tiberius does is he withdraws all funding from the exile, so they are essentially a starved to death. I don't know how they end up actually dying, but the withdrawal of funds sort of means that they're unable to maintain any life whatsoever, and it seems like they maybe haven't made enough friends on the island to sustain a life and be taken in by others.
Dr Rad 8:58
Ancient Rome. Survivor edition, yeah, exactly.
Dr G 9:02
It's like, there were only chickens here.
Jenny W 9:05
I don't think there would have been people to befriend. I mean, there were maybe not even that, I don't know. Like it was a very dire situation, right? I remember doing an interview with an author who had written a book, kind of a fictionalized version of the life of Julia the younger, and Julia the elder was in it as well. Who Julia the younger was also exiled for something like 20 years. And we were discussing like, the dangers of having this happen, where you were ex, you're sent into exile and then starved to death, or perhaps, you know, beaten by the guards, or really mistreated like this is not a good situation. And what she was telling me, her name is Tana Rebellis. She has she's written some really interesting, I think it was a duology about Julia the younger. But what she was discussing was how, you know, the power of Augustus in his time meant that the guards were gonna be pretty careful about Julia the elder, at least maintain her health and make sure she was okay. When Augustus died like that, was when you had to worry about the guards. That's when it got a little more dangerous because you didn't have that protection anymore. Yeah,
Dr G 10:07
and certainly, like, the orders are now coming from somebody else, and they're coming from somebody who has not liked her time. Think
Speaker 1 10:15
we all have nightmares about our ex being in control of our lives. No, like, Oh no,
Dr G 10:20
Tiberius is now in charge. But I really enjoy the focus of what is Julia the elder trying to do, because she's kind of like a classic, sort of stick it to the man figure in this scenario, because she gets caught in the forum, that's the rumor. And she's kind of got this whole group of senatorial young bloods who are very happy to like party on and have orgies in the forum. So it's like she's hanging out with some very elite characters, and she's really flaunting it all. And at the same time, this is precisely when Augustus is building up his reputation, and he's been awarded a really prestigious title pater patriae, the father of the Fatherland. So he's kind of gotten to this real pinnacle of his own political success, but at the same time that family life is like completely falling apart. And I think there is a really nice mirror to the opening scene of your novel, of how your protagonist, Julia, is kind of as we meet her for the first time, and the kinds of things that she's up to gives that real sense of somebody who's like, I'm going to do exactly what I please. I have the right I'm in a position of power. Life is here for the taking
Jenny W 11:37
exactly. And I think in my book, I was also really thinking about, and I'm sure, like, this was, this is an issue for Julia too, because she kind of lived in the midst of this time, like, what happens when there's a transfer of power, you know? And that's always a really dangerous time for for emperors and, you know, ruling, ruling families and their survivors when they die. So just thinking about how, how the rules are going to change, and they're changing underneath her. And my Julia doesn't really realize that that is what's happening until, until she does kind of too late.
Dr G 12:06
Yeah, interesting. So when we're thinking about the connections between, like the ancient source material and the way that you've interwoven it into this new form, what were the sort of aspects of Julia the elder that really appealed to you, and which elements Did you really try to bring in for this novel?
Jenny W 12:26
So I really enjoyed, and like, I said, like, I really enjoyed this idea of, here's here's this woman who's just kind of careening LIKE A WRECKING BALL through this very upright society, and just, you know, having these orgies and doing whatever she feels like, and probably having a lot of sex and drugs and just that is not normally what you hear about women in the ancient world at all. So I was just very drawn to this party animal character, and I think I wanted to bring that into my book. But you know, my my Julia, has reasons why she's like that and things that she's sort of coping with by sort of drowning her sorrows, basically, and it's like a coping mechanism for her. But I was also thinking about Julia the elder, and kind of how she's perceived, and all these screwless rumors that kind of show up in the sources about her and other figures, where you kind of wonder, like, is this the whole story? Did this actually happen this way, or is this kind of a smear campaign? So my Julia is, she's kind of wild, but she's not as wild as you think at first. And there are, of course, like rumors swirling around her, just like there would have been rumors around Julia the elder, and that was something that really interested me later, is that, you know, the reasons given for her exile, and whether they, in fact, did involve her sleeping around, or whether she was doing some deeper plotting against her dad, is kind of something I've always been interested in, yeah,
Dr G 13:46
and that's the thing, isn't it? Because what we get in the historical source material a lot of the time, we have to question it, because the political invective nature of how do you make it possible to exile somebody like you? Do have to find a way to really trash their reputation. And is it more useful to say openly that there was a political plot against you? It's probably not a great move that might just encourage more plots, for instance, so being able to find a way to tarnish somebody's character is a much more convenient way of ensuring that they're effectively disposed of, and people can no longer associate with them because it becomes hugely problematic. And also, like, if they're stuck on an island, good luck. How are they going to organize anything from there?
Jenny W 14:30
Exactly, exactly. So my Julia, I would say she's, she's a partier, but she's also a plotter, you know? So I kind of was inspired by those two sides that I saw in Julia the elder that I kind of wanted to be true, fair enough.
Speaker 1 14:43
I definitely got visions of I saw Megalopolis, which I would not recommend to anybody, but the opening sequence of Megalopolis, where they have this character of Julia as a party girl. I definitely got visions of your Julia like. When I was reading your book from that movie,
Jenny W 15:03
I have got to watch this. I have got to watch it. I haven't seen it yet. It is so terrible.
Speaker 1 15:07
It's honestly one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my whole life. Oh, wow. The fact that it is inspired by ancient Rome is the reason why I went to see it. But oh my god, what a trash fire. What a mess.
Jenny W 15:22
My goodness, I feel like I maybe just have to watch the first scene then,
Speaker 1 15:26
yeah, maybe the opening five minutes. That's what I would recommend you watch. Gotcha. So thinking about Julia the elder and how you wove various pieces into your book, I was just wondering what specific sources did you actually revisit? Because, as you said, you've done a series where Julie the elder was a major feature in the podcast before, when you were writing the book. Did you go back to any of the ancient source material, or were you more using sort of secondary sources? What was your sort of process with that? So
Jenny W 15:56
it's been so long since I actually had to do it, you know? But like, I remember going back to, like, the gossipy sources like Cassius Dio has some things to say about Julia, if I remember right, who else covered her Suetonius. I honestly forget at this point. But like any book that I could find, and I used a lot of secondary sources, too, and fiction, like whatever I could find, basically, and my own imagination, you know, because that's ultimately what it's about?
Speaker 1 16:21
No, I think what you've done is actually, it's really hard for people that tend to write history, which obviously is what we all do when we're podcasting. I find it really interesting to think about taking all of that material and then turning it into a fictionalized story, because it sort of goes against, in some ways, what we've been trained to do in terms of using so much of your imagination.
Jenny W 16:46
Yeah, I think that's true. When we started the podcast, Jen and I remember being very, sort of intimidated by the idea that I would have to be correct about things, because I did not train as a historian at all, like I have a degree in English, so I was always a little bit nervous, what if I just, you know, write this whole episode about something and just completely because I was, I loved history. I always loved history, but I was just like, what if I just get it wrong? And what's interesting about that in the podcast, in fangirl is that we have a lot of historians and archeologists who listen to us. So far, that seems to be a lot of our fan base. And I'm just like, that seems to be going okay so far. But it's not, it's not that weird to me, because we always kind of incorporated that into our podcast already. You know, like we do Jen and I, my podcast co host and I, we've done a lot of sort of fictionalized, kind of micro fiction intros to podcast episodes that we've done. Then we do a lot of extrapolating, you know, and kind of fan fictioning, and like imagining these scenarios and things like that, and picking a lane like I'm sure you have to do that as historians too, where there's many different possibilities of how the sources could be interpreted, or how the archeology could be interpreted. And you kind of even, even when you have that material in front of you, you have to kind of craft a story about what has happened here in order to make sense of it. So I don't know, like I feel like in my work, in the podcast, I find myself using my imagination more than I thought. Yeah,
Dr G 18:15
definitely, I would agree with that, because, and particularly for ancient history, like modern history, you're almost overwhelmed by the amount of source material you have access to, so you've really got to pick a niche. But with ancient history, I feel like it's more like you're crafting a lace, or you're a spider that's sort of creating a web. And like, what can you connect to? What and what would be most plausible to connect to something else given the other little pieces of information you've been able to scrounge together. So ultimately, the imaginative process is fundamental to doing ancient history, because you're trying to join together things that are just sort of sitting slightly far apart from each other, and how they are connected is going to be the key, and you have to make that connection. Yeah,
Jenny W 18:57
I think that's exactly right. Yeah. I
Speaker 1 19:00
think it's more the idea of having to put it all into the format of a fictionalized book, you know, having the actual conversations and interactions between characters and, you know, and really fully fleshing out the pieces where we don't know as much and that sort of aspect, that's where I think I would struggle,
Jenny W 19:19
yeah, like giving them a voice, like, What do they sound like, you know, when they're irritated or when they're excited, or, you know, like, well, actual words come out of their mouth, and what would that sound like if you translate that into English? Yes, I frequently struggle with dialog.
Speaker 1 19:32
I can, I can understand that. That's, I think, where I would struggle. As you say, it's not that unusual for us to have to pick a lane, but then to have to turn that into something that is more of a story where you've got people interacting and having those sorts of moments between each other. It's a different kind of style of writing completely to what we tend to do.
Jenny W 19:52
Yeah, and it's just to for me in this moment, it was two characters who obviously never met, like if I took Julia the Elder and introduced her to Alaric of the Goths, how would that conversation go like? These are two people from wildly different parts of the empire, from the beginning and the end, you know. So that also kind of interested me as like an exercise is to bring those two people together in a way, and just see what kind of sparks flew and like, how would their understanding of the world be different? And I think, like in the very, very beginning of the book, when I first started it. This was ages ago, and I was really, did not know what I was doing, and I was just kind of playing around. I was like, what if Augustus just lived in the time of Alaric, and this was the real Julia the Elder, like, what if I just did that? And I had, like, a few, you know, scenes written, you know, Intro scenes written with just Julia, where that was her dad instead of her brother. And there were lots of conversations about these, you know, laws, these, sort of like, “women can't be slutty anymore” laws, it was just me having fun. But that is definitely a huge source of inspiration for me. Is these, this sort of wild, what if of history, absolutely.
Speaker 1 21:02
So we can definitely see the influence of Julie the Elder in the characterization, particularly earlier on in your novel, but obviously a large part of your inspiration comes from much later in Roman history, and that is talking about Galla Placidia. Now I'd say that a lot of our listeners probably have heard of Julia the elder, but they probably haven't heard that much about Galla Placidia. She is definitely a lesser known figure, even though she was also very important at Rome's history. So can you tell us a little bit about her family background, her connections and the time in which she lived?
Jenny W 21:37
Yeah, absolutely so Galla Placidia, she was the daughter of Theodosius, the real daughter of Theodosius, and Theodosius was this emperor who lived in the late three hundreds. AD, I don't think he made it into the four hundreds. Ad, I'm trying to think, but he was a really big figure in the history of Roman Christianity, and establishing Christianity as the state religion of Rome. I think he was involved in the Nicene I think he was like the guy who laid down the Nicene Creed, which established Nicene Christianity as the state religion that would be different from Arian Christianity, which was the form of Christianity that alarca The Visigoths was part of. So she was his daughter, and she would have been in Rome during multiple Alaric related sieges, or, like, you know, invasions, he made it down to Rome several times. Yeah, he got there a couple of times. Yeah, yeah. It's actually kind of weird, because I'm like, there are so many times when he made it into the peninsula and then had to leave, and then made it all the way down, and then kind of went up again and then back down. Like, there was a lot of moving around, you know, but she was in the city for a lot of that, I think, 15 years old. There was news of Alaric at one of his sieges. This was not the final one, coming down the peninsula and setting fire to cities along his way. And all these, this horrible news of like sacking and burning, terrible things happening. And the people in Rome were freaking out. And there's all this paranoia. At one point, the priests in the city, these would have been Christian priests, allowed the pagan priests, the worshipers of the old religion, to fire up the old altars again because of all this, you know, horrible stuff happening, and they wanted them to appeal to the gods in every way that they could. And the wife of Stilicho, the old general who had been Alaric's main opponent, the guy who had been keeping him out, who had previously been executed for suspicion of colluding with Alaric. And that's a whole backstory of its own. Anyway, he had been executed. His wife, Serena was arrested on the belief that she was somehow colluding with Alaric. And like, strangled and Galla Placidia at one point, I think, was like witness that, and like, voted for it, or something like that. And from that early age, she just had this kind of cold spine to her that just fascinated me. And she was in the city of Rome when it was sacked by Alaric and the Visigoths. We're not sure exactly how she came to be in his entourage, but she was probably a captive who was taken at that point, she possibly met Alaric himself, but she wound up marrying Alaric's second in command, and his brother in law, Athaulf. Athaulf was this guy who was another Gothic warlord type of guy, said to be very attractive, said to be also short. So, you know, hot, but we is kind of how I pictured him. Here. They got married. It's, there's all kinds of stuff in Edward Gibbon about, like, the history of Rome, about her dowry, which is absolutely amazing, like she supposedly had this enormous table made entirely of precious stones that had 365, legs and, like, just giant gold, solid gold plates, the size of wagon wheels and all kinds of crazy things, supposedly awesome. And I'm just like, you know, reading all this, I'm like, How can I work this in? Where do I put the giant table in Alaric's war tent? So supposedly, depending on the source you. This is really kind of presented as these were two people who fell in love, which is another thing that really drew me to this story, because that's another thing you actually don't see a lot in in the sources about women in the ancient world falling in love with somebody that they wind up marrying, like a lot of is a lot of these noble marriages were like, marriage is a convenience, and if this is a kidnapping, obviously you would not think that that would be the case. And I think that that there are definitely sources that don't show it that way. And I think modern historians that I've read have been more skeptical of that interpretation. So it kind of depends on how you see it. But that's one interpretation. I remember being super drawn to that, because I was just like, oh my gosh, a situation where it's not the worst for the woman, how about that? So I liked it. And I thought, you know, I have early commentary about my book and the way I kind of wove Galla Placidia in. I don't use that name. I couldn't have her fall in love with Athaulf because he gets killed by this guy who was a servant of an enemy of Alaric about, like, a year or maybe two years in the bath after they get married. So they don't stay married long, and it's not a happy story for that reason. So I couldn't have written just a straight historical fiction romance novel about them. I kind of had to make it my own thing. And I definitely, you know, allergic dies five minutes after sacking Rome, so that that had, like, I knew it was suspending disbelief anyway, writing this book, and I wanted to give it a happy ending, so that's what I did. And, you know, early, sort of, you know, reviews about this book have pointed out that this is not historically accurate, like, if I wanted to write a romance novel about this time period, why didn't I just write about gull of lasidia? And my answer to that is, well, because that wouldn't be a romance novel, because romance novels have to have a happy ending any way I did it. If I was writing about Alaric, or if I was writing about Ataulf and Galla Placidia, I would have to completely change it to give them the happy ending anyway. So as long as I was messing with the history, I wanted to do it my way,
Speaker 1 27:02
absolutely. I mean, that's the whole idea, again, of writing historical fiction and not writing a history
Jenny W 27:09
Exactly, exactly. So Galla Placidia, after a tough dies, she gets basically sold back to the Romans. They're like a series of unfortunate events that happened where the Goths are in a terrible position again and wind up having to negotiate with the Romans to survive and send her back, along with a bunch of other concessions, she winds up marrying this general called Constantius, who she loathed, down to her soul, hated this guy. I think that's pretty clear in the sources, as I remember, he eventually becomes emperor, and then dies, and then she becomes Empress, and rules for about 12 years. And she is really, really good at it. Rules completely with an iron fist. She's like, very good at, like, negotiating disputes. She oversaw a lot of building projects in Ravenna, and was really pretty much undisputed. And I just love the idea of my Julia kind of growing into the gala Placidia, part of herself over the course of this story. So that's kind of part of the clay I was working with.
Speaker 1 28:12
I kind of imagine Agrippina, the younger, loving the position that Galla Placidia ends up having, which is after making it through all the marriages and all the men, she ends up getting to be regent for her son and effectively being Empress of the Roman Empire, which I think is what Agrippina the younger probably had in mind when Nero came to reign, and it just didn't work out for her that way. Oh, absolutely.
Jenny W 28:35
And, I mean, I think that there's a lot, there's a there's a huge interesting conversation to be had, because we saw how Cleopatra dealt with her brother husbands, you know, having them killed off. As long as you have a son who is a child, you can rule undisputed. But once that kid gets to be about Nero's age, he's like, 15 years old, he starts to want to do it himself. Then you have a problem, you know, and you see Cleopatra having a similar situation with these brother husbands that she's married to who are like, you know, 12 years old. I mean, she starts to assassinate them. At least that's the rumor. I don't know that's actually all 100% historically accurate all the time. I've
Dr G 29:16
got opinions. They've got to go,
Jenny W 29:18
you know, there's all kinds of stuff happening here, where, as a woman, if you want to rule, you have to rule through this son that you have most of the time if you're alone, you don't have, like, a husband. So that can be a problem as the son ages, unless, unless you have a good relationship with him, or, like, you know, you work it out somehow, I guess.
Speaker 1 29:39
Valentinian the third from memory was not the most inspirational character in history.
Jenny W 29:47
No, no, I don't know what happened with him.
Dr Rad 29:51
Nothing good.
Jenny W 29:53
Yeah, I
Dr G 29:55
think it's a really interesting aspect of history, is that we get the. Women who grow up in the imperial court, so they're very familiar with how things are done. They understand that on some in some respects, that they're locked out of official power in many ways. And we see that with particularly with Honoria as well. And yet, if they get the chance, some of them are like, I can make this work, and it's like, I found my conduit. I've got the small child. It's a man that's great, and now I can start to leverage within that system of power, which I'm very familiar with. I know he's working against me, but if I say I'm speaking on behalf of this kid over here, all of a sudden I can get some stuff done. And I was like, it's like, really face in the face of adversity, finding a way to be powerful anyway, which I think is pretty cool.
Jenny W 30:50
Yeah, I think it's fascinating, too. And it's also dangerous. Like, I think that as your son ages, that can become a time of transition that's dangerous for women rulers. Just as you know, times of transition when a male king dies could be dangerous for everybody. And
Speaker 1 31:02
it's interesting to think about you using Galla Placidia as well, because, as you highlighted when you were talking about the timing of her life, it isn't a completely different Rome. It's the room that most people don't really think about because it's not often presented in popular history, I think, is effectively as earlier parts of Roman history, because this is a really Christianized version of the Roman Empire. And as a result, the way that our sources write about people is different to the way that say, you know your Suetonius, your A Tacitus, would write about people. So what sense Did you really get of the character of Galla Placidia when you were crafting her, I just
Jenny W 31:44
got this sense of just this is a woman who is going to make it work no matter what. You know. She finds herself in the midst of this Gothic horde of people who has just sacked her city and she's gonna rule them. And she finds herself depending on this man who maybe makes her marry him. I don't know exactly how that would have happened, but, or maybe she fell in love with him, but what I suspect is that she wound up having to marry him because he took a shine to her. He decided that it would be politically advantageous to him to marry the daughter of Theodosius. And she decided, I'm going to rule over this man, and then I'm going to rule over your people. And when that fell apart and she wound up going back to Rome and having to marry this other guy, she made it work that way as well. Like she was somebody who was just not gonna she was not gonna take anything lying down, you know, like, whatever situation she came into, she was gonna dominate that situation. And that was really interesting to me.
Dr Rad 32:38
It is really interesting when you think about the what if of that situation, because, as you say, definitely the accepted version of things, even though modern scholars might be a bit more skeptical about it, is that there was some sort of affection or relationship developing between Galla Placidia and her husband, Adolf in that they had a child, they seem to have been really sad when that child died, and if her husband hadn't died so quickly as well. I mean, who knows what would have happened, given that her son ends up dying only a few years after she does, and it's during these increasing problems with the quote, unquote, barbarians. It's just so interesting to think about what would have happened if gala had managed to hold everything together and have preserved a union between the barbarians, again, flesh rabbits and the Romans. Yeah.
Jenny W 33:36
I mean, I think that it would have been a stronger kingdom, you know, because she she leaves it at a point of weakness. And I'm gonna do a whole series coming up on the history of the Goths, and what happens to the Goths after this whole episode with the Romans, after they move out of Italy and things like that like that's also just really interesting history, but I haven't quite gotten to that yet. It's a big undertaking. That's a lot of them. That's the thing. It's a huge undertaking. And that's what part of what made this book so heavily fictionalized, like how I had to write it that way, is because there's so much we don't know about Gothic culture. We have reams and reams and reams and reams and reams of military history, but there's a lot we don't know about how they saw things in just sort of daily life. And it's really easy to assume that they were kind of proto Vikings for various reasons, but that may not have been the case. I am doing a deep dive later. I'm not sure, but I made some choices in the book, you know, because there's a lot of gaps to fill in,
Dr G 34:38
for sure, and I think in a way that becomes like a perfect sort of Canvas for historical fiction, because we don't have those insights into exactly how they live their lives, how their leadership was structured in many respects, and sort of like cross culturally between different Gothic groups as well. Were not sure about when they really sort of came together and decided to work in a more unified way, and what led to that? So there's lots of potential for coloring in all of those gaps to create a really rich world for the reader to explore. Yeah, exactly.
