We explore the research that sits behind the series and consider how the negative source tradition influenced how key figures in the late Republic get represented in a story that focuses on Antony’s perspective (hint: this is a series for the Cicero haters). Gough takes us through some of the details we know about Antony’s early life as well as the influence of the Catiline conspiracy on the shape of politics during Antony’s lifetime.

Gough also takes us through his process and his rules for writing historical fiction. Join us as well learn more about the influences that frames Antony’s life and career and learn more about Gough’s detailed approach to historical fiction. If you enjoy historical fiction, we recommend checking out Gough’s novels! The four novels part of the Mark Antony series are: Caesar’s Soldier, Caesar’s General, Caesar’s Avenger, and Caesar’s Nemesis.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents.

The post Special Episode – Mark Antony with Alex Gough appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Ever wondered what it would be like to walk in the calcei of a Roman gladiator? How did gladiators pass their days? Join us and our special guest to find out more! 

Harry Sidebottom

Harry Sidebottom holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Oxford and is a lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College, Oxford. He is the author of two well-known series, Warrior of Rome and Throne of the Caesars, as well as several non-fiction books on Roman history. 

His latest book is THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE: A Day in the Life of a Roman Gladiator. 

This investigation illuminates the harsh truths about the everyday lives of men who fought to the death in the sandy arena of the Colosseum and breaks down the twenty-four-hour period between the evening before the games and the aftermath. We get to go on a journey as the gladiators train, eat their final meal, process into the arena, the formidable bloody combat, and the sunset after battle. 

Things to Look Out For:

• Magic and medicine
• Provincial gladiators
• Rusty – we just stay away from you, Mr Crowe!
• The likelihood of surviving the arena
• The connection between politics and gladiators 

Be sure to grab your copy today and fill the next 24 hours in your life. 

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, 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 new special episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Rad, and I am Dr. G. And Dr. G, we’re stepping into the arena today. We are joined by Harry Sidebottom, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and is a lecturer in ancient history at Lincoln College, Oxford. He is the author of two well-known series, Warrior of Rome and Throne of the Caesars, as well as several non-fiction books on Roman history. However, his latest book is Those Who Are About to Die: A Day in the life of a Roman gladiator, which is being released actually as we speak, I believe, which is mid-April 2026. For those of you listening in the future, this book investigates and illuminates the harsh truths about the everyday lives of the men who fought to the death in the sandy arena of the Colosseum, and breaks down the 24-hour period between the evening before the games and the aftermath. We get to go on a journey as the gladiators train, eat their final meal, process into the arena, the formidable bloody combat, and then the sunset after battle. So we’re very excited for this. Welcome to the show, Harry.

Harry Sidebottom 2:24
Hi, thank you for having me on.

Dr G 2:27
An absolute pleasure. We’re very excited about this topic. It is a topic that is particularly close to Dr. Rad’s heart, as I’m sure our listeners are well aware, and it’s something that over time I’ve come to know quite well through Dr. Rad, so I’m really excited to learn even more about this fantastic topic. So to get us started, who were gladiators, and where does gladiatorial combat come from?

Harry Sidebottom 2:54
Okay, who were gladiators? There’s four main pools for recruits, and the first were prisoners of war, warriors from foreign nations that the Romans had conquered. That’s really kind of straightforward. Rather than being executed or enslaved and put to work in chain gangs or whatever, they’re condemned to the arena. The second group are criminals, guys convicted of really major crimes, murder, temple robbing, sacrilege. Once again, convicted, sent to the arena. Now, one of the things that’s kind of odd in our way of thinking is that the Romans regarded sending these two groups of people to the arena as actually merciful, because they could have just been executed with 100% chance of dying, if they’re sent to the arena, which we might talk about later, they they have a reasonable chance of survival. So they’re the first two groups, and obviously prisoners of war. The numbers vary hugely over time, depending on if the Romans are fighting successful wars of conquest. The third group are slaves. Slaves sold into the arena by their owners, and they’re really quite interesting because the Emperor Hadrian enacts a law that no slave owner can sell a slave into the gladiatorial schools unless the slave has done something wrong. Now that kind of looks like a humanitarian, humane thing, and in already and in intention, it probably is. But then, when you sort of stop and think about it, you think, well, how’s this slave going to get access to Roman law? And if he does, then a horrible fact is that the evidence of a slave in Roman courts can only be taken under torture. So maybe some slaves would have just thought it was easier. Maybe most slaves would have thought it’s a hell of a lot easier just to go quietly to the gladiatorial school and hope to come out the other end. As a sort of adjunct to that, the next emperor Antoninus Pius is in the mid second century AD. He possus a very. Different law that any slaves who’ve run away from their owner to hide in a gladiatorial school, if they’re discovered, should be sent back, and that kind of I think is one of the chilling thing of just how horrible Roman slavery could be. That you know, some slaves thought their brutalized lives as slaves; they’d be better off risking their life on the sand in the arena, and the final of the four groups, I think I’ve remembered more. We got prisoners of war, we got criminals, we got slaves, and we’ve got free men who volunteer. And that, for us, is kind of a weird one. But free men did volunteer to fight, and volunteered in quite large numbers.

Dr Rad 5:39
And that’s a really interesting group to sort of get into. Can you tell us a little bit more about maybe the differences between the experience of a free man who’d volunteered to become a gladiator as opposed to someone who was already a slave?

Speaker 1 5:54
Oh, you guys ask the toughest questions. I can try. If you’re a volunteer free man from the elite, you almost certainly had a contract, and the contract specified you would fight X number of times, maybe only once. As far as how differently they were treated, the satirist juvenile does mention that free men bunked in different cells from slaves and the others. Juvenal, of course, says the these cells are, I think, not quite as revolting and obscene as the other ones. So it’s not necessarily a good thing in Juvenal’s eye. We did know the prize money. The share of the prize money was different. If you’re a slave gladiator, you get 20% of the prize, and if you’re a free man, you get 25% And your trainer, the lanista, he gets the majority. So yeah, there are different, definite differences, but actually, it’s one of those areas that’s very, very hard to tell. I mean, the thing that always fascinates me, and I think fascinates quite a lot of people, is why the hell did people volunteer in the first place?

Dr Rad 7:06
Yeah, it does seem weird.

Speaker 1 7:08
And why would you do it? The poet Horace has a really simple, straightforward answer: they’re morally bad people. There you go. They’re just bad, bad people.

Dr G 7:20
Clean cut, simple.

Harry Sidebottom 7:21
Well, he says they’re bad people, and there’s specific type of bad guy. They’re young men from rich families who just wasted their entire inheritance on all the usual things for a Roman moralist. That’ll be booze, women, gambling, food, flashy houses, whatever. They’ve run out of money and they have no choice. They can either become a carriage driver or they can become a gladiator. But I think if we strip out Horace’s elite moralizing, there is kind of a bit of a point there that grinding poverty. We tend to forget, and we think of Rome. We think of the big palaces, the marble floors, the big, the statues, whatever the togas. Yeah, that’s about the elite, the well-off. About 10% of the population, 90% are living on or below the subsistence line. The one thing that being at a gladiatorial school guarantees you is you will be fed and fed a lot of a lot of food, and you’ll be housed, and you know, grinding poverty is a way out. Not, of course, that we should necessarily think that’s the only reason. I mean, why do guys from deprived areas now try a career in boxing? It’s not just a way out of their background. It’s also glamorous. It’s also you get money, you get fame, and guys who do extreme sports. And yeah, perhaps there was a parallel there in Rome with young men who actually relished the the incredibly dangerous physicality of it all. Yeah, the sort of guys who now end up playing international rugby,

Dr Rad 9:00
adrenaline junkies, a lot of them. No, look, that’s actually a really interesting point because one of the things I did like about the Stars Spartacus series, the original one, not the House of Ashur one, is that for all its flaws, it does include a character who enters the gladiatorial school because of debt, and we get to sort of explore his rationale a bit more, and it does kind of flesh out these sorts of decisions that people might have had to make in the Roman world.

Speaker 1 9:29
Yeah, absolutely. I think too often as historians we just kind of go homogenize people’s reasons. I mean, people probably volunteered for a whole bunch of different reasons. Grinding poverty is one. Adrenaline junk is another. The glamor, yeah. They and they could, of course, all be coming together in one guy. So yeah, I mean, I’m not sure I would have volunteered, but but yeah, I can see why people did.

Dr G 9:55
Yeah, I can see as well. It’s that sort of thing where it’s like if you’re interested in. Spotlight, and you can’t see any other way to get there. It’s it’s certainly a viable option, and also if the struggle is real and you feel like you’ve had to fight for everything anyway, you might as well get paid for the fighting. And I can see the appeal in that for sure. I think this leads in nicely to thinking about some of the misconceptions that we have in the modern world about the lives and experiences of gladiators. Are there any particular bugbears that you’ve noticed along in your research?

Speaker 1 10:29
Yeah, the one that seems to catch everyone’s attention is their body shape. I mean, because our popular image of gladiators is via Hollywood, and we think Russell Crowe in his prime. We think I’ve forgotten the actor, the guy who’s in Gladiator Two, which, by the way, I’ve never seen. Everyone tells me it’s terrible, but

Dr Rad 10:48
that-that’s good for you. Yeah, that’s a good one. You’re missing Paul Macca, I think, is what you’re probably talking about. Yeah,

Speaker 1 10:53
yeah, but I’m-he’s young and ripped and muscly and thin and athletic. Gladiators weren’t. Um, they-they tended to be beefed up on a special diet. It was called Saginaw stuffing. It’s got kind of an animal food connotation. Put it out to modern medical terms, it was a and I’m not a doctor, medical doctor, so I’m going to struggle over this. It was a carbohydrate rich diet, and it was designed to build up a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. The idea is the guys. These are big B, and they’re not sumo wrestlers, but they’re big guys. And the idea is they can take a wound, they can be cut, and they can bleed in a visual, spectacular way, but the weapon has not reached a vital artery or organ, so that’s why they are. They’re big tubby guys, and this is one of the things that seems to fascinate people. I mean, I I said it in an interview in England some time ago, and it was picked up by the newspapers, and then there was this weird sort of thing on one of their online papers when all sorts of people accusing me of being a lefty body positive revisionist historian.

Dr G 12:09
Oh no! Of all the things.

Speaker 1 12:12
I mean, even my agent said, “Yeah, my deep, deep cover had failed. I’d finally been rumbled. I had no idea what these guys were talking about because you know, I’m not making any in the book. I’m not making any point about body shape or images now. I’m just looking at the ancient evidence and saying these guys were actually quite heavy. But yeah, that’s one. The other one that preconception is via Hollywood that it’s carnage that everyone dies, and they and they don’t. Okay, it’s very hard to form any realistic estimate of your percentage chance of survival or dying. I’ve seen one rather bloody-minded French scholar reckoned you had a one in four chance of dying in about, whereas one rather more Pacific American scholar came out at one in 20. I looked at one fairly intact inscription from Pompeii, which has it’s the program of the day’s fighting, and someone later has added on the results, including who died, and the answer was one in eight. Okay, you got one in eight chance of dying in a fight, but to make that at all meaningful, you’ve got to put it with how often did guys fight and how long did they fight for? Okay, the Emperor Hadrian again. This is a very specific legal enactment by him, which historians we just tend to generalize out across the whole empire and across centuries. But he asked one very specific legal question: What should we do with Spanish cattle rustlers who are condemned to the arena? And he replied, they can be condemned for five years, but they only fight for three of them. Now, okay, so maybe that’s you know kind of the norm, and you only were condemned for three years, and it looks like you only fought once or twice a year usually. So basically, if you’re in the arena for three years and you’re only fighting between three and six times, you have only a one in eight chance of dying in each combat. Your chances of survival are actually quite good. I mean, the chance of dying is always there, but yeah, the majority of guys probably would come out the other end, and so that’s. I think that’s one of the big misconceptions we all have. I mean, in the first Gladiator movie, which actually I really enjoyed, I thought it was great. I mean, it’s a bit weird that Marcus Servilius wanted to restore the Republic. I didn’t know about that, and I’d studied the subject for years. Put

Dr Rad 14:37
that aside. Yeah, suspension of that was confusing, admittedly.

Speaker 2 14:42
But it’s a minor detail

Dr Rad 14:43
Minor detail. But

Speaker 1 14:44
yeah, our popular image is you can. They’re mass battles, and the whole sands are just strewn with bodies afterwards. No, they weren’t even mass battles usually. Usually, gloat or about is a duel between two guys. With either the same or contrasting equipment, and they’re very much graded by their expertise and experience. And it’s not about death; it’s about exhibiting courage, endurance, skill. It’s playing out the central building block of Roman identity, which was virtues, courage, but with a moral virtue element, and the rationale for having gladiatorial combats at all really oddly remains the same throughout Roman history over centuries. It’s a lesson for warfare. the The story is the idea is that if that scum out on out on the sands, show courage, as they were to put it, close to the steel, and you have to pronounce it in a Russell Crowe way. Like you had to say, those who are about to die, as if you’re Richard Burton. If those guys scum out on the sands are prepared to show that courage close to steel, exhibit virtues, how much more so are us, the guys in the stands, Roman citizens, going to exhibit if and when we’re called upon to fight for Rome. So yeah, I think there there are two key misconceptions that all gladiators are really look like a young Russell Crowe, and that everyone dies. No, most of them were kind of tubby guys, and no, most of them didn’t die.

Dr Rad 16:22
Well, I take that as some bad news and some good news because I wouldn’t like all gladiators to look like Russell Crowe in his prime. But I’m very glad to hear about the higher survival rate. So, you’ve given me a bit of an even keel there. Now, in your book, you are obviously following this 24-hour in the life of a gladiator kind of format, and I’m curious to know how much you think it’s possible to really understand or know about what the gladiators themselves felt about their profession.

Speaker 2 16:52
Yeah, that’s a really good point, because as you know, all all our literary texts aren’t written by gladiators; they’re written by members of the elite who are looking down on observing gladiators? In the book, I try and use tombstones of gladiators as a way into their mentality. We have about 250 300 surviving ones, and they’re not only a few. The inscription on them was actually composed by the dead gladiator himself, but almost all of them are composed by people really close to him in the gladiator school. So either a woman claiming to be his widow, I say claiming because technically slaves can’t marry, so they couldn’t have a wife. It’s a woman who cohabits, but she takes to herself the role of wife and widow, or they’re set up by other gladiators in the school, so they’re as close as we’re going to get to the thought world of gladiators, and they’re very interesting. Um, what fascinated me, and I didn’t know at all till I did the research for the book, was the gladiatorial tombstones divide into those from the eastern half of the empire, the Greek-speaking half, and those from the west, the Latin-speaking half. And in the Latin-speaking half, the tombstones, both in their imagery and in their wording, very much try and aspire to make the gladiator like a soldier. They try and, as if they’ve been doing a more honorable, but still extremely violent profession. Well, the East is even odder because their gladiators try and make out their athletes, and of course, athletes in the Greek East are young men from high-status families, and they call themselves athletes of the war god, athletes of the sands, and in both cases, the gladiator who kind of is at the bottom of the social pyramid, they’re trying to aspire to and claim a higher status. They also, really interestingly, claim quite often to be merciful, that they spare people, they never killed anyone. Some say, which again kind of reinforces this idea: it’s not all about killing; it’s about skill, it’s about virtue, endurance, and weirdly enough, gladiators like to see themselves as merciful guys. So yeah, I think the tombstones are the best way for us to get close to the real thought world of the gladiator, rather than the thought world of rich members of the elite observing gladiators.

Dr G 19:31
I think that’s fantastic because it gives us this way into thinking about what is a gladiatorial subculture in operation between these members, because they’re living together, eating together, fighting together, and then going on tours at times as well, and meeting other groups and seeing what their culture is a bit like as well, and these tombstones then represent something infinitely useful in terms of insight into what we can learn about them. I’m wondering beyond the tombstones, what are the other important sources that we have for learning about gladiators?

Speaker 2 20:08
Kind of everything, basically all the all the sources we’ve got. What we don’t have, which would have been very helpful, is one literary figure giving us a long book on gladiatorial combat, literature is important, but it tends to be little scattered references here and there. Then we have the tombstones. Then we have the hard, you know, the bricks and mortar archeology. We have the Colosseum. We have all those amphitheaters. I always forget how many there are. I think it’s about 300 have been found across the empire, mainly in the west, because in the east the Greeks could repurpose and adapt an existing theater or an existing running track. So we have that, and we have glad tourist schools, of which there are five known archeologically: two, two in Pompeii, one in Rome, and two others. So we’ve got that sort of day-to-day thing. Then there’s art, visual imagery, and what is particularly a type that is particularly useful are mosaics. Rich guys who have sponsored gladiatorial games in their hometown like to have a mosaic recording their generosity to their community, which is kind of weird to ask because they’re usually situated in what would have been a dining room. So your guests come in and they have dinner, drinks, and dinner with you, and under their feet, people are being disemboweled. But yeah, it does delicious. Delicious. It does kind of remind me that I mean, this is the Romans weren’t just like us. I mean, this is the thing that always really irritates me with bad historical novels. They kind of get the the let’s use the German word the realien. They get the clothes, the food, the weapons and stuff right, but they make no effort to get mentalities right. You know, they they have a modern person with all our modernities and values, just in fancy dress, and it’s things like the mosaics in dining rooms of people being eaten by tigers in the in the executions or stabbing each other reminds us that in some ways Romans are very like us, but in other ways they’re as alien as a, you know, a very remote tribe in Papua New Guinea. Their mindset is not ours. So yeah, and the mosaics were a great one for writing the book.

Dr G 22:31
I think they also reveal the body shape as well for people who are like, where do I find this information that is ruining my understanding of the athletic body? Check the mosaics.

Speaker 2 22:41
Yeah, and the Borghese mosaic is a famous 1/4, century AD from Rome, and they are incredible. Those guys are almost sumo wrestlers. They are very, very tubby gentlemen. They also have really quite interesting sort of names in that they’re quite often named after famous, good-looking boys from and from myth, so you get Narcissus, you get Eros, you get one called Licentiosus, which I rather like. Iaculator, well, there’s a name to conjure with. These guys were sex symbols, even though they were tubby, which is one of the weirdest things because the Roman body image of what was a good-looking guy was very similar to ours. It’s ripped. It’s young. It’s not a tubby guy with scars. Yeah. In the book, I try and explore why were gladiators’ sex symbols, since they didn’t fit the ideal of sexual attractiveness for men, and I think the answer I had to come to is that they are just the ultimate rough trade. Yeah, these are dangerous, bad, or maybe the French expression.

Dr Rad 23:48
Bad boys.

Speaker 2 23:49
Jolie laide, pretty ugly. They may be like some of those great French character actors that that battered, lived-in face. Guys like Thierry Godard in Spiral. You know these guys who are not conventionally good looking, but there’s something really attractive about that. That one worries me because my mum, who’s 97, told me that Thierry Godard was a very sexually attractive man the other day. I’m going, hey mum, I don’t need to know what you think about that.

Dr Rad 24:17
She still got it. I like it. You’ve highlighted that gladiators and the displays that they provide are connected to the values of Roman culture, but there is also this interesting connection between gladiatorial displays and the political world of Rome, particularly at. We get, you know, really into probably some of the better known periods of Roman history, the ones where we have a bit more documentation. Can you tell us a bit more about that link?

Speaker 1 25:09
Yeah, sure. I think it’s best if we kind of divide it into two: the Republic and then the Empire. When Rome’s ruled by emperors, under the Republic, lateral combat first appears as funeral games, the Romans are very convinced. The first fight was in our terms, 264 BC. Three pairs of gladiators fight at the funeral of a senator. Senators very quickly realize they’re a crowd pleaser, and senators under the Republic need the populace to vote for them, to vote them into office, to vote for laws they want passed against laws they don’t, and they realize that putting on glad tour of games is is a surefire way of getting this popular favor. So there’s a huge exponential explosion in numbers and lavishness under the republic, and then that all kind of stops in Rome once you’ve got Augustus and an emperor, because an emperor has to be the one patron of the plebs of Rome. So senators can no longer put on games. Instead, you have the emperors doing it. But once again, there’s an inflation of numbers and spectacle, because if you’re an emperor, you’ve got and you’re putting on games, you’ve got to put on something bigger, better, and with more novelty than the guy before you, because otherwise, you know, the public will get bored. So I mean, they reach absolutely crazy, inflated numbers under Trajan, and then maybe in the third century, according to some really dodgy sources, you get ludicrous numbers of men and animals being consumed in the games. Meanwhile, out in the provinces under the emperors, the local elites are doing pretty much what the senators did in the republic. They are putting on games to win popularity in their own hometown, and of course, these small towns are building amphitheaters, which is the biggest building in any town. It’s an incredibly expensive way of showing the local elites’ commitment to the new order, how Roman they are, their commitment to Romanitus. There’s a great expression by the late Keith Hopkins, who professor at Cambridge, in the Roman world, the amphitheater would loom over a town in the same way the great cathedrals did in medieval towns in Europe, and I think that’s a really evocative way of thinking about it because just like cathedrals, the amphitheaters embody an awful lot more than entertainment. They embody core values of the culture of the time. So yeah, I guess kind of splitting into three ways. There’s also the little the the penny shows, the assiferana. We know next to nothing about them, but there are guys out in the provinces under the emperors putting on commercial shows. I mean, the fact they’re called assiferana doesn’t mean you paid one ass a small coin to get in. I mean, it it’s a judgmental term, I think, not an actual how much you had to pay. I mean, after all, penny dreadful novels don’t cost a penny. You don’t only buy airport thrillers at airports, but there’s this subworld of little local commercial lanistai trainers putting on shows for money. Incidentally, lanistai are right at the bottom. They are just the scum. Legally, they’re on a par with pimps, prostitutes, and very tellingly, for the Roman way of thinking, actors and actresses, and people who keep bars. I mean, these are just the lowest of the low, really, aren’t they? Well, they were if you they were if you’re Roman.

Dr G 28:40
Shocking stuff, the lanistas. Yeah, look, I think this is. There’s a sense in which I like this image that you’ve presented as well about this idea of the likeness to the cathedral. I think that’s that is a really useful image to keep in mind, and the way that as the center builds itself up to such a degree under the emperors, that it frees up the local elites outside in the peripheries to start doing something that feels very Roman for them, and I imagine that over time this leads to differences turning up in the way that things happen versus what’s happening at the center versus what’s happening in the periphery, and I’m wondering what do we know about that kind of thing?

Speaker 1 29:25
It’s fascinating topic, and you’re absolutely right. The trouble is, we don’t really know much about it. All our literary evidence is focused really on Rome, so when we’re trying to reconstruct how were gladiatorial shows put on out in the boondoggles, somewhere like Colchester in Essex in England, where let’s face it, nothing happens now, let alone then. Sorry to anyone who’s listening who happens to live in Colchester. We do get little hints. Twice we hear of types of gladiators who are specific to the Gallic provinces, to modern France, but. They’re just passing references, but it does show that out in the provinces there might be a different style of fighting, different types of fighters. I think the key thing is the shows in the provinces would be much smaller. Even the richest guy in Athens or Ephesus, let alone Colchester, cannot rival. And indeed, it’d be politically very unwise to start rivaling the emperor in Rome, because you do that. I mean, you’re heading for exile or death, really, aren’t

Dr Rad 30:29
you? Yeah, I think that’s a really useful point. It kind of highlights how the context of when you’re fighting, where you’re fighting, really would shape the kind of experience that a gladiator would have, and we, and that’s really all we can say, as you’ve highlighted. It’s hard to know any of the specifics, but you probably, for example, have a lower chance of survival the deeper we get into the empire when there are these huge displays that are being put on, or so it would seem, unless they’re exaggerating things as the Romans like to do, and if you’re not fighting in Rome itself and you’re fighting in the provinces, who knows what that would do to your treatment, your training, and your chances of survival? It would be so great if just a gladiator somewhere had thought to keep a diary. Honestly, they’re only fighting twice a year. Yeah, why didn’t they? Yeah, I

Speaker 1 31:18
think that’s that’s absolutely true. I mean, if you’re a star gladiator and you’re in the imperial school in the Ludus Magnus, the great school in Rome, your chances of survival are probably much higher than if you’re certainly much higher than if you’re a novice somewhere out in the boondocks. But I’ve always I kind of use the image I think in the book that I think your chances of survival increase the longer you are a gladiator.

Dr Rad 31:46
That’s true. Yes, you have a bit of a reputation. People don’t want to see you. Exactly. I mean, the

Speaker 1 31:51
guy putting on the show wants you to come back for the next show because you’re a crowd pleaser. Also, I guess because you’re getting more skilled. I mean, I use the comparison in the book with World War One fighter pilots, scout pilots as they should be called in their own terms. Basically, yeah, the terrible they only lived three weeks type thing and dawn patrol. Yeah, but these were the novices. These were the guys with no experience. Once you got through the first few combats, yes, you could always die, but your chance of survival increased exponentially the longer you did it. Until, of course, in their case, you broke down psychologically and couldn’t bring yourself to do it ever again.

Dr Rad 32:31
There is that now. Look, I think it’s very much like how when you’re watching a movie or a TV show, if you see a very well-known actor or actress appear, you most of the time can bet on the fact that they’re going to be in the movie for the majority of the story. They’re not going to be killed off in the next frame. People are going to want to see them more, and they’re the draw card. So you can most of the time, unless they’re going for shock value, guarantee that you’re going to see that person a bit while you’re watching it, in going in a totally different direction, there is a really interesting connection between Roman ideas around magic and medicine and gladiators, and we would love to know a bit more about that because I don’t think most people know about this part.

Speaker 1 33:16
Yeah, let’s start with medicine. Gladiators are really expensive investments. You’ve trained them. You’ve fed them. You’ve housed them, and it seems that every gladiatorial school gave them the best medical care it possibly could. We mainly know about gladiatorial medicine via Galen, you know, the great West father of Western medicine, who went on to be personal physician to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and we know that he started out his career as the doctor of a gladiatorial troupe in Pergamum in Asia Minor in modern Turkey. Unfortunately, Galen didn’t write a book on me being a doctor of gladiators. What he does is, in loads of later works, you have this occasional references to what he did, and needless to say, as as it’s Galen writing this, he was really good. He claims he never had a fatality; every patient survived, which is odd. Because in another book, he says, “I quite often used to sit up through the night. Certain types of chest wound are invariably fatal, and these were the symptoms as the gladiator died. Okay, so doesn’t quite match. Galen

Dr Rad 34:28
gave himself away there.

Speaker 1 34:29
Yeah, he gave himself away a little there. He should have written one one connected book on it. It seems that Roman medicine was very good at suturing wounds, fixing broken bones. I mean, in the there’s a glad toural cemetery that’s been archeologically dug from Ephesus in Turkey, and modern forensic pathologists, forensic anthropologists have studied the skeletons, and it’s a treasure trove of information. But one of the most fascinating things for me, apart from the fact these guys do have the bone structure to support being tubby, and they have a very high calcium rate, they drank a special drink with ash mixed in to build up the power of the bones, strength of the bones. One of the things is they’ve they’ve almost all got wounds that survived, and some of them are really serious wounds, a lot of compression wounds to the head, to the skull, and one has survived them, having his leg amputated.

Dr Rad 35:27
Ouch! Yeah.

Dr G 35:28
Okay, that’s a tough one.

Speaker 1 35:30
I’m guessing he wasn’t still fighting. I’m guessing if we’re going back to the Hadrian model, he’s done his three years fighting, maybe been cut short, and then he’s in the two years of maybe acting as a trainer himself, or as a maybe a guard in the school.

Dr G 35:46
Although you never know, the Romans do like a twist. I have a vision of him having a very special stool that he then operates from, and is able to spin while doing his attacks. When he needs, yeah, that’s good. He’s got a

Speaker 1 35:57
special wooden leg.

Dr Rad 36:00
There’s a sword in the in there.

Speaker 2 36:03
Shifting from real medicine to magic, and the key magic thing is the blood of a gladiator was thought to cure epilepsy, and it features in several Christian books. Now, I’d be tempted to dismiss that as just Christian propaganda because obviously Christian’s main role in gladiatorial days to get killed at lunchtime, be executed, and they’re totally anti the whole the whole spectacle. But it also appears in a few pagan texts, including pagan doctors, and there’s a bit of a division. Some implying you have to drink the blood of the gladiator straight after he’s killed, others sort of imply you can take it away and have a bit later. Also, the liver of a gladiator that also is good for epilepsy, but that you definitely took took away and ate in little portions. What’s interesting is that all our sources are totally opposed to this. The medical writers say this is an abomination. It’s a it’s a lower class superstition, and all but one say it doesn’t work. And this is not something a real doctor should have anything to do with. One of the medical doctors does say it appears to have worked in some cases, and he says it’s an absolutely hideous cure for a hideous affliction, because obviously there was no way of understanding epilepsy or of dealing with it. But yeah, there’s also the the bride on a wedding day. The bride’s hair traditionally should be parted with a spear which was crusted with the dried blood of a gladiator.

Dr G 37:41
Hmm. intriguing. And before you ask

Speaker 1 37:44
me why, I don’t know because the Romans themselves had no idea. It’s just this. Even for historical times, Romans, it’s a weird tradition that we don’t understand. But it’s tradition. But then again, I guess why do we have wedding cakes at weddings? I mean, none of us know. I don’t know. Why do we have those tiered wedding cakes? I mean, is it some weird thing about fertility, or because

Dr Rad 38:06
they’re delicious? That’s is it

Speaker 1 38:08
just a tradition? Yeah, it can’t be a real wedding without a big cake. I don’t know. Yeah.

Dr G 38:13
So what I’m hearing is that there is a side trade on spears smothered with gladiator blood, so you can pick them up after the games. Got a wedding coming up? Just come and get your spear. Be prepared. Yeah,

Speaker 2 38:26
and it’s also kind of odd in that almost all types of gladiators don’t fight with spears; they fight with swords. So, is it a weird sort of trade in which the body of the gladiator after he’s dead and he’s in the room where they strip the armor off, is his body then pierced with a spear so you can sell it? Because I’m thinking I can only think of the hoplomachus, one type of gladiator out of many, whose primary weapon was a spear. Other guys use a sword or a trident, or a bow and arrow. They don’t use spears, so why a spear? Why isn’t it a sword? I mean, it’s a mystery.

Dr G 39:08
Yes. Well, this is the trouble with history, isn’t it? As soon as you find one piece of evidence, it all just opens up so many more questions. I’m like, well, that couldn’t have been something that they did for wedding ceremonies pre gladiators. So the early republic that couldn’t have been a thing, surely not. So where does that come from? I have more questions. Yeah,

Speaker 1 39:30
exactly. When did they invent this tradition? I guess some sometime after 264 and then it just became tradition.

Dr G 39:39
Fascinating. So, thinking about the structure that you’ve taken with this book, you’re following 24 hours in the life of a gladiator. What drove you to choose this structure?

Speaker 1 39:56
Okay, I’d used the structure once before. In a novel called The Last Hour why did I use it in a history book? Those are about to die. I was inspired by a brilliant book by a Cambridge scholar called Colin Jones, which is The Fall of Robespierre It’s a day in the French Revolution, and obviously the material he uses entirely different. He’s got dozens, hundreds, maybe 1000s of contemporary documents. He can date everything, whereas I’m trying to do a composite picture, pulling evidence from across the empire and from across centuries. But I thought it was a really cool way doing it because following them through, as in the intro, from the ritual dinner the night before through the night, the big parade in the morning, the beast fights in the in the morning, executions and spectacles at lunchtime, then the big deal, the gladiators, then the gift giving, then back to the barracks. It kind of allowed. There’s a really good structure for exploring all sorts of different aspects of Roman culture, so I can do obviously food, diet, body shape, sleep, dream, sex, attitudes to animals and the natural world, crime, punishment, yeah, and barbarity, civilization, politics. It I thought it was just a really cool way of almost using gladiators and the 24 hour spectacles as a window through which we could view loads of different aspects of Roman culture that people wouldn’t necessarily associate automatically with gladiators. That if they read the book, yeah, they’ll learn about gladiators, but they can whole sorts of other avenues open up for them to think about

Dr Rad 41:41
does definitely situate them. I think much more within the society, which I think is a good way to look at them because if we’re thinking about them and the way that they’re presented in popular culture, that’s not always the way that we see them. They’re sort of they seem kind of separate sometimes, but this kind of leads into a question as we sort of get to know a little bit more about you and what drew you to this career path. You’ve obviously been studying ancient history for a few decades now. What was it that initially drew you to the ancient world and ancient Rome in particular?

Speaker 1 42:16
I can actually answer that one really easily. I was a 16-year-old kid at school. I was very lucky. One of my godfathers was the manager of a bookshop in Cambridge, so birthdays and Christmas. I got given really nice hardback books. And one year, when I was 16, can’t remember his birthday or Christmas, he gave me Robin Lane Fox’s biography of Alexander the Great, and it’s a big book, and it terrified me because it’s got a lot of endnotes at the back, and I thought it was just way too scholarly and way too grown up for 16-year-old me. But then I started reading it, and I absolutely loved it. And I decided pretty much there and then that the idea of being a top-class rugby player or an actor was out of the window, and I wanted to spend my career reading and hopefully writing books like Robin’s, and luckily, you know, by getting a job at Oxford, Robin actually ended up as a colleague and a friend, which is incredibly cool. And I suppose the one thing I’ve done for him is I’ve said that in interviews before, and he seemed quite pleased that he ruined my life by telling me introduction story.

Dr G 43:23
Another one. I got another one. The tragedy. The

Speaker 1 43:29
Roman bit because that was the Macedonians I was first into, and I’ve done one novel, The Shadow King, on Alexander. But what turned me to the Romans was just an inspirational tutor at my first uni Lancaster, where I was studying archeology, a guy called David Scholter, who was just a brilliant lecturer and tutor, and I thought, well, maybe those Romans could be quite interesting. So yeah, one book and one guy, and his

Dr Rad 43:54
name is a name I definitely recognize.

Dr G 43:56
I was going to say, listeners, you will not be disappointed if you seek out Schulter’s work as well because it is good. So I’m interested also thinking about how within the course of your writing career you’ve done pretty good like nonfiction history stuff, and on the other hand there’s the historical fiction side, and I’m interested in your approaches to these different modes of expressing the ancient world.

Speaker 1 44:26
Okay. Yeah. I mean, this might surprise some people, but it’s not that different. Actually, not that different at all. I mean, people tend to think of history as all being fact and a historical novel all being made up, but there’s a big gray area, border area in between, because in my novels I use as much conventional straight history as I possibly can, and I’m very keen on actually lifting dialog from ancient writers, and then again on the other. And on the history books, you know, you have to, with Apache evidence, you have to use your imagination to try and fill in the gaps and interpret stuff to do what the great American anthropologist Clifford Geertz described as thick description, which I always use that because it’s just like a it’s like a get out of jail card to make stuff up, which is fine, providing you tell the reader you’re speculating that this isn’t grounded in hard evidence. This is what I think it was, but no, I don’t. I don’t find the process across the processes are a bit different, but they’re not totally different. You still decide what you’re going to write about, and then you draw up a plan of research. What you’re going to read, what you’re going to look at, where you’re going to go. You take copious notes, and then you try and arrange it in a narrative, and you try and take the reader with you. And in the the nonfiction like those who are about to die, I mean, I’m I am trying to use every technique and trick I’ve learned from publishing 15 novels to get the reader on side and enjoying it, so they’re not as different as they might be. Although I tend not to make up dialog in history books, although the I would like better point out the the start of every chapter in Those Are About to Die has a paragraph or two in italics, and that is flagged up right at the start in the intro. This is fiction, just to set the scene for each chapter. I think you’d be really bad at reading books not to realize that.