Jenny W 35:17
And that's just so much fun like that is something I absolutely love to do. And
Dr Rad 35:21
so I'd love to ask for Galla Placidia, because, as I say, she's someone that people don't know as well, but she definitely was a major part of your character of Julia. What kind of source material was out there for you for her? So
Jenny W 35:35
I think I first met her in Edward Gibbon. So like the honestly, I'm terrible with names of books, so I should have had a list of things. There is Jordanes, there's Zosimus. There's various writers at the time who come at this mainly from a Christian lens. I would say, I think it's Jordanes, who is actually Gothic and who is writing a history of things. Those are like sources from my for the world in general, and about Alaric, and some of them also talk about Galla Placidia and Athaulf as well. So I think there was one, I forget the name, but there was one that was definitely talking about the relationship between Galla Placidita and Athaulf as servitude. That was the word that was used. But most of them talk about it as she fell in love with him, and he was very handsome, if just a bit short, but she didn't mind. They were in love. One
Dr Rad 36:25
down, full,
Jenny W 36:27
right? No, she was like, You know what? I like a guy who's my height. I don't know. I mean, that's definitely, I feel like that's just definitely a more positive interpretation that I really fell in love with at the time. But you never, you never know with these things, and I don't know, but I was very intrigued by this idea of a woman who could, who could just walk into that situation and make it hers. Yeah,
Dr G 36:49
I think it's really tricky, because obviously we don't have sources from the inside for that kind of situation, but obviously as a hostage, there is a certain degree in which it would be wise to follow along certain decision making paths in order to preserve yourself and to try to create a ring of safety around you and a bit of a buffer. So if somebody has taken a shine to you, for instance, and he does happen to be a little bit shorter, and to all of our short kings out there. Don't worry. It's okay. No,
Speaker 2 37:22
sure, it's all right, yeah, yes, yeah. Well,
Speaker 1 37:27
her brother wasn't exactly the most again. I mean, this is another another woman who isn't surrounded by men who were not the most capable, inspirational characters. Her brother was also a bit of a waste of space. Basically, I think her dad is the only one who anyone it would look at and go. Now there's an emperor. Her brother and my son were kind of a waste of space.
Jenny W 37:52
That is so true.
Dr G 37:55
She's doing the best she can. I
Dr Rad 37:56
think the interesting thing about Galla Placidia, as opposed to characters like Julia and Agrippina the Younger, who I'm just mentioning because of her ambition, not because she necessarily has any connection to your book. But the thing about Galla Placidia is that living in this Christianized world, it did give women a different set of tools to play with, I suppose, and a different avenue for power, because if they were admirable religious figures, it kind of, I think, allowed men to admire them and respect them in a slightly different way to what they had before. Yeah, and
Jenny W 38:34
that comes up in the sources, how she was perceived. I believe she's described as beautiful and very pious, and that was kind of a shield that she was holding. And remember that the Goths at this point were also Christian, so that would have been something that that was respected. I did a very early episode, like one of the first episodes that I ever did was about, I did a kind of a series about Alaric, Athaulf, and Galla Placidia, and Honoria and Attila the Hun and in the Athaulf and Galla Placidia episode. This is many, many years ago, like when we first started the podcast. Started the podcast, I made a case that the Gothic culture was less misogynist than the Roman one, and would have valued women more highly, even if they were both Christian at the time, like they had a long history of venerating women as ciruses and listening to them as, you know, community leaders. And there wasn't the sense. One of the things that I picked up on was this sort of scorn for love that occurs, at least in upper class aristocratic Roman culture, like, for example, Pompey was a wife guy and was ridiculed for it. And this happens occasionally, where, you know, people really make fun of someone for loving their wife, and it's kind of looked down on, is like, Oh, you're just kind of enthralled by this woman, and love was seen as this madness and things like that
Speaker 1 39:49
disgusting. I've never heard of such films, right?
Jenny W 39:52
I mean, the appropriate feeling for your spouse should be a sort of fondness and familial duty. That's what you're supposed to feel. You're certainly not supposed to get too excited about it. So this idea that maybe the Gothic culture gave Galla Placidia a little bit more room to breathe, I like the idea that maybe she enjoyed that about it when she found it.
Speaker 1 40:14
It is so intriguing to think about the possibilities of what her life was like in that very brief moment where she was living amongst them, yeah.
Jenny W 40:22
And this is, of course, fan fiction on my part, mostly, and potentially fan fiction on the sources part, depending, you know, because we don't have anything from her point of view, I think it's high, highly likely that when she got into that situation, she wasn't like, I mean, maybe, I don't know, maybe she fell in love with a tall first glance, unlikely. I think it was a bad situation that she was trying to make the best of. She could make this guy enthralled with her all the better. And then, if she could, once she was back in Rome, things worked out for her there too. And I think that kind of shows that that was the kind of person she was
Dr G 40:57
good at making the best of a bad set of circumstances.
Jenny W 41:00
Yeah, good, good at, like, walking into a situation that would be really bad and just ruling it fine of steel. And I just respected that about her, like that was the thing that came across to me.
Speaker 1 41:12
Well, I think you're right. I think when we're talking about her character, as I said, after her father died, which was in 395, ce really, there were a lot of, I mean, I suppose it's not the best way to characterize them, but weaker rulers. There weren't really any strong Roman emperors after Theodosius, and it was the people around them that were more holding things together. I think, after that, particularly if we're talking about, obviously, this sort of Western Roman court, and gallopicity is one of those people. We also have all these, again, quote, unquote, barbarian figures, and we also have people like Constantius, who, even though galapaciti Apparently couldn't stand him, these are the strong characters around the Emperors that seem to be driving events and holding things together. But the Emperors themselves a very meh from this time period, yeah,
Jenny W 42:03
and, and, I mean, that is kind of a, you know, in a way, she has a channel of power because her son is sort of her, her excuse to hang on to power when she is in that position. But there are situations where we kind of see Agrippina, the Younger doing this with Claudius, you know, like there are situations where women to hold on to power need a strong husband that they can operate through. So potentially, at that point, a tough was that guy, maybe potentially where she's like, all right, I can work with this clay.
Speaker 1 42:35
Now, just to wrap up, we're not going to go into heaps of detail, because, to be honest, there's not heaps of detail to be had, but we did mention at the top that Honoria was also worked into this story somewhat. She's a very shadowy figure in the histories, and we have even less from her point of view than we do about someone like Galla Placidia. Can you tell us a little bit about Honoria and how she factored into your story as
Jenny W 43:01
well. Oh yeah, this is actually one of my favorite parts. So Honoria was gala Placidia, his daughter with Constantius, and she did not want to marry the guy that her mom picked out for her, and she rebelled. And what is wild about this is that Galla Placidia, theoretically, again, depending on if you believe the sources, had been married to a man that she maybe loved or had some affection for, possibly, and then married to a man that she absolutely loathed, consensus, and she was really adamant that her daughter was going to marry this man that she loathed, which is wild to me, like this, this idea that she was going to make her daughter do this thing. And so Honoria, at this time, Attila the Hun was kind of ravaging various territories in Rome, and I don't think he had made it all the way into Italy or had made it to Gaul yet, but what she did was she, essentially, she sent him a message inviting him to come and get her,
Dr G 44:03
please. Yes, babe, I would really appreciate
Jenny W 44:06
and get me and I will marry you. Get me out of here. Is that amazing? And as far as I remember, this is a very long time ago that I did these episodes. But this is something that stuck in my mind. He basically took this as a pretext, you know, well, if I marry this woman, that means I own half the Roman Empire. So he invaded on that pretext alone, before they were even married. Now, I don't think these people ever met. Honoria was, I believe, eventually forced to marry somebody, or there's a question mark about what happened to her. I'm not sure she might have been sent into exile. Again. These are like just various theories that I've seen come across, but I'm not sure. I don't think people know, as you said, but yeah, she and Attila the Hun never met in person. And that, again, that scenario, again, was one of the inspirations for this book. And like, I kind of played with the idea of Augustus and Julia the elder living in 410 ad. I also played with the. Idea that maybe this romance novel I was writing was about anoria and Attila the Hun, like, what if they met in person? My Julia kind of propositioning Alaric of the Visigoths, comes from that sort of that just absolutely balls to the walls, you know, rebellious spirit that anoria had, and like, this absolute refusal to just do what most women did at that time, which is, marry who your parents told you to.
Dr G 45:26
Under no circumstances. I'd rather marry a hun. Everyone's like,
Jenny W 45:30
at least she picked him out herself. I mean, granted, she hadn't met him, but
Speaker 1 45:36
it is wild when you think about the reputation that Attila the Hun has, yeah, it is wild to think about a Roman imperial Princess being like, you know what? I don't like the guy that you've picked for me, mom. I'd like that guy well.
Jenny W 45:51
And I think at one point, Honoria was sent to live with the Eastern Roman court, which was a lot more rigidly Christian than where she was living before. So if I remember, right, I don't know if this, honestly, don't know if this is fan fiction at this point, but I wrote, I wrote an intro to this episode that I did about Honoria, where she's in the Eastern Roman court, and she's been living this extremely strictured Christian life, and she can't stand it. And there's this point where Attila the Hun is bearing down on Constantinople. And there's all these wild like, like with the Alaric story, you know, there's all these wild rumors flying before him about his brutality and all of the horrible things he's going to do to the city as soon as he gets to it. And the people are building the walls that have been just destroyed by an earthquake, and they have, like, two weeks to do this, or, you know, some extremely short time to do this before the the Huns are going to get here, and everybody's praying for the walls to rise, and anoria is praying for the walls to fall and for the Huns to just sweep into the city and burn everything and rescue her from this extremely rigid lifestyle. Like that. She just it just didn't fit her. She couldn't stand it. That's who anoria is in my head. I think about that all the time like that. What she was refusing to do was what women did all the time, like that was extremely common back then, is just you married whoever your parents told you to marry, and that was it. And if you were 15 and he was 50 years old, that was fine. That's just what people did. Or, you know, whatever other horrible situation it was like the these were, you know, women and girls who did not get a choice, and the fact that she just dug in her heels and said, No, nobody did that like gala Placidia didn't even do that well,
Dr G 47:28
not directly, but as Honoria is sort of growing up and witnessing what is happening in the imperial court. It's her mom in charge. So it's kind of like as a child, I think you would be seeing very much a situation where you're like, Well, mom gets to do what she likes.
Speaker 1 47:48
I know just imagining this confrontation where it's like, But mom, you got to run off with a barbarian who open you, and my age is a son. That's such
Jenny W 47:56
a good point. Like, why can't I have a barbarian husband? You got
Dr G 48:00
to do it. Yeah. And I think maybe if I'm thinking of like, in a historical fiction kind of way, I feel like that conversation will be like, But mom, you already said you love that guy, and it's like, I just want my own. How bad
Jenny W 48:13
could Attila the Hun be really? I mean, isn't it all just girl is rumor Exactly. It's
Speaker 1 48:21
also that thing of, as you say, We know so little about anoria, which is mental because she is often brought up as being a key factor in Attila the Hun attacking at this point in time. But again, it's that question of, was that just some sort of pretense on behalf of the sources to blame it all on her, when maybe Attila was going to attack anyway. Or maybe there were much larger reasons. It's so hard to understand, but at the same time, you can understand why he would if he thought there was a chance of nailing an Imperial Princess, yeah.
Jenny W 48:53
Or just, you know, maybe this comes up in my book, where my Alaric kind of sells the idea of being married to a Roman Princess, to his people by saying, like this, this is obviously going to mean that when I invade, we're going to have a son, and he's going to be the heir. So I basically already rule Rome. I just have to go and take it, you know, like there's that sort of, that motivation that I think Attila probably had, or at least he's, he's been presented as having. I mean, whether that's the actual case is anybody's guess. Well, I
Speaker 1 49:23
think that's what's so interesting about thinking about this period of Rome's history, in that it is one where a lot of the groups that are putting pressure on Rome's borders, or putting pressure on Rome systems from within. It is about them wanting to be integrated into the Roman Empire, and a lot of the time the Romans are causing problems for themselves by not effectively doing that, by either resisting it, fighting back, or putting all these terms and conditions which are kind of unacceptable on it. And when we see them thriving more, I think is where they are. Able to come to some sort of agreement with these peoples, because, after all, a lot of the barbarians are moving into Rome and putting pressure on Rome because they themselves are having pressure put on them, you know, because they're being driven out of their traditional lands. And so it is an interesting thing to think about when there's so much discussion about immigration in a lot of parts of the world at this point in time, and given that there's only going to be increasing number of people who are fleeing from war, genocide and climate change, it's such an interesting thing for us to be considering at this moment in time. Yeah, that's
Jenny W 50:35
a huge part of this story, because it was the migration era, right? And like, what that means is that there were Huns coming down from. People aren't actually sure where the Huns were coming down from. It might have been the Eastern Asian steppes. It might have been elsewhere. There's a lot of question about who the Huns were, but they were kind of crashing into these other populations of Germanic and Gothic tribes, and they were crashing into the Roman Empire, and that was starting in alaric's time. And so you have, like, you know, refugee crisis piled upon refugee crisis in this time period anyway, which is really the engine for what is happening right now. And Alaric wanted to be integrated. Like a big part of his story was that he had been a federate leader, and he wanted the legitimate, highly placed generalship position in the Roman army proper. And there's questions, you know, about what that means. Did he want that? Because it would have put his people in a better position. Did he want that? Because he just was really petty about the job title for some reason, like,
Dr Rad 51:30
I want the official title, god damn it,
Jenny W 51:32
right. But like the real Alaric, I messed with this history a little bit in my book. Like my Alaric is kind of more focused on the on the homeland part, but the real Alaric was really focused on part of his story was this was a story about integration and what immigrants into Rome did and didn't have the right to do and have, and what was happening to these people. And there's a biography that I've read that came out actually just as I was polishing up and finishing the final draft of book one. Unfortunately, that would have been so helpful, always, always. And it's about, it's called Alaric the Goth, like An Outsider's History of Rome. It's by Douglas Boin, and it is an excellent, excellent biography, and it really focuses on the immigrant part. And it's just fascinating, and just sheds a lot of light on this, on this topic. Well,
Dr G 52:20
at this point in time, I reckon we should wrap up, and I think there's lots of really interesting ideas that come up through your novel that sort of relate and raise questions about what we know about this history and that it is also a case that you're receiving a lot of high praise, so I want to just quote one of them. So Elodie Harper, who is the author of the acclaimed ‘The Wolf Den', has said, this is a hugely entertaining Roman world romanticy with a hilarious heroine and a smoldering hero, whose adventures in love and war are set against the backdrop of the last dangerous days of an ancient empire. So enticing, very enticing, that's Yeah. Congratulations,
Speaker 1 53:10
Jenny. You must be so thrilled to have such an amazing endorsement of your debut novel. And we're wondering, are there any hints about what you might be working on? Well,
Jenny W 53:22
I just want to say thank you to Elodie for that glowing praise. I am eternally grateful. I'm so glad that she loved the book. And yes, I am working on book two of this series where, yeah, which is the continuation of the story. I definitely, when I started it, thought it might be one book, but it is not. It is two books. I'm getting that draft ready. I'm actually, as we're doing this interview, scheduled to pass in the first draft of it to my editor in two days, three, two or three days. I don't know what day is it? It's Friday. Scary
Dr G 53:55
times. Yeah, it's
Jenny W 53:56
a little intimidating. That's what I'm going to be doing all weekend. So, yeah. So I'm working on Book Two, which is as yet untitled. I have an idea for a book three, but I'm kind of sitting on it for now. Gonna see how these edits go, and you know how everything goes, whether I keep the plot point that it's all based on. But yeah, I have an idea for one, at least. And yeah, we'll see. We'll see what's next.
Speaker 1 54:21
Oh, how exciting to hear that this might be a trilogy in the making, potentially,
Jenny W 54:25
I don't know at this point, it's a duology.
Speaker 1 54:30
Yeah, fair enough. So just to wrap up, Jenny, we have mentioned the podcast, obviously. But can you tell our listeners where people can find you? And of course, ancient Yeah?
Jenny W 54:39
So I my podcast is ancient history. Fan girl, it can be found wherever you get podcasts. And I'm Jenny Williamson. Mainly, I'm mainly active on Instagram. My handle is Jenny freaking Williamson. I have a website, Jenny Williamson, author, and from there, you can pretty much find out everything about me that you want to
Speaker 1 54:59
know. Fan. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on and telling us all about your book and your process and your source material, your inspiration and listeners, we hope that you also run out and buy a copy of Jenny's book. Yeah,
Jenny W 55:13
enemy of my dreams, it drops February 4. And yeah, thank you guys so much for having me
Dr G 55:19
an absolute pleasure.
Dr Rad 55:26
Thank you for listening to this episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman, and because this is a special episode, we would like to say thank you to all of our Patreon and Kofi supporters who helped to make bonus content like this possible, and in return, they get early access to all of our extra content. We'd also like to say that if you found the people we were discussing in today's episode particularly fascinating, and let's face it, why wouldn't you? You might want to check out your cheeky guide to the Roman Empire, which is the book that Dr G and I just wrote, which has entries on both Julia the elder and Galla Placidia. We'd also like to recommend Emma Southon's excellent book, a History of Rome in 21 women, which also has some content that might interest you, particularly about Gallup Placidia and Honoria. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome, you
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We are thrilled to sit down in conversation with Professor Joel P. Christensen to discuss some of the ideas explored in his forthcoming book Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things (Yale University Press).
Special Episode – Storylife with Professor Joel P. Christensen
Joel Christensen is Professor of Classical Studies at Brandeis University. He received his BA and MA from Brandeis in Classics and English and holds a PhD in Classics from New York University. His publications include A Beginner’s Guide to Homer (2013), A Commentary on the Homeric Battle of Frogs and Mice with Erik Robinson (2018), Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts with Elton T. E. Barker (2019), and The Many-Minded Man: the Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic (2020).
Professor Christensen is also famous online for his engaging work on ancient Greece and Rome through his website sententiaeantiquae.com
In this episode we delve into some of the ideas that Christensen explores in his forthcoming book Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things (Yale University Press). With chapters exploring Homer in tandem with the COVID-19 pandemic and people’s response to it, particularly in the context of the United States.
The cover for Storylife
Keen on the Ancient Greek recited by Professor Christensen in this episode?
He recites the opening line of the Iliad:
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
which can be found online at Perseus.
And he also cites the first line of the Odyssey:
ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
which can also be found online at Perseus.
Our music is composed by the amazing Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Lightly edited for the Latin and our wonderful Australian accents!
Dr G 0:15
Welcome to The Partial Historians.
We explore all the details of ancient Rome.
Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battled wage and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr Rad.
And I'm Dr G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Welcome everybody to a very special episode of The Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr G.
And I am Dr Rad.
And we are super thrilled today to be welcoming a special guest, Professor JoelChristiensen. Now, Joel Christiensen is professor of Classical Studies at Brandeis University. He received his BA and MA from Brandeis in classics and English, and holds a PhD in classics from New York University, and has many exciting publications in his back catalog, including ‘A Beginner's guide to Homer', ‘A Commentary on the Homeric Battle of Frogs and Mice' with Eric Robinson, ‘Homer's Thebes' with Elton T. E. Barker and ‘The Many-Minded Man:The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic'. Also, Professor Christensen is famous online for his engaging work on ancient Greece and Rome through his website, which I'm about to mispronounce, sententiaeantiquae.com
Yup, you stuff that up completely.
I did. Somebody correct me, please. Somebody correct me.
Sententiae, I think.
See, there you go. It's easy. Just don't rely on me for pronouncing things. So you could say, from this back catalog that we are incredibly starstruck and also completely out of our death, because we are Roman historians. And you will have noticed that Professor Christensen is really a Greek specialist in all of these sorts of areas that he's focused on in his work. And we are going to be really junior learners in this process of this interview, which we're excited about as we talk about Professor Christensen's forthcoming book, ‘Storylife: On Epic Narrative and Living Things', which is coming out in 2025 through Yale University Press. So thank you, Joel, so much for joining us.
Professor Joel Christensen 2:57
Hey, thank you for inviting me. I was so psyched when you guys sent that email, it's a pleasure to be here.
Dr G 3:03
Fantastic. Woo hoo. I'm glad that the excitement is mutual, because we're definitely starstruck. So this is, this is thrilling stuff. So to start off with, thinking about story life, in the preface, you say that this is an exploration of how we think about stories if we externalize them. And I'm wondering if you can take us a little bit about what led you to this idea to consider stories as external agents.
Speaker 1 3:31
Yeah, so I mean, what's probably connected and animated my work, in fact, my interest in scholarship, since I was, I don't know, middle school is thinking about how stories function in the world, why we respond to them so much, why we care about them and really like how we depend on them and what they do. And so, you know, for many years, in teaching myth, I, you know, grasp about for different metaphors and how to think about getting people to understand why makes vary, why stories are embedded in different contexts, and what similarities and differences from one context to another means. And at the same time, while I was doing this, I have been, as you note in the introduction, sort of habitually online, watching everything that's happened in Twitter and Facebook since it started, I'm, you know, I feel like I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember a world before Google and before Facebook. In fact, both debuted while I was in graduate school, and you really got a sense of watching them unfold, of how much faster narratives were moving and changing, and how they could really make people act in different ways. And so part of it is, for me, I've always felt sort of on the outside of what we might see as American centrism and what we do in the world. To go back again to around the time Google debuted, I was in New York City for 911. I was there for the peace protest. And you know, I lost friends and, like, ruined family relationships. Because from the beginning, I didn't understand why a terrorist attack in the US meant we should be going on an endless war and terror and, you know, invading Afghanistan, Iraq, all of those things. And so constantly, you know, I was interested in rhetoric, in politics. And then, you know, post the 2008 election and Obama, I got really interested in the way that stories shape our notion by identity and belonging to larger groups. And so that's a very long answer for your for your question, but I'm getting, you know, I'm getting to the point, I got to the point where I, you know, everyone's talking about intention and responsibility, like, who's creating stories, who's responsible for it? But one of the things that I think is really clear from watching the way narratives, you know, metastasize online and change, is I don't think there are agents, right? We can point to specific moments where someone floats in there, gets accepted, but it's so much more complicated than and so for me, what? But, you know, Trump's victory in 2016 like bored me. I was like, How does this happen? How do people think like we can actually do? And then what really made me start to think of narratives as being independent of us was our collective response of us, especially to COVID, just the very notion that people were rejecting vaccination, not believing that we could understand the way the disease is working, rejecting masking and public health things, you know, it made me think, well, what if, just for sake of argument, we imagine that stories have nothing to do with our attention, right, but that they have a reason for existing on their own, and they operate by their own logic. And what if, in this logic is the very logic that animates the rest of creation, which is the need to perpetuate itself, not for good, not for evil, just for basic survival. And so that, for me, was sort of the starting proposition, what would it mean to just think about stories as independent from us, and that, in a way, can help sort of soften the blow of us understanding that something that we create and participate in willingly actually causes us harm. And so for me, this is also connected. It's not just about COVID, of course. It's also about climate change, it's about so many of the narratives that we participate in that actually cause harm to us, individually and collectively. And so I think the ideas have been brewing and simmering for a very long time, but the real catalyst was just spending 18 months sitting at home watching us make bad decision after bad decision, and wondering if there's a different way of thinking about things.