Dr G 46:33
Well, I mean, but you’ve let everybody know, and I think that’s that’s perfectly acceptable. And I think I, in the sense that studying the ancient world is a process of trying to weave together small bits of evidence in a way that perhaps in some cases modern history is not. I feel when you get into modern history, it’s more about what are you going to leave out and how are you going to constructively leave things out without destroying the argument that you want to present about the the past, whereas for ancient historians, it’s much more about have we even got enough to say, and how plausible can I make the bits that I put in between that are the part of my imagination to tie those pieces together. So in that sense, I I definitely hear you that the process of constructing the fiction and the process of constructing the history actually almost one in the same from a process perspective for an ancient historian. So that’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Speaker 1 47:28
Yeah, absolutely. And with the fiction, I do always have an author’s note at the end saying, “By the way, these are the bits where I played with the history for the sake of the story, and a kind of a further reading if you want to actually find out what it’s based on, go away and read this, this, and this, which is kind of interesting. When my first novel came out with Penguin, they really didn’t want that there, and I’m going, but but they’re going, yeah. Basically, my editor went, no one wants to read that. No, some guys do, and you know, it’s like a boneless feature on an old-fashioned DVD. It shouldn’t really upset people if it’s there, although weirdly enough it sometimes does. I had a string of really odd online pseudonymus reviews going. My Kindle ended 80-7% of the way through, and the last 13% was full of historical notes and other rubbish. Mate, are you working on the principle that if I hadn’t put the endnotes in, I’d have written 13% more story. I mean, how dumb are you?

Dr G 48:25
Clearly, those were wasted pages. There should have been more action. Come on! When in doubt,

Speaker 1 48:32
always stick in another rooftop case. That’s what several of my editors have said.

Dr Rad 48:37
Now, obviously, those who are about to die is the best thing you’ve written today. But putting that one aside, are there any other publications that you’re particularly proud of that you’d like to mention before we finish up?

Speaker 1 48:50
Well, obviously, yeah. Those who are about to die is undoubtedly. Yeah, it’s the best Roman history book ever written by anyone. Below me. Yeah,

Dr Rad 48:58
I have no questions. You heard it here first.

Speaker 1 49:03
I’ll always have a special fondness for my first novel. It’s called Fire in the East, and I mean, I think if I wrote it now, it would probably be kind of different. But it was my first published novel, and it’s a bit like a rock band. You know, they spend years and years writing songs and doing gigs and touring, and then they finally get a break and they throw every idea that they’ve been thinking about for years into that first album, and kind of that’s how it was with me in Fire in the East. I’d been trying to, you know, decide what sort of history book, what novel I’d write, and I think I would probably this doesn’t encourage people to go and buy it and read it, but I think it’d probably be better written if I wrote it now, 20 years later. But it has a kind of raw energy that I think is really good because it’s the first one, and and also because it started a lot. Series of novels that I realized from the start that the hero of that series, Ballista, is a very durable hero and nicely conflicted, put in bad positions, but a decent guy and people related to him.

Dr Rad 50:13
Excellent. Well, that’s another one that our listeners can check out from your back catalog. Thank you so much, Harry, for joining us, listeners. Just a reminder: our wonderful guest has been Harry Sidebottom, and the book is Those Who Are About to Die: A Day in the Life of a Roman Gladiator It should be out now, wherever good books are sold. Make sure you pick yourself up a copy. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Speaker 1 50:38
Thank you so much. That was a lot of fun. Thanks, guys!

Dr Rad 50:50
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 Joy de Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collectiveme.com. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad-free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch, we have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on Ko-fi, and we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if your imperial coffers do not overflow us, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five-star review wherever you listen. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – A Day in the Life of a Roman Gladiator appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

In this special episode, we are thrilled to be joined by Laura Jenkinson-Brown (aka Jenks), teacher, writer, lover of Odysseus, and – most famously – the genius behind the website and resources of ‘Greek Myth Comix’ which makes all manner of ancient Greek and Roman ideas and literature engaging and accessible for all learners!

Laura teaches Classical Civilisation and Ancient History in the UK, she writes and illustrates pedagogical resources, and is now also a fellow podcaster, producing the show ‘Ancient Geek’. Seriously, if you are an ancient history teacher and have not checked out her amazing resources, you are certifiably insane. There’s just no other way of looking at it. 

Laura’s outstanding contributions to the field have been recognised by The Classical Association and the Working Classicists. We are excited to discuss Laura’s amazing new publication You Are Odysseus which shakes up Homer’s epic poem by placing the reader in the centre of the story and all its complexities. Any 80s kids out there who were fans of the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ series? This is that… Homeric style. And if you’re not much of a reader, there is also a podcast version of this creative new take on the ancient classic out now. 

Things to Look Out For:

• Discussion of how you even begin to create so many different storylines in one book! 
• Odysseus – a semi-bad boy and why he’s more appealing than Aeneas 
• The Muses
• An unusual childhood friend called ‘Ginger’
• And a bit of kleos – would our episode be complete without it? 

You can pick up You Are Odysseus and have yourself a Homeric adventure from the comfort of your living room right now. Why not grab it from your local independent bookseller? 

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, 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. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Rad, and I am Dr. G. And Dr. G, we have a living legend on our podcast today. Someone whose resources I have been using in my classroom for such a very long time. I won’t give a precise number because that ages me, quite frankly. We are thrilled to be joined today by Laura Jenkinson Brown, teacher, writer, and most famously the genius behind the website and resources of Greek myth comics, which makes all manner of ancient Greek and Roman ideas and literature engaging and accessible for all learners, Laura teaches classical civilisation and ancient history in the UK. She writes and illustrates pedagogical resources and is a stick figure artist par excellence. Laura’s outstanding contributions to the field have been recognized by the Classical Association and the Working Classicists. We are excited to discuss Laura’s amazing new publication, “You Are Odysseus”, which shakes up Homer’s epic poem by placing the reader in the center of the story and in all its complexities. Welcome to the show, Laura.

Speaker 1 2:20
Thank you. Thank you. you for having me. Good gosh, Fiona, that was amazing. Thank you so much. I don’t think I’ve ever had quite such a gushing introduction. I don’t know what to say.

Dr Rad 2:32
All well deserved. All well deserved. When I found you were coming on, I was extremely excited because back when I used to be able to teach ancient history, I did use your resources so very much, and

Jenks 2:43
it’s funny because I listened to your podcast to learn what else to teach.

Dr Rad 2:48
There you go. World’s colliding, and we didn’t know it.

Dr G 2:53
This is super exciting indeed because I think there is a lot of interest, generally speaking, that has been increasing over time for ancient Greek and ancient Roman and ancient world information, and to have creators like yourself putting out so many high-quality resources that people can utilize to enhance their understanding is phenomenal. Because there is the danger, I think, particularly in a social media world, of following some pretty questionable accounts with highly questionable information about the ancient world, which does nobody any favors. So, I think you’re doing great work. I think the gods would. Oh well,

Jenks 3:35
that is high praise.

Dr G 3:36
And I think tackling what is one of considered one of the foundational texts is a huge ask as well, and the way that you’ve pulled it together is really fascinating. So we wanted to take this chance to have a chat to you about this book, You Are Odysseus, because it’s doing something really fresh and new, and also allowing people to engage in the mythic landscape in a very different way. So, to get us started, in the foreword to “You Are Odysseus, Liv Albert, another famous podcaster in this space, notes that “Homes Odysseus” is a text that prompts the question, “What if this had gone differently? And I’m wondering if you can take us a little bit through your personal journey with the Odyssey and the questions that it’s prompted for you in your engagement with the poem.

Jenks 4:29
Okay, what an excellent question to start. I suppose I think I was. I remember answering this question previously. Where did I say I first read the Odyssey? Because I’m starting to forget. Everything gets a bit everything’s a bit gray around the edges when you get to my age. It’s actually my birthday tomorrow, so I’m feeling older than usual. Yes, the anniversary of the Titanic sinking. Yay!

Dr G 4:57
No, surely

Jenks 4:59
not. I came to the Odyssey before I came to it teaching, but I really came to it teaching because I was an originally an English literature teacher that then taught classical civilization part time within my teaching allocation, and then over the last 20 years this year, it has become my my main classical civilization, rather than the Odyssey. It would be lovely if it was just Odyssey all day, but sadly that is not the case. I find teaching texts is incredibly illuminating. Someone who really loves to learn and try and new try and learn new things all the time, teaching a text from the so you’re you’re looking at it from the other direction and trying to inform others of why it’s so amazing and special allows you to really see those things. And I know some people tend to kill books by over-explaining them, and sometimes people come out of English literature lessons going, “Wow, really wish I didn’t know all that about this great book that I would love to have enjoyed otherwise, but I think with the Odyssey and and other epic texts, because they have so many amazing features that make them work so well, it is kind of a privilege to get to know them and understand them and see why they work so well. Because then, because they are ancient, they are so then informative into the lives of people who were listening to them, and the people who were composing them, and the lives of the people that they are meant to be about, and how realistic those lives might have been, and also a massive insight into what they believed their lives were about and for, and were represented by when it comes to things like the gods and the supernatural, so I think I came to the Odyssey most of all when for the classical civilization GCSE, which is and now I’m going to show a complete, complete lack of knowledge of your education system down the despite I used to know this. So GCSE is ages 15 to 16. I suppose it’s sort of middle way through secondary school, high school, and it’s the second last qualification you do at school. The A level being the last one. So I teach classical civilization GCSE, and then ancient history A level, which is where your podcast comes in, because I get to teach the Roman side of it, which is great fun, and which was was something I came to quite late. But the Odyssey was very much half the entire course on the original GCSE, and then it became slightly less. But you would still read about five books of it, and then they changed that which books every so often. So you you would get a little bit of a refresh. Although Book Nine is always in there, and that is where I sudden I started to understand it. I think and understand how amazing this character was. I think, in fact, I told the Iliad first and thought, well, I can I can see why Achilles is so incredibly demanding of our attention because he’s so real and just trying to work things out, and then you get to Odysseus, and he’s just trying to work out how to con you, and get the best out of every single situation, which is just so fun and also very real, but in a very very different way. So I think that’s why I became slightly obsessed with him. I suppose everyone loves a bad boy, really. He’s not a bad bad boy, but he’s certainly more interesting than, say, than the other side of my teaching. Aeneas, who’s just so

Dr Rad 8:30
nice and good and does all the good things. And as one

Jenks 8:33
class during when Game of Thrones was really big, one class derided Aeneas as being, “Miss. He’s just like Jon Snow. He’s just a bit dull.” So yeah, Odysseus is rather a happy medium between those three heroes of famous epic. I suppose that all interlink within the stories of the epic cycle. Achilles is too angry. Aeneas is too nice, and then you’ve got Odysseus in the middle, rangy, complicated, exciting. Not quite sure what he’s going to do next. Not quite sure if he’s telling you the truth at any point.

Dr G 9:09
Ah, yes, Odysseus. Famously untrustworthy on many levels. I think there’s something really strong in what you’ve said about the way that teaching really changes the way that you know a text as well. Certainly, I find myself in a similar position. I also teach English literature as my main teaching focus at secondary, and I often try to bring in translations of ancient texts just to kind of supplement what might be going on underneath the surface? Because modern literature is often referring back to ancient texts, and I was like, if we can build a foundation for a little bit of ancient knowledge, they’ll start to recognize the symbolism, the motifs a little bit more. And a character like Odysseus is just a touch more exciting for. An audience, I would say, of new readers to epic texts, than say somebody like Aeneas, who yes has some flaws, but otherwise is just on the straight and narrow. You’re like, I’d really agree

Jenks 10:16
with you there because I’m certain at some point I had a children’s book of the Odyssey, but I definitely didn’t have a children’s book of the Iliad or the Aeneid at all.

Dr Rad 10:26
Yes, we’re not we’re not precious about Aeneas on here, in spite of our connections to ancient Rome. So one of the things we love about this book is that it really offers readers a different way into Greek mythology beyond Homer. And whilst this book is a choose-your-own-adventure, the paths of the adventure are definitely underpinned by your extensive research into the variants for Odysseus’s story in the ancient evidence that go beyond Homer. So, what were some of the challenges that you faced in bringing different sources for Odysseus to life?

Jenks 11:01
Well, I I suppose I should start. The book took about six years to write, but not like straight through. There was lockdown. I had a baby. I also have a job, obviously, and so I was at one point I was just writing it in maybe an afternoon a week. So one of the challenges was just finding the time to actually do the research and then actually write it because the research took so long, and then writing something that is changeable per section and keeping track of it is obviously quite hard. Although I found a program that helped me with that because I’m not great with numbers and I knew from the start I wasn’t going to be able to be able to keep all these bits in my head, especially as it grew and grew and grew. But what was really interesting is I started writing the alternatives first because I felt I was really familiar with the main story. I’d write that bit, put his choice in from the text. Odysseus thought in his great heart this way and that, and then put those choices in, and then think right. Okay, so what will happen if he does actually choose this? It can’t be, and you die because that’s boring. And in fact, the original version, you you got home in three, and everyone’s like, “Oh, that was great, and handed it back to me. Well, that that’s very dull. That all that proves is he really could have got home had he just said, “No, man, you are not going to sit around after fighting the coconas. We’re leaving. Ta da! The end. That would have been great. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. And whose fault is it anyway? God, that’s an amazing essay title that always comes up, and you you start asking yourself through all the way through. But yeah, finding that and then going off on an amazing tangent and a rabbit hole of research to work out, could this have happened? So is he likely to have become a hermit and stolen himself away? What stories are there? What aspects of his character could could link with that? And one summer I thought, oh, but what if he actually goes off with Menelaus, and Menelaus is his Nestor stories in books three and four? Right. Okay. Great. We don’t have any details of this because they’re lost from the epic cycle. So I’m just going to go with what he’s said he did, and then try and work out how he spends seven years doing it exactly, and which parts of the year he was like to be able to sail, where he was probably able to sail to the Stanford Orbis website, where you’re able to plot your way around the age. Well, was incredibly useful for that. Who would he be staying with that he might not have mentioned? And then in in Egypt, what is the comparative mythology with these Greek names, with the actual Egyptian names? And do I need to go so far as to actually find them and put them in? And at times I thought I did, and then I didn’t. And though actually I do, and then I found this amazing crossover myth where Heracles is raw, I think, and to be honest, the challenge was just stopping myself because it was so fascinating. And then I wanted to have a moment where you’re stuck in Egypt, so what do you see? And I don’t know anything about Egypt, and I’ve never had the chance to really study it because I came to teaching classics as a secondary thing, and I have a very tiny bit of a classical civilization degree. Mostly, it’s English literature, and because I’ve never taught it, it’s never come up. So that was quite fun. It was rather indulgent, actually. I did grow up in London and went to the British Museum pretty much every other weekend because it was free and we didn’t have any money, and I would hang out in the Egyptian galleries because there was a mummy there called Ginger, and I have Ginger hair and I felt very alone. And Ginger was my friend as a very small child.

Jenks 14:32
I feel a bit differently now about keeping people in museums, but as a child, this was just what the adults did, so obviously it felt completely accessible, and I learned a lot about what he looked like, but not really the details of it. So it was really fun to go and research that and think, right, what would it actually look like if you were looking out in the time of year and when the Nile floods? I think that was both the biggest challenge and also my. Favorite bit because it’s unwritten. I got to kind of do what I wanted with it, whilst then trying to keep a little bit within the style of homer’s text, but then also just within an adventure and and actually visualizing it for the reader.

Dr Rad 15:17
Yeah, no. Look, when I was exploring it, I was marveling at how you were able to keep track of all these different storylines, I was like, “Oh my god, how long did this have taken to do? I can’t even imagine trying to plot all of this out.

Jenks 15:31
I have to admit, I did have help with that because I’ve never been able to. I did find an amazing little bit of software. I’d sort of abandoned on the internet, and I I I paid for the full version and put it into practice-a piece of software for making essentially your own little choose-your own adventure, which I can’t say because they are a bit litigious books. What was difficult was I-I like to mess with the reader a bit in that there might be some choices where the you don’t know straight away what has been affected? So the next passage will sound almost identical to the passage that he does choose, but there’ll be something that has changed, and you’ll read it and hopefully get a sense of déjà vu. If you’re if you’re continuing on and trying different ways and think, have I read that before? Was there something similar that happened, or or have I gone down the same? And then you realize later that you have gone down a completely different path. So I hope that it was a bit mystifying in places. That’s intentional.

Dr G 16:30
Look, it it certainly presents lots of interesting pathways, and I think the power of placing the reader in the position of Odysseus makes this really unique because you start to feel the conundrums building up for you, and you’re like, “What kind of Odysseus am I going to be in this moment? And it’s a real opportunity to explore some of the ancient Greek values and also to test out your own modern values and see how that might sort of lead to like different pathways or different outcomes, and one of those ways that your book is doing this is through the concept of kleos, and first of all, this is a key concept associated with Greek heroes, and I’m not going to pretend I’m pronouncing anything in ancient Greek correctly because that hardly ever happens for me, but what is kleos and how does Odysseus embody it?

Jenks 17:26
Well, this is really embarrassing, but kleos is something I didn’t know about until about 10 years ago, having taught the Odyssey for about six years by that point, because I’d only been taught aidos and kudos as being almost two two sides of one coin. I like to teach them as two jars of pennies. You can have aidos pennies. They’re black and twisted, and they’re bad, and you can’t pay for anything with them. And then you can have kudos pennies, and they’re they’re good and shiny, and they all add up. And I didn’t realize that actually, yes, that that’s what it’s adding up to is kleos, that overall glory. So I like to think of aidos as your bad reputation, and kudos as your good reputation. The things you do that people will talk about, because that’s what we do. We talk about them, and that is the hopefully for most of them the the chaos, the the glory of their name lasting forever. And I do often notice in class as well that right now you are acting in a way that is earning you idos. But if you earn in a different way, then perhaps you’ll have more kudos, and I will forget about the idos for the rest of the lesson. You won’t get to detention. So it’s really a great way of talking about you can’t just be a bad person and a good person. You are both of those things, but you might do things that are regrettable at times, and so Odysseus is building up lots of kudos and some aidos. But in the end, his his kudos is must be greater because his kleos is is supreme. He is probably the most talked about hero. He’s not the one who does the most amazing things in Greek mythology, which is fascinating, he really doesn’t do half the most amazing things that even like Bellerophon does. Bellerophon, the greatest hero that no one’s ever heard of, unless they’re a real proper nerdy fan of Greek mythology. But I think because Odysseus has balanced those out almost to that point, where he’s you know is he going to gain more of one or the other? His his kleos has sort of become supreme.

Dr G 19:32
He has these moments where you think to yourself, how is he going to dig himself out of that hole? And then he pulls it around, and you’re like, okay, all right. So I do appreciate the way that Odysseus both gets himself into trouble and then finds ways to get himself out of trouble, and by doing so builds up this continuous store of chaos over time, which can be very impressive. Whilst also leaving the questions about the the choices he’s made, they’re maybe not not so good.

Jenks 20:05
He is.

Dr Rad 20:07
I think I’m definitely going to try that teaching strategy as well.

Dr Rad 20:09
Definitely works with the year nines

Dr G 20:12
Jars of coins for every student.

Jenks 20:16
One thing that’s that’s really interesting in Odysseus’ story because when I was plotting this, I I literally sat down with my copies of Gantz’s early myth and wrote down every single time Odysseus is in a myth or mentioned in a myth, and what he’s character tells you then is he has this arc from not wanting to go to war and not even really being that interested in in getting with Helen in the first place, but just being able to sort out these situations to being a guy who, on the way home, takes every single opportunity to earn yet more kudos, is he has this this arc that war has changed him. He’s he hated it to begin with, and by the end he hates it. But he can see what it can give him, and he wants to come home with something to really throw that off. He must have so much from the war that he can take home booty and goods and slaves who were never mentioned. But he just keeps going for more. There’s no reason to go to the Cyclops Island. They’re on Goat Island. They have food. They’re really happy. And he’s like, “Oh, but there might be some people over there, and we can get more. I’m just going to go and look, and and he loses six men, and it’s it’s not the only time. I mean, the rest of the time he is still he’s going to look for things. They could just take on at every island water and food and leave everything else alone. But oh, a curl of smoke! I love that Homer constantly uses the idea. There’s a wisp of smoke in the distance, and by the third time, the men the men’s reaction to hearing there’s a wisp of smoke is to burst into tears because they just don’t want to deal with it. But he just keeps going. Although at least two times he sends someone else to go and check the wisp of smoke, so he doesn’t die immediately. And this time, I mean, it works in terms of us still talking about him.

Dr Rad 21:58
Imagine their disappointment when they find out that it’s just the election of a new pope, disappointing. As you highlighted, it is possible when you are exploring this book to follow the path that Odysseus follows in Homer. So you can take the traditional journey, and there’s about 151 sections to take that path, but when you were recreating things, did you think, oh, you know what? There are these moments when even if you’re following a different version of events to what Odysseus would have done in Homer, it’s still something that is very consistent with Greek values.

Speaker 2 22:38
Absolutely, I suppose Xenia hospitality running through the entire text has to be respected no matter what. So all the different versions of the stories are: if you if you don’t give zenia, you will suffer. The people who don’t give zenya do suffer. That’s one of the the major themes, especially when you’re teaching it at a GCSE level and you need to teach them something that they can really focus on. All the bad guys don’t do xenia. All the good guys do. So that is consistent throughout. And one of the reasons why I started writing it in the first place was really for my extremely interested class a way of getting to understand Odysseus’s character better, and not to justify why he makes choices, but to teach them why in the moment, and with those values, he is making that choice, and then also deciding whether you still think that is the right choice or the wrong choice overall. Well, in fact, you can get to the end by following a slightly different path. You can still get to Ithaca, and you can still have this roughly the same outcome, but you will not be as talked about afterwards. Perhaps because you will not have done certain things. There is a point at which, when you finally get to the and you meet the Phaeacians, and then you get to tell your story. Obviously, you’ve already done that in the text, so you choose what what what story are you telling? Have you done amazing things? And then that’s directly linked to what booty and goods the Phaeacians will give you to go home with. And then you start you start going oh oh that’s why his story is so amazing. He is butt naked in a place with nothing. He doesn’t has has no way of getting home. These are very proud people. He has to impress them, and you realize why he’s such an unreliable narrator. I don’t really tackle the unreliable narrator thing here because it’s a second-person text. You’re either experiencing it or you aren’t. But I’m hoping that that will dawn on some readers certainly. But I do think most people are playing it with modern values because literally every single person who has told me that they’ve read it has said they got home straight away. Their their duty of care was to their people, the men and the the slaves on board the ships, and they just got home, and they really like that ending. Like, oh, I better read it again though, so that. That’s really interesting. It it does try and impress upon you think like Odysseus if you really want to, but but we don’t, which is really nice. And it also sounds like my readers are really lovely people.

Dr Rad 25:14
I like that idea.

Dr G 25:16
My first reading was a very quick reading, and I was like, huh, and we’re home. Ah, delightful, and nobody’s been strung up, and nothing bad has happened.

Jenks 25:26
I filled that full of little Easter eggs, so at least be satisfying. I hope I hope people recognize those as they then go, oh, flick to the end, start again.

Dr Rad 25:37
It’s making me think I’m a bad person because my way of reading it was, what’s the most chaotic way I can read? That’s the second thing that people say they’re going to

Jenks 25:45
do right now. I’m going to do everything wrong, but I included Troy Skate at the start, not to definitively make you bad or good, because again, we can’t really do that. But I found the story of him and Diomedes going into Troy and getting the Palladium, I thought was a really good moment because the story has to start chronologically, which it doesn’t in the original text. So we’re leaving Troy. Does he go with Menelaus? Does he go with Nestor? Does he stay with Agamemnon? And you’ve got to decide whether or not you’re going to do one of these things, and it’s not clear in the Odyssey which one of those he does anyway. So this is kind of a good trap because even if you know the Odyssey really well, you might not actually know which one of those to choose. And so I put in the sort of I called it the Diomedes Gate. Did you try and kill Diomedes? Oh no, I wouldn’t def definitely wouldn’t try and kill Diomedes. Just to try and get you thinking about: Are you ruthless, Odysseus, complicated Odysseus, trying to get all the kudos he can Odysseus, or are you a bit more of duty of care, Nostos-loving Odysseus? So still within the the key concepts, but it’s still it’s not completely binary, good or bad. It’s still slightly complicated, and there are two depending on which you decide to do. So it gets very complicated very quickly.

Dr G 27:07
Oh no! So I think there is a sense in which you are Odysseus really opens up what could be the narrow focus of an epic text, where you open it up and you’re like, here we go. It’s Homer, front cover to back cover. Let’s see what happens. And instead, what your text is doing is offering a really practical and engaging way to explore not just Homer but also the variants on that story as well. And I think you’ve touched on this a little already, but I’m interested in how you found using this text as a teaching resource.

Jenks 27:46
I would love to, except we don’t teach Homer anymore, and we’re going to die. I know. I know. Dare they? Oh

Dr Rad 27:53
my god! How galling!

Dr G 27:56
Petition for change.

Jenks 27:58
I keep saying no. Sorry, that’s very boring. I did use it initially when when it was in the early writing stages, and I did use it with a with a club at school and a few other clubs at school and some my older students as well. They were like my test readers. They were really keen on it, and I have a gaming group, or I had a gaming group anyway. They’ve left now. They’re all big boys and girls, and so we do RPG gaming, and this was kind of right up their street, and that was great fun. And they, some of them knew the story, some of them had been taught by me, and some of them didn’t know the story. And they did great fun things, like they’re going to tally how many people they killed by accident, which was great. And also, like right, they would have little discussions what might happen if we did this? And that that was exactly what I wanted. They were really thinking about the character, and then I also used it with the class that I was teaching, and they were like, “Oh, we know the right answers, and they still died, which was great. So it it it definitely got them thinking. Although sadly, we’ve we’ve switched modules now, and now I don’t get to teach any Homer, and I’m really sad, but we might switch back to a crime.

Dr G 29:07
Fingers crossed. I well,

Jenks 29:09
I started teaching classes. I used to have days when I’d start off with the Iliad, and then I’d go onto the the Odyssey, and then I’d finish with the Iliad, and it was amazing. And those were just wonderful halcyon days, and I remember them as full of sunlight under the magnolia tree outside, where I’d be plucking a magnolia petal to to fully explain. There’s that lovely simile in the Aeneid, where Pallas’ skin is pierced and it is like a thumbnail on a flat. And I used to demonstrate that, and that’s that’s and blood stains randomly on my copy of the Iliad West. I’ll put on dies, and I still don’t know how that happened. And now it’s admin and Roman cities, which I love. I’m a big fan of Pompeii, but it’s not Homer. But Pompeii

Dr G 29:56
does have a lot to offer. I’m not going to lie, but it does seem like. A timeline of unfortunate events to have such a great test. So I hope there is a moment of change where you get to bring it in because I would love to see how it goes. Well,

Jenks 30:13
obviously I couldn’t leave it alone, so I turned it into an audiobook podcast because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it, and I wanted to use it as a teaching aid, so I thought this way might be great because it’s a really big book. It is heavy. It’s like three and a half pounds. It’s like half the size my daughter was when she was born, and that’s actually quite difficult. And I’ve got carpal tunnel. I can’t hold it up sometimes. And so there is an ebook version where you you click and it takes you to the right page, which is kind of fun. But I thought what would be really fun is to just take the main storyline, the bit that that people mostly might be interested in listening to, and presenting that to them in a different way, where it’s the second person narrative. But I’ve I’ve played with the sound effects, so now everything is soundscaped, so it’s more immersive. And if you close your eyes, you can really hear the Laestragonians eating your men, and the ships all sinking. It’s quite harrowing, actually. I had to tone that down a little bit, but then you also you get asked those choices, and there’s a little sound that says, “Oh, you have to make a choice now, and you have to think about which one would be better. And then the story picks up again, and it tells you which one he’s chosen, and you can go. What? No! Don’t shout at these high globs again. So that’s that’s just started, and that’s been really fun. And I’m still in the process of making that. I’ve made the first season where he’s still getting home, and then season two will be Ithaca there and back again, as it were. So yeah. So I, in a way, I still will be teaching people, but lots of people have said that they are planning on using it in class, or they’re giving it to their students, or that they’ve read it themselves to add to their knowledge of the Odyssey and look at it in a different way. And that-that is what I wanted, really, just to hopefully make people love it as much as I do and just think about it in a in a different direction.

Dr Rad 32:01
Oh, I have no doubt that the one reassuring thing about your situation is that you know that your resources constantly be and do, even if not by you, which seems crazy.

Jenks 32:14
I do love hearing that people when when my students go off to university, if they if they’re still doing a classical subject, they’ll like email me, go. I saw your comics and less and less, and I am quite proud that I’ve lost track now. At one point, it was at least 200 schools were using my classics GCSE resources, and that was that was about five or six years ago. So I don’t know how many it is now, but that that does make me really really proud because it it is a subject, especially in the UK, that’s really has been really stigmatized as being only for the rich or only in private schools, and we have had a spate of really quite awful politicians who have used the classical world to hold up their views. That has not stopped. I teach Fall of the Republic now, and I was like, well, this was unprecedented. But if we look at American now, yeah, that’s fun. Always great to have more examples. Proscription. Hey, that’s a word I didn’t think I’d be hearing in the news. So let’s talk about that. As usual, I’ve now lost the thread of this thought process. I’m so sorry, it’s very late.

Dr Rad 33:18
No, no, totally. No, look, it, it, you know, I’m bewailing the, you know, your ability to use these resources yourself. But in the possibilities in our syllabus, I, I don’t think I ever really go into the Odyssey in as much detail as I would say the Iliad. The way that, the way that we teach it as like an ancient history subject, it’s more about Troy, and therefore the Iliad and the Odyssey are kind of just some of the sources that you may use, and you don’t really go into them so much as as classical texts. I think you’d probably come across it more as you say, perhaps as like a language type source if you if you did Greek, which again, as you say, for us would be something that you probably only do if you go to a private school.

Jenks 34:06
Oh, that’s what I was talking about. Sorry. Well, this is the thing. I didn’t do it at a private school. I was really lucky at my state school that they got a Latin teacher in to teach those who were interested in Latin up to the GCSE, and so I did it as a twilight subject before school, after school, and then we did the GC at the qualification in that in year 10 before I made rest of my exams in year 11, and I think that basically changed the trajectory of my life. Aside from hanging out in museums all the time and having parents who were really really keen for us to do that, which was great. I’d never really thought of the concept of language as separate. We’d done French, we’d done Spanish. They were really interesting, but now we were studying the language, not just learning what to say. And I didn’t know anything about English grammar either, which because they just didn’t teach that in the 80s. For I am older than I look, and so I was. What what is a verb? I think my friends will laugh because I I I knew nothing and they never saw me turning into an actual teacher of Latin. And so I when I teach Latin now, it is pretty much only to 11 and 12 year olds that I teach it. My my colleagues teach more of the Latin than I do, but I still link it directly to English grammar and the etymology of of English words to really give them something to grab hold on to, and so, like you were saying, then with the Odyssey and the Iliad as being texts to support things like like Troy and the Trojan War, that’s actually what it is on the GCSE. We we look at the Mycenaean world, and Troy is one of the cities that we look at you know pocket-sized versions of, and then we use the Odyssey to support that, which is really interesting because does it? It’s a little, maybe a little bit anachronistic, but it’s really interesting to consider that as being in the the Bronze Age and and the Mycenaean period. But yeah, so this this idea that it has been stigmatized, but it’s it’s perfectly possible for anyone to access it if they have the resources, and that’s what I was always really keen to provide. And realized pretty quickly that things I was making for my classes, if I just stuck them on the internet, other people might find them, and they did. So there was a need for them. So then I handed out my resources for teaching as well as just the the fun extra stuff, and that kept going too. And then I just made fun paper kits for the for the lols at the end of class, and those those do those go around those do well at the end of the year as well. People are always looking forward to making something fun that sort of props up what they’ve been teaching. So I’m really proud to have done that, and I really hope this book will can continue doing that. Hopefully,

Dr Rad 36:44
oh no doubt it will. Now, apart from discovering that Aeneas is actually rather dull, were there any other mythic characters that, when you were developing this book, suddenly stood out to you in a different way?

Jenks 37:00
Oh, Menelaus is adorable, actually, and I’d never paid him any attention because we don’t study books three and four, and I’d I was really rusty on them, and I was reading again, going, “Oh, he’s he just wants to be his friend. He really misses it. Oh, this is adorable. So it kind of if you if you go to Egypt, becomes a little bit of a buddy romance comedy, but Menelaus is also back with his wife. So you’re you’re third wheeling, and it gets a bit embarrassing, and you keep having to find things to do, and then they dump you while they go off for like a year, and you’re stuck looking after the entire fleet, and you’re bored. And I just thought that was hilarious. So yeah, absolutely. Menelaus is is is my buddy. I was trying to create a fantasy cast because I thought this would be this would be really fun way of making a film of the Odyssey. This was before Christopher Nolan announced his film of the Odyssey. That was beautiful timing for me because I literally just announced that I’d be publishing it in a year or so, so yes. Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for essentially doing my marketing for me. And I, I think I had. Oh, who did I have? I’m going to have to look it up now, and you’ll have to edit this bit out. But oh, one of the Gleesons, you know, Brendan Gleeson, but then his son, just really happy, like a big Labrador, essentially a big ginger Labrador. Yeah, and Helen was really spiky, and I couldn’t quite decide who would play Helen, and I I settled on um, oh what’s her name, Dimitriu in um, in what we do in the shadows. That might not be the best choice of casting, but I thought she’d prickly like that and just be like, yes, I’m brilliant, and you can deal with it.

Dr Rad 38:42
When I used to teach Troy, and the big assessment tasks that my class would do would be designing a new movie of the Iliad or the Odyssey, and they had to come up with things like their casting and what kind of genre was it going to be, and a lot of them did actually pick to do like a, you know, like a buddy, you know, like road trip kind of story. So yeah, this all makes perfect sense to me. I suppose

Jenks 39:09
every every bit of classical reception or every retelling is kind of got to be a reflection of the time period it’s made in and reflect the things that people find interesting or they don’t want to. Which is why I’m fascinated to know what this film is going to look like when it comes out in June, July.

Dr Rad 39:25
Oh, I know, right? I know.

Dr G 39:27
I’m like, what is this? Yeah, certainly from the visuals, I’m a little bit confused, but I, I am interested to obviously I’ll go and watch it because I need to know. But yeah, I’m just not sure how to feel about it right now.

Jenks 39:42
I’ve decided I’m not. I’m not going to feel it until I see it because I’m still convinced all the gray and brown stuff we’ll see will be like revealed to be a front, and it will like open up like a Technicolor Oz as soon as we go in the supernatural world. Hopefully,

Dr Rad 39:56
that would be a marketing ploy that would really work for me.

Dr G 40:00
Certainly, the trailer is just sort of like dark looks and like people looking over their shoulder, being like, “And I’m like, what’s going on? It’s hardly any dialog. It’s

Jenks 40:10
just men walking around, and I suppose it kind of makes you realize, yeah, actually, a lot of the Odyssey is men walking around.

Dr G 40:18
It is.

Jenks 40:19
So I suppose that’s not really wrong.

Dr G 40:23
Men walking around and women standing still, being like,

Jenks 40:25
“Yeah. I mean, I I like that Homer doesn’t focus on those bits. So I, when I going back to the book, I suppose we probably should talk about putting in more so that you can experience it was quite an arduous task. In a that’s the wrong thing to say. It wasn’t arduous task. It was an honorable task, and I was honored to do it. But it was it was difficult because I didn’t want to stray outside the boundaries of Homer. But I also wanted that to make people feel like they were there to add bits, and I didn’t want to just retell Homer because Homer’s already done that, and it’s brilliant. So I want to add something to it. So I did add more walking around, but still more more description of what you would see while you were there. But that is something fascinating as well, where Homer really does gloss over stuff and just then focus on the really interesting bits, like the sirens. Always amazes me that it’s only like a paragraph. That’s it. This incredibly memorable moment is I don’t know, like 20-five lines or something, and the only bit that’s focused on is what they say and what they do. And him stuck to the mast. All the other details that would have been there, the men rowing and so forth, is is kind of ignored until Odysseus is asking them to to tie him up more and that kind of thing, and then there’s there’s even moments where Homer just leaves stuff out. So I think it’s in book 13 or books 14, and Odysseus and Telemachus have revealed themselves to each other, and then Eumaeus comes back, and then Eumaeus goes out for the day, and Odysseus and Telemachus just have that afternoon together, but that’s not talked about. Homer goes off and follows Eumaeus, so that was that was fun. I got to write what they would be talking about, but I didn’t want to write a word for word thing. He says this, he says that, because that’s not entirely in the spirit of the text. So it’s it’s still summative and fleeting, but it hopefully still fills a gap that was there in in the story because you’re only getting the bits of the story that Odysseus can see. You don’t see Eumaeus go off and talk to Penelope because you’re in his hut, and that’s happening elsewhere. So that what I’m hoping there is that people who’ve read the audience be going, oh, that’s the bit when that happens in that scene, but we’re not going to see that until later. Or if they read it, they ought to see later, having read this first. They’re like, “Oh no, I know those moments of real satisfaction where you can show that you know something, and it makes it hopefully richer and more alive for you. Either way you read

Dr G 42:56
it, look, there’s so much potential here, and to turn from these sort of like these physical characters of this world to the more metaphysical characters, so you open with the Greek muse Calliope, but sometimes the story ends with a different muse, and I’m going to try to pronounce her name, and I’ll probably get it wrong, Melpomene. So we have a switch from one muse to another muse, and often epics will open with a sort of a question or a desire for the muse to compel in some way in in terms of the story. And so to have this switch is really interesting. And so, I’m interested in what realms of knowledge do these two muses cover, and why might readers want to be on the lookout for which muse is part of which story?