Dr G 7:45
Yeah, I think that's really amazing. I think that puts things in a really great context as well, to set up, like the questions that we're going to start to delve into further as we get into this interview as well, but this sense in which stories sort of sit both outside of the realm of the self, but are also constantly interacting with us as we move through space and time. And I think your analogy of, well, it's not even an analogy, it's just a fact of history, the way that the explosiveness of the internet over time, and so I don't think that we're that old, either, but we also pre date some of that stuff.
Speaker 1 8:24
Well, I mean, look for full disclosure, my age. I'm 46 right? And, you know, the first time I ever sent an email was when I was a freshman in college, yeah. And, you know, I never used the internet till I applied for college. And so I think this means, to a certain extent, that my consciousness and cognitive capacity formed before that and have a different relationship to information, but we can see that change. It's like my parents talk about what life was like before cable TV. Like I really understand that, but I can clock the way it works. And just one thing to add to that, you know, that can another connection that that really primed all this thought is the work I did for my Odyssey book, which was really engaged in cognitive psychology and neurobiology and sort of collective notions of thinking and minds to sort of lay the basis for epic being a therapeutic experience. And I think one of our big challenges, and this again, lead back to the book, is as human beings, we are both culturally set up to think of ourselves as individuals and separate from things, and we're biologically encouraged to consider the world in that way, but our language and our engagement with ideas, with others, is actually a collective experience. And so I think one of the reasons why I find these analogies not just useful, but absolutely necessary, is it's so hard for us to defamiliarize ourselves, with our with the experiences that we have. Have like, we don't think well in the aggregate, and it's really hard to think outside of our individual subjectivity and imagine ourselves as part of a larger narrative ecosystem that shapes our identities, instead of sort of, you know, like free agents in the world making all of our own choices.
Dr G 10:15
Yeah, obviously, as of time of recording, to totally date this podcast, which I know we're not supposed to do. But hey, watch me do it yet again. We are obviously all reeling with the news of Trump's re election as of a few weeks ago, and definitely, as somebody who is constantly struggling with the lack of serious action on climate change, on the on the behalf of both institutions and individuals, I totally get what you're saying in terms of, it just constantly boggles my mind that this kind of stuff is happening in the world. And I do think it has a lot to do with with narratives and the way that people interact with them. Yeah, that's drive that, you know, helping to drive sort of action on these sorts of issues.
Speaker 1 10:55
No, I look it's mind boggling. And you know, the the stance I always had, you know, when we elected, when we re elected, George Bush in 2004 you know, my first stance was, everybody's stupid, right? But, but then I had to step back and say, look like, while it might be attractive to dismiss more than 50% of the country, like, we can't assume that everyone's just insane, right? Like, there has to be some other way to think about it, you know. And part of is about to reading people with empathy, trying to under, like, trying to understand the world in a generous way, which is really, really hard. And so that's where it's like, sort of, you know, to think of us as not individuals making rational decisions may seem to, you know, deprive us of agency, in a way, but it also is a fundamentally important framing for understanding human action, and I think that's one of our real challenges in public policy and education. Is really seeing that problem there, that we are part of these larger tides in the world. And no matter how much smarter more informed we think we are like, we still have to look at the larger picture.
Dr G 12:11
So perhaps to segue from modern American politics to ancient Greece, such a jump time traveling a little bit obviously, even the average person on the street is probably aware that one of the standout figures in ancient Greek thought and storytelling is Homer. And one of the big questions that usually concerns scholars of Homer is important enough to receive capitalized letters, which is the Homeric question. Can you briefly explain to us what the Homeric question is all about?
Speaker 1 12:45
So, so that modifier, briefly, there is, is a dangerous request, but I'll see. I'll see what I could do. So the Homeric question, it's not really one question, it's multiple questions, and it has the following elements, one first one are the alien the Odyssey by the same person in scare quotes? Two, whether or not they're by the same person, or if they are, are the alien Odyssey as we have them unitary? Are each of them whole in the way they're meant to be, instead of sort of Malcolm text that were put together by later, by later editors? Three if these texts are unitary, or if they not, or if they're not, what is the relationship between the texts we have and the oral tradition that we're very certain predated the textualizations of the epic right? So, how did they move from an oral tradition of performance into a textual tradition of reading. And I think an additional question there is, how does that change the way we think about the epics, even if they came from an oral tradition, but they're also in text? How do we analyze them? And then I think I'd add to that, how and when did it happen? And, you know it, did it happen in a single time or over time? And what's the dirty relationship between the oral tradition and the text? So complicating features of this is that we have no certain evidence about a person called Homer. There are biographical traditions that are clearly false. They're from all over the place. The best book on this is by Barbara Graziosi. It's called ‘Inventing Homer', and it really goes through the ancient evidence for the creation of Homer as a as a sort of poetic figure. You guys may like this next anecdote. I'll try to make it simple. But my daughter came home. She is in She's a freshman in high school, so first year in high school, she's 14, and to hassle me, she took out her textbook, and she showed me in her history textbook, line, Homer was a blind poet who wrote The Iliad of the Odyssey, and she knew I was going to die from that. And she's like, Well, why isn't this right? I'm like, it. To and I tried to explain to her about composition and performance and how important it was over time. And then she said, Well, Encyclopedia Britannica says this is right. And she took out a phone and started fact checking me. And then she went to karate class and kept texting me. She texted, you know, what is Homer, according to you, and then she followed up people in my class say who was a real guy. And I just like, you're trying to murder me, my daughter. And so I think the biographical tradition is clearly false. And in addition, there are significant features that are different between sort of oral derived literature and literary culture. And to add to all that, and make it more complicated, as a literate culture, where prejudice towards a sort of God author model for the creation of things. And I think if you read really carefully in the development of ancient Greek literature, you can see culture changing. I think Aristotle doesn't understand oral culture. He doesn't see the tradition as being indebted to variety and multiplicity and performance. He sees it as a written thing, because he's a writer, and I think our number one challenge in conceptualizing a non written, fixed textual tradition for Homer is our own cultural framework that privileges authorship over genius over almost all else, and dis privileges collective contributions and creations.
Dr G 16:35
Well, you convinced me I'm going to go out and smash my bust of Homer immediately after recording this episode. Oh no, take that genius.
Professor Joel Christensen 16:45
Somebody might find it useful.
Dr G 16:49
Just fragments. Just leave fragments behind.
That should be appropriate, like that's a good metaphor for what's gonna happen here with the test, I shook that Aristotle was wrong about something. I mean, my god.
Speaker 1 17:02
I may be, I may be veering into iconoclastic territory by saying that, but I think, look, we have good evidence in studies in sort of oral culture, that the shift in mindset is less than a generation like even one person's lifetime, as they move from an oral performance culture. Once they move to relying on reading and fixing things on a page, their sort of neurological relationship to creation changes. So there's some good stuff, but like about that, but it's something again, it's so hard for us to think outside of it's like thinking in another language completely, or like breathing different kind of air.
Dr G 17:41
Well, this is very much like what you were saying, though, because we are of the same generation as you, not to disclose our age too much, but yeah, as you said, like the creation of the internet in our youth, let's say did definitely lead to some changes. And I am a teacher of teenagers, and so I definitely see the different way that they think about information and communication and all of that kind of stuff, in terms of how they interact with social media and AI and all of those sorts of tools which they've grown up with.
Speaker 1 18:14
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's just a small sample of how much it changes. And just imagine the difference if you're embedded in a cultural group that's not relying on reading or writing at all, right, and that's used to attributing authority externally. And so that, to go to your earlier question about sort of externalizing stories, one of the most important things, I think, differences in early Greek literature is the externalizing of agency for an authority, for narrative to the muse. We now think of that as a poetic device that's a way like it's taught like this is just something you do, but I think it was taken very seriously prior to Plato, and even you know among in his time, like this is a way of saying this comes from somewhere else without actually being sure about where it comes to them.
Dr G 19:02
I think this has good parallels to draw upon in connection with oral culture that still exists within indigenous traditions. So definitely in Australia, there is a sort of a reclamation of a lot of indigenous oral tradition, and the way that storytelling is embedded in a really layered way, and it's about relationships between people. But it's also the case that it's very explicitly made clear that if you are being told a story by an elder, you're only being told the first version of that story. There's going to be deeper layers as you get further embedded into the culture and you demonstrate your responsibility and your obligations and things like that. So there's a sense in which the complexity of something like a Homeric text in its oral form is really beyond our capacity to be able to comprehend, because we've only got this written version that remains. That oral tradition has not continued, because it would have evolved and changed through the retelling every single time.
Speaker 1 20:01
Yeah. And, I mean, I think this is one of the things that we miss the most in our tradition, about Homer as well, in that we're taught to read ancient literature as if it's modern literature, as if we just sit there reading it literally. And there's been this sort of, this movement for about 300 years in reading ancient literature that discounts allegory and, you know, symbolism and indirect meaning. You know, as early we have evidence of 600 BCE Pythagorean traditions of, you know, of reading Homer's allegory, of seeing everything in the Odyssey about being the reincarnation of souls. It's not actually about the story of Odysseus. Instead, it's a secret included message. And so I think you know that goes exactly with what you were saying about so traditional literature and community and layers of interpretation and passing down the authority of the past, it's just something we're so separate from, because we're raised with sort of the belief in scriptural traditions where the word is on the page and we interpret it, and we have this idea of universal, timeless meaning, which seems to be inflexible in a way.
Dr G 21:09
So challenging, but also now I'm feeling a little bit riled up. The English teacher side of me is like, but no, it's always about the interpretation every valid and different.
Professor Joel Christensen 21:19
But my guess is you would be a better English teacher, because there are different models, right? There's the model where there's one interpretation and the authority gives it to you, and then there's the other one, where there are where it's the ambiguity and multiplicity of interpretations that makes literature special. And so I think there's a real tension there in the Western tradition of approaching literature, right? It goes back to who has the authority to interpret? Is it supply side poetics, where it's all about whatever the author meant, or is it about something more, much more complicated, about that dance between tradition and the individual and audiences and sort of narratives?
Yeah, for sure, there's so much to think about with this sort of thing. So yeah, I feel like I'm just like, I'm just letting my brain absorb it and and take it in um. But taking this idea a little bit further with the Homeric tradition, and starting to think about the external elements of it as well. You discuss the idea of thinking about Homer's writing home, is writing get out my flesh rabbits through both an oral metaphor and an arboreal metaphor. So a metaphor related to trees. And I don't know if you're open to it, but I'm wondering if you'd be willing to recreate this experience of the arboreal metaphor for us.Okay, sure. So in the introduction, the first thing I talk about is, instead of thinking about the Iliad of the Odyssey as a complex symphony played in different rooms by musicians who can't hear each other, the next one I think, I ask people to think about is the object of the elite. The Odyssey is something fixed like a tree in the landscape. So I have a section where I say, you know, I'll quote myself, and I'll go through it right. If you can get someone to read the next few paragraphs aloud, close your eyes and listen. And here we go. Take a minute and imagine a tree in a manicured park, a private garden. Make it a really lovely tree, one you would notice and remember, if you lingered on a bit, one that has been well situated in its environment. Think about the trees in perfect symmetry, the way it occupies its space. Has it grown? It's in odd angles to meet the sun's changing rays over the seasons or in response to persistent winds. How deeply is it rooted? Now think about this. Someone planted the tree, others tended to it and trimmed it. More people spent generations selecting this domesticated tree from its ancestral stock. Think about the uncountable hands that made this tree possible. The saplings transplanted, the varieties combined over time. What were their lives like? What stories did they tell? What were trees to them, think about the tree's beauty, its esthetics. What makes us set this tree apart from others? What is essential about it? Our appreciation is based on other trees we might not remember, as well as an entire grammar of human beings in the environment, like any native language, you learned its basic syntax without trying. You have a sense of the way trees should be. You probably judge a tree differently from a shrub for historical esthetic reasons. You have expectations of what trees should do, how they should look and how they relate to the world around them. For the most part, you're not cognizant of these assumptions, but you almost certainly have different notions about a shrub or a bush. Now, if you've been listening, open your eyes, but keep the tree in your mind. If someone asks Who is responsible for the tree, what do you say? Is that the person who designed the park? Is it the gardener is the first person who imagined a tree in the garden, any single answer ignores those countless hands, minds and environments that contribute to the treeness of the tree. I can keep going, and there's more, but enough of it.
Dr G 25:07
No I think that's good, that that starts to open up the pathways they're thinking about the complexities of anything. So I think one of the challenges that students often come with is when they're sold an idea that, like, Homer, is a guy, you know, he's a blind poet. He did these things is that it gives it that singular point of generation. It's like this is emerged from a singular moment of genius from one person. And perhaps it was a response to their world. But it somehow all comes down to them, and anything that we can take away from that text, we also then have to acknowledge the genius of the creator, and by stepping back and trying to place the poetry and the ideas that come with that poetry in the broader landscape. And I think this is part of the power of this metaphor, is that it allows us to see the whole context, or a window into that whole context. And it's like we're always looking at so much more than just some phrasing, just a moment of singular genius. I mean, Western culture does have this sort of propensity for the for the white male genius aspect, model of creation, but it's so much more than that, and so I think that it shows a real potential for how we can start to think about literature completely differently. So thank you,
Speaker 1 26:33
Yeah, and well, and I think what I found useful or attractive about is that there are two angles, and it really gets into what I'll just call, perhaps unfairly ecological thinking, right? Like we all, anybody who's taking basic science understands how a tree is part of an ecosystem, what we lose track of, though, is that most of our ecosystems are human shaped. At this point, there are few that don't have some sort of influence from us, that have kept a different equilibrium that wouldn't be natural, whatever that means, because we're still natural in a way, right? Or, you know, have had some other influence on what we're seeing. So there's that ecosystem that's really critical, because every every piece of the tree is shaped by, you know, inheritance that it has from its own tree genes, right? And then the experience of the world, how the world has shaped it the secondary ecosystem that comes from our judgment, right, and our judgment is similarly constituted in an ecosystem of ideas, of our own history, of other people's influence of esthetic judgments, of our interaction of our senses in the world that shape those esthetic judgments, but also shaped by them. I mean, all those things are really complicated, and then we live in a specific slice of time and have a real hard ability seeing duration of time and how things change. And so we pick a point, and we see things in one way or another, and we it's very hard for us to think about these overlapping ecologies of sort of the nature and ecologies of thought.
Dr G 28:06
Indeed, yes, and I really, I liked, I liked that tree metaphor. That was actually the part that really jumped out at me when I was reading the introduction. Now I have to ask you a question about my most feared subject, which is ancient languages.
Professor Joel Christensen 28:25
I'll try not to be too scary.
Dr G 28:28
Well, I am someone who struggles with language in any form, modern, ancient doesn't matter. Latin, Greek, either way, I don't understand it, so Homeric Greek is a big challenge. But even to people who are better at languages than I am. This is a big challenge. So in the first chapter, you explore parallels between Homeric language and DNA. What are some of the key features of Homeric meter and language, and how do you think DNA helps us to better appreciate the ethics?
Speaker 1 28:58
All right, so the first thing I'm going to say that's probably going to upset you more, or maybe it won't, is that I actually think that all language is going to be governed by the principles that I'll talk about, but that it's easier for us to think about Homeric language in this way, because we think of it in some way as artificial, even though that's completely false. So I'll talk about Homeric Greek a little bit, but, you know, interrupt me at any point, because I don't want to send people screaming after they listen to this bit, right? So look, we know that all languages are governed by rules, right? And the rules are essentially arbitrary. They exist within a system of contrast, and we have learned them at a young age, right? And so there's no sort of universal syntax or grammar or universal semantics or meaning. Those two axes are always engaging in the way that things unfold in time, right? So any languages, as I see it, has building blocks that are akin to. DNA. And the building blocks are the morphologies, the actual sounds, the grammar, how these morphologies fit together to unveil meaning right in an ordered way, following rules we know. And then there's the semantic sphere, which is, well, what do these words mean in contact with each other? And so the very basic idea that I have is that, you know, DNA that's not activated in an environment, that's not living, is just a string of proteins, but when you put it in an environment in contact with other things, then various traits are triggered. They are, you know, they are activated and they reveal themselves to the world. So a big, you know, big thing people talk about in genetics for a while is epigenetics, right? The way that certain features of DNA or of a creature will be activated by its environment, right? And so, you know, a hand or foot doesn't make any sense unless it's articulated with the rest of the body. It doesn't make sense in space to have four limbs, right? It's really based on engagement with the environment. So in a very simplistic way, language functions the same way. Now Homeric Greek, I think, lends itself to this analysis a little better because of the way it developed, it has a limit on it that other languages don't, and that limit is meter, right? So one of the things that people used to think about Homeric language is that it was composed the way Virgil composed the Aeneid or Shakespeare composed some of his poetry, which is that you had to, like, take your language and put it into meter, right? But that's not actually what happened with ancient with a Homeric Greek. Homeric Greek developed over time with the metrical shapes as part of its repertoire. So just as our language is bounded by tense forms, whether it's ed on the end for past tense or your ablouding with grew and grow. Ancient Greek had rhythmic features that drew from different dialects. And so that's another reason why I find the DNA for attractive is because we can look at strands of DNA and see how one organism is actually comprised of many different historical organisms like DNA put together to make a entity that functions in a particular environment with particular constraints. So Homeric language has drawn from several different dialects with different forms for any given word that make it possible to fill the six foot line, and now I'm going to make it really concrete for me. All right, so the first line of the Iliad is μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος. First line of the Odyssey: ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ. The basic rule there is that the final two feet end in a shave and a haircut, right bump ba-da bump, bump, right, a dactyl and a spondee. Everything before that can be two longs, like may, like, sorry, long and two shorts, μῆνιν ἄει, it can be two longs. And the main rule is that ending. Now, if you follow the history of Greek poetry over time, as you move towards writing, the rules become much more rigid. If you you know, if you were turned off by Greek poetry or by prosody, it's probably because someone made you learn a bunch of laws or rules. But the fact is, it's much simpler. If you think of it as music, if you imagine, you know, four bars, four bars of four, four time, and your options are like a quarter notes and eighth notes, and I can mix them together, right? If you're listening to music that's in four, four time. You're not sitting there thinking that's a quarter note, that's an eighth note, right? You're listening to it, and you tolerate creativity. People shove a bunch of syllables and like one line or they go, the meaning goes over one line or another. Like, music has that variety that we don't often attribute to prose. Now, to go back to Homeric week, part of what's really amazing about it is that it's not just single words put together. Most of the time, we're looking at phrases that can be repeated. And so the line I mentioned, μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος, really has three parts to it, and you can split most Homeric lines into two or three parts, and most lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, 16,000 of the Iliad or so, 12, 13,000 of the Odyssey. Majority of them don't roll over into the next line. Each line is a single unit of meaning, which is first thing that floored me when I read Homeric Greek when I was I must have been 21 the first time I read it in Greek, because it was so different from, again, Milton or Shakespeare or Virgil, where you could definitely see the joins where we're trying to fit our ideas in this. And so this means that somebody who was trained to perform Homeric Greek could speak, or at least converse the way I am right now, in meter, right? It wouldn't be the same cadence or flow, because the esthetics would be different. But the whole system was conducive to composing in performance. And so the actual performance of Homeric poetry, Hesiodic poetry, anything in the same language, was a combination between sort of plans that happened ahead of time and the actual performance itself, which could change. And a lot of this comes from work that people don't know about it, Millman Perry, Albert Lord, studying living epic and what used to be Yugoslavia, they really found that there were traditions where things like this were still happening, where it was absolutely possible for someone to compose in the spot a very complicated narrative. And so to go back to the Homeric question, before I wrap up on the language, all of this is connected to whether or not people thought it was possible to develop a super long narrative without writing as a planning and it comes down to that sort of last moment of whether or not we credit the amazingness of the Odyssey to this really fluid multicultural tradition, or we credit it to a final composer who inherited this tradition and put it all down. But back to the language itself. It is so hard to explain, to convince someone of how the Homeric language works if they don't actually learn Greek. So if you're not fully persuaded, you know, maybe come, learn Greek with me or learn it on your own. But I mean, it is. It's qualitatively and quantitatively different from any language I've studied. And you can really feel it when you get into it if you move from a literate author, even a Greek one, like Apollonius Rhodes from several centuries later. And it's even more severe if you jump to say Virgil, Lucan or Ovid.