Jenks 43:52
I’m really glad you asked that because I love this bit. I tried to put at the end each time you finish your story. I won’t say die because you don’t die in every single one. But each time you finish your story, I give you another epithet to be that version of Odysseus that you ended up being. But then yes, Melpomene turns up because you have effed up royally, and wow. Whereas is the muse of epic poetry, whom you’re meant to have started off with, and whom, in the the traditional text, the poet speaks directly to in an invocation at the start. Oh, hear me muse and help me tell this story, which I always think is brilliant. It’s like everyone’s oh, curtains up, right? It’s starting. Everyone be quiet because the muse is being invoked, and it also stops the rapsode rhapsode. Sorry, I’m saying wrong. From being a bit hubristic by saying I can tell all this myself. No, I need the god’s help, and it is inspiration, and that also makes it more worthy to listen to, and that’s that’s the muse you want. To tell an epic poem, you don’t want the muse of tragedy to take over, and that’s what’s happened. So I did. I I did have a really fun time writing a a tragedy in verse for when you have completely royally effed up, because I love tragedy. That was one of my favorite things on my A level. We sat around reading tons of of Sophocles and and and Aristophanes, and and it was not Aristophanes; he’s a comedian. What we also did sit around reading comedians and just giggling, which was great. But Aeschylus, so I really wanted to put in a Euripidean tragedy because he does like to. I I do like his the best, and that was really really fun. But also, it actually made me cry, which was I think hopefully a sign that I’ve done it well in homage. But the idea that you are now the cause, having returned of everyone’s death, hurrah! So yeah, I’m pleased to have introduced another muse, but only because I’m a chaos goblin who loves making things go wrong.

Dr G 46:06
I think it’s totally appropriate. Things have changed. Things have gone badly. It’s like passing the baton. A new muse enters stage left, being like, “I’ll take it from here. This is no longer an epic.

Dr Rad 46:18
So your book is not just about the substance. You also obviously wanted to emulate a certain feeling and style to the way that the ancient Greeks told these stories. How did you try to emulate the poetics of Homer’s Odyssey in this book? This

Jenks 46:34
is one of my favorite bits to teach. As a former English teacher, teaching epic simile and formula and epithet, these are great, and they’re they’re from a teaching point of view, they are really great handles on the text. And often they’re the bits that will get you’ll get a gobbet of a of the text in the exam, and you’ll be asked what makes this so great. Well, in my opinion, no no opinion here. Please tell me what is the technique and what is the effect of the technique? And the whole point of these techniques is to make the listener actually be able to visualize it. And so I tried to make sure that all the similes are left intact, added to ever so slightly. But honestly, you don’t need to because they’re so vivid and special and deep. I have a huge fondness for epic similes. I I did a bit of a deep dive into one using the research of a fabulous woman in the 1920s His name I completely forgot, Eliza something. I’m going to check that in a second. Who had categorized every single simile across Homer, and you learn so much just reading what the similes are about, even from like how they baked bread or what the methods were for for separating the chaff and the corn-it’s amazing. And the roles of women, and the roles of men, and the roles of children, and absolutely fascinating stuff. So I included all of those. I did therefore have to write more or similar ones, but with slightly different backgrounds to them, in that they would imply what was happening, because often you get that sense of ominous foreboding from some similes, and and so that and epithets as well get included. So I think that’s one of the things that gives you the most sort of Homeric feel without tripping over the text too much. It it they don’t stick out as much as perhaps making every single line sound like a translation of Homer. One thing I also did was I read seven different versions, seven different translations of the text. I think I’ve got eight now. Actually, I lost track. I’ve got also a really nice graphic novel as well, which I do love dipping into, but I didn’t use it for this and a pop-up version, but I also didn’t use that one either. But I liked being able to look at the way that certain parts of the text, all the similes, had been translated from. I think my earliest one is 1800 or it’s later than the first translations, and then the most recent one I think I had was the Emily Wilson one, and she’s fascinating. She obviously talks hugely about the the history of translation in in her work and how she came to her decisions, and comparing to previous translations as well. But often, if I would be thinking, right, well, how exactly is this? This translation says this. Let me compare this over here. What exactly is happening, and and what image are we meant to get? And that was very clarifying, which is something I hadn’t really realized before. You can be really colored in your in your expectations by which translation you read, and that had never really been hammered home to be before. And we read often whichever one is free and out of copyright because it makes it a lot cheaper for the people running the exam, and those are not the best versions at all. I believe the phrase “the moist house of Hades” appeared in one. I was like, “That is, that is not a sentence I want to read out

Speaker 3 49:59
loud. Yes, gross.

Dr G 50:00
What a visual! Yeah, yeah.

Jenks 50:04
So that that was something I I think helped me a lot with that, and knowing which bits to include and which bits to emulate and how to emulate them more.

Dr G 50:13
I think this gives us a sense of just the power of translation over time as well, because different translations suit different audiences, and Odysseus himself, with his own epithets in translation and the way he’s described it, it changes over time. So we get things like many-minded Odysseus or complicated Odysseus, and all of these ways of describing him position him as somebody who’s not necessarily nice. And when I think about what happens in the epic poem itself, I certainly would not want to be traveling home with this guy. I think about what are the chances that you will come through that journey, there are many ways to get lost along the way. But having said that, why do you think we continue to find his story compelling and enduring?

Jenks 51:12
I think it is exactly that he isn’t nice, and I think some of the best characters have always just not been nice, and they’re unpredictable, and there is still something about them that compels you to enjoy their presence, or at least want to know what they will do next. And I’m sure if you look through literature, those are the characters that that stand out, and those are the texts that that constantly get read and revisited. Again, like I said earlier, some Greek character, some some ancient Greek mythical heroes, just fall by the wayside because they no longer lack the kind of interest that the modern audience wants. They want people as characters. They want really detailed characterizations. They want to know everything about. They want a close up in a way, really. That’s what we’re used to now: full face on screen details, being able to read every single facial expression. And Odysseus even has facial expressions. He motions with his eyebrows, which I love. Like everyone can can visualize that. And I think also what’s really important is that he spends the most exciting and important bit of the text narrating, so we get his first person narrative, whereas we don’t get that in the Iliad. It’s all third person, and we do get to hear from. Oh my God, I forgot his name from Achilles. We do get to hear from Achilles directly, and he gives that amazing speech, which often I like to read aloud in class, and then people will come and check what’s wrong and why am I shouting, because it’s so good. But you can really feel his passion rising, but you don’t get it from his point of view from him telling everyone what’s happening, and I think that would be a really fun way to obviously that’s sort of been done a little bit in the Song of Achilles, although from Patroclus’ viewpoint, that is something that you you get with Odysseus. But even then, you don’t know whether to believe him, and that’s fascinating. So you can read you can read the Odyssey time and time again, as I have done, and notice things you absolutely did not notice before, or things that he suggests, or the way in which he says it, or the way in which the image every time he lands, there’s a wisp of smoke, or there’s a young girl fetching water on her own. Red flag. Is it the daughter of the Laestrygonians? Is it Athenian disguise? Is it just a girl? And I like those visual signposts, and I try to include those because they they really stick out all of a sudden. I try to include those in the in the text and in the the audio book podcasty thing, so that you you hopefully you hear that and go, oh wait, I’ve heard that before. Like hopefully in the text, you would have been originally the the audience listening to the poet and go oh oh no I’ve heard that before this can only go badly those those signposts just like the similes as well are just so important and we get those in modern literature too and again they give that idea that idea of satisfaction that we’ve noticed something and we’re involved in it and you would do that these days in a media and film you’d have certain colors or maybe something in the background. Like everyone’s like, “Oh, the guy’s just talking. There’s a space in the background. What’s going to happen in the space in the background? It’s that kind of visual narrative and and storytelling. I think that does really translate. So it’s still really recognizable, even though it’s in a completely different format to something that we would normally consume.

Dr Rad 54:38
So to sum up all of this fascinating stuff we’ve been talking about. What do you hope that your readers of You Are Odysseus are going to take away from this interactive experience that you have created?

Jenks 54:54
Well, I hope they’re going to to not hate Odysseus off the bat because of so many people. And they’ll just say, “Oh, war crimes done, canceled. Yes, obviously war crimes. Everyone else is doing war crimes too. We’re not justifying war crimes, but we are looking at a specific set of values and a specific situation. What would you do if you were in that situation? You’d apparently get home. Well done, you. And who will know your name in the future? So I really would like people to not feel awful about themselves, but feel really good about themselves, and then also poke a little deeper and see if they can read the right version, as it were. There is, in fact, a set of author notes on my website, and if you have the book, there’s a little code to type in, and it takes you to a page where it has all the correct order of sections. If you want to check your answers, and I I made it into a spreadsheet as well, so you can print it off and tick it off. Which I’m really glad I did because I was like, which sections I had to color code them, and then I had to print it off for myself making the podcast because I couldn’t remember which was which. And there is actually one mistake which I do have to re-edit in terms of which one goes where. So that’s quite a fun test, but it just the idea that hopefully we’ll learn something else as well, and maybe look further to another myth, or seek out some comparative mythology, or go and watch this film later and go, oh, they’ve missed out this bit and this bit, or or another piece of media, or watch Ulysses 31 and go, that’s not Odysseus, that’s Aeneas. He’s too nice, or something like that, because that’s what I do in my lessons. Hopefully, when you’re reading Shakespeare, you’ll notice a myth. You go, oh, we learned about that over here, and like you were saying, linking these stories together because they’re always referred back to in some way, there’s always a question on a game show as well, and University Challenge, and it comes up time and time and time again. And what I really, really, really want is just to have made this text, which some people just will assume is too hard to read because it’s old, not inaccessible. Just it’s something you can listen to. It’s something you can read and take control of. It’s something you can compare to the real thing, and notice different things because of it. That’s what I’d like.

Dr Rad 57:12
I think you can rest assured that that is probably what your readers will take away. This truly is the most amazing project, and I think a real a real monument to to what you’ve been working towards in your guys. You’re super kind. Oh no, it’s it’s amazing. When I simply did it, I was like, oh my god, I can’t believe no one’s ever thought to do this before. This is a genius idea. It’s one of those things that once it exists, I’m like, ah, of course. But I would never have really thought about it until you’d already done it. Well, this

Jenks 57:44
is the thing: people have made choose your own, choose your own versions of the Odyssey before, but they’re really short and they’re very much you die, and maybe not everyone would have thought let’s do this, but then with a million different endings and huge amount of detail and make the book too heavy to actually carry, and yeah, I couldn’t. I couldn’t cut it. That’s part of its

Dr G 58:05
charm at this point. I think it gives it that weightiness actually lends to the idea that this is not just about Homer’s version of the Odyssey. It is about Odysseus emerging out of a mythic landscape where so many stories are told, and these stories can be connected in a variety of different ways, depending on who the rhapsod is, where they are, what their audience is like, and when the opportunity comes and it’s written down, we have this new version of what Odysseus could be and how he might present in the world, and I think part of the richness of the text that you’ve created is that you’re bringing some of that complexity of the tapestry of myth to life for people in a way that is incredibly readable, and the passages are generally not. It’s not like an endurance reading moment. Like the book itself is heavy, but the sections themselves are relatively short in the sense that you you don’t ever feel like oh I I can’t pick this up just before I go to bed because a chapter is like 30 pages long. It’s not like that. You can get to a choice and be like you know what gonna you know put my bookmark in there, and we’re going to think about that choice, and I’m not going to make it just yet. I will come back tomorrow. Yeah, no,

Jenks 59:26
I hadn’t thought of that, but actually, that makes me really happy.

Dr Rad 59:29
And you know what? I also think that, given the nature of what this is all about, it’s it’s good to have a physical workout happening whilst you are reading it. It just seems to make sense. It’s too easy otherwise.

Dr G 59:42
Yeah. Do you want to be a Greek guru? You’re going to have to lift that bro. Yeah.

Dr Rad 59:46
Work on those muscles.

Jenks 59:47
Yes. Lift the book. One in each hand.

Dr G 59:50
Epic adventures. They’re not light. No, no. You

Dr Rad 59:53
got to be physically and mentally prepared. Yeah.

Dr G 59:56
Well, thank you so much for spending the time to chat. With us about this amazing book that you have written, we’re so thrilled to go into more detail about it, and we encourage anybody who is in any way interested in epic myth to seek this text out and try it for yourself, and enjoy being immersed in this world in a new and fun way.

Dr Rad 1:00:30
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 Joy de Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collectivemem.com. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad-free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch, we have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on Ko-fi. And we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if your imperial coffers do not overflow us, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five-star review wherever you listen. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – You Are Odysseus with Laura Jenkinson-Brown appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

The Camillus Show continues in c. 386 and 385 BCE! But the Romans seem to be facing tensions not just from their enemies, but even from those who they used to count on as allies…

Journey to the North

There’s nothing for it by for the Romans to send aid north. And who should be tasked with leadership for this support but Camillus. He’s not happy to go alone, however, and he’s joined by fellow military tribune with consular power, Valerius Poplicola. What will they find as they head into Etruscan territory? Tune in to find out the details!

Trouble in Allied Paradise?

Are the Latins and the Hernicians still friends with Rome? There’s building evidence that maybe the friendship is over and the best-friend necklaces have been thrown away. Rome needs some clarity and tries to have a conversation about the situation, but it doesn’t seem like the Latins or the Hernicians want to play ball.

The Return of Marcus Manlius

We enter the year c. 385 BCE and it’s time to welcome Marcus Manlius back to the stage! He is already famous by Roman standards for his involvement with the sacred geese on the Capitol during the Gaul’s siege of Rome, but his story is only just getting started. Is he feeling jealous of some of his peers? We’ll find out.

Things to listen out for

• Nepete (modern Nepi of Acqua di Nepi fame, near Viterbo)
• The return to Sutrium (modern Sutri, also near Viterbo)
• Epigraphic evidence enters the mix
• Traitors!
• The potential of bundles of tree branches
• And the power of ladders

Our Players 386 BCE

MILITARY TRIBUNES WITH CONSULAR POWER

• Marcus Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat)
• Servius Cornelius P. f. M. n. Malguginensis (Pat)
• Quintus Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat)
• Lucius Quinctius (- f. – n.) Cincinnatus (Pat)
• Lucius Horatius – f. – n. Pulvillus (Pat)
• Publius Valerius L. f. L. n. Potitus Poplicola (Pat)

Our Players 385 BCE

MILITARY TRIBUNES WITH CONSULAR POWER

• Aulus Manlius (T. f. A. n. Capitolinus?) (Pat)
• Publius Cornelius – f. – n. – – – – – (Pat)
• Titus Quinctius (T. f. L. n. Cincinnatus) Capitolinus (Pat)
• Lucius Quinctius (L. f. L. n. Cincinnatus?) Capitolinus (Pat)
• Lucius Papirius – f. – n. Cursor (Pat)
• (Gnaeus Sergius – f. – n. Fidenas Coxo) (Pat)

DICTATOR

• Aulus Cornelius – f. – n. Cossus (Pat)

MASTER OF THE HORSE

• Titus Quinctius (T. f. L. n. Cincinnatus) Capitolinus (Pat) 

OTHERS OF NOTE

• Marcus Manlius Capitolinus

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 6.6-10
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 15.25.1, 15.27.4; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 35; Frontinus, Strategems, 2.8.4 Vitruvius, On Architecture 1.7; CIL 6.1308.
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cancik, Hubert, Helmuth Schneider, Christine F. Salazar, and August Friedrich von Pauly. Brill’s New Pauly : Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Leiden ; Brill, 2002.
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum – https://cil.bbaw.de/en/
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Oakley, S. P. (Ed.). (2016). A commentary on Livy : books VI-X. Vol. 1, Introduction and book VI. Oxford University Press. 
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.
• Peter VanDerPuy, “The Price of Expansion: Agriculture, Debt-Dependency, and Warfare during the Rise of the Republic, c. 450-287.” In Romans at War, 1st ed., edited by Jeremy Armstrong and Michael P. Fronda, 35–51. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351063500-3.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents.

The post Episode 177 – Etruscan Evil Plans appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Emma holds a PhD in Ancient History and is the author of a number of fabulous books about the ancient world. This includes: A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women, A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore. Not only a writer, Emma also co-hosts the History is Sexy podcast. Besides all this, she’s an all round fabulous human and cat-lover.

In this episode, we were fortunate enough to chat to her about her latest book, Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire – or, if you are based in the US, the alternative title is Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire.

Along with deep research into the source material, Emma considers the emotional experience of being an enslaved person in various contexts within the Roman world. This can be a challenging  topic to study, and not only because of how truly awful it was. We just don’t have as much as we would like from the perspective of enslaved people, or about their lives in general. Enslaved people were not considered to be suitable subjects for long biographies.   

Things to Look Out For:

• ‘Best’ and ‘worst’ case scenarios for an enslaved person
• How slavery evolved throughout Rome’s history 
• Resistance to slavery 
• Manumission
• Freedmen and women 
• Family relationships
• Slave rebellions (hey Spartacus!)  
• Some of the most appalling behaviour we have seen from the Romans yet! 