Dr G 37:22
I know. Look, I think we should convince them by forcing them to sit through nine hours of, you know, Irish bard performance, or, you know,
Speaker 1 37:31
Right, right? And there are, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, there are so many different traditions around the world that support it. But the challenging thing is that they're not all the same, right? Just that. So I think one of the mistakes early studies in oral poetry made is making the assertion that they were monolithic in nature, culturally and esthetic, right? But we know that written forms of poetry, say a Shakespearean sonnet or a haiku, follow, follow very different cultural rules and adhere to very different expectations. So why would oral poetry be any different, right? So if you look at, you know, Sub-Saharan African epic traditions, Arabic epic traditions, Yugoslavian, Indian you know the oral traditions of the of the Maori, or, you know, indigenous people in Australia, there are very different rules, right? But they do show some commonalities and difference from literary cultures. I think there, you know, if people looking for reading recommendations or classic texts on this is Ruth Finnegan's, Oral Poetry' really shows the variety of things available in oral poetic traditions. And then Walter Ong's ‘Orality and Literacy' really focuses on difference in esthetics between oral cultures and literary cultures, and they read really well together.
Dr G 38:51
I think this is amazing, because this is opening up some pathways that I've definitely thought about before within literary English teaching, but and have understood sort of tacitly, because people who do study Homeric literature, if we and the flesh rabbits again, I think definitely wax lyrical in ways that other people who study other types of of poetry do not, and I've never really been able to put my finger on why, because I've always been a Roman person, and I'm like mad Latin, you know, it's a bit like a mathematical part.
Speaker 1 39:36
I became a classics major because I loved Catullus.
Dr G 39:40
Ah, well, that's a good place to start.
Professor Joel Christensen 39:43
Yeah, I read Catullus and Horace, I think, when I was 16 in high school, and I hated Horace, I'll be honest there, but Catullus, like I did. I was floored, right? I was like, This is amazing. I want to understand more about it. And I took Greek just because you had to, yeah, you know. And, you know, I'd stumbled through. It, I was okay at it. I don't think anybody would say I was an exceptional Greek student, but I remember from the first moment reading the Iliad in the original that I was like, this is different, yeah. And at that time, I said, I want to spend a little time figuring out how and a little time turned into a senior thesis. A senior thesis turned into a dissertation. And now I'm over 25 years into it, and I'm still figuring out how Homer's different.
Dr G 40:26
That's amazing.
Too late to turn back now.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta keep going
Professor Joel Christensen 40:33
Yeah, it is
Dr G 40:35
Focus now, focus now, You've got to be getting close
Professor Joel Christensen 40:40
I may have another 25 years.
Dr G 40:44
And I also think that's one of the values, and the part of the great richness of studying the ancient world is actually it offers so much potential for rethinking and recalibrating your thoughts.
Professor Joel Christensen 40:55
It does, well I think, you know, yeah, in the spirit of the work I do, though, is sort of focusing on the opportunities rather than what's been closed off. When I was in graduate school, I told my advisor, David Cider, who won't listen to this, but if he did, he won't mind me sharing that I wanted to do homework. And he said, why the bibliography is so long? He's like, you can't say anything new. And I've always been someone who does what people tell me not to do. I just got that problem. But I think, you know, I think there's the challenge of it, but there's also, you know, the depth of what people have said already is impressive, and you can learn from it. And that, you know, it was never boring conversation.
Dr G 41:38
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. And I think what you said about language, though, is so true. Because I think one of the reasons why I actually struggle so much with other languages is that I struggle to see the different ways that people put together their sentence structures. I can learn the meaning of words and grammar and that sort of thing, but then put me in front of a passage which I have no idea what it's about. And I'm like, Oh my God. It's like they're speaking like Yoda, and it makes no sense at all.
Speaker 1 42:07
But actually I think, I mean, I've been teaching languages since I was in college in Latin and Greek, and I actually think that some people just have are cognitively blocked and to move from word order dominant languages to inflected languages, just, I think there's a percentage of the population where it's just a huge challenge, right? It's like being colorblind. And I don't I don't know of any studies that prove this, but I can tell you that I've had so many students who are smart people, but when it comes down to it, they will never understand an indirect statement in Latin and Greek. It just doesn't come naturally, and it hurts. And I can't explain that in any other way, except the brains are just not set up.
Dr G 42:48
No, look, I'm really glad that we have this on recording. So everyone out there, including my old Latin teachers, Professor Joel Christensen, has just said that I am a smart person, but cognitively blocked and it is impossible for me to understand.
Speaker 1 43:01
I didn't say impossible. I just said harder. Like my wife. I met my wife when I was an undergraduate, but like in our like in our third week, and when I met her, she was studying Spanish, French, Arabic and Latin, like she was involved in those four classes. I said, What are you doing? She's like, I don't know. I like languages, but I remember her coming up and like, it was Latin indirect statements, and no matter how many times we went through it, she just couldn't get it. Now she can speak any language better than I can. She's a pediatric dentist. Now she's gone to Ivy League schools. I haven't, right, but there's just that one thing, like, her brain's just like, No, I hate it. I will not accept it.
Dr G 43:43
Under no circumstances
Dr Rad 43:43
Exactly what I think about Latin.
Dr G 43:48
Oh, look, I don't want to speak too much about my facility with or with, not with languages. No, I keep trying. I was okay at Latin when I was able to study it four hours a day. That was, that was the time I got good at it.
Yeah and look, I think, as well, in Australia, in the in the era that we grew up, English was taught in a very strange way in that it wasn't explicit. And then on top of that, back in, back in Australia in the 1980s your engagement with other languages in public schooling systems was generally fairly limited. So I think it's also to do with, yeah, potentially, the culture you grow up in, and how it encourages you to perhaps engage with other languages.
Speaker 1 44:32
No doubt, yeah, like, I mean, I spent, you know, the few two years ago, we were in Denmark, and I think we, you know, told we're in Scandinavia maybe a week and a half. And, you know, I had a graduate student study. I had to pass French exams, German exams. I don't know any of it well, but just being in an environment where everybody's speaking different languages all the time changes the way your brain works, right, like when you're in and. Monoglot culture, like the US, for many of us, because we are really, really segregated, or or Australia, like, your brain's just not primed for it. And it's like, if you spend your life doing very little physical activity, and then suddenly you have to do a 5k like, it's going to be the worst pain you've ever felt, right, but if you spend all your time really active, like, it's not that bad. And so I just think it's about training and and, you know, like, you can do everything you want in primary school and public school, but if you're not embarrassed in languages and exposed to them, like more than 45 minutes, three days a week, like you're not going to learn anything, like you're always going to be blocked.
Dr G 45:40
Yeah. Well, okay, okay, okay, focusing in, focusing in, because
enough about my trauma.
I'm not disinterested in your trauma, Dr Rad.
No no, I have spoken about it many times.
I'm trying to learn Italian. My husband's Italian, and that that is my new quest in life, and I've tried to learn so many times, and this is the first time where I feel like I'm actually getting it, because I'm no longer a beginner student, but I'm no yet, nowhere near yet, competent. But I have moments where I'm like, Oh, I think, I think I have it and and so, like, those little breakthroughs are really important, but it's, it's a struggle, but to to bring everything to a bit of a close, because we're coming up on on our hour together, so we're surrounded by stories. I think this is this has become really clear through what we've talked about and thinking about that context of politics, and the way that with the advent of the Internet, in particularly the the way that narratives shift and change so quickly. So there's the stories that we're told however we receive them. There's the ones that we read so we go out and and we we either read them or we receive them. And then there's the stories that we actually tell. So there's the orality. So we might hear stories, we might read them. We might be telling stories as well. There's this whole nexus. Stories create a capacity, I think, to glimpse lives and experiences that we will never have, the capacity to confront for ourselves. So there's so much opportunity when it comes to stories, and particularly when we're thinking about the Homeric tradition as well, and the things that extend out of that, the capacity to come in contact with generations of people so far removed from our own experience as well. If there's one last thing that you'd like to leave us with in terms of thinking about stories, what sort of idea or question Would you like to leave us to contemplate?
Speaker 1 47:36
Oh, well, um, one idea I'm going to go over time.
Dr G 47:43
Also, you don't need to limit yourself. If there's more than one, that's okay.
Speaker 1 47:46
No, no. I mean, so I think the main so, the thing you just said about story, giving us the capacity to experience 1000 lives is one of the most important things to acknowledge about narrative, right? And so I think that one of the ways that people often talk about language and narrative is to think of it as a technology, right? If we imagine that narrative and stories are akin to our ability to use fire or, you know, to cook food and to things like that, then we can see it as something we that we use that facilitates culture, etc. But I think another way to think about it, and this is the one I'll go back to, is the notion that stories actually do keep on living on their own. And so the reason I really focus on the biological narrative in the book is to give us the understanding that stories combine and recombine with other features in the world, and they act on their own, so in a different environment, let's say a heroic narrative is is successful and useful for getting people to stand up and defend their communities. On the other hand, that very same narrative can cause people to have expectations of their communities that are unfair and damaging, right? And so, you know, maybe I'll answer your question by getting concrete and going to the Iliad and then jumping outside of the Iliad, if I can, right? So, too often people see the Iliad as a simple narrative where it's about Achilles as a hero, and they're not wrong, he's a hero, but in the sense that Erwin Cook describes heroes in an article about Herakles and Odysseus, which is that heroes cause suffering and they suffer. So the biggest thing to understand about the Iliad and the Odyssey is that both of our primary heroes are mentioned for being serial killers, like from the beginning, Achilles is said to send myriad Achaeans to their doom, not Trojans, Achaeans. And from the beginning, we hear about Odysseus, that he tried really, really hard to save his men, but he failed. And then we're asked. To consider how human beings make their own fate harder or worse than it has to be because of their own recklessness. And if you read the Odyssey carefully, it's constantly pointing its finger, finger at Odysseus, right? So the ill in the Odyssey are not praise narratives. That's the biggest reason people or biggest way people misunderstand them instead their narratives about mismatched expectations and about how dangerous elevating individuals above the collective can be, right? And that's where I'll go back to Achilles and try to say something positive, right? Because what I think the Iliad is offering is the very same thing that the Pfizer vaccine I just got last week is offering me vis-a-vis COVID, and that's project protection. Because if you read the Iliad carefully, it lets you know that a heroic narrative is damaging. It lets you know that because Achilles expected to be honored by his community for being so awesome, and then wasn't, and through a fit, his best friend or lover died. Patroclus dies because of Achilles, and that's the hardest thing for the Iliad to convey, because people want to point fingers elsewhere. They want to talk about his rage, about how he is dishonored. No Achilles made a choice, and it was the wrong one, but the Iliad doesn't end with that. Instead, if you carefully read the Iliad, and I'm not going to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, I hope it has Achilles many moments, this moment, moment in Book 19, where he laments for Patroclus and the other people watch him lament and feel pity, and they lament for themselves as well. This is Book 19, but if you read the language closely, it's echoed at that magnificent moment in Book 24 when Priam comes to Achilles and he says to Achilles, remember your father and you know, and then they weep together, like they see in each other the suffering and the loss that they feel in themselves and the languages they pity each other, and they felt something about it. I think the notion the lesson of the Iliad is something that modern science has confirmed, and that's the stories can actually make you feel the very same things, cognitively and neurobiology, biologically, that real life can make you feel they can change you. And it's an avenue to be re humanized, right? And so what the Iliad offers, I think, and the Odyssey, too, if you listen to it carefully, is the understanding that narratives can send you in completely the wrong direction. They can make you instrumentalize other people. They can make you misunderstand people. They help you dehumanize other people in order to slaughter them and and continue with war. But narrative also has that potential when you understand somebody else's story to make them real to you, and for you to see yourself in them and to maybe change. And so that's a powerful moment. And the one person who acts like in The Iliad is actually zoops. He sees Achilles and he pities, and he changes the way he does things, because he has that feeling. And I think that the Iliad is that we as audience members are supposed to go through that process. And so like when I close the book, I talk about different stories. I talk about Kleomedes, this, you know, boxer who kills a bunch of young kids because he's upset that he lost. And I talk about heroic narratives and the damage they do. But I don't end by saying we're screwed. Let's just give up, right? Instead, like we actually need to get away from, you know, the very simplistic and superficial approaches to narrative that we have. We need to understand that it's going to keep doing whatever it wants to do, but we can actually live alongside it, right? Like we can educate people. The thing I always tell students and my colleagues now increasingly, is that we're born, we're not giving a manual to the human mind and body, right? One doesn't exist. And to be frank, if we were given a manual, I wouldn't read it, because I never read the manuals anyway, right? But I think a fundamental function of education has to be especially in universities, where we say we're preparing people to be citizens of the world, right? A fundamental part of education has to be understanding how narrative binds us and breaks us, how it allows us to work together as a group, but it also constrains our view of the future and what we think is possible, and how understanding narrative is actually prior to political activity, because political activity is presupposed on us, actually understanding each other. And so I think, like, you know, again, a long answer to your question. It wasn't a simple question, to be fair, but I think at the end, the one thing to take away is that you. Oh, wait, I'm going to get negative. Now almost all of our educational systems are moving in the wrong direction, right? I mean, we don't acknowledge that science is a narrative, right? That a whole notion of like causality is narrative. That what we need to train people from a young age to understand is, you know, differences between propaganda and narrative, identity and belonging, all of these things that make our life together possible. We take it for granted, to our own detriment, and then people who are good at manipulating it intentionally or not, I don't think, for example, major politician, politician just elected the US President, again, actually thinking about what he's doing instead, he's leaning into a system that favors a certain type of madness. And so we need to have anti madness out there. We need to inoculate people against the disruptions of narrative and actually give them a control, a choice in their lives, both individually and together. And I know to say, Oh, this is all what's going on the Iliad sounds a little crazy, right? But again, I think that the Iliad and the Odyssey emerge during periods of increasing political complexity, in a period when Greek city states were moving from little households and fiefdoms into larger entities that were experimenting with oligarchy and tyranny, aristocracy and democracy, and that the questions of language and how we lived together under the weight of the past were central to what they were doing together, and it's no different for us today.
Dr G 56:36
Oh, this is a powerful conclusion. Thank you so much. I think there is ways in which the dismissal of the power of narrative across education broadly has been to its detriment. I definitely agree with you on this, because so much of the role of humanity subjects, not just classics, is to try and give students the potential critical tools to be able to see narratives for what they are, and to pull out the pieces of information that that don't marry up quite well, to like expectation, To see the things that are potentially endangering society.
Speaker 1 57:23
And what you just said, I mean, you know, but the way we've been forced to sell the humanities right, is with these two insidious words, critical thinking, right? And we say it because, oh, this will make you a better stock broker. This will make you a better surgeon. Critical thinking will make you a better I don't know baker, whatever it is, but what we need to double down on is that one of the original meetings of the liberal arts was the, you know, the studies worthy of a free person, but another one or the skills and studies that make you a free person. And I think no again, to put my conspiracy hat back on, I think there's an intentional reason why corporations, governments don't want to lean into that aspect of it, because, as you said, they're the very skills the humanities social sciences, are the very skills that force us to question the basis of our social structures, of our inequalities, of our histories. And you know, there's a there's a reason why people might be disinclined to encourage that.
Dr G 58:28
Oh no, let's not create a disruptive citizenry that is expecting more, that's unproductive for us all. But don't get me started on productivity before I get angry.
Speaker 1 58:41
I mean, at times I find myself like, sort of even railing against the academic humanities, because we are, you know, you teach English, you know how much of it is like, what's this genre? What's this form? What's the main character, right? When, when the humanities, if they're useful, are the studies that help us be human. It's a study of what that means and what's uniquely so. And too much of it is just now the sort of rope stuff. We won't want to be dangerous. We don't want to unsettle people's notions of reality. But at the end of it, if we don't do so, what are we looking at, right? I mean, we're going to break that three degrees celsius mark, right? Pretty soon, right? And we have people are saying, oh, we should go to Mars. We should invest all this money and stuff. Like, human beings cannot gestate in non, non-Earth gravity, like it's a medical fact, like, we cannot survive on Mars. It's insanity to even think so.
Dr G 59:38
I mean, I do agree with you, but I'm also not against billionaires taking themselves out of this context and leaving us to then sort it out, because they're not helping
Speaker 1 59:47
But taking all that wealth that could feed people with them. Yeah, it's problem. I keep wanting to post online, but I'm afraid I'll get fired someday, and all I want to write is: Where are the good billionaires? Is a trick question.
Dr G 1:00:04
yeah for sure
Speaker 1 1:00:06
because it's where does wealth come from?
Dr G 1:00:11
As someone who has been increasingly concerned about the problems with communication into over climate change, I remember reading this really amazing book which really changed the way that I tried to talk to people about this a number of years ago, which was literally called ‘How to Talk About Climate Change' and and also thinking about the work of there's actually a really amazing Australian filmmaker whose name I've totally forgotten. I think it's, is it, Damon Gameau, but yeah, he his whole thing about, he made this film called ‘2040', and his whole thing was that part of the problem with the environmental movement is that it has not clearly communicated to people a better story you know about, you know, like, Why wouldn't you want to live in a cleaner, healthier environment that's, you know, that's much better for you, like, Why? Why wouldn't you want that? And so, you know, you have to tell people the story that shows them, you know, what is possible and what this is all about, rather than just being it all about, you know, the the scientific facts, or this really complicated, you know, scientific language, and it has to be a story,
Speaker 1 1:01:22
And we fail. I mean, we fail all the time. I mean another example that's not from climate change, but you know, from from the recent elections, so many people are upset in the US about inflation. Yeah, right. And they say, but I didn't, at once see the Democratic Party make the very true and clear argument that inflation went up because we had to lower our money policies to avoid a generation defining Depression during COVID Right? We rate, lowered the money down like that, increased the flow of money. The interest rates gave lots of people flush with cash, which created inflation that then we had to exert deflationary pressure on, which takes time, right? It was actually handled really well from a macroeconomic, economic perspective. But we didn't make the argument like we didn't tell the story that this is about COVID, and I just, I don't know why like it, just it flabbergasted me that we didn't like directly address a very clear cause and effect situation.
Dr G 1:02:23
Oh, look, I actually been talking. I actually teach about America in the 1920s and 1930s to my senior students, and I see so many parallels between that time period and now. And I constantly have to say to them about the Great Depression and the Wall Street crash. Correlation is not causation, and you can see that very much in American politics right now. People sometimes think that just because something's happening at around the same time, that therefore there is a direct cause and effect link, and it's just not the case.
Speaker 1 1:02:54
Yeah, yeah, no. And so, I mean all the way around, though, like from from simple things, like one election to, like massive things like the environment and what we're doing to the world, it is so hard to tell clear and simple narratives about complex things. So those of us who like study it and are experts are at some level, like, paralyzed by our knowledge and incapable of translating it to a way that people who haven't learned it can accept, just like me, with like, Homeric language,
Dr G 1:03:24
Yeah, no. Look, I think it's one of those things where, on the positive side, we do actually have a course here in New South Wales for high school students called extension history. And it is actually all about getting into these really higher order ideas about the way that history is constructed and potentially misrepresented, used and abused as a narrative. And it's one, it's one of those subjects that when people get into it, they actually, they actually, really like it, because it is moving away from exactly what you said. What was wrong with education? It's not about rote learning. It's not about, you know, just learning facts. It is about the students developing their own voice, their own capacity to tell stories, and also their own capacity to read stories. I'm going to use that word in a critical manner, but I mean in the sense of, you know, engaging with the way that things have been pieced together and then are potentially, yeah, used and abused in the world. So yeah, there are some things out there which are little glimmers of hope education.
Well, thank you so much, Joel for joining us. It has been a really interesting hour to delve into some of the ideas that are coming up in your forthcoming book ‘Storylife'. So very excited to see it out in the world. And, yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 1:04:49
Well, thank you. And you know, I'm always happy to talk to you again, and I really, I just want to say I appreciate the work that you all do in you know. Popularizing and bringing all these ideas. I think that the you know, the podcast that you do reach, you know, an order of magnitude more people than any article I write ever will. So you're doing important work, and I appreciate it.
Dr G 1:05:13
Oh, thank you.
Dr Rad 1:05:14
Thank you.
Dr G 1:05:45
Music. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Partial Historians. You can find our sources sound credits and transcript in our show notesover at partialhistorians.com . We offer a huge thank you to you, if you're one of our illustrious Patreon supporters. If you enjoy the show, we'd love your support in a way that works for you. Leaving a nice review really makes our day. We're on Ko-fi for one or four ongoing donations or Patreon, of course, our latest book, ‘Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire' is published through Ulysses Press. It is full of stories that the Romans probably don't want you to know about them. This book is packed with some of our favorite tales of the colorful history of ancient Rome. Treat yourself or an open minded friend to Rome's glories, embarrassments and most salacious claims with ‘Your Cheeky Guide To the Roman Empire'.
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In 398, the Romans received some worrying signs from the gods, and now we return with a special message for them: From Delphi, With Love.
Episode 157 – From Delphi, With Love
In 397 BCE, the Romans were waging war on all fronts. On top of their ongoing siege at Veii, they were contesting their hold on Anxur with the Volscians, and their colony at Labici against the Aequians. Never ones to shy away from drama, the Romans were also dealing with internal division between the patricians and the plebeians. PHEW! Sounds exhausting.
The Tarquinii, from another part of Etruria, also noticed that the Romans had a lot on their plate. Now was their moment to attack and score some booty! The Romans were highly offended that anyone could even THINK of attacking them when they were already so busy. It was time for an etiquette lesson…
The Romans wiped the floor with these rude raiders, but the rest of their campaigns were in a stalemate. They weren’t losing, but they weren’t winning either. Clearly they needed some divine help, direct from Delphi.
The Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The ambassadors that had been seen to the Delphic Oracle after the sudden rise in the levels of the Alban Lake in 398 returned at this moment. They confirmed what the kidnapped soothsayer from Veii had told them in 398. Lower the levels of the lake and you will have your victory at Veii. Suddenly their captive seemed much more valuable.
Aside from their lack of military victories and the higher levels of water in the Alban Lake, the Romans discovered another sign that all was not right. When the magistrates for 397 had been proclaimed, something had gone wrong. Magistrates were proclaimed during the annual Latin festival for Jupiter Latiaris. If a mistake was made during the sacrifice or proclamation, there was only one thing to do. Get rid of this lot of magistrates and start all over.
An interregnum ensued whilst the Romans sorted out their magistrate woes. Very unusually, the Romans set their sights on someone who was not even campaigning, Publius Licinius Calvus. Calvus had been the first confirmed plebeian to become military tribune with consular power and was known to be very moderate. But how would the Romans pull off his election? Tune in to find out more!
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Our music is composed by the amazing Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Dr Rad 0:00
Hi listeners. Before we get into today's episode, Dr G and I would just like to mention that we will once again be presenting at the podcast event of the year, Intelligence Speech in 2025 this event will be taking place on February 8, starting at 9am Eastern Standard Time. The tickets are $30 and are available at intelligentspeechonline.com this year's topic is deception. So we will be hearing about all sorts of fake history. And historical deception seems timely. Last year, we had a blast talking about Augustus failed attempts to secure an air and we're looking forward to presenting on something similarly Imperial and scandalous this year. We hope that you can join us and all your other favorite podcasters at Intelligent Speech, and now on with the episode you
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.
Dr G 1:13
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,
Dr Rad 1:18
Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage, and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr rad, and
Dr G 1:28
I'm Dr G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 1:38
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr rad, and
Dr G 1:59
I am Dr G, and I'm super excited to be here because we're about to talk about 397 BCE, indeed,
Dr Rad 2:09
we are Dr G as we trace the story of room from the founding of the city. But before we get to 397 Can we please quickly recap what happened in 398,
Dr G 2:22
look, there was some sort of lake. It rose up. I think that might be all I recall. Yeah, no, it was important. I didn't have a lot of evidence, but I think I had some things that suggested that, you know, we had a dangerous time. There was some reading of some portents, one of the people from they revealed the nature of the portent to the Romans, which then prompted the Romans to take some action to make sure the portent worked out in their favor.
Dr Rad 2:51
You are more correct than you know. Dr G, so we're right in the middle of this lengthy siege of they a rival Etruscan city to Rome, that even though we've got this very epic story, is actually not that far away. But we understand why the Romans want to conquer it. It's powerful. It's on their doorstep. It's from a rival peoples they want it for their close to home. Yeah, and it's been dragging on for a while. It's been causing internal tension in Rome over issues like military pay and military service. So the quicker this is wrapped up, the better. And last episode, we did indeed have a man from ve, potentially an older man, a soothsayer of some kind, being kidnapped, and he revealed that the only way Rome was going to be able to conquer the city of a was if they figured out how to deal with the excessive water in this particular lake that you mentioned.
Dr G 3:52
Now, intriguing. Now, I have to say, one of our Patreon supporters got in touch with us about this, to discuss the way that there is some evidence from a volcanology perspective, that's right, or the flooding of these kinds of volcanic lakes from volcanic activity that happens below them that then pushes the water up above the line that it usually sits at. So if you've got a lot of magma moving around under the surface, all of a sudden, you might get a situation which appears preternatural, but is actually the result of volcanic activity. And I loved the fact that they reached out with this detail, because I am not a volcanologist. I am an ancient historian. I was just baffled by this, like,
Dr Rad 4:38
what are you bringing to the show, if not volcanology, get out of here!
Dr G 4:42
Charm and good looks. Thank you.
Dr Rad 4:43
Well, that would make so much sense, and I agree with you. So glad that someone reached out with this detail. Because we are, of course, talking about the album like which is seemingly not connected to they, which is in completely the other direction. However, sign. Come from? Whence signs come? Dr, G, when the gods choose to speak, it may not be geographically appropriate, and that makes sense, because the Alban Mons was an active volcano up until around 1150 BC. I believe which, which might explain why there's not a lot of people living this area until just after that. So that kind of makes sense. You know, the volcano stuff, it adds up.
Dr G 5:29
It does. So I think that's an exciting detail that adds into this. Because you're like, Okay, that sounds like a really bizarre story on the surface, but there could be some natural phenomena that is feeding into what is some very unusual natural observations that are happening from the side of they and the portents that are suggested as a result.
Dr Rad 5:50
Yeah. So thank you very much. Patreon, listener for your volcanology tip and with that, Dr, G, I think We might be ready to dive into 397, BCE,
Oh, all right. Dr G, 397 BCE, please tell me. Who are we dealing with as magistrates? This year,
Dr G 6:33
our players, the magistrates, we have a whole suite of military tribunes with consular power, and they're all patricians,
Dr Rad 6:44
back in the saddle again for the ride through the town with the elites. Yeah,
Dr G 6:51
look, you can have some successes in your siege under a plebeian leadership. But is that enough to keep them in power? No people who have always had power want it back, and they want it back yesterday, so
Dr Rad 7:05
yesterday and forever. Dr, G, yeah,
Dr G 7:07
look so people we have in the role. We've got some names that are going to sound awfully familiar, and I think most of these people, by and large, have held positions before, or if not, they come from families that are going to be well known, well well heard amongst listeners, sure. So we have Lucius Iulius Vopisci.
Dr Rad 7:31
Ulis, yep, I definitely recognize that name, and I reconsider 90% of the people listening to this show
Dr G 7:38
like a Julii in power. What are the chances? Previously, a military Tribune in 401 so really, quite recently, Lucius Furius Medullinus,
Dr Rad 7:50
yeah, yeah,
Dr G 7:52
a Furius back in the saddle. Previously, consul in 413, and 409 and previously, military tribunein 407, 405, but most importantly, 398, just the previous year. Methinks,
Dr Rad 8:08
you've got a bit of a monopoly on power.
Dr G 8:11
He certainly seems to hold a lot of position. So he seems to be quite popular new kid on the block, but very familiar name, Lucius Sergius Fidenas,
Dr Rad 8:23
yes, descended, I presume, from a branch of a family that's had something to do with the conquest of Fidenae, one would assume, yes,
Dr G 8:34
following up, also new to the role Aulus Postumius Albinus Regillensis, new
Dr Rad 8:40
man, but perhaps very familiar name.
Dr G 8:43
Yeah, we're like, is that a new guy? Because that sounds like somebody we've talked about before. I agree. How many, how many, how many Postumii are there? We;ve then got Publius Cornelius, Maluginensis.
Dr Rad 8:58
I hate that name.
Dr G 9:00
Also first turn around the block, and then Aulus Manlius Vulso Capitolinus, who was also previously military tribune in 405, and 4020, okay. I do have some mention that there are some legates or some ambassadors, indeed, but apparently Livy talks about them, so I don't have their names.
Dr Rad 9:21
Oh well, okay, I have their names so I can go through the little list, and then we'll see how they come up in our story. We've got Cnaeus Cornelius Cossus. Now we think that's his name, who's a patrician, previously military Tribune with consular power in 406, 404 and 401 and then we've got Publius Licinius Calvus Esquilinus, previously military Tribune in 400 BC. We've then got Lucius Valerius Potitus, and he has been military Tribune with consular power in 414 406, 403, 401, and 398,
Dr G 10:03
somebody's popular at high school. Yeah.
Dr Rad 10:05
Now that's, that's one set. Oh, yeah,
Dr G 10:09
there are more sets. Yeah. Well, this is
Dr Rad 10:11
the thing. There's a bit of confusion about, I think, these positions. So we may be dealing instead with Caius Valerius Potitus. Yeah. Consul in 410, military Tribune in 415, and 404 Kaeso Fabius Ambustus, military Tribune with consular power in 410, 404 and 401 or we might be dealing with a Numerius Fabius Ambustus.
Dr G 10:43
Oh, okay, now that that we've hit the Ambustii, yeah, in this list, I'm like, wait a minute. I had these people listed down for the previous year, but apparently, maybe some of them are ongoing in their ambassadorial Yeah. I
Dr Rad 10:59
think there's a bit of confusion. There's a bit of confusion. There's definitely a bit of confusion happening around these Ambassador legate people. All right,
Dr G 11:08
okay. They're still there, still hanging around. They are
Dr Rad 11:11
listed in Broughton, and therefore I accept that they were there.
Dr G 11:15
No fair enough. So when we're talking about legates at this time period, it's basically a delegation. You could be given any kind of task. It's whatever the military tribunes or the Senate decide needs to be done. So it's not like they hold a specific military position. I mean, you do get military legates later, but you could be asked to do any task that's administrative in nature, that is supportive of the Roman state. Yeah. So whatever that is, and I'm probably about to hear about it for the first time,
Dr Rad 11:47
well, I think, I think the reason why there's a bit of overlap is that we, of course, had some legits legging it to see the Oracle at Delphi in the previous year. I would maybe implying that maybe they're still traveling at this point in time that might have something to do with it.
Dr G 12:05
Are you telling me it's not that fast to travel all the way to Delphi okay, it's
Dr Rad 12:09
bit of a journey. It's a bit of a journey. All right. Dr, G, you ready? Therefore to jump into 397, now that we kind of know who we're dealing with,
Dr G 12:18
I'm excited to find out what happens for sure? Yep.
Dr Rad 12:22
Okay, so we have a new enemy on the horizon for Rome in this year, the Tarquinenses.
Dr G 12:33
Oh, dear. Yeah, these the inhabitants of Tarquinii. This
Dr Rad 12:37
is to do with the area of Tarquinii, yes. So we're talking about an Etruscan peoples, yes. Now they notice that Rome is dealing with a lot of other enemies at this point in time. So not only do they have the siege at they which is ongoing and they, of course, has by this time, being joined by neighboring peoples, the Falerr and people from Capena. And then we've also got them fighting the Volsci who were contesting occupation of Anxur. We've talked about that a few times. That's been tossed backwards and forwards between the Romans and the Volscians like a hot potato. And then we've also got the Aequians who are engaged in attacking the Roman colony at Labici, oh,
Dr G 13:25
dear. It sounds like the Romans have got enemies on every single side.
Dr Rad 13:29
When don't they talk to G, when don't they this is
Dr G 13:33
a particularly robust group of everybody that they've really ever encountered, not having anything nice to say about them and deciding that attacking is worthwhile. So the Volsci and the Aequians, sort of to the south and the south east, the Falsicans, the Capenates and the people of they to the north, and the Tarquinii also to the north. It's a pretty big sweep of war on two fronts and multiple enemies on both fronts, and
Dr Rad 14:03
just when you thought that Rome couldn't take anymore. Dr, G, I'm gonna add a smattering of internal problems. Uh, oh yeah, we're talking, of course, about the patricians and the plebeians.
Dr G 14:15
Well, Color me surprised. What are they up to now? Oh,
Dr Rad 14:19
well, you know, they always have these ongoing issues, don't they? I mean, we're in the conflict of the orders, and we will be for quite some time now.
Dr G 14:28
Oh boy,
Dr Rad 14:29
it couldn't be really more problematic in Rome right now. So the people who are the Tarquinenses are right on the money in saying that Rome has its hands full. Now, if I were being historical about this. Dr, G, I might want to point out that there are some eerie parallels between events from this year at another year, which we haven't actually covered yet, which is 388, BCE, oh, okay,
Dr G 14:55
that's a very close year to have as a parallel, but I'll allow it. Yeah.
Dr Rad 15:00
I think it's just that historians have definitely noticed that there are some interesting overlaps in that. We also have war with the Tarquinii. We've also got Camillus showing up in that year. We've also got an attack on the Aequians. It's just some interesting crossovers there, which may or may not be coincidental.
Dr G 15:22
This might explain why my evidence is such a mess. Because there is some evidence that I have that I think goes with a later year, but could possibly be connected with this one. And I think for now, I'm just going to leave it until later, and whenever we get to the episode where I think it belongs. But yes, there was some confusion, even with the small amount of things I have available to me as evidence right now about where things go in terms of the timeline. Yes,
Dr Rad 15:49
exactly, yeah. So basically, the tar quinnenzis, they decide they're going to just dabble in some raiding whilst Rome is too busy to really pay attention. They totally believe that the Romans are either going to just ignore the attacks as they didn't have the capacity to address it, or if they decided to deal with it, they wouldn't be sending their best men, and therefore might be easily defeated or dealt with. I
Dr G 16:15
see. Okay, so it's a raid of opportunity.
Dr Rad 16:19
It is definitely now, the Romans were not necessarily particularly worried by this raiding, because, of course, come on, they're wrong. They're way too awesome to worry about such minor problems. However, it's the manners, the etiquette, that is at stake here. Dr G, it is an outrageous and unprovoked attack. How very dare you. Is basically their response to these people.
Dr G 16:47
How rude any warning. Yes, exactly.
Dr Rad 16:51
It's just, it's just not the way that we do cricket. Yeah, can't
Dr G 16:57
you see, I'm busy with a whole bunch of other wars. You could at least send a letter to warn us we were about to do this kind
Dr Rad 17:04
of as predicted. The Romans indeed did not put much effort into their preparation for dealing with this new and unexpected enemy. But they also didn't hesitate to deal with this situation. Aulus Postumius and Lucius Iulius. They weren't able to hold a regular levy because the tribunes of the plebs are named, prevented one. So instead, they set out with a volunteer force totally made up of anyone who had been talked into signing up. And they decided to travel through car A and managed to surprise this new enemy as they were journeying home happily with their stolen booty in their backpacks.
Dr G 17:49
Wow. Okay, so I think the most impressive thing here is that there was anybody left in Rome who would volunteer go on a party when they're in the middle of so many wars. And the reason why the tribune of the plebs are probably trying to prevent the levy is because the people, by and large, do not want to be levied anymore. No,
Dr Rad 18:08
who is, I agree with you, who is left to levy?
Dr G 18:11
Yeah. Who are these people? Yeah. Is it the young patricians who are like, it's time for me to show my masculinity out in the field? Yeah. Is
Dr Rad 18:19
it children? Is it the elderly?
Dr G 18:23
I don't know. Volunteers, Goodness me.
Dr Rad 18:26
But of course, because these people are totally beneath the Romans, the Romans managed to kill a lot of them. I mean, it is surprise attack, to be fair, and they managed to take back all the booty that had been stolen from them and headed back to Rome. Wow.
Dr G 18:41
Okay, so on some level, I suppose this could just be read as a standard surprise attack, but I wonder if this is also something where Livy is now trying to build a narrative of Etruscan decline, because interesting. So the Tarquinii are one of the Etruscan peoples, and we know that they is not in a great situation. They haven't lost this siege yet. But watch out, everybody, spoilers.
Dr Rad 19:13
Yes, it could be definitely a bit of an indication of what is about to come spoilers. Yes, so the Romans then have a very amusing situation to me, which we've spoken of often, Dr G, which is where they basically put everything out in the open, and they say, Come and get your stuff. You got two days. Oh,
Dr G 19:31
okay, so is this like a is this a booty situation? Yeah,
Dr Rad 19:36
because I take him back, basically everything that had been taken in this, in this initial attack, has been taken back in the reverse surprise attack. And so they come home with all this stuff. And stupidly, the Romans have not put their name on everything in black texture. And so they just put it all out and they say, right, you got two days. Everybody and anything that's left on the third day is going. To be sold under the spear, and the money raised will be split between the soldiers that served in this surprise attack. Selling something under the spear means a spear would sort of be set up to as like an advertisement saying, Come and get it, and it would be essentially a public auction. Intriguing.
Dr G 20:17
Now I wonder if there would ever be anything left, I feel like the onus would be on. The priority would be to take as much stuff as possible, particularly if you were involved in the raid. Because what if there was nothing left at the end for that auction to raise money for yourself? That would suck. Yeah, this, this does sound like a bizarre set of maneuvers. You know, there
Dr Rad 20:42
might be an odd shoe doesn't have,
Dr G 20:46
like I see that leather vest, but I could make one better myself. Yeah, take that rubbish home. Etruscan rubbish. No. Well, so
Dr Rad 20:54
anyway, so that's what happens. That's a little bit obviously of Roman success, which is just as well, because as for the rest of the Roman campaigns, it's not going that well. Dr, g Now, don't get me wrong, the Romans are definitely not losing their other campaigns, but they're certainly not winning. It's basically a stalemate just all around. Ah,
Dr G 21:15
well, that's tough times, isn't it? Not making any progress, just sort of waiting it out, and it's the grind of war. It
Dr Rad 21:23
is. It is so the Romans feel that they're stuck in this situation. They no longer feel that they're going to be getting any help from humans. We need to turn to the divine. Dr, G, and wouldn't you know it? It's right about now that those legates slash ambassadors returned from the Delphic
Dr G 21:43
Oracle. Oh, good timing, guys,
Dr Rad 21:47
exactly. Now they did have that soothsayer, the elderly soothsayer that had been kidnapped from they, who told them how to deal with the rising waters in the Alban Lake, and that unless they dealt with that, they would never triumph over they. But naturally, because he's from the enemy, they're in little bits and submissions that he might be trying to throw them off course. And they wanted verification. The Delphic Oracle says exactly the same thing as the old man has said. So now they have corroboration. Of course, being an Oracle, it says it in a much, much more wordy Oracle, e sort of way the the meaning is essentially the same, I
Dr G 22:23
suppose, yes. I mean the famously, these oracles could be misinterpreted. So I hope this one is clearer than most
Dr Rad 22:30
well. Interestingly, some historians, of course, have looked into this oracle, and it does apparently stem from something that has been translated from the Greek, and the prophecy is thought to be one that isn't really an original Oracle from Delphi, but one of these ones that had sort of popped up in the late Republic and was reported to be an Oracle from Delphi. Oh, I
Dr G 23:00
see, okay, the way that, I mean, yeah, okay, yeah. So we're dealing with a bit of a sort of an anachronistic sort of retrojection back into this, at least
Dr Rad 23:10
in the wording, yeah. I mean, the meaning might have, you know, always been there. But yes, the way that it's worded, I believe, hmm,
Dr G 23:17
I think this is a really interesting move, on the behalf of the Romans to be like, we need to put our faith in not any sort of soothsayer necessarily, or even local members of the sipper lines, for instance, but we need to travel all the way to Delphi to get an answer. This might be indicative of just how under the pump the Romans feel in this moment, with this ongoing siege, that they're like, We really need the big guns for this one. But it is an interesting sense in which we can understand Rome as being part of that broader Mediterranean world. They're not just relying on their own people. They're certainly not just relying on the Etruscans, and they're willing to travel quite vast distances in order to get some sort of divine insight into their local problems,
Dr Rad 24:04
and now the Romans feel obliged to give the Delphic Oracle a very generous gift once the war was entirely over. So that's their future intention. Ah,
Dr G 24:16
yes, okay, I look forward to this because I think I've read a little bit about this, but it doesn't happen this year. I'm like, No, this
Dr Rad 24:22
is just a an intention. They're like, mental note. Put it in the diary, guys. Once we finish dealing with this situation, we better send them something really nice. We'll get them a box of lint chocolates. We want top quality. We want foreign champagne. The whole works.
Dr G 24:38
All right, so prepare yourselves for a hamper. Priestess of Apollo, given
Dr Rad 24:44
that we are currently recording this at around Christmas time, I feel like there's going to be all sorts of strange things in this hamper as well that you would never normally eat, but somehow turn up in hampers.
Dr G 24:55
Yeah, you're like, Oh, that's really intriguing. Yeah, some
Dr Rad 24:59
sort of. Pate, some sort of spread made of something that you never thought could be turned into a spread.
Dr G 25:04
Well, you're like, thank you.
Dr Rad 25:08
Now, of course, all of a sudden, the guy that they had kidnapped from they the soothsayer that had told them ages ago about this whole lake situation is very respected in urban society, because wouldn't you know what he was telling the truth this whole time.
Dr G 25:24
Can you imagine his fate, if that he had not been corroborated by the Delphic Oracle, would have been death very quickly. So I'm glad for his sake, but that it's turned out well, it's
Dr Rad 25:35
I think this is where your version of events makes more sense than mine in this particular instance, because you highlighted that in your account, this guy was tortured for information, whereas in my account, he seems to very willingly just give information up. Either way, I definitely would have been suspicious. Torture means he might have just been saying it to make the pain stop. The other way around, it seems a little quick that he just suddenly turns against his own people and tells the Romans what they need to know.
Dr G 26:03
Where's the sense of loyalty? What's in it for him?
Dr Rad 26:06
Yes, the military tribunes, Cornelius and Postumius, want to use the soothsayer to take care of this whole album Lake overflowing situation, especially because now the gods are involved, they feel they have to appease the gods by taking care of that particular situation. Sounds
Dr G 26:21
reasonable, all right, so they're going to get a workforce onto that one.
Dr Rad 26:25
Now they also find that there's been an offense against the gods, because there was a problem with some of the magistrates.
Dr G 26:36
Oh dear.
Dr Rad 26:38
Turns out that there had been a problem with the election. Oh, okay, it had been improperly proclaimed, these Latin games and a sacrifice conducted on the Alban Mount. Now this is probably referring to a Latin festival that of Juppiter Latiarius. This is probably what it's referring to here, which was something that is associated with the Latin League. It was held every year. And after this festival, that's where there'd be a sacrifice, and there'd be the proclamation of new consuls or military tribunes at this time. So it seems that somewhere in here, at this very important moment of proclamation, something had gone wrong.
Dr G 27:24
Okay, so I think this is one of those things about Ancient Rome which is off overlooked, particularly for the Republic, but is super important, which is the way in which their politics is very much tied in to their relationship with the gods at all times. So the way that things are pronounced, the way that things are said, all of those ritual formulations, are extremely important in order to get right for things to be proper in the eyes of the gods, from a Roman perspective. So if something has gone wrong in any of that stuff, and they come back around and they realize this is a huge problem. So does this mean that they disband this whole group of, like, military tributes we're
Dr Rad 28:10
getting there. We're getting I'm just gonna add okay to what you just said. I think it's also, I think you're totally right about that, but I think it's also potentially a problem with the sacrifice, like, it sounds like a great big stuff up on their part.