You can add Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire to your bookshelf now! Sold wherever good books are sold, and of course we suggest supporting independent booksellers. 

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, 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 special episode of the Partial Historians. I’m Dr. Rad, and I’m Dr. G. And Dr. G, I think this might be a historical first for our podcast in terms of the amount of times we’ve had a guest back on the show, but I think people will understand why when they hear who it is, Emma Southern, long-time friend of the show, probably needs no introduction, but we’re going to give it a whirl anyway. Emma holds a Ph.D. in ancient history and is the author of a number of fabulous books about the ancient world. This includes a history of the Roman Empire in 20-one women, a fatal thing happened on the way to the forum, and Agrippina, Empress, exile, hustler, whore! We totally recommend you check out our previous interviews with Emma about all of these books, and then obviously add copies to your bookshelf. What are you doing? Not only a writer, Emma also co-hosts the History is Sexy podcast. Besides all this, she’s an all-round fabulous human and cat lover, and we are super excited to talk today about her latest book, Servius, or Servius, depending on how you like your Latin. How slavery made the Roman Empire, or if you are based in the U.S. the alternative title is “Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire. Welcome, Emma. Hello.

Dr Emma Southon 2:30
So nice to be back. Am I really a historic first to be the most you

Speaker 1 2:34
are

Dr Emma Southon 2:34
frequent guest?

Dr Rad 2:36
I think you definitely. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. This is adequate. Yeah. Got to be fourth time. Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, and also you’re going to have to stop writing books eventually, though, because your intro is getting a bit long.

Speaker 2 2:47
It is getting quite long. I did look at my shelf earlier this week and was like, “Oh, I’ve actually written quite a lot of books. Like, how did that happen?

Dr Rad 2:56
What are you doing with your time? Yeah,

Speaker 2 2:59
that looks like quite impressive.

Dr G 2:59
You’re like a proper author,

Dr Emma Southon 3:01
yeah. It was, it was, yeah. It was quite a nice moment because I don’t know these things kind of happen on a year by year basis, and then all of a sudden you look back and you’re like, oh, oh, that looks quite quite impressive, all put together.

Dr Rad 3:16
I’ve actually got like a whole shelf dedicated to myself.

Dr Emma Southon 3:19
I do have a whole shelf dedicated to myself, yeah.

Dr Rad 3:23
I aspire to that

Dr Emma Southon 3:24
one day. One day, just see my

Dr Rad 3:27
damn teaching didn’t keep getting in the way.

Dr Emma Southon 3:29
Yead you see this is this was the trick I left at academia.

Dr G 3:34
Yes, frees up the writing time. Yeah,

Dr Emma Southon 3:36
no one makes me go to meeting everybody out there.

Dr G 3:40
This book, I say, is relatively different from the subjects that you’ve tackled previously. So I’m really interested to chat about this because, for what it’s worth, slavery is not a topic that screams a great read. No, doesn’t it doesn’t feel like you’re you’re going to have a good time, and so I think to start us off, why do you think it is so important for us to better understand slavery as it was practiced in the Roman Empire?

Dr Emma Southon 4:10
I think just because it’s such an important part of the Roman Empire, like the Roman Empire does not exist without slavery. It is like just from the bureaucratic perspective of what the empire is, the like the bureaucracy of building empire doesn’t exist without slavery. Almost every single person who is working in the like imperial mechanisms of the paperwork and accountancy and message carrying and like just the sheer amount of busy work that is involved in running an empire is an enslaved person. Almost all of the people who are involved in the commerce of the empire is involved in slavery in some way. Almost everybody who is involved in temple worship is enslaved. Like just. The empire does not exist without it. A huge proportion of people in the empire are enslaved or have experienced slavery for at least part of their life, and every single person in the empire interacts with slavery every day in about a million ways. So it just not having that be part of the story of how we understand the ancient world is just like lopping off, like one of the legs of the empire, basically, and then pretending like we can see it. And like at some point in the book, I use the metaphor of the you know three blind men and an elephant, where one of them they’ve never seen an elephant, they go and they’re using their hands to understand it, one of them says, “Oh, I can feel this part, and it feels long and thick like a boa constrictor because he’s touching the trunk. And one is holding the tail and says, “Oh no, it’s thin. And none of them can see the whole empire. But and you need slavery in order to understand how the Roman Empire works, what the Roman Empire is, and what it was like to exist in the Roman Empire. Even as a free person, it was a part of your life and a part of your understanding of the world that you just need to know about.

Dr Rad 6:08
That is so true. I mean, really, being a free person in Rome is an identity because you exist in opposition to those who are not.

Dr Emma Southon 6:16
Exactly. You need the unfree, and you need the those kind of intermediate, the third class, the formerly enslaved, the freed person, in order to make freedom mean something. And that’s why they go on about it all the time. Like I read so much Seneca and like Cicero, and they’re talking about freedom constantly and calling themselves slaves constantly because they know what slavery is, and because it’s like a everyday part of their life, and they’re like, “Well, we don’t want to be like that.

Dr Rad 6:48
Now, you note right at the beginning that there is divided opinion about the terminology that we should be using when we’re talking about this topic. So, can you run us through what are the challenges posed by using the term slave as opposed to enslaved person.

Dr Emma Southon 7:04
Yes, so there there are divisions in that some people were argued that slave is the more common term, and also the term that almost all enslaved people would use to describe themselves. Like if you were to ask a person in the ancient world what they were, and they do. Like if you read the graffiti, if you read the epigraphs, and you can see the places where people describe themselves, they do say, like they use it as a definitional term, you know, Felix, slave of Servius or whatever, and therefore it is a terminology that’s easier and is more accurately descriptive of how they would describe themselves. On the other hand, the argument that I use is that enslaved person deliberately interrupts the kind of mental models that we have of slavery. Easy to say slave, and it kind of slips off the tongue, and then it doesn’t challenge the way that you think about enslaved people. And it is we have a mental structure that is largely defined by transatlantic slavery of what an enslaved person looks like, and they’re almost always black for a start. They’re almost always male, like chaining, and we have these kind of mental models of what a slave is. And using enslaved person, firstly, makes it difficult for you to use those mental models. You have to re, you have to stop and think, like even for half a millisecond when you’re reading it, and it kind of forces you and the reader and me to expand the definition of what we think of as an enslaved person, because there are so many different types of slavery in the Roman Empire that range from like luxury slaves whose job is to do nothing but look pretty and be sexually available, down to people who are in penal servitude with their legs broken, like hauling water in a mine, across to people who are working agricultural slavery and then into bureaucratic slavery. There’s like a bazillion different ways you can be enslaved, and using enslaved person just kind of interrupts that a little bit, and also I think it does force you to remember that these are people. And if there’s one thing that I want to do with the book is be like, these are people’s lives. Each of these people is a tiny little universe, just like you, the reader, are a tiny little universe, and they have feelings, and they have toes that get stubbed, and they have wants and needs, and just kind of is a rhetorical strategy to a certain degree of forcing you to just think about it slightly harder than you would if I said slave.

Dr G 9:30
And I think this is a really good point because by returning the humanity into the situation, we’re forced to think of the real challenges that enslaved people face,

Dr Emma Southon 9:41
yeah,

Dr G 9:42
and the nature of those challenges, and that sort of leads really nicely into thinking about like what are our real obstacles as historians for investigating the lives of enslaved people? Because you’ve mentioned the elephant metaphor, and I think that’s a really elegant way to sort of describe. We can’t really quite see everything. How can we really figure out what it is if we can’t see the whole picture?

Dr Emma Southon 10:07
Yeah, we can’t see the whole picture. There’s almost no enslaved lives where we have like more than a fragment. And when we do, it is people who were manumitted generally, and the focus of their life will then be on their post-manumission life. So a lot of books that I read and a lot of stuff that I read about would use people like imperial freedmen, like Callistus and Polybius, and would use the lives of of manumitted freedmen who would then become very very loquacious on their tombstones, or who appear in the sources frequently because they’re no longer enslaved, and they will talk about their formerly enslaved, like they don’t talk about their enslaved lives, and I really didn’t want to fall into that trap. So what you’re left with then is kind of fragments, basically, and the epigraphy is unbelievably useful for that kind of thing, and the Columbaria of the Volusii and the Statilli, who were two big families in the early imperial period, mean that you can see you get entire families, entire friendship groups who all chose to commemorate themselves in the same space. They’re like family burial spaces for listeners who don’t know what columbaria I don’t know if you’ve covered it, but they’re like big family burial spaces. They look like dove cots where they were really fashionable, like for about 100 years, for massive like aristocratic families to have a space where all of their enslaved people and formerly enslaved members of the family could choose to be buried there as a member of the family, and so you see all of these like family groups, and you can trace the same names appearing over and over again in commemorations, and you can extrapolate out from that. Basically, there’s a lot of extrapolation that happens with building enslaved lives. You can extrapolate that if you see a husband and wife, and then you see them commemorating a child, and then you later see that child commemorating his mother. You can kind of extrapolate the emotional relationships that have happened in that space, and the same with graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum. When you see the same names appear, you can see conversations happening, and you can kind of extrapolate out, you know. If you have spaces like kitchens where people are writing poetry on the wall, you know that you have enslaved people who are literate in a kitchen, and they’re reading poetry and then they’re writing it on the wall. And then there’s a lot of kind of creative reading between the lines in both the traditional sources like the, like the Cicero, like the letters of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, are amazing for this kind of thing because they are kind of forced to mention slavery a lot because it’s such an important part of their everyday lives. Like they can’t not, and so when they’re telling anecdotes about their days for moral education of their listeners, then they’re always mentioning slavery. So they’re like, there’s a letter of Pliny where he’s like, “Oh, today my the the four year old slave that is my exercise partner was making fun of me because he can overtake me now, and he was making fun of me that we’re both losing our teeth. And you’re like, “Oh, whoa! You have like a child slave who’s your exercise partner who is at the age where he’s losing his teeth, and then that’s a funny anecdote to you. Like, okay. And then at the other end of the scale, you have this bit with Seneca where he’s writing that he is at one of his villas in the countryside, and he makes fun of a doorkeeper for being old and ugly to his face. Incidentally, like straight to his face. It’s like, where the hell did you get this guy? He’s so disgusting. Like, did you dig him out of a grave? Like, he looks like you’ve stolen him from the dead. And the guy goes, “Oh no, do you not recognize me? I’m Felix. We used to play together when we were children, and I was like your friend, and I’m the son of your like the steward, and we were we were friends when we were younger. And Seneca’s like, and the point of his story there is that it made him realize that he was getting kind of old.

Dr Emma Southon 14:17
But you can read it and be like, oh, this is a guy who has was born into slavery, who has spent his entire life in slavery on this, on this estate, and is now so old that people are like, “Oh Jesus Christ, you look like you’re about to die, and is still in slavery working the door, and you can, you know, you don’t know the finer details of his life, but you have a lifetime in that anecdote that Seneca tells, and so there’s a lot of finding fragments and then stitching them together into patterns.

Dr G 14:50
Yeah, wow, and Seneca as well because he is often lauded as being sort of anti-slavery in some respects. But to tell stories like this, it sounds like maybe he wasn’t quite self. Unless in thinking about the others,

Dr Emma Southon 15:02
no, because Seneca has this one letter called, which is promoted around on the internet as on master and slave, which is basically writing like, oh, just FYI, slaves are human. But he does have a line in it specifically towards the end where he says, “People are gonna accuse me of wanting to abolish slavery because I’ve written that we shouldn’t beat them for sneezing, and that we should not just feed them scraps. We should maybe let them eat proper food. But I don’t. I don’t wouldn’t say that. I would never say let’s abolish slavery. I’m just saying maybe don’t abuse them. But so that’s that’s considered.

Dr G 15:36
I’m not trying to bring down the system. Exactly. Stress anybody. I’m just saying.

Dr Emma Southon 15:41
I’m not trying to cancel slavery. Like I’m not woke.

Dr Rad 15:44
What do you think I am? A monster? Yeah, exactly.

Dr Emma Southon 15:47
All I’m saying is that it’s uncomfortable when I go to dinner.

Dr Rad 15:50
My childhood playmate looks terrible, and then I

Dr Emma Southon 15:53
have to watch a beating. Like I just don’t like it very much, and that’s considered like peak wokery in ancient Rome.

Dr G 16:01
Just, just wow. But also this idea that his childhood friend is so unrecognizable that the life of an enslaved person can be even just within a parallel universe where we’re thinking about these two men having grown up together, and Seneca getting to the point where he’s like, I don’t even recognize this person. Yeah, like the the weight of the work that is required, and we don’t know what it is for this guy, seems to have really changed his physique in a way that makes him unrecognizable in old age, which is incredible. And

Dr Emma Southon 16:34
also, I think the fragility of those like friendships that were obviously like important to this guy. He’s like, you know, oh no, we were friends. Like you gave me presents when I was a child, and Seneca has just eradicated him from his mind. They grew up together as children on an estate, and then he’s just like, it means nothing to him anymore that he, you know, he’s hanging out with the emperor now, like, and because that’s the thing that gets brought up a fair amount is that there can be these relationships between enslaved people and the people who enslave them. Like Tiro and Cicero is one that gets brought up all the time because Tiro like tends so gently to his legacy and makes sure that all of Cicero’s letters are published and that he is remembered after his death, although having read Cicero’s letters and seen like from beginning to end and seen how he comes across, I’m like maybe actually Cicero was not entering to his legacy. It might have been revenge. Maybe it was the show. Maybe he was like, “Oh, this one’s a really embarrassing woman. He writes about begging the Senate for a try-off and making sure this one’s published. The

Dr Rad 17:41
silver lining to some of these stories, although I know that this is not the case for most people who were slave owners in Rome, is that Cicero ends up as Fulvia’s pincushion, and Seneca doesn’t finish so well either. So, if anyone’s thinking that these guys are d-bags, don’t worry, they come up as it’s coming.

Dr Emma Southon 17:57
A lot of them do end up horribly, and you do. One of the fun things was reading all of the stories in Appian and Valerius Maximus about all of the enslaved people who get their revenge during the prescription, so under Sulla and then under the triumvirate, and a load of enslaved people are just like, just straight on the phone to whatever the closest man with the sword is.

Dr G 18:21
Put this guy on the list. He’s horrible. Yeah,

Dr Emma Southon 18:24
and like just absolutely doing anything they can to get rid of these horrible people who have, so they can get some freedom and a bit of control back in their life.

Dr Rad 18:33
No, look, I think what you’ve done is so powerful. The way that you’ve gone into these individual stories, and as you said, you’ve kind of inferred as much as possible as we can from these fragments, because obviously slavery is part of the story that I’ve often looked into in most depths. For those of you who don’t listen to this podcast, that would be the story of Spartacus. But it’s always been in the background, and I must admit, a lot of the books I’ve read so far on slavery, they tend to focus, I feel, on you know numbers, and I don’t know, like trying to figure out how many slaves exactly were they, and in what proportion were they working, in what industry, and where were they coming from, and where were they being sold. It’s it’s those sorts of details that you encounter, and sometimes you don’t always stop to think about the emotional side of it, especially because I must admit, I’ve been guilty of saying that. Well, in comparison to some other systems, because you had the chance of being freed, I guess Roman slavery wasn’t as bad. And then you’re like, no, it was still freaking horrible. That is the lie that they wanted you to fall for.

Dr Emma Southon 19:38
It is the lie that they wanted to fall for, and it is the lie that they told themselves, and the lie that they told enslaved people. And I think, see, oh yeah, no, because I also read all those books, and they are like obsessed with like systemizing or like getting really into like what proportion of enslaved people do you think were actually captured in the year 143 C? Exactly. Well, that’s an impossible question, but have fun, I guess. Whereas I am interested in that emotional lives, like what is it like to be in this situation? How does it feel to be the person standing next to Cicero when he randomly frees a guy because he gets some good news, and also the guy standing next to Hadrian when he stabs a guy in the eye because he’s kind of mad.

Dr Rad 20:28
Yeah,

Dr Emma Southon 20:28
or to be one of the guys that Seneca describes who is standing around the walls of a dinner party aren’t like not even allowed to cough, not even allowed to like breathe loudly in case you are beaten, and just the total lack of control that you have over your life, I think, is the the key thing in Roman slavery, and at every level of it, the total lack of of control that you have, even over manumission, manumission. Manumission is one of the things I thought about a lot when I read that a huge proportion of the manumitted people that we see in the epigraphy of the city of Rome were children who had clearly not earned manumission in their adulthood, but had been granted it probably on their deathbeds. I was like, oh, okay, it’s actually not even in the epigraphy. It’s not as common as we think it is, and that shifted my thinking a lot. But then I read because I do use comparative material as well. So I used I read a lot of narratives and biographies written and spoken by enslaved people from the Americas and Olaudah Equiano talks about he was kidnapped from Nigeria, then raised in slavery in on in the British Navy, and then ended up in the Caribbean. And his English owner says to him, “Oh yeah, I’ll let you buy your slavery for 40 pounds. And so he spends five years raising that money, and then he gets to the point where he can buy his slavery. And his James King, who’s the guy who owns him, is like, “Oh, oh, I didn’t expect you to actually do it. Like, I don’t actually want to let you buy your slavery. And he almost doesn’t get it. He spent five years like working incredibly hard on two jobs, basically being an enslaved trader and also running his own business, and he only gets it because he brings another white person into the room, basically to advocate for him. That immediately made me think of the guy who kills Pedanius, the ex-consul who gets killed in Rome by an enslaved person, which then leads to the crucifixion of 400 people under Nero, and one of the reasons given for that is that Podaas had promised him his freedom, and then at the last minute had said he couldn’t have it. And you just think that even the dangling of freedom and saying, “Oh no, you could if you just keep going, you you might I’ll offer you yeah sure I’ll free you is is a is a way of controlling behavior is a way of of having a thing you can hold over somebody and you can give it or you can take it away or you can keep changing the parameters of what it is

Dr Rad 23:16
moving the goalpost yeah exactly

Dr Emma Southon 23:17
and and oh even like the possibility of freedom, which seems like such a kindness, is act can actually be turned into something incredibly cruel if you are of the persuasion to be that way.

Dr Rad 23:31
Yeah. Note to note to our podcast, Doctor G. Never ever let me again underestimate how truly abysmal the Romans are as people.

Dr Emma Southon 23:41
They are never give them. them out.

Dr G 23:43
Don’t worry, better than

Dr Rad 23:44
doubt. No,

Dr G 23:46
they are not good people, listeners. Just FYI,

Dr Emma Southon 23:49
they’re not.

Dr Rad 23:50
Yeah, one of the interesting things that we’ve found, obviously, given the way that we’re tracing the narrative of Rome’s history from the founding of the city, is that slavery really seems to have been a part of the story from the very beginnings, at least as far as we can tell. And as you’ve highlighted, just penetrates every aspect of life. And you’ve also sort of mentioned the fact that there are just so many different ways that you can be an enslaved person in terms of the types of work. So, how much difference do you think contextual factors make to the experience in the sense of the time period in which you are enslaved and the type of work that you might be assigned to. I mean, is there such a thing as a best and worst case scenario when we’re talking about Roman slavery, or is it just all the bottom of the barrel?

Dr Emma Southon 24:38
I do think that there are best and worst case stories, and I also think that one of the very clever things that the Roman system does is build in hierarchies into slavery, so which really effectively prevents any kind of class consciousness from arising. And the times when you see trouble is when they put loads of people together who are suffering the same thing. And are able to come together and be like, oh, yo, hang on a minute. Do we have something in common?

Dr Rad 25:05
You hate the Romans! I hate the Romans! Yeah, exactly.

Dr Rad 25:08
Let’s Rebel!.

Dr Emma Southon 25:09
Do you think these guys really suck? And so they are very clever at building in these hierarchies that separate both enslaved people from each other and also the poor free from enslaved people, and make everybody resent each other really well. So you can have kind of contact with the the dominus, the person who who owns you, and having and any kind of public facing role within an aristocratic house or within the imperial kind of structure is going to be your best case scenario because that is after Augustus. Augustus makes it the law that if anyone is going to be manumitted, they have to be manumitted by name. Before that, you can just put basically in your will free all of my hairdressers, free all of my accountants, and you don’t really have to, you know, know who they are. You can just do it as a beneficence and feel good about yourself as you die. But there are complaints during the early reign of Augustus that people are doing this so that they can have loads of grateful freed people in their funerary processions.

Dr G 26:21
Just as yeah, just just to doing it for show, yeah, basically. So for those of us who honorably refuse to just free any of our slaves at the brink of death, yeah, obviously we’re now embarrassed about the funeral. Exactly. Now we’ve

Dr Emma Southon 26:35
only got like 10 people who we freed honorably because of their great service, and that guy over there who freed everybody has like a much better funerary procession and looks better, even though he’s not done it right, and it’s ruining slavery for everybody. And so after Augustus, basically, you have to name people. You have to say, you know, my accountant Polybius. And so anything where you can get kind of face time with the person who frees you, and anything where you can get where you are a representative of the person who owns you, because the rovers are so obsessed with display and so obsessed with kind of conspicuous like hierarchies that if you are a public-facing member of your familia, if you are in any way associated with the dominus or with the family to other people, then you’re you’re probably going to look be well fed, have beautiful clothing. You’re going to be able to manipulate that access in order to get money and favors, and your slavery is going to be something that is a significant part of your life because you’re still an enslaved person, but it is not going to look anything like the slavery of the people who work in the farms of the your dominus. So, like freedom in the agricultural communities, or if you work on one of his banks, like outlets in North Africa, or like if you’re the guy who you know works over in Britain or whatever, like like you’re not going to have the same privileges or the same access or the same chances of freedom as as that person, and then clearly there are very significant differences as the law changes. Like if you were, if your Dominus happened to die three weeks before Augustus passed that law, then you had a much better chance of walking as a freedman in the funerary procession than you did a year later, and so you do get like fairly fundamental shifts in what slavery can look like, as the Romans really grapple with how big they’ve their system has become, and how many enslaved people now exist in their cities, and how important slavery is to the the display of wealth. And like it was so common. I was started making notes, and I had like a big file of every time that I found the phrase, like something like a cohort of slaves or a large amount of slaves, or she was walking with a huge collection of like the the display of having a load of enslaved people around you and becomes so important, like in the late Republic and onwards, that the Romans have to grapple with it and have to change the laws and have to change how they they handle the world. So it does shift as it as time moves forward and things kind of gradually solidify into a system. But because the those at the top of that hierarchy are so visible. They’re the ones who are so proud of themselves that they left a part of themselves behind in the epigraphy. They’re the ones who the writers, the Tacituses and the Senecas and the Ciceros, come into contact with. So they’re the ones they complain about. They’re the ones who appear in the letters. Because they’re the ones who are the closest, and so they become the most visible representation. But they are like the 1% at the top of what Roman slavery is, and the rest of it doesn’t look like that at all. And is various hierarchies of getting ever kind of grimmer as you get towards the bottom, and the bottom is the kind of imprisoned, tattooed. beaten, scarred men and women who are on the, who are in the mines, who are on the agricultural farms that are feeding Rome in Sicily and in North Africa, and not like in southern Italy, where their lives have kind of no hope, really. The best they can hope is maybe they’ll get out of chains, and they have to build smaller lives.

Dr Emma Southon 30:50
But you do sometimes see that what they have done is try to build, like just having a family and a sheep can be a fulfilling life at that end of the scale, and that’s where the hierarchies are even there. You have somebody who has a family and somebody who doesn’t, somebody who has a sheep and somebody who doesn’t, and so there are enormous amounts of shades of gray within slavery. And what I tried to do was push away from the the silken clothed, curly-haired boys at the top and see as much as I could fit into one book of all the rest of

Dr Rad 31:25
it. Yeah, we do often wonder when we’re talking about this early period of Rome, where the Romans are essentially fighting people that are very close by to them constantly. We often wonder when there are these very limited references to enslaved people who pop up in the record, usually as you sort of highlighted in some sort of story, where oh, an enslaved person betrayed their master or part of the plot or tried to tell someone the truth about something that was going on, and every now and then they pop up, and we’re kind of like, what was that like? Because if we’re talking about enslaved people at that time period, it’s almost like, oh, Bill, Bill, Bill from. I didn’t know you got captured. Well, this is a bit awkward, but I’d really just need you to work the fun. How’s it going?

Dr Emma Southon 32:13
Haven’t seen you in a while. Yeah, and this is the thing with like how the system kind of explodes is that it’s it’s so normal in that period. Like they have the slaves. Latium has slaves. Like the Etruscans have everybody does, and they’re effectively the same 500 people being kind of moved around. It

Dr G 32:34
does feel like that in our narrative sources.

Dr Rad 32:36
We have a theory that the booty that is being captured is actually just the same pair of sandals that everyone exactly. It’s just like it’s one

Dr Emma Southon 32:44
really nice bars and five guys that like just keeps getting passed around. It doesn’t even get unboxed because they know another battle’s coming.

Dr G 32:53
Somebody’s gonna take it. I don’t know if it’ll be me who keeps it. Yeah, it is. It is this really fascinating thing because it seems so embedded even in this early period of Rome’s history, and you’ve talked about like these distinct changes that come in under Augustus as well. But you also make reference to what is happening in Carthage in 146, which is kind of smack in between where we are in our narrative episodes right now and where Augustus is going to end up, and what happens in this moment that is a turning point in terms of slavery?

Dr Emma Southon 33:25
So what happens in 146 which I use as a kind of fairly arbitrary date, just because it’s a useful monarch, really. But that point is the point at which Rome finally wins the Punic Wars, destroys Carthage, and at the same time, is just exploding outwards across the Mediterranean. Like its power is going in all kinds of different directions. I worry for you when you reach this point because you’re gonna have so much that’s happening.

Dr G 33:52
It’s gonna be a lot.

Dr Rad 33:54
We’re kind of counting on the fact that we probably never will.

Dr Emma Southon 33:58
Just never get there. Yeah

Dr Rad 34:01
Death will take us before we reach Carthage.

Dr Emma Southon 34:04
But like they, they just explode in every direction. Like they’ve been so focused really on Carthage and its allies for such a long time, and that’s fought on lots of different fronts. But as soon as that power collapses, they are able to just burst in every direction, and they start kind of exploding across into the Eastern Mediterranean and going off into the Iberian Peninsula. Like they can now explode up through there, and then once they’re there, they can start being like, “Oh, yo, Gaul looks interesting, and they can just keep going. And there is no massive power anywhere that can stop them until they hit Mithradates 100 years later, and so they continue the the system that they had been doing, which is the normal system of the ancient world, which is that booty includes people that you can take everything from the temples, you can take all of their nice. Earrings, and you can also take all of you can take all of their enslaved people, but you can also enslave people, and you can sell them, and the numbers of people that they’re suddenly bringing into the market just explode exponentially, and it just completely shifts what their economy looks like because now they can just dump men and women into, and because they’re also gathering land. Like every time they defeat someone and burn down their village, all of a sudden that’s now a new space where a lovely villa can go to grow wine for some guy, or it can be a lovely new space where they can carve it up and give it to the 50 Roman soldiers with an attitude problem, and they’ll all need people to work their land. So they’ve got loads of land, and they can just fill it with enslaved people who are not mad happy. And this is when you get the servile wars, which are basically the teething problems of the Roman slave economy, when it shifts from being just an economy that has slavery that is growing into an economy that relies completely on slavery to survive and cannot exist without slavery. And three Servilius wars, so two in Sicily and then Spartacus, explode in this 100-year period and terrify the Romans into making sure that the system keeps keeps people so they can’t speak the same language together. So they develop a very clear line that you can’t dump loads of. They’re all Syrian in Sicily. They just put loads and loads of people from the Levant in one place, and then are surprised when they all gather together, can speak the same language, have the same religious beliefs, and are have the same kind of not keenness on being enslaved by the Romans in horrible ways.

Dr G 36:49
Wait a minute,

Dr Emma Southon 36:51
yeah, and so they learn to not do that. Like, just the owners, the people who are buying enslaved people are like, oh, well, don’t don’t buy people who can all speak the same language, and they learn to balance kind of punishment and reward on a large scale, and they learn to take every single act of rebellion very, very seriously. Which is how you get the law, which comes in fairly soon after Spartacus. Actually, that if one person rebels and murders somebody, everybody dies. If one person murders a free person in the household, everybody in the household dies. If one person doesn’t step up to help, then everybody dies. Like, like they teach, treat every act of rebellion as though it is the biggest act of rebellion, and just respond to it with punishing, overwhelming force, and it is just the point at which things tip into a completely different system. And then when Augustus stops most of the wars of expansion, and you don’t get the same level of success after Augustus, like until Trajan, you don’t really get those same levels of like expansion and success in huge numbers. That is a point at which the system changes because they have to start handling the fact that they’re not getting a new influx of enslaved people, and so the problems that they deal with in maintaining their slave system change, which is why they’re suddenly talking about wills all the time and suddenly talking, and the legal, which I don’t recognize, recommend this as a way to spend any time at all. But I read the entire Digest. Oh, okay,

Dr G 38:31
okay, that’s impressive. Kudos to you, everybody. That is a hard text. It’s a lot. It’s a hard text.

Dr Emma Southon 38:37
I understood. I would say a quarter of it, but every single thing to do with slavery are marked, and like you can see the point at which the imperial rescripts start getting really invested in talking about who owns a a fetus, who owns a baby if it is a twin that’s born and the woman has been promised freedom if she has three babies, and the second twin is her fourth baby. Who, like, and they get into the the real nitty gritty of buying and selling people, and all of the million million contractual difficulties that can arise from that, which is the thing that they’re really interested in, and like once you enter the imperial period, you you get a real shift into how they think about slavery as a contractual issue and as a buying and selling and ownership issue rather than a control issue to a certain extent, which is a whole new way of being horrifying.

Dr Rad 39:41
Definitely, only. the Romans.

Dr Emma Southon 39:46
Yeah, no, they were quite depressing because they would be like they would, because the digest will have like a heading, and then it will have a collection of thoughts taken mostly from second and third century legal thinkers. So like the worst. Kind of people, people who like thinking about legal hypotheticals, thinking about legal hypotheticals and imagining what the answer would be if this arose, and so they’ll be like, and so so and so has sold this woman so that, but has said that she can’t be sold into prostitution, but X has sold her into prostitution. Therefore, is the sale not like? Can he claim her back? And then they just go on and on. He had sold her on the condition that. And you’re like, this is a person. And why is this other person deciding? Like, these are two guys arguing about whether this woman could be sold as a prostitute or not. I wish she had a say. It is

Dr G 40:41
deeply, deeply horrifying. Yeah. Yes.

Dr Emma Southon 40:43
It becomes quite numbing after a while, and you can see how all of those like German legal theorists got into like stopped being able to think of these as people because they obviously don’t. They think they talk about them in the same way. They talk about property and talk about tables or land, and you can kind of let it wash over you. But the soon as you take that step and go, that’s a. If this is a real case, that’s a person, that’s a woman, that’s a woman with a child that we’re talking about, and you’re saying that one of her twins was born enslaved and is going to be taken away from her, and the other one was born free and she can take that with her. That’s a horrific thing to happen to a woman, and this is presumably things that happen to women, and people would then have court cases and argue about them, and the the woman would have to sit there and let this happen, and then her baby would be taken from her. And like as soon as you start thinking, seeing through the language that they use into the realities that they are describing, even the potential realities, you’re like, oh, this is evil.

Dr G 41:48
Deeply, deeply so. Yes.

Dr Rad 41:49
Yeah, I won’t do my evil laughter there. It seems inappropriate. It’s a different kind of. It’s a different kind of evil. Yeah. So then, because

Dr Emma Southon 41:57
it’s not evil in a like, aha, we’re going to take over the world. It’s an evil inner. I literally don’t care that this person has feelings. I’m entirely concerned with the value and monetary value of this property.

Dr Rad 42:08
Yeah, exactly. Now you’ve highlighted obviously the big servile wars which happen in the late republic. They’re very obvious cases of resistance on the behalf of the enslaved people, but there is a wide range of kinds of resistance that you might see coming from an enslaved person. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you found out about the other ways that people could express resistance?

Dr Emma Southon 42:36
It is. I think it’s Keith Hopkins who was like, once you look at the sources, you see that passive acceptance of slavery was never the norm at any point because you find you can mostly see resistance through enslavers complaining about the things that annoy them, like the fact that petty theft is so common that there is a law that says you cannot prosecute, you cannot bring a public complaint about this. Like, please stop talking about it. And it’s just like so normal that enslaved people are going to be like, “Fuck it, I’m taking a sip of the wine, or “This is Falernian. Like, this is really good wine. I want to know what it tastes like. Or that they’re going to just pocket something and sell it because they can. Or that sometimes they just go for a wanderer. Lingering or loitering is something that people complain about a lot. Like they’ll just wander off

Dr Rad 43:28
standing over there. You got time to lean. You got time to clean, buddy.

Dr Emma Southon 43:33
Yeah, yeah. They’ll be like, “Oh, can you just nip down and get some bread? And they will nip down and get some bread. But they’ll also walk around and talk to their friends, and they’ll also, or they’ll be sent to, you know, from one estate to the other, and they’ll just take the longest possible time that it can take to travel 100 miles, because it’s just a way of exerting control, and this pisses people off to a massive degree. My absolute favorite example of this, just because it’s it’s so horrific, it becomes funny. Is a there’s a story of Valerius Maximus about a guy who is sent on an errand and he just doesn’t come back, and for weeks, and for some reason his Dominus thinks that he’s been murdered and that this other guy’s slave has done it. Like there must be some kind of feud that had been happening, but he’s convinced that this is what’s happening, and so they torture this guy, this other slave. The Romans are quite inventive with torture, so this is like racking and burning and whipping and very medieval kind of stuff. And then until he confesses to this murder, at which point they crucify him, and everyone’s like, “Brilliant! Can’t believe that he did this murder and thought that he would get away with it. And then, like a week later, the victim just comes back, like he just

Dr G 44:52
oh no

Dr Emma Southon 44:53
done as long as possible on whatever this errand was, and presumably had some kind of excuse as to like what he had been doing. Thought that he would just be like, oh yeah, got delayed in Brindisi or whatever, and turns up and finds someone who’s been like horrifically tortured and executed for his murder, and it’s so horrific. But I just imagine like the awkward silence as he walks in and like, hey guys, what I miss. And then

Dr G 45:21
also immediately regretting it, being like, I could have just never come back. Yeah,

Dr Rad 45:26
that would have been your chance. No one was gonna chase me. Yeah, that that would have been such a moment of like sliding doors, where you you would sit there for the rest of your life, being like, God damn it, why the? Yeah, I could have just kept

Dr Emma Southon 45:39
going. And so, like you, and this is a thing that people, you know, just did, and it’s so common that that they just kind of huff about it in in a very kind of formulaic way, or they’ll, you know, they’ll people just don’t do their jobs very well all the time because they don’t give a fuck. Like, what are they getting out of it? And you get these stories of like, oh, I think it’s in Horace. There’s a story of a going to a dinner party and they’ve hung up all of these drapes, and they just haven’t done it very well, and they just fall on people during the.

Dr G 46:13
I did the best that I could. Yeah, or

Dr Emma Southon 46:15
they’ll like running away and hiding when someone’s got the whips out is a really common one. Like they’ll get the whip out in order to, and so they just disappear until he’s moved on and forgotten about it in the hope that they won’t. And you just like constant moments of refusing to be enslaved, basically. Like what the Romans want, what an enslaver wants is a fully enslaved person who totally believes that their job is to submit every part of themselves, and to see themselves as the property of and an extension of the will of their dominus, of their enslaver, and to be like, yes, I will do it. I will grovel and crawl, and nothing. I have no will of my own. And what you see is just a bazillion people being like, I really want to know what that wine tastes like, though. Or I’m just going to have a nap over here. There’s a brilliant book called The Material Life of Slaves by Sandra Joshell and I think it’s Elizabeth Peterson, where they spend ages. There’s a whole chapter where they spend time creeping around one of the houses in Pompeii, with one of them pretending to be the dominant, and one of them pretending to like seeing how far they can get before they’re spotted. Like if I hide over here, like how much like moving around the house can I do without being seen from this room? How much moving around the house can I do? Like how much creeping about can I do?