Dr G 28:22
Oh, a problem with the sacrifice. Do they have details about what went wrong with the sacrifice?
Dr Rad 28:27
No, just says there was a problem, a problem
Dr G 28:31
with a sacrifice. Yeah, all right, I'm very intrigued by this. Yeah. Please continue. Yeah.
Dr Rad 28:36
Well, and I just thought I'd also mention because people might not know much about this. Indeed, I don't know much about this because I'm not really into religion as much as you are. But this particular gathering, this festival, it's very ancient. As far as we can tell. It goes back a really, really long way. It's held, funnily enough, on the Alban mount, which we keep talking about, this previously volcanic mountain, which has now become such a focus of so many of our stories. And it is something where various Latin people come together, and it's where you can see this commonality between them in terms of the language that they speak in terms of the gods that they worship, potentially also the way that their societies are organized. You know, we offer, you know, we've often questioned, do they have exactly the same political setup as the Romans? Because sometimes it seems like the Roman sources assume that they do. Maybe they do,
Dr G 29:36
maybe they do. There has got to be some sort of cultural connection. You would assume, even if things are run slightly differently in each place, that shared language and a shared understanding of the gods that need to be looked after and appeased is a sense of commonality of purpose, even if there are small nuances of differences in how each one is run. Politically when they go back home, yeah? Now, if we're talking about problems that you could have with a sacrifice, I mean, there's a whole number of problems potentially. And this
Dr Rad 30:10
is a big have, yeah, this is a bull that is sacrificed, okay,
Dr G 30:14
yeah, because it has to be, obviously, it has to be the right kind of bull. So you would hope that that's not the mistake that they've got the right kind of bull in terms of its coloration, for instance, and its age, things like that are very important. But it could be something about the nature of the procession to the ritual killing. It could be something about how the knife was wielded during the sacrifice. It could be something about what was said in the moment over the sacrifice, either before it happened or after it happened. So those verbalizations tend to be something that is really possible to make a mistake with, and could be heavily scrutinized afterwards. Now, how would you know you'd be waiting for other signs of the gods, right, to suggest that there was some sort of displeasure here, so then you'd have to backtrack. Yeah, yeah, the lake might be the indicator. Be like, Oh no, the lake, guys, I don't think we did it, right, yeah.
Dr Rad 31:16
And it is. It is so interesting, because, as you say, I feel like I often do overlook these religious aspects to Roman life. And obviously this is beyond Roman life. This is about Latin communal life where they're coming together. And it becomes a really important sign that you're invited to this, you know that you're part of that particular community, and it's something that the Romans will continue to attend for, like, a really long time. So it's probably not the only moment where we might mention this particular festival. Now we don't know how far back this particular association goes exactly, even though we know the festival itself is very ancient, but it might be something to do with this myth idea that the Latins all trace their ancestry back to Latinus, the father in law of anaeus, who's obviously very important in terms of Roman understanding of themselves and their connection to Trojan War survivors, who is transformed into The figure of Juppiter Latiarius after his death. Now that may come after the festival, maybe a way of explaining some aspects of it, but certainly it does eventually have that particular association as well, which again highlights that shared culture.
Dr G 32:35
Yeah. And as far as these sorts of things go, there's likely to be a number of different locations, in different spots locally, where gatherings happen depending on the god, depending on the time of year. So shared sacred spaces, essentially where people come together to meet in order to do this kind of ritual undertaking, in order to make sure those relationships with the gods are solid. Now I think what I would love to know, and I think might be impossible to really know, is how often might it be the case that the Romans are turning up to these sort of shared sacred spaces in order to engage in communal sharing of gods and sacrifice with people that they are also potentially at war with outside of those spaces, I've wondered to what degree that is happening, or whether there are times where certain groups don't attend in anticipation of not wanting to run into groups that they're currently in conflict with it is an
Dr Rad 33:41
interesting question, because as far as we can tell, the Romans did not initiate this festival, and it's something that they just they became a part of, and became a perhaps more important part of as they start to conquer. You know, surrounding cities and towns and their reach grows larger, but yes, I agree. Awkward,
Dr G 34:03
awkward. Oh, hey guys, just, just here for the sacrifice.
Dr Rad 34:09
Could you please pass the slaughtered ball
Dr G 34:12
that guy tried to stab me last year on the battlefield? Anything
Dr Rad 34:18
now, as you highlighted Dr G in this particular moment, the only thing that could be done to address this was to get all of the military tribunes to resign their office and to retake the auspices and start an interregnum in the place of the military tribunes. Because, oh goodness, yeah, it causes huge problems, obviously, for their their power, the legality of that power, it's just not worth the risk.
Dr G 34:44
Wow. It's been a while since, I think we've had an interregnum. Yeah? Okay, I'm up for that. Sure. Let it commence.
Dr Rad 34:52
Yeah? So, I mean, I think it's because they see all these signs, not just the lake, but obviously the fact that they're not having much success in battle, like they're not you. Not a disaster, but it's not what they aspire to. So the Senate orders that this takes place the interregges who are chosen are Lucius Valerius, Quintus Servilius Fidenas and Marcus Furius Camillus.
Dr G 35:12
Oh, okay, well,
Dr Rad 35:15
how convenient. Yes, there are ongoing problems caused by these unnamed tribunes of the plebs who are continuing to cause issues. In this particular instance, they are blocking elections until they receive assurances that most of the new military tribunes with consular power would be plebeians,
Dr G 35:38
fair enough. I mean, it's a classic tribune of the plebs move. I applaud them for it, and I wish them all the very best. Yeah,
Dr Rad 35:45
yeah. And I think this is perhaps why they're unnamed, because Livy's just like, Oh my God, here we go again. Not more of this segue to what's going on in the Etruscan land. Ooh. The Etruscans are also having a bit of a meeting at this moment in time. Now, we've often seen the Etruscans come together at voltuner. It's where they all seem to meet chat and get on Veii's case.
Dr G 36:16
What's happening down there this time? Guys? You need help again? We're busy. Yeah.
Dr Rad 36:20
So now that they've got the capernaus and the Philistines involved in this whole shenanigan, they are strongly suggesting that all the Etruscans should band together to try and help end the siege against vein, because they're obviously now committed. And they're like, Come on, guys, come on. We know you hate vein, but what about us? We're adorable. However, once again, the Etruscans say a big fat no to helping. They citing their old reason that they had never shown any interest in helping or caring for anyone else but themselves. It
Dr G 36:51
is really interesting, because one How would Livy know this, but also this idea that Etruria as a nation is starting to break down. Like, under what circumstances would you not try to look after one of your own? They is an Etruscan city. So the idea that the rest of the Etruscans are getting together and being like, No, and it's like, it's really rejecting somebody from your family at that point. Oh, yeah. Like, you're on your own, whatever. Yeah.
Dr Rad 37:23
No, I know it's kind of bizarre, because surely they can see that things aren't going terribly, but it's not good. It's been the Siege has been enduring for quite some time now, and what
Dr G 37:33
does it what does the true area think is going to happen if they falls? Who do they think is next? It's like they haven't thought ahead the way the civiliscans and the capinartes have. They're like, they're like, no, no, we're a solid block. We'll be fine.
Dr Rad 37:48
The Etruscans also have their own problems going on, which might also explain their reluctance to help the people of A and that is that they're dealing with. And I quote my translation of Livy, a strange race new settlers. Who are these people? No freaking idea. The Etruscans aren't actually engaged in warfare with them at this point in time, but it's clear that it's a prickly situation, right?
Dr G 38:14
Are these people, by any chance, from the North?
Dr Rad 38:18
I know what you're thinking, and we can't really be sure, it doesn't seem quite right. Seems too early.
Dr G 38:25
Intriguing. Yeah, I
Dr Rad 38:26
I'll just explain to the listeners. I believe Dr G is asking if they are indeed, Gauls. Are
Dr G 38:34
they have the French arrive. Everyone's like, I'm confused, but their cheese is delicious, so I'll let them stay for now.
Dr Rad 38:44
Yeah, honestly, not sure. But from what I've seen so far, I think the answer is probably no, okay, yeah, but we don't know. Okay,
Dr G 38:52
I wonder if they're people from the other side of the Apennines. Then there's sort of like, the East Coast Italians coming over the way, being like, hello,
Dr Rad 39:02
East Coast. West Coast. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So the Etruscans decide to make a bit of a compromise in this whole scenario, which is that any of their young men who want to go and volunteer may go and help. They once again volunteering. Big thing 397,
Dr G 39:19
nobody's got any money that that we've established
Dr Rad 39:22
that might be it.
Dr G 39:25
They spend it all paying the soldiers to get through winter. Nobody's got any cash left. Etruscans included,
Dr Rad 39:30
yeah, with young people going to volunteer to help, they the Romans, of course, presumably don't know that all of this is going on, that this is a negotiation that's happening, and so all they see is this huge influx of young fighting men, and they're like, holy crap. What does this mean? Is this a sign that worse is to come? This seems very worrying. And of course, as soon as the external threat that external pressure is increased, it means that the patrician and plebeian problems, they got to take a back seat that predictable pattern that we come to know and love. Dr, G,
Dr G 40:08
yes, we need to band together, put aside our personal political differences and make sure we win this war. It's the only way. In fact, it is the only patrician way to navigate anything. Yes,
Dr Rad 40:22
it's at this moment that we see a return of Publius Licinius Calvus, if that name doesn't ring a bell for shame, because he was the first ever military Tribune with consular power, who was definitely, without doubt, a plebeian. And he first served in 400 BC, so only a few years ago.
Dr G 40:41
How could one forget that's very exciting. But what's he What is he going to do? Does this mean they've put him into a magistracy or,
Dr Rad 40:48
yeah, he's he's chosen again, to be prospective military tribune with consular power for the following year. I believe that's what, oh, that's what they want. And I think because they know that he's a very moderate character. Remember, if we cast our minds back to 400 BCE, it seems that he was chosen because, whilst he has the plebeian background that would please the tribunes of the plebs and the plebs themselves, he was not offensively radical to the patricians,
Dr G 41:16
very willing to roll patrician style, yes, and
Dr Rad 41:20
because he had proved himself before, I think they see this as a compromise moment, once again, all right, very interesting. Now I'm going to add another detail. It's going to blow your mind here. Okay, okay, so he was chosen even though he had not run for the office.
Dr G 41:41
Okay. Well, that sounding more classic Roman potential, weird horse moment being like, I'm just hanging around being a dude, and it's like, we need you to save Rome. Yeah,
Dr Rad 41:52
I think that's it. I think they see him as serving a very particular purpose and a moment of tension when they need the Roman people to be united, and the senators are very happy that he is around to serve this purpose. And I think the idea is they're going to get the whole band back together. That's what Livy says. He's like, let's just get everybody from 400 because that was a great team. We want that team. We need that team. Wow.
Dr G 42:15
Okay, well, I feel like that's that will be an interesting moment for them, if that's the path they decide to tread for the next year. But I guess, I guess we'll find out soon. We
Dr Rad 42:26
will, and I'm gonna have to save, unfortunately, the details of exactly what happens for the following year, because, of course, this is all for the following year. So this is looking forward to 396, the detail that I'll finish up on. And this is one I must admit, that I always find confusing to explain, because the Roman voting system is always one that perplexes me, particularly early on in this stage where we can't be 100% sure about a lot of details, but the way that he was chosen was apparently by prerogatives. Now explaining this is where I get a little a little tripped up. Essentially, the idea is that there are 18 centuries of knights, and they would vote first, and if they all vote the same way, the other centuries are not required to vote because they outnumber it. That whole idea of like the the rich and the powerful out ranking everybody else,
Dr G 43:17
yeah, there's a yeah, there's a clear system of who gets to vote in what order. And then there's a first past the post kind of element to this, where it's like, once they reach a threshold of who the winner is, everybody else can just go home.
Dr Rad 43:31
Yes. The difference is that with the praerogativa, the idea is that one would be chosen by lot. Okay, yeah, so that's kind of the idea, rather than them all voting together as a voting block, eventually, there was a system introduced where one would be one of the centuries would be chosen by lot, and it would be revealed to the rest of the assembly before a vote was recorded. So it was kind of being like, this is the way that we're heading, kind of indication, I suppose,
Dr G 44:08
okay, and that selection by lot happens before the voting commences. Yeah,
Dr Rad 44:13
it's this idea that one of the centuries. So presumably, what we're talking about here is like the committee a century art, and it's like one of the centuries from the first class would be chosen by a lot, and that would be like an indication of where things were going eventually, it was, I believe, adapted so that a single century would be chosen by a lot to try and make it a bit fairer. Now, all of these developments that I'm talking about here, they're all things that we can only test for certain at a much later date. We have no idea when these things actually really started.
Dr G 44:47
Yeah, the voting organization is very unclear from our source material for this particular period, and I think we only start to get some really solid evidence, some hints and tips. It's in a century or two.
Dr Rad 45:02
Yes, exactly. So exactly what this means is a little unclear, but it certainly, I think, is meant to be indicating that, look, this is the way that the vote would go. And we like this guy, we want Publius, Licinius Calvus, to be our man. Interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, so it's a little confusing. I apologize that I've explained this badly, but it's mostly because it's all about who has the right to vote first, essentially. And the reason why it's confusing is that it's really hard to know exactly how this would have played out at this particular moment in time, for sure. And that is about all I have for 397, BCE, dr, G
Dr G 45:44
Oh, well. Exciting news. I have things to tell you about the broader Mediterranean world. Love it, not a lot, but I don't have much on Rome, but I have made a note about this prerogative motion in voting systems, because I'll go and have a look at it and have a look at it and see what I can dig up, because I would love to know more.
Dr Rad 46:04
Yes, and I must admit, when I looked the more I looked it up, the more I became incredibly confused, because it's obviously been adapted several times, and none of those particular tested moments may have anything to do with this story.
Dr G 46:18
Yeah, it's a tough one, particularly for this early period of the Republic. So the source that I have for this period is Diodorus Siculus, amazing. Who gets some of the names right of the military tribunes some of the names wrong, leaves a couple out. But he does also tell us about what's going down with the Persians and the Athenians at this point in time. So we have this really interesting character called Conon. Now, Conon was a naval commander of the Athenians, and he gets voted in on multiple occasions as Dr Goss so as a military commander, General figure, and during the Peloponnesian War, he gets caught up with some situations around my deline, and he loses a whole bunch of his ships. And this is a problem, and he escapes out of this situation, and he flees to a king eurogoros And who's in Cyprus. So he gets to a different island, he gets himself out of trouble, and it's at that point that he's put in touch with a guy called fauna barzos, who is a Sartre of the Persians, and is currently great king as well. So somehow, he falls in with the Persians, the powerful Persians at this time, and he is then taken in by the Persians and placed as an amral at the head of a Persian fleet because of his great skill set. So he's basically escaped from a war like situation and sold his skill set to the Persians. The Persians have been willing to accept that, and he's now an Athenian leading a Persian naval command. You're like, this is chaos. What is this guy up to? I
Dr Rad 48:23
feel like that's not a terribly uncommon story for the Greeks at this moment in time. Even though the Persians are often like their great enemy, a lot of people who fall afoul of their fellow Greeks seem to find their way to Persia.
Dr G 48:38
Yeah. And so it's in this sort of like situation where it's like he's fallen in with the Persians, and they're looking after him, and he's been put in charge of stuff that they then send him because it probably because of his intelligence, they send him at the head of a Persian fleet to Athens so not only is he now working for The Persians, but he now is rocking up at the doorstep of his former homeland, entering the parius with 80 triremes. And he's like, we're here to help. The Persians are here to help everyone's like, this situation is part of what is going on with this complexity of the Athenian situation, which has been variously strung out with the Peloponnesian War, which is just has wrapped up, but is now like, what are the consequences of that? And part of the consequences of that is that the Spartans are now seeing a power gap in opportunity, and so they see that this Conon character is that the head of this fleet, they try to make that a thing for them. It's just getting really messy over there. He eventually gets lured back to Persia, and there he's arrested because he's not doing what the Persians want him to do. So the Athenians don't seem to be particularly happy, and the Spartans are not very happy either. So it's a tale of woe and dissatisfaction that is playing out in Greece. So I mean good luck to the legates and ambassadors who have been trying to travel to the Oracle at Delphi, because it seems like it's a complicated time in the Mediterranean Sea in terms of who's going where or what ship, and how they're ending up, and who's actually in charge. And how do you tell if somebody's Persian or Athenian when they're in command of a whole fleet of vessels? Nobody knows it's madness out there. Indeed.
Dr Rad 50:36
Oh my goodness. Well, that's
Dr G 50:37
that's my fun tale. I'm sadly lacking in source material for the Romans. I
Dr Rad 50:42
suspect that will change for the next year. I'm very excited
Dr G 50:45
for the next year, because I have so many sources to consider,
Dr Rad 50:49
indeed. Well, I think that means, Dr G, that it's probably time for and the partial pick a very tired little Igor today. So Dr G tell us about the partial pick. All
Dr G 51:04
right, we judge Rome by their own standards, and often they fail miserably, so we'll see how they do this time round. But there are five categories that we're going to consider, and they can win up to 10 golden eagles in each category, and at the end, we'll add it up to see what they got out of 50 and whether it's a pass or fail for the old romance this time round,
Dr Rad 51:27
I'm not holding my breath. I'm not going to lie. But let's start off with our first category. First category is military clout, all right. Well, whilst widely acknowledged to be in a stalemate. They did have that little victory over those Raiders.
Dr G 51:43
I give them one point for that. They haven't lost
Dr Rad 51:47
anything disastrously. They're holding their own.
Dr G 51:51
They've won nothing else, but they're facing so many enemies, okay, two I would expect, I expect more victories, but they're
Dr Rad 52:01
not losing. They're holding their own against several enemies and still managed to secure, okay, admittedly, a minor victory against some raiders, but still they got all their stuff back. Okay,
Dr G 52:12
how well have the Romans acquitted themselves in battle? Is the question that is connected with the concept of military clout. Well,
Dr Rad 52:20
they won against the Raiders. They got all their stuff back, and they give it back to everybody.
Dr G 52:23
Raiding is not a battle.
Dr Rad 52:25
No, the enemies were raiding. The Romans put those raiders in their place with volunteers, no less. Dr G, volunteers
Dr G 52:35
willing to give them one golden eagle. Nothing more. All right, fine, nothing less. The second category is diplomacy,
Dr Rad 52:44
Hmm, no, I don't think so.
Dr G 52:48
I sense no negotiation. Well,
Dr Rad 52:50
I feel like the Etruscans are negotiating amongst themselves, but that doesn't count for the Romans.
Dr G 52:54
It certainly does not expansion, no.
Dr Rad 52:58
I mean, they're kind of just holding on desperately.
Dr G 53:05
Okay, weirdos? Oh,
Dr Rad 53:06
my God, no, there's like nothing going on here.
Dr G 53:10
I don't know. I felt like there was a weird to us moment when Calvus Didn't put himself forward. Is
Dr Rad 53:18
that weird or so? Isn't weird to us about taking action.
Dr G 53:22
I mean, yes, but it would also potentially if we had a scene where he actively declined.
Dr Rad 53:31
I don't think that's what happened. I think, I mean, it's Look, I can't, I don't want to give anything away about the following year, but it seems more that he was just minding his own business, racing around trying to manage the folds of his toga. And he was chosen because he demonstrated that moderate behavior, which they felt Rome was sorely lacking at this point in time. And he doesn't seem to have said No, exactly, okay.
Dr G 54:00
Well, he's coming across as a pretty bland character. Yes, yes. Doesn't say no. Just goes with the flow. I
Dr Rad 54:09
mean, look, there will there will come a moment which, which is going to complicate this story in the following year. But I don't think he is like a Cincinnatus type of character where he's like, you just leave me alone to farm. Well,
Dr G 54:21
in that case, I'm not seeing any clear signs of weird display. No.
Dr Rad 54:26
I mean, look again, there's the dealing with the raiders, the military tribunes with consular power. They do that. They deal with the Alban Lake situation. But I feel that's just politicking
Dr G 54:35
that is. I'm not necessarily seeing any standout figures of Roman weird to us. Yeah, all right. The final category perhaps the moment for redemption, because otherwise it's looking pretty grim, is the citizen score.
Dr Rad 54:50
Oh boy. Okay, we don't get a lot of insight in this year to what's going on with the citizens, apart from the fact that there is this ongoing tension between the. Patricians and the plebeians. And again, it's a very stalemate situation. While it doesn't seem to be going that brilliantly for them, the tribunes of the plebs are definitely holding their own, unnamed as they are. They
Dr G 55:15
are. They seem to have denied a levy, but we also have citizens who are volunteering to go on some counter raid. That's
Dr Rad 55:23
true. But from where are they? The ones that had their stuff stolen? Well,
Dr G 55:27
Give me back my blanket.
I want my shoes, damn it.
Dr Rad 55:31
How am I supposed to walk anywhere?
Dr G 55:35
They say, walk a mile in his shoes, and you understand him. Understand myself without shoes. Yeah? So anyway, I don't know. Yeah, that's what
Dr Rad 55:46
I mean. It's very confusing. We do have the military tribunes refusing a levy. We have them postponing elections until they get certain assurances, which seem to have been somewhat successful because of this Licinius Calvus person being resurrected again, vanilla as he is. He is a plebeian vanilla bean.
Dr G 56:06
Well, I mean, if you have to have vanilla beans, let them be plebeian.
Dr Rad 56:10
Yeah, yeah. So there's a little bit of success there, but there is still a lot of war going on, yes.
Dr G 56:15
So as a citizen, it doesn't seem like it's the worst time, because it's not like that Romans having terrible losses on the battlefield, where you can be like, it's a horrible time to be a Roman city. They don't seem to be winning a lot either, no, except for the misplaced booty situation. So maybe
Dr Rad 56:34
two, yeah, I think that is fair. I think we also need to rewrite that famous line from Charles Dickens. It wasn't quite the worst of times. It wasn't quite the best of times.
Dr G 56:50
397, mediocre at best. Yeah,
Dr Rad 56:54
and that means Dr G that we have a total of three out of 50 Golden Eagles for Rome. Well,
Dr G 56:59
that's quite low Rome, but maybe next year will be redemption.
Dr Rad 57:04
It's one of those things because I'm like, actually, this was an interesting year in some ways, but it just wasn't really going anywhere. It was like the holding pattern. Look this once again, could be Livy padding the narrative a little bit, until we get to the very big year of 396, he's in a holding pattern. He's circling. He's circling a very big story not ready to come into land yet.
Dr G 57:29
Yeah. He's like a little vulture just waiting for the 10 years to be up so he can start telling this tale about how
Dr Rad 57:36
How dare you He's an eagle.
Dr G 57:39
Either way, either way. Yeah,
Dr Rad 57:41
all right. Dr, G, well, that is 397 wrapped up, and I am extremely excited to talk to you about 396 because I have indicated a number of times I have you it's going to be a big one.
Dr G 57:53
Oh yeah, looking forward to it. You.
Dr Rad 57:55
Music. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Partial Historians. You can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman. You too can support our show and help us to produce more fascinating content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon or buy us a coffee on ko fi. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes. Today, we would like to say salve to Taurus, Vicky, the Mercian People's Front and Gail some of our recent Patreon and Ko fi supporters. Thank you so much for joining the partial band. However, if you lost all of your money betting on the wrong Gladiator, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. And if you're looking for something delightful and rumin to read over your holiday break, you can grab yourself a copy of our latest book, your cheeky guide to the Roman Empire out now Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome. You
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We certainly hope so, as we are thrilled to welcome Dr Emma Southon back on the show for the FOURTH TIME (not the third, as incorrectly said by Dr Rad). Emma has released her first children’s book, which was co-authored with Greg Jenner and illustrated by Rikin Parekh.
Special Episode – Totally Chaotic History with Dr Emma Southon
The cover of Totally Chaotic History: Roman Britain Gets Rowdy!
This powerhouse trio have produced Totally Chaotic History: Roman History Gets Rowdy! Whilst the target audience for this latest instalment in the Totally Chaotic series is 7-12 year olds, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Turns out that we didn’t know as much about Roman Britain as we thought!
If you would like to chuckle and LOL your way through the lengthy history of the British and their interactions with the Romans, you need to grab a copy of this book. We were intrigued to find out how Greg, Emma and Rikin managed to pack so much historiography into a children’s history book. It was intriguing to find out about the process that went into building the layers of historical meaning on every page.
Are you ready to get rowdy?
Ask Santa for Totally Chaotic History: Roman History Gets Rowdy! Naturally, Mr Claus shops at your local independent bookstore.
Want more from Emma Southon? Check out our previous interview about A History of Rome in 21 Women from 2023.
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Dr Rad 0:15
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.
Dr G 0:18
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,
Dr Rad 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr Rad and
Dr G 0:33
I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Welcome to a special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr Rad, and I am Dr G and Dr G, we are joined by someone who is now, I think, a triple guest, which I don't think we've ever had before. We are joined by Dr Emma Southon, who is without doubt, our top drag race fan to have on the podcast, but she also happens to be a top notch historian and hilarious, so that's very handy for us. She is the author of a biography of Agrippina the Younger as well as a book called A fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and, most recently, a history of Rome in 21 women, all of which you need to check out if you have not read them already, Emma is also the co host of the podcast. History is sexy, but we are here today to graduate her on her latest book, which is totally chaotic history Roman Britain gets rowdy, and in this collaboration, Emma gets together with a podcaster and all around famous author Greg Jenner and illustrator Rikin Parekh. So Emma, welcome,
Dr Emma Southon 2:06
hello. What a joy to be back. Am I really your first third person? That makes me feel special.
Dr Rad 2:11
I think so
Dr G 2:14
special you've come to the right place. So we
Dr Rad 2:17
are so excited to talk about this book, because it is very different, and we're going to explore some of those differences in a moment for you. But let's start with the general premise of the book. Shall we? The book is about Roman Britain, and we actually learned a lot by reading this, right? Because it is actually a children's book, I should point out to people.
Dr Emma Southon 2:37
It isn't for, technically, for like seven to 12 year olds, but both Greg and I love history, and so we put in about as much as we learned. Everything that we learned that we found was interesting, we chucked in there, and we're very keen to make it a book that is proper history like So the premise is that Greg is an amateur historian who is telling the reader the story of whatever the period he's covering, so telling the story of Roman Britain. And then that's all in the present tense, and then he has expert interruptions from a professional historian and expert in the field, who, in the past tense, comes in and says, Actually, Greg, we used to think that, but now we think says, and we know this because we found x, y, z, or and this is what the evidence is. And kind of then gives you the historiography of the period as well, and the like, how we know what we know what kind of things historians have had arguments about what has shifted in our understanding of it, how we interpret the sources and just both widening the subjects as it's usually taught to children. So it's not just like decontextualized Roman Britain, which has like no time period, which is what you very often get with kids books. You just get, like, the Romans or and as if there was no change in the entire period. Or like, you know, the Romans are in Britain for 500 years, and there's just pretense that it's all the same and all the whole time, and also showing how we expanding what history is as it's taught to children. So it's not just giving them facts, as though we just we know those facts, but what historians actually do like how we learn, how we change our minds, how we have big history fights all the time, and have arguments about things, and how there isn't, like one right answer in history. Most of the time, there's a lot of wrong answers, but there's very rare there's also a lot of right answers. And so it sounds quite complicated, but because Greg is naturally hilarious, and because there a lot of it is done through illustration and the way that the page is laid out, it means that there can be lots of a lot going on on the page, and you can learn a whole lot from what looks like just a really fun, silly joke.
Dr Rad 4:59
Like, you're making me feel a lot better about the fact that I learned a lot from reading
Dr Emma Southon 5:04
good that's the aim. Is that? Because, I think that, especially with because I read the first is a series that Greg is doing, and he's doing four initially. The first one was totally chaotic Egypt, and he sent me that, like, before it came out, to say, like, this is what the thing's gonna look like. And I learned so much from that. And like I did, I haven't technically done Egypt since I was an undergraduate, but I still felt like I had, you know, a basic grasp of it, but like, there's a whole debate in there about why Egyptians mummified people and, like, what is the purpose of that? And I was like, Oh my God, I've never even thought about that as an like it's just in a kid's book for eight year olds, and a complete shift in my understanding of why Egyptian culture mummified people. Is it preservation, or is it actually a deliberate transformation? Because if it's preservation, why are you taking the organs out that's not preserving? Is it that's transforming the body.
Dr Rad 6:02
That's true. That's true. Yeah.
Dr Emma Southon 6:04
So, so I also learned a lot, and the next one is a stone age, and I'm looking forward to learning stuff about that. Okay,
Dr G 6:10
I'm ready to dig in. I'm gonna have to acquire the whole series. On the back of this amazing
Dr Rad 6:16
it makes me feel terrified that all these children are gonna grow up to be so incredibly educated
Dr Emma Southon 6:21
they are. They're going to be smarter than by the time they're 12. They're going to know so
Dr Rad 6:26
exactly they're going to be like, Excuse me, I think you'll find that there's historiographical debate about that exactly, that's what we want, which I find terrific, because I'm a teacher, I'm actually going to encounter this. Thanks.
Dr Emma Southon 6:40
They'll be the best kids, though. Yeah.
Dr G 6:43
We want that kind of smarts coming through. That's that's really exciting.
Dr Rad 6:47
So that's an amazing description of what the book is all about, in sort of general terms. And it sort of made us realize that when we have looked at Roman Britain, it's been very much about Caesar Claudius and Boudicca, the highlights, yeah, as I like to call them, which all happened in a very short period of time. So can you tell us a bit about some of the other chapters and what they specifically focus on?
Dr Emma Southon 7:06
So we have a chapter first at the beginning, about the late Iron Age and like, what is Britain like before Caesar gets there? Basically, very important, yeah, because I think that everybody thinks that see the Britain like before Caesar got there, is basically what Caesar describes, which is eight men with mustaches and 200 cows and nothing. So
Dr Rad 7:30
we've got a bit sounds like a party, yeah.
Dr Emma Southon 7:32
And then it effectively goes through, kind of chronologically, the the history of of the Roman occupation of Britain. And Britain as part of the Empire. So it does Caesar. And then the massive impacts that Caesar brings, because he makes Britain, or at least southern Britain, big chunks of it, become client kingdoms of the Roman Empire. And so there's these relationships with Tiberius and Augustus that are very rarely written about in anywhere, to be honest, but they're all there. And then Claudius, kind of second invasion, his big invasion, and then the resistance period after that. So you've got about 100 years of people like coraticus and the kind of ongoing attempts to remove the Romans. And then we really wanted it to not just focus on London. So we have a section on Wales. We've got sections on what's happening in the north of England, on how these places are kind of slowly absorbed into the empire in different ways, especially Wales, which takes, like, a really concerted effort to get it in. And then we go all the way through talking about both how unique Britain is, in terms of how much of the army is there, how you get these kind of syncretic, syncretistic gods that you find in Britain? So we've got a god swap game where you get to match your gods to your local Yeah, all of them just match with Mars, because apparently the British just really took to Mars and were like, we hear you said he's a god of war, but we've decided he's the God of Everything. So and fashion. What do we you know? What are people wearing? What are people doing? Building fancy villas, building a town? Because what Rome really brings is urbanization, and then so you get towns for the first time and cities, but also you get these huge Villa estates that are like areas of agricultural production for export, which never existed before, and they're really unique, like the way they're built. And when everybody draws a Roman villa, they draw that kind of bracket shaped, you know, classic Italian Palace, but the ones in Britain are like corridors, and they're kind of weird. So we've got lots of archeology and mosaics and how you build your villa. So we have a, we originally wrote a Grand Designs thing for that. So it was going to be like, someone's coming to video. But they were like, I.
Dr Rad 10:00
Only 40 year olds will get eight year old is watching,
Dr Emma Southon 10:09
like he was really funny for us. And then we were like, no, no. Eight year old knows. So we did it as a catalog instead, like they'll get that. And then we did, like, the building your villa, you're building your town as a kind of Minecraft thing. So you get to did it as constructor the game, and then talked through all of the actually big history that happens in in Britain at the end of the Roman Empire. So from like 200 to 400 there are like three emperors that are proclaimed in Britain, including Caracalla and Geta of Gladiator II fame,
Dr Rad 10:42
absolutely, I was very, so excited to see the section on them. There
Dr G 10:46
they are hanging out. I will
Dr Emma Southon 10:49
tell you now, and I'm sorry they're going to probably have to edit this out. But I spent the entire thing going, why is Geta the big one?
Dr G 10:58
Yeah. Surely this really assumed, yeah, miscasting,
Dr Emma Southon 11:03
yeah, like, Geta is the big one and the little one is Caracalla.
Dr G 11:08
Don't tell Fiona too much. She hasn't seen it yet.
Dr Rad 11:11
Oh, you've seen it. Okay, we're actually going together to what we call Gold Class here, which basically is, like the super fancy cinema with, like this, you know, the recliner I
Dr G 11:21
want? I want to Colosseum popcorn bucket. That's what I'm after. Yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 11:26
I cannot get it here, and it breaks my heart. I'm not going to spoil anything else, but I'm just going to say Gator is the big one, and I genuinely spent a third of a movie with
Dr Rad 11:34
my mind blown. Yeah, no, that is crazy to me. Yeah.
Dr Emma Southon 11:38
So Caracalla,, Geta, Constantine the great he is crowned in Britain. And then Britain is called like a hotbed of usurpers, because people keep rising up, taking chunks of the army and invading mainland Britain, basically. And then there's a lot that goes on there. Britain, I think, is very often considered to be like a massive backwater that Rome didn't care about at all. But you see hundreds of years of them desperately trying to keep Britain in the empire, because it is very important as both a space for which is agriculturally, producing enormously, and it is a place where people have loads of property and they want to keep it. And it is, you know, they don't want to lose it as a space. And the period that Britain is the richest and when the most beautiful things are being built, and when it's spending the most money on villas and mosaics and paintings, and is the third and fourth century, like this period that we think of as a period of decline and misery is actually a period of kind of gold and luxury in Roman Britain. So, so we have all of that, and then we have the kind of final sad decline, I suppose, of Britain as the army just keeps leaving, and then no one has any money to travel across the sea anymore. So
Dr G 12:56
this ferry system is getting very expensive. I don't know if I can put my army on boats,
Dr Emma Southon 13:02
and their Saxons got very, very good at piracy, so it became real expensive to keep sending stuff over. And so this kind of last hurrah of Roman Britain is kind of ends with a bit of a whimper. And that famous letter from Honorius where he says, you know, we wrote to Britain and said that they'd have to deal with themselves, which may or may not be about Britain, but yeah, so it hopefully gives, like, a very different perspective on Roman Britain, and then that, it does the whole of it, from the first contact in 150 BCE all the way through to, kind of The final dregs of Roman culture in like 500 and tells you everything that happened, basically, and get a good idea of what living at any period under Roman occupation was like,
Dr G 13:53
Oh, fantastic. So I like the fact that there's a chronology here. It's, as you say, it's not just a smattering of facts without any sort of contextual detail. So everybody gets to go on a journey through this whole few 100 years of Roman contact with the Britons. When you're thinking about your research and work on this book, was there anything in particular you were surprised to learn as you went through this process,
Dr Emma Southon 14:20
the kind of uniqueness of Romano British culture, like archeologically, because the archeology of Roman Britain is not something that I had ever like looked at in huge detail, and I'd certainly never sat down and read all of the many British archeological reports I read. And because British archeological reports basically publish every archeology PhD that wants to be published. Oh, that's on British archeology, and it's brilliant. And as a result, you can read the tiny little niches that people do and see what they're looking at. And the there are real uniquenesses to Roman British culture, like they didn't. We used to call it romanizing Back in the day, but you know, they didn't hell themselves into being as Roman as possible on a copy. But they took what they wanted and absorbed it. But so they were like, Okay, we'll do villas, but we're doing them in a way that we like, like, we'll do corners. Now, really funny thing is that there was a drought 2007-2008, that, for archeologists, was brilliant, because all of the dried out fields meant that they could see with aerial photography, loads of foundations that they wouldn't have been able to see, and so they could suddenly see loads of Roman and pre Roman archeological sites, or like sites of locations of inhabitation where that they hadn't known existed before. And you can tell which ones are the pre Roman because they're all round. And then the Romans come and put corners on
Dr G 15:41
all those Romans. They love their lines. They love their angles.
Dr Emma Southon 15:48
I just really amused me to imagine, like early Roman Britons being like, and they've got coordinates, you say,
Dr Rad 15:58
or something. There's something there about, like, a square pig and
Dr Emma Southon 16:04
a round you get these things, these really specific villas. And like, they build Roman temples, but they build them in a really specific way that is doesn't look like Roman temple has got like a circular bit in the middle. So they'll be like, Okay, we'll do like 50-50, and they were, like, all of the religious sites that appear, which don't appear until, like, relatively late, but they appeared, but they're like, we'll do votive offering. We get that, but we are only going to put it in water, because water is our thing. So we're gonna, like, make we're gonna absorb it into our culture, rather than absorbing ourselves into you, basically, which was fascinating to me. And at no point does Britain in general seem to have, like, wholeheartedly thrown itself into you get the odd guy, like the guy who built fishborne Roman palace. But mostly people are like, yeah. Don't know how I feel about guys
Unknown Speaker 16:58
that might work, but
Dr Emma Southon 17:02
they are still building roundhouses. And like you can see, like, they'll get on board with things that are useful, like lamps and locks. But apart from that, they're a bit like, there is a real uniqueness. And like face pots, as well as this thing that you only find in Roman Britain, which is urns for cremains. And they would bury the cremains in a pot with a little face on it. So they make these little face pots interesting. They are adorable. And I don't know if they're like the face of the person, sometimes they have a little penis on them because they're Roman. So they'll just have, like, a penis, actually, yeah, wouldn't
Dr G 17:38
want to miss an opportunity,
Dr Emma Southon 17:41
yeah. But you find it in, like, you only find the Britain and, like, a little bit in northern Gaul, but they're just like these unique aspects of Roman Britain culture that I thought were really delightful. And every single one of them that I learned about was so charming. Because, like, certainly, when I was in school, we went, I grew up near fish born Roman Palace, which is, like the Roman palace, and it is the villa that everybody talks about, and it's ginormous. It's like four times the size of most villas. And it is so Roman. It's so square. It's got, like, the atrium, it's got the big wings that go round a bit of grass. And so for a long time, I was like, Okay, so that's what a Roman villa is. But then when you look at what they all look like, they have a specific layout that the British designed themselves. And so it was, yeah, it was um, eye opening to see how, how the the people for 400 years, were like, okay, we can get along with some of this. But I kind of like, that's like, feels profoundly British, yeah,
Dr G 18:42
okay, the pragmatism of like, well, you say you do it that way, but we've always done it like this, so I think we're just gonna keep doing it like this. We're gonna
Dr Emma Southon 18:53
keep we'll incorporate the bits that we like, but otherwise we will be avoiding virtually all of it.
Dr Rad 19:03
We'll take the luck, yeah, throw it.
Dr Emma Southon 19:06
We'll take this, but we're not getting on board with we'll take the wine, but we're not getting on board with the garam
Dr Rad 19:13
there's got to be a new Monty Python skit in there somewhere.
Dr Emma Southon 19:16
Yeah, there's a horrible history skit in there somewhere with this, yeah,
Dr Rad 19:21
exactly, yeah. Which is, which is obviously very apt, given that Greg Jenner was involved in me. He was,
Dr Emma Southon 19:26
and you can tell he was the historical consultant for Horrible Histories for a long time. And he wrote the, or helped write the film, The Boudicca film. And, yeah, did a was kind of locked, very responsible for a lot of horrible history stuff. So you can see that humor in there. He has a very the puns and word play. And we share a hilarity of just imagining how these things play out when people talk about and then they cleared some land. We both find it really funny to imagine, like, how does that like? There is a horrible history. Sketch of, like, somebody turning up at a guy's door and saying, we're going to build a wall through here. Going to build a massive wall right the way across the island, and if you could just move your sheep out. I think,
Dr Rad 20:11
I think that is something that that we also share. We delight in imagining these scenes of when people come up to the door of, you know, Cincinnatus, whilst he's farming shirtless. And, yeah, exactly,
Dr Emma Southon 20:26
giving Cato a call, and he's talking about with cabbages yet again.
Dr Rad 20:33
So obviously, as you sort of highlighted before, there are sometimes these sort of different ideas behind each chapter, the way you laid it out, and the sort of approach that you've taken, so when you sort of saw it all come together, which part ended up being your favorite?
Dr Emma Southon 20:47
That's my favorite. I find the Julius Caesar YouTube bit really funny. So we did Julius Caesar as like a manosphere YouTube bro who is trying to pass off his ludicrous, his ludicrous turning up in Britain, fundamentally unprepared and being chased out and then constantly complaining that doesn't matter how many hostages he takes, they just keep stabbing him in the back, trying to pass it off as a brilliant victory. And we imagined him kind of, what's that guy that just fought?
Dr G 21:23
Oh, the guy that just fought my boxer guy,
Dr Emma Southon 21:27
yes,
Dr G 21:28
I can't remember his name. What's his name? But isn't he fundamentally a YouTuber? Yeah, he is.
Dr Emma Southon 21:34
So basically, we imagined him as one of those youtubers who's, like, always doing stunts, or like a kind of Mr. Beast type bro guy who just wants to impress everybody with, like, the massive stunts that he's doing. And then we had, like, his description of Britain. We ended up doing it as, like a Q and A while he's trapped in because he can't go out because the weather's so bad that it's destroyed all of his ships that genuinely happened. So he got trapped on the island well, because all his ships got destroyed and stopped. So, like, he's got nothing to do. So he can do an AMA, and he'll describe Britain, and that's how we'll have, like, his description of what Britain is like. And yeah, that ended up. And when we were recording the audio book, Greg was doing voices, doing his YouTube voice. And it took a while to get through that, because it was just made us both really laughed that one. I really like that chapter. I think it's really funny.
Dr G 22:30
That's a good one. Julius Caesar, what a man, what a time I know, what a guy. And maybe this will help some people, you know, young people, come to a better sense of what he might have really been like. Yeah, he spends a lot of time talking about himself, that's for sure. In
Dr Emma Southon 22:51
the third person we did, let him say, I we should have we thought they might be a bit far if we had him saying, Caesar has been to British. Yeah. Ridiculous.
Dr G 23:04
It would have served him right in some respects, but I can appreciate the change,
Dr Emma Southon 23:07
yeah, but yeah. Still, it still tickles me to imagine him on YouTube.
Dr G 23:11
Definitely. He'd have quite a following. I can only imagine
Dr Emma Southon 23:16
he really would. He'd have a podcast following, be doing massive things and filming them. Yeah, it would be ridiculous.
Dr G 23:27
So I like the fact that this is a new kind of Avenue, if you like, for your work as a way, because not only is this a co authorship situation that, but there's also an illustrator involved, and you've talked a little bit about how the layout of the page is doing a lot of the work and sort of helping create the the argumentative structures and to point people in particular directions. I'm wondering, if you can take us a little bit through that process, what was it like coming together to collaborate on that visual as well as the written
Dr Emma Southon 23:59
fun? I'm not a visual thinker, so the what the page looked like was probably the bit that I was least involved in. We had kind of as we were going through. So what we did was we went through and put together, like a chronology of what we thought the chapter should be and what we wanted to include and how to break it up. And then we went through and sat on Zoom for hours, and like, chapter by chapter, we're like, what's the funniest way to do this chapter? And then we wrote them. So I would do the research, and then send loads of research to Greg, and he would write it and send it back to me, and then I would edit it and fiddle about with it and send it back to him. And then we would go back and forth. And then we basically sent a giant Word document, and we came would come up with kind of ideas of things that we would think were funny to for it to look like, but we basically then sent the text to Rikin and then he drew what he thought were funny, basically versions about Greg thinks of jokes really easily, like visual jokes, because of his work in TV. So sometimes he. Would put in a LIKE, Would it be funny to have like? When I found, archeologists have found skulls, cow skulls with Roman bullets in them, because the Roman army would use cows as target practice, or were just shooting cows for fun, which is bizarre. And so he was like, we have to have a picture of we have to have a picture of that. Or he would think of a caption, and then we would send that to Rikin, and then Rikin and just drew loads. And part of it is of what the page looks like is done by the editors, because it has to fit onto a certain amount of pages, essentially. And so we would lose text in order to keep a picture, or lose a picture in order to keep text. And so go went through probably 10 or 12 different iterations of what the page is going to look like. If we have this image here, the joke is before, like, the visual joke is before the paragraph, so we're going to have to shift it around. But if we do that, then it's going to push the visual joke onto the next page. So we're going to have to cut out like 13 words of this paragraph so that it will all fit on this one page. And it's a very kind of careful I have a lot more appreciation for kids books and illustrated books now, of the of how much work goes in, like page by page, to making sure that you don't end up with a big bit of blank space. You don't end up with a especially because we've got like, three layers of text. We've got the Greg's text and then the interruptions. And some of them are interruptions and some of them are definitions, so where I've underlined something and then defined it, and keeping that all on the one page so that the jokes run in the right order, and that the paragraph doesn't ruin the visual joke, and the visual joke doesn't come completely out of context, is quite an undertaking, and I now have a lot of respect for children's books editors who would happen to balance this like very visually that I did not have before. I did not appreciate them as much as I should have. So it is quite present. And sometimes I sent Rikin a lot of visual references so that everything would be as accurate as possible. So when we have at the beginning, when they you start seeing things like cosmetic mixes, cosmetic sets like appear in southern Britain. I was like, we should totally like, we're gonna have if we can't be having like, I don't need. Want you to be having like, a mirror and a brush. I want it to be a Roman cosmetic set. Don't look like what you consider to be a cosmetic set. It looks like a pestle and mortar. That's tiny. But he was great asking for more. What does this look like? What does an actual pot look like? Like one of the original pots he drew? I was like, No, that's a Greek pot. Sorry, I love you, but that like, there's a difference between a Greek pot and a Roman. And you've drawn a Greek pot, and I need you to draw me a Roman. Like, the handles are smaller, the neck is different. And so we did go kind of back and forth, a few on that, but he really wanted to be accurate as well. So he I would send him, like, big PDFs full of images, often drawings of things from bar reports. And he would make them funny. God bless him. That
Dr G 28:17
is an art, I think, being able to take, you know, archeological drawings, and turn them into something hilarious as well as informative at the same time.
Dr Emma Southon 28:26
And we really did our best to be like, you know, what's the difference between a Roman chariot and a like, I see any chariot like, do we know? What can we tell? How do we make them look different? What does what's the difference between a Greek pot and a Roman so we're not misleading people.
Dr Rad 28:44
And, yeah, yeah, well, I mean, and I think that that you've actually highlighted something which is also a bit of a departure for you, which is that you have most definitely been writing for adults in your previous books, all the murder, yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 28:58
all the murder, all the swearing. Oh, yeah, exactly. Development jokes, not.
Dr Rad 29:04
So what was it like having to write for children?
Dr Emma Southon 29:07
I was very lucky that I was with Greg, so he did the first draft of everything. And he obviously has been writing for kids for a very long time, and he has other kids books that he has written. This was his third or fourth one, and he did a he's like, does he did a podcast series for kids during the lockdown called homeschool history, like he knows how to make children laugh, and he has a kid and he's not afraid of them like I am. So he did the first pass, basically, of everything, and then I just went through and was either like, I understand the sentence, or just kind of tweet things. So I was very it felt like a kind of apprenticeship in a way of seeing Greg do his thing, and I would give him, like, quite dense 1520, page research articles that I would written up, or like lists of things. You know what? It. All the things I thought would be interesting for this chapter. And he would pare those down into 2000 words of that contained a ton of jokes for kids and some references to like, robot hamsters, or like it is a real work of genius to be able to do this and make it like, snappy and funny and yeah, and then we would just edit it down together until it got kind of littler and littler. And the only bit I wrote by myself was, which was by the time we had got, like, quite a few chapters in, was the myth buster part on the on Hadrian's Wall. So I'd seen him write like, six or seven chapters by that point, so I felt like I could have a go. And then he edited it into something better. But it is a real it's a real art form to talk to kids and entertain them without patronizing them, and without being like cost you the clown or something. And so it was or doing what I do to children in real life, which is to talk to them like they're just adults, but smaller. Charles, how was your day at work? Let's
Dr Rad 31:10
please talk about the difference between Roman and Greek pots. It's very important that you understand the subtle differences.
Dr Emma Southon 31:15
I do as an example of how I usually am with children, I was talking to my nephew quite recently. It was his 21st birthday. And he I took him out for dinner, and we were out, and he said, Do you remember Auntie Emma when I was about six and you taught me what genocide was? I was like, yes,
Dr Rad 31:38
that is exactly the kind of thing that I would do.
Dr G 31:42
I mean, if it comes up in conversation and it's the right time to learn the information I don't I mean,
Dr Emma Southon 31:48
in my defense, he had, he was in a school that was very progressive, and they had decided to name all of their classes after countries, like each year group was a continent and each class was a country. The year before, he had been in hedgehog class, and this year, I asked him what class he was in, and he said, Cambodia. Oh, God. Well,
Dr Rad 32:07
that makes total sense that you would instantly go there. And so after
Dr Emma Southon 32:11
some questioning, we obviously got around to Cambodian history, fair enough. And yeah, and he considers a very formative part of his like, he's now very politically engaged, and he's a journalist, so I feel like I did a good job, but still,
Dr Rad 32:24
I think that's one of the things, yeah, that is one of the things I find when you're actually talking to a small child, because I also have a couple of nephews who are toddlers at the moment, and I find that it's one of those things where I'll just be talking to them normally, just as I'm like, you know, bustling around, and I'll just say something, and then all of a sudden, as the words leave my mouth, I'm like, Oh no, that's gonna lead to more questions. And I don't know what their parents want me to say about this. And I literally did that the other day, where I was talking about how I was a step parent and that, and then I was like, oh no, oh no. That's gonna lead to questions about what. What does that involve? And so I had to go through the whole thing of, look, so you know those people I call my children? Yeah, they weren't actually ever inside of me. Oh crap, yeah. And I think, I think we ended up finishing the conversation with him, concluding that to have a step parent means that you have three mothers. And I was like, yep, you know what? Let's just Yeah.
Dr G 33:21
We can clear that up. That's
Dr Emma Southon 33:23
worse things that could come out. But
Dr Rad 33:26
yeah, so I am terrible at explaining things to really small
Dr Emma Southon 33:28
children. Yeah, they're very challenging. That's why they can see right through you. And this is the thing with writing for kids and talking to kids really like they, they know, if you're like, trying to bullshit them, they can. They don't have time for any kind of patronizing them or pretending like they and so you have to be enthusiastic, and you have to take them seriously. And that was which is good, because that's what I like to do, I take everything well, that's not true. I don't take everything seriously, but I do take history,
Dr Rad 34:05
I think seriously underneath hilarious on the top, yeah, exactly.
Dr Emma Southon 34:08
And I wouldn't have done a book for children if it had been anything other than what Greg does, which is to teach kids history, not just teach them history facts like or history stories, but teach them what history is and what historians do, and that history is largely arguing and interpretation. It's not just like a static series of stories or facts or myths. It is a kind of constantly evolving discipline, and he takes that very seriously indeed. And then does robot hamster jokes.
Dr G 34:50
This actually leads me into something that I did want to ask you about, because this book has things like the the chaos ratings in it, as you as you go through. True. And, you know, this is obviously a really great mechanism, I think, for giving us sort of a little bit of a foreshadowing of what is to come or indicating just how complex the thing that is about to be discussed is going to be. And I'm wondering about how, like, a feature like that may have evolved during the discussion process.
Dr Rad 35:18
Yeah, because that's the historic graphical bit, I think,
Dr Emma Southon 35:21
yeah, because this is so Greg's original like pitch for this was that he will be the guy who is living through it, essentially, like he's in present tense, and he is living through it. And sometimes he you never know what's coming next. And sometimes what comes next is really chaotic, and like in the moment, you have no clue what's happening, and the historian can come in and say, Oh, x, y, z is what is occurring. But like, so you have this period at the end, which is, I think, when the chaos meter goes to totally chaotic, when Britain is like in three separate empires, technically, in about a 20 year period. So the Gallic Empire splits away from the Roman Empire in the third century, and then Aurelian brings it back in, and then it splits off into a tiny British Empire, which consists of Britain.
Dr G 36:12
We're all by ourselves,
Dr Emma Southon 36:14
yeah, for like 10 years, it's the British Empire, and then it's back into the Roman Empire again. And so we had that as a news reader, who's, like, constantly being like, and then this guy's been murdered, and then this guy's been murdered, there's constantly coins like, appearing, which, and who the hell is this guy? And so his feeling is that it like, sometimes it's going to feel like you don't know what's going to happen, like, who you can who's going to be the Emperor when you wake up tomorrow, who? What Empire Am I in when I wake up tomorrow? Like sometimes when you're living day to day, it feels totally chaotic and like you don't know how anything is going to survive, but in you can be, then be a historian, and look back and say, Ah, the forces, an Aurelian is going to come and save everybody, and it's all going to be okay. Don't worry, guys. Yeah. And so the chaos meter is basically how the person at the time would be feeling if they were living through this. Are they feeling like they're in a good, chill, useful time where everything is delightful and it's the end of history, or are they living in interesting historical times and they feel like they don't know what their world is going to look like tomorrow, and they're burying their gold because they're worried that someone's going to come and
Dr G 37:26
rob them. Fair enough,
Dr Rad 37:28
I was really impressed by all those additional elements, because, as I say, I think that's where the historiography comes in, with the accuracy alerts the myth bust, seeing, you know, it was so layered, as you say, I was like, Whoa, there's like, so much historiography going on on this page, and it's a children's book. And I think, without a doubt, this isn't a question. I'm just saying this, without a doubt, my favorite part was the historian head to head over Buddha cup, mostly because of the illustration of you and Greg fighting each other with books.
Dr Emma Southon 37:56
Yeah, a genuinely delightful Yeah. And, you know, and that is an argument that, for some reason, I tried to keep trying to avoid Boudicca, but you come back to her constantly. I know I've accidentally written two books that she's in, and like there are so many different interpretations of her and so many like that. You know you can talk to French archeologists who argue that she never existed. You can talk to like, really intense patriots who are like she was a woman, and this and like the Tacitus story, is exactly what happened to her, and that is precisely it I kind of like to sit in the middle. And I think that Tacitus is telling a very specific, fictionalized mythic story about her, and that it best, almost no resemblance to the Dio version of her, that these are, you know, she's a real woman told as a literary device. And but then you have, you know, there's the Amanda Scott who is like, no, she was Welsh. And Boudicca actually means vodaker, and it means victory. And like there's so many different ways of understanding her and of of interpreting her, but all we have, really is two guys who know something about her and are writing about her for a very specific political audience, and that kind of arguing about her, that's what history is, especially ancient history. And you know this, when you're dealing with Roman texts and you've got nothing else to where you've got nothing else to work with, it's just arguing over two guys and how much you want to believe those two guys were telling the truth, and if they were both telling the truth, then why their story is so different?
Dr Rad 39:44
Yeah, look as two people who base their entire podcast basically on Livy and Dionysus of Halicarnassus for a long time, and we generally do, often get to the point where I end up sort of saying at the end of the episode, so wait, maybe none of this ever actually happened. And Peta's like, whoa, whoa.
Dr G 39:59
I mean, something happened, like, have we
Dr Rad 40:04
just proven that none of this ever happened?
Dr Emma Southon 40:06
Rome appeared fully formed, 27 BCE with Augustine
Dr G 40:14
before that. We can't possibly know anything.
Dr Rad 40:20
You know, look, I think it's, it is amazing how much you guys have been able to show, as you say, what history actually is, which is all these different perspectives, all this problematic evidence. It is amazing that you have been able to delve into all of these issues and cover the entire history of Britain all in one book.
Dr Emma Southon 40:36
Yeah, amazing in like 25,000 words. It's, yeah,
Dr Rad 40:39
I might have something to learn. So tell us, if people are really keen to dive right in, and we mean physically dive in, are there any places in Britain that you would recommend going?
Dr Emma Southon 40:52
So there are a bunch of villas. So I honestly do think that fishborne is brilliant. It is very much a it's like an early Roman villa. It's in Sussex, and it is, it's like the most Roman of all the Roman villas, but it is amazing, and it is like a genuine delight to see chedworth is also great. And that's much more of a what's the word, like British one? But, yeah, it's a corridor, but it's also it has great like mosaics, and it's a great site to go to. The British Museum has all the cool stuff. So, you know, you can't say no to the British Museum, really, it does have all the best stuff. But the great thing about Britain is you can come one day, me and my husband say we're going to get an English Heritage membership and just spend a year like driving around Britain looking all the English Heritage stuff, because there's so much in the way of in every town, there's something almost every town, there's something that is Roman, and then, like, my dad lives in Dover, and they have a fort That's under a car park that you can go to
Dr G 42:04
classic, come to our car park fort, yeah, and
Dr Emma Southon 42:08
then and you can go to Dover.
And Dover Castle has a Roman lighthouse, so it's still standing. Yes, it's like next to a 12th century church, but it's this Roman lighthouse that you can go to and virtually anywhere that you go. And quite often, because we wanted to do a whole chapter on the rediscovery of Roman Britain, because Roman Britain was not appreciated, particularly until, like, the 18th century, when they redug up bath in order to make it kind of Spa, Georgian spa destination. And we discovered all of the stuff in Bath, and all of the stuff there, you can see the Roman stuff, but a lot of it is still buried. And a lot of the stuff that they say is Roman is actually Victorian, but it's like pseudo neoclassical. It's still gorgeous. It's worth going to but and just be aware that it's not all that, but so much of it was not appreciated. And you get all of these stories of like 17th century, 16th century farmers digging up mosaics and then just chucking them in the bin. Oh, no. Ooh. There was one story that was like from 1840 something of a farmer plowing up a mosaic and then load it being in the papers, and loads of people coming to see them, and then everyone just taking some of it home. And it kind of makes you feel a bit sick,
Dr Rad 43:36
but, and this is my charm, how much stuff I mean when you combine that with all the stories of early archeologists at places like Pompeii and Herculaneum, you know, being like, that's not important, tossing it out. Give me the good stuff. Just like, Oh my god. How much of this stuff that we complain we don't have enough of has actually ended up in the bin. But
Dr Emma Southon 43:55
since then, it's got a bit better. But now virtually every town in Britain has something and it will have a mosaic or something cool and Roman in their like Village Museum, and which is kind of delightful to see how much of it there is just everywhere, and not just the monumental stuff that you get if you go like, there's no arches, there's no big buildings, particularly, there's just lots of little things. I will do one shout out for the Mithraeum in London, actually, if you're in London, which is in the bottom of the Bloomberg building, but they have a load of they have the oldest writing tablets that have been found in Western Europe, which are from like 100 CE, that were all found in the Thames, and they're all Business Tablets, so they're well, boring, but they're delightful to see. But then what they've done with the Mithraeum,with these kind of light show and holograms and this recreation of mithraic worship is really cool to see. Sounds like a delight. Yeah?
Dr Rad 44:58
Indeed. Yeah. I. Never been, actually, even though I've been to London several times, I didn't know was there the last time I
Dr Emma Southon 45:05
was, yeah, you have to, like, go to the business districts and then, like, go into the bottom of a building that really feels like you shouldn't be in
Unknown Speaker 45:13
this all Bloomberg cannon. But, yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 45:15
but it's freedom, and it is like an hour, and you get to see, and they've got these kind of displays of all of the stuff that they found. Their archeological reports are great as well, actually. But yeah, there's just so much on the army. You can go up and see all the forts in the north, and you can go and see Hadrian's Wall and walk along it. And you can go to Vindolanda, although the good tablets are in the British Museum.
Dr G 45:39
Fair warning, fair warning. Yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 45:41
they do have lots
Dr Rad 45:42
Start at the British Museum, then work your way up.
Dr Emma Southon 45:44
Yeah, pretty much start the bottom, work your way up, drive around. There is a great book, actually, about driving around Roman Britain, by Charlotte Higgins, oh, okay, and she drove around a few years old now, she drove around Britain and went to loads and loads of different Roman sites, and, like really explored the impact that Rome left on on the British landscape that you can still see. So I would recommend that
Dr G 46:10
fantastic. All right. Well, to wrap this up, because this has been a fabulous conversation, as always, we hear that there might be exciting new, upcoming projects in your life
Dr Emma Southon 46:22
there are, and
Dr G 46:23
we're wondering, if you can tell us hints and tips I can.
Dr Emma Southon 46:26
So the book that I'm writing at the moment is very definitely for adults, and is a kind of big cultural history of slavery in the Roman Empire and all of the ways that slavery was embedded into the Empire, and supported it and made it possible for the Empire to exist, basically, which I'm trying not to make depressing, largely by focusing on people, and as many people as I can that to experience slavery in one day or one way or another, which is everybody in the empire, like there is not one single person in the whole Roman Empire who experienced a day without coming into contact with slavery in some way, either by owning them, being one or dealing with an enslaved person. So that's the one I'm writing at the moment. And then I have a two book deal now, so there's minimum of two books coming. So the next one after that is going to be about the Palatine and a history of the Palatine complex, through the emperors who lived there, how it grew, the what was there? What's going on? Who are these guys? It takes up the takes of, like, two miles of Rome. It takes up like a nearly a quarter of the city in its original walls. It's enormous, and it's full of people, and yeah, what's going on up there, and how it changes, and everybody from the guy who is in charge of import taxes from Alexandria to the guy whose job is to be a sexy human pet.
Dr Rad 48:06
Sounds fascinating. You
Dr G 48:09
can go up that hill, but you don't know what anybody will ask you to do once you get to the top of the
Dr Emma Southon 48:14
map. You do not and it could be very boring, or it's almost only gonna be very boring, but it might also be very weird,
Dr G 48:22
amazing. Both of those projects actually sound really incredible and important, actually, because I think for readers who are interested in Rome but haven't had the opportunity to really study it in depth, the extent to which slavery shapes Rome and how it operates is is massive. And yeah, it needs to be better understood. I think, yeah. And
Dr Emma Southon 48:44
when I talk to people, and I tell people who are not Roman historians that this is what I'm doing 99% of the time, the response is, Oh, I hear slavery in Rome was actually fine, like everybody was freed, and it was basically like being a serf, and you have to be like, no,
Dr G 49:04
actually pretty terrible.
Dr Rad 49:07
Just generally not a good idea. It
Dr Emma Southon 49:09
is still very much slavery. So, yeah,
Dr G 49:12
like, just
Dr Rad 49:14
because it's better than some forms of Greek slavery, does it mean that people are like, Oh, that's totally cool. I'll totally do
Dr Emma Southon 49:21
Yeah. Just because it doesn't have a philosophy behind it doesn't mean that it isn't still slavery, yeah, yeah. So part of it is going to be overcoming the fact that people think that Roman slavery is not really slavery, or they don't think it's chattel slavery, or, yeah, or they're just really focused on one specific form of domestic slavery like that. You are the secretary of Cicero, and therefore you have a certain amount of power, forgetting all of the people in the fields and the mines and their Fullers and the people doing the monstrous jobs that no one will take, you know is being paid to do. They're doing it forever.
Dr Rad 49:59
Yeah, you gotta think of that opening of Spartacus, because as much as there is zero evidence that that's what Spartacus originally did, the film does show him working in pretty terrible job. At first, there's
Dr Emma Southon 50:13
a lot of people talking about like mining and field work and chain gangs and, you know, and how terrible it was, but that's the next project, which it not forget. Are
Dr Rad 50:25
you sure? I don't know. Yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 50:27
I don't know. Maybe, all right, yeah, just really depressed some children, yeah.
Dr Rad 50:32
Well, that is very exciting. We will be looking forward to hopefully chatting to you again when that is finished. But thank you so much for talking to us today. As usual, we have, not only did we learn a lot from the book, but we learned a lot about the process of producing a book like this. And I definitely would encourage actually adults to read it as well as get it for your kids, because I think you'll find it's a genuinely delightful read. Yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 50:59
I think that everybody will learn a lot from it. There are not that many books on Roman Britain for adults or for anybody that do a big tell you all about it, and this is a good starting point, I think.
Dr G 51:15
Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for telling us more about this book. So for people who are listening at home or wherever you are out and about, the book is called totally chaotic history. Roman Britain gets rowdy with an exclamation mark. So get the excitement pumping. Get into some historiography. Go and enjoy the whole swath of Roman British history. Yeah,
Dr Rad 51:39
and it is available in e book as well as print and audio book from the sounds of it. Yeah,
Dr Emma Southon 51:43
my first audio book reading experience, I do a voice. I do a good couple of amusing voices. So if you want to hear me do my first full range of voice acting,
Dr Rad 51:55
how exciting? Yeah, I look forward to hearing what you think Agrippina the younger sounds, all right. Well, thank you so much, and we will definitely be talking to you hopefully shortly about thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this special episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes@www.partialhistorians.com Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman. You too can support our show and help us to produce more fascinating content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes, just like this one. However, if you lost all your money betting on a chariot race, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.
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