Dr G 47:34
I kind of love this. This puts the Romans in a whole new light because they’re lauded so commonly as this sort of militaristic, incredible force, impossible to resist, and in the background, it’s just annoyed Romans being like, “But my slaves just never do what I ask, and they always take so much time, and I’m just really frustrated, and I also can’t prosecute.

Dr Emma Southon 47:55
And if I get, if I threaten to beat them, then they just hide, and I, and I’m not going down those horrible little corridors to find them. So, and like there’s a bit in one of Pliny’s letters where it’s like, oh, it’s so it was so nice to be at your house because your slave didn’t know me, so they treated me like with intense respect because presumably they thought that he might be like a violent man. Whereas when I come back here, they know that I won’t hit them, so they’re just like real lags. And you can just imagine him sitting there being like, “Can I get a glass of water? And everyone’s just like not hearing.

Dr Rad 48:29
Someone, anyone,

Dr Emma Southon 48:30
anyone, and he talks about his. He takes two teenage boys with him on a trip to Rome to, like, they’re his not my clutches, like the guys who remember the names of people, and somebody offers them some money to go to a poetry reading, which is another glorious like insight into people paying members of the audience to go to see them read poetry. So it looks like they have loads of people in the audience to listen to their

Dr Rad 48:56
poetry,

Dr Emma Southon 48:59
and so someone pays them and they just disappear, and Pliny is like left wondering where they have gone because they’ve just like gone. Oh, okay, yeah, I’ll take a sesterces and go and listen to some shit poetry, and and he’s like, guys, guys, yeah, and it is a like because of the one side you have the guys who are like will not let anybody breathe, and like the terror that they assert over people. But you know that those people in the background were just like dropping as many plates as they can because they hate that guy so much, or stealing as much wine as they can. But even like the guys who imagine themselves to be the good guys. Like Pliny just really thinks of himself as like the best of guys because he’s non-violent. He says that he allows his he allows his slaves to make wills as long as they own they leave their possessions to somebody within the household. So it can’t leave the household, but. He lets them like have this kind of illusion of autonomy, and he’ll often free them on their deathbeds, which he thinks of himself as being like profoundly kindly for doing this. And how generous? Exactly, like words of no loss to you, is it, Penny? But

Dr Rad 50:15
yeah.

Dr Emma Southon 50:15
So he like imagines himself as being this lovely guy, but even then, people are just like, you know, I just don’t really like. I just don’t really feel like it today. And like you see everywhere, just constant resistance to the concept of being enslaved. Like they might be a slave, they’re aware that that is a possibility, but in the end, they have a human will, and they’re gonna live their own lives anyway.

Dr G 50:39
They find a way around the system. Yeah. Well, good for them. Yeah. I have to say, it puts it in a in a slightly better light, I suppose. If the level of resistance is like everyday and quite common for for a lot of them,

Dr Emma Southon 50:54
it is. And the way the only like they this is why they’re constantly like trying to balance this. Like, oh, if you’re good, you can have some money of your own, and you can maybe get manumitted. And if you’re bad, we’ll beat you to death. But most people don’t use either of those particularly as as much as we think they do. Like they’re not manumitting on a mass scale like every day. They’re not only a few people will ever get that, and they’re not beating people to death every day because that would be very messy, and most people don’t actually like beating people that much. Like even the Romans have levels of like they don’t want to be doing that constantly every day, and the ones that do are a bit freakish, and so for the most part, they just everybody is just enduring a real shit situation where the enslaved people don’t want to be there, and the enslaver is like, have the fuck’s sake! Like they just keep stealing my stuff. And you’re like, well, both the easy way to solve this would just be to not have slavery. But sure, continue.

Dr Rad 51:53
The Romans really persisted. Yeah, like there’s got to be a way. Yeah, there’s got to be a way we can make this system work for our benefit. If only,

Dr Emma Southon 52:01
yeah, yeah, and so you see a concept, and even like people leaving, people running away from slavery, just freeing yourself is a terrifying thing to do. Like, and I think there’s a really good thriller to be written about somebody trying to run away because the way that the Roman state suddenly shifted into action, and the way that you can suddenly see how pervasive the army and surveillance system of like like you cannot move along the roads without being seen constantly. You cannot get in and out of the city without being seen. You cannot the mechanisms of the army are are a surveillance system as well as a security system, but people still do it. People do it all the time, and plenty of them get away and do manage to end up in either some distant part of the empire on the other side of the world. They have to leave everything to do it. They have to restart their life in like the Balkans or Egypt or somewhere where they don’t speak the language. But they do do it, and they can do it, and it infuriates the Romans. Plenty of them are recaptured and reenslaved, but they still tried it. They still caused some havoc while they were doing it, and had some time where they were free before they were reenslaved and tattooed or collared or whatever. But they still had a bash at it, and good for them.

Dr G 53:23
Yeah, fair enough as well. I mean, for every individual who’s in that situation, it’s not like the other examples are going to deter you, because it’s still your life that you’re trying to find a way to live as freely as possible. So you mentioned manumission, and we get a lot of stories where manumission is granted on the deathbed of the slave-that feels like a useless kind of manumission in some respects. But for those who were managed to be manumitted before the end of their life, what was it like for people post-slavery?

Dr Emma Southon 53:57
So when you are freed in the Roman world, you become a third type of person, so you enter in their legal system a third space of being a person who has experienced slavery and is stained by slavery forever, and it can still be called a slave as an insult, but does have freedom, a conditional freedom, because it can be taken away from you, and sometimes is if you’re not grateful enough, if you’re freed during the lifetime of the person who owned you, but it is nonetheless freedom. And if you’re owned by a Roman citizen, then you get citizenship, which is obviously brilliant because you go from being completely unprotected by the law, like your body and your soul are meaningless, into being the most protected person in the empire, all of a sudden, even throwing stuff at you as an insult to the empire, and you can do you can prosecute people for it, and you can never be put in chains by anyone other than the Roman authorities ever again. And like it’s a real kind of shooting straight to the top of the citizenship hierarchy. I think that you have to remember that most people in the empire. And enslaved people can’t be properly rational because they have had to submit their will, and that means that they can will never be able to form a proper masculine citizen Roman brain. It’s

Dr Rad 1:00:10
not the Roman identity that we’re going for, guys. It’s off-brand. So perhaps to wrap things up, you’ve given us some fantastic stories today about some of the lives you’ve encountered, but is there one that you’d like to finish off with that you haven’t mentioned so far that you felt was really compelling in all of the stories that you came across?

Speaker 4 1:00:31
I’d say the one that really stuck with me was one from one of the columbaria from the Statilii, which is this family that you can piece together through the epigraphy, and there’s a guy called Euticus, and he is married to a white woman called Aphrodisia, and they have three children who all live to adulthood. So they have a daughter and two sons, and then you can see them die basically. So they are all then commemorated at various ages. So their daughter dies at 16, and then their son dies, and then Aphrodisia dies, and then Euticus dies, and you can see them commemorating each other. On the one hand, you’re like, oh, this is like the tiniest little fragment of this family, but on the other hand, you’re like this family. Eutychus was born into slavery, it seems, because he is described as being a faithful, faithful something of Messalina, and he has brothers who are in slavery. At some point, he met Aphrodisia, and they fell in love enough to have three children, and they had at least three who grew into adulthood, which means that Aphrodicia was pregnant three times as an enslaved woman, and then you can imagine the what it is like to be in love, to find out that you are pregnant to be a pregnant woman to then give birth in wherever she gave birth in this household three times and to hold a baby and then to raise those children into adulthood and go through all of the experiences of first talking first walking learning to read they all they all end up in quite close positions to the family, like one of them is a as a dresser. One of them is something to do with curtains that nobody understands. One of them is a the daughter is just a pediske, like a foot woman, footman of Messalina, and so they’re all they all end up in these quite close positions, and then they all die of various things in their late teens and early 20s until there is just one son left, but then you can see this mourning, like the way they describe one another as you know, like they have gone out of their way to raise this money to buy these things, and sometimes they have to club together with a friend. So when Euticus dies, like a bunch of friends have to get together because Aphrodisia is already dead, and he’s only got one son left. And like, this is a whole family that comes together and lives together and loves each other in slavery. And we don’t know what happens to the son Aphrodisias, like whether he makes it out or whether he also is sold somewhere if he dies because he nobody commemorates him. But it’s a whole family. It’s a whole family life. It is all the emotions that are of falling in love, of marrying, of describing each other as husband and wife, which they’re not legally allowed to do. They’re not legally husband and wife, but that’s what they describe each other as calling each other mother and son and father and son, which they’re not legally allowed to do, but they do it anyway. And just all of the the beauty that there is in that being a human and having a human life and having that much love for one another that continues into death. That because they’re Romans, they are then going to that, like they’ve put each other in that space, so they can go there and they can clean the tombs and they can do the rituals of of ancestor worship that occur in Roman religion, and that they’re doing that over and over again, and it’s beautiful, and it’s heart wrenching that this happened in slavery, and it’s heart wrenching that they all died so young, but they, what you see in those moments of pain is is their humanity and their essential humanity that is the same as all of our humanity of wanting to love and be loved and doing that in like quite horrific circumstances. And so those are the ones that I think of whenever I think about even the highest echelons of slavery. Like they lived in slavery, they died in slavery, but they loved in slavery as well.

Dr G 1:04:45
Thank you. I think holding on to that essence of the human spirit is really where we want to end up with all of this, because the numbers are horrifying, the stories are so largely traumatizing. That to find an essence of hope somewhere in there, I think, is vitally important because it’s such a human story, and so many people experienced it in the Roman Empire.

Dr Emma Southon 1:05:09
Exactly, and it is, you know, it is a as much the story of Rome as the story of Cicero is, or the story of any of the, if anything, it is there were only like at max 900 senators, and each of those probably own 900 people. So it’s a more representative story of Rome than than the story of any senator. And so, what I hope people get from the book is is that these are people’s lives, and that they’re as important to the the story of Roman history as any other human life.

Dr Rad 1:05:41
Yeah, no. Look, I really love the way that you have explored these various themes throughout the chapters. I must admit, there were times where it felt like each chapter was like a punch to the gut, where I’m like, oh ,really? Just they just keep coming. The blues just keep coming. But it’s really important to think about, especially considering obviously that it’s not like slavery is an issue that doesn’t exist in our modern world, and so it is really important to think about these questions because unfortunately there are still so many enslaved people that exist in this world right now. It

Dr Emma Southon 1:06:13
is, and also because people will still use this imagined version of the Roman Empire that doesn’t include slavery to to argue for ideas today, but also to argue for the bringing back of slavery. And people, you know, there are people in this world who argue for slavery, and so confronting the reality of what slavery is for the people who are enslaved, I think, is important to counter people who who think that slavery is something that is either fine or not worth considering, or a a sacrifice worth making for the glory of Rome?

Dr Rad 1:06:50
Listeners, I definitely advise that you rush out and pick up a copy of Emma’s latest book. It really does highlight those emotional aspects, the lived aspects of what it would be actually like to be an enslaved person in the Roman Empire, which isn’t often a perspective that you get even in books on ancient slavery.

Dr Emma Southon 1:07:10
Yeah, and gosh, have I read them?

Dr Rad 1:07:14
So thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing that with us. Are there any other book projects on the horizon before we bid you farewell, I

Dr Emma Southon 1:07:22
am currently working on another children’s book by myself. So yeah, which is hopefully out next year. But is by far. I thought that this was the hardest thing I’d ever written in my life, and now I’m writing for children. I’m like, oh no, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. This is my childhood. Can’t even swear.

Dr G 1:07:45
Oh dear goodness me! Well, looking forward to hearing more about that as the time gets close. Thank

Dr Emma Southon 1:07:51
you so much for having me back. It’s always so fun to talk to you.

Dr Rad 1:08:03
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 Joy de Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collectivemem.com. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad-free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch, we have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on Ko-fi. And we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if your imperial coffers do not overfloweth, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five-star review wherever you listen. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – Servus: How Slavery Built the Roman Empire with Dr Emma Southon appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

All Hail Camillus!

Whilst the tribune of the plebs were still agitating for control of the Pomptine territory, there was remarkable harmony between the patricians who were appointed as military tribunes with consular power. Camillus had been voted into power, and the rest of his colleagues decided to fall in line and follow his lead, especially once it became clear that war was on the horizon.

The Romans would have liked to teach their former allies, the Latins and Hernici, a lesson. The Etruscans also seemed to be up to something. However, it would end up being the Volscians who attracted Rome’s attention. According to some “fugitives” who showed up in Rome, problems were arising in Antium, a very important Volscian coastal town. It was time for Camillus to get down to business. The Romans were not ignoring warnings any more after everything that had happened with the Gauls! Lesson learned.

All Systems Are Go

Camillus went into war preparation mode, organising three forces under his fellow military tribunes. One section of the army would serve under Camillus himself and his sidekick Valerius, one would keep a lookout for any attacks from the Etruscans, and the final section, made up of the men who were too old or decrepit to serve anywhere else, would guard the city itself. The Senate and the Roman people were filled with positivity, not only because Camillus was an angel sent from heaven, but because of this amazing display of teamwork. Why can’t elite dudes always be this selfless? 

With that sorted, Camillus and Valerius were off to Satricum, where some of the troublemakers from Antium were gathering up some Volscian forces and also a large number of ‘volunteers’ from the Latins and Hernici. Ouch! The Romans were devastated to see that their former allies would do them dirty like that! 

Roman military standards, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Throwing the Standard

Camillus knew these sad sacks in front of him were not going to be able to secure victory – not unless they had one of the best pep talks in HISTORY! Jumping on his horse, Camillus delivered immortal words: “Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you’re part of this team!” But he could not stop with mere words. Actions are what count. Camillus ended his speech by leading the charge himself, either dragging the nearest standard-bearer with him into the fray or throwing the standard into the enemy forces. Baller move, Camillus! 

Well, the Romans could not allow the standards to fall into Volscian hands. Suitably inspired, a furious battle ensued. Even with passion on their side, the Romans were still vastly outnumbered. Would they secure another triumph for Camillus? And would he then be able to finally turn his attention to the root of the problem, Antium? 

Join us to learn all about Camillus’ history, and a bit about Rome too. 

Things to Look Out For:

• Sad, sensitive little Roman soldiers 
• A remarkably easy siege 
• Betrayal upon betrayal!
• Dr G’s jet lag – she’s a trooper! 
• Dr Rad realising that maybe it was meant to be Hernicans (not Hernicians) all this time? 
• An archaeological find that makes Livy look like a GENIUS historian – just saying! 

Our Players 386 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 401, 398, 394, 384, 381

Ser. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 384, 382, 380, 376, 370, 368

Q. Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 402, 398, 395, 390, 388

L. Quinctius (- f. – n.) Cincinnatus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 385, 377

L. Horatius – f. – n. Pulvillus (Pat)

P. Valerius L. f. L. n. Potitus Poplicola (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 384, 380, 377, 370, 367

Tribune of the Plebs (listed for 387 BCE)

L Sicinius

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 6.6-10
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 15.25.1, 15.27.4; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 35; Frontinus, Strategems, 2.8.4 Vitruvius, On Architecture 1.7; CIL 6.1308.
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cancik, Hubert, Helmuth Schneider, Christine F. Salazar, and August Friedrich von Pauly. Brill’s New Pauly : Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Leiden ; Brill, 2002.
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Dubbini, R. 2016. ‘A new Republican temple on the via Appia, at the borders of Rome’s urban space’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 29: 327-347. DOI:10.1017/S1047759400072160 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Oakley, S. P. (Ed.). (2016). A commentary on Livy : books VI-X. Vol. 1, Introduction and book VI. Oxford University Press. 
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Serrati, J. 2019. ‘“Take the sword away from that girl!” Combat, gender, and vengeance in the middle Republic” in Armstrong, J., Fronda, M. P. eds. Romans at War: Soldiers, Citizens, and Society in the Roman Republic (Routledge), pp 117-119.
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.
• Peter VanDerPuy, and Peter VanDerPuy. “The Price of Expansion: Agriculture, Debt-Dependency, and Warfare during the Rise of the Republic, c. 450-287.” In Romans at War, 1st ed., edited by Jeremy Armstrong and Michael P. Fronda, 35–51. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351063500-3.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of BBC Sounds and Orange Free Sounds.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, 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 0:58
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am Dr. G,

Dr Rad 1:07
and I am Dr. Rad,

Dr G 1:09
and we are somewhere in the Middle Republic. Oh yes,

Dr Rad 1:13
it’s getting very iffy around the dates. The circas are jumping off the page,

Dr G 1:18
and because the dating is all over the shop, and the chronology is not going so well. Our sources are also very out of sync, I think, and I think might become apparent as we get into this episode. But nominally, we’re in the year 386 BECE.

Dr Rad 1:37
We are Doctor G, but lest we forget the monumental year that was 387. For a brief recap, in case people have somehow forgotten the crazy, stupendous events that took place in that year.

Dr G 1:50
Well, let us not forget, because I also have things to say about that year now that I’ve done more research. Oh, okay,

Dr Rad 1:56
okay. Well, look, for me, I think we were very much still in the rebuilding era, post whatever happened between the Gauls and Rome, bit of a mystery. But I think we can safely say it wasn’t a pleasant encounter. It might have got aggressive. It might have got violent.

Dr G 2:14
Yes, yes. And Rome’s ability to recover from things like this is this is the first time they’ve gone through something like this, it’s never been this bad.

Dr Rad 2:23
It has never been this bad. I think that that is definitely something we can agree upon. So, my account is definitely still showing the Romans dealing with that in terms of not just rebuilding, but actually just mentally processing what has happened and trying to move on with their lives,

Dr G 2:41
and apparently this involves the dedication of a temple, amongst other things,

Dr Rad 2:48
naturally.

Dr G 2:48
And I didn’t have much to say about that temple, and so I think the bulk of the things I’ll have to say in this episode are going to be retrojection back to that moment.

Dr Rad 2:58
Oh, okay. No, please tell me what have you discovered?

Dr G 3:01
Ah, so the temple to Mars. Yes, yes, yes. I’m glad you’ve asked. So when you mentioned it in the previous episode, I was like, well, I knew I knew we had two men for the sacred things at play, but I had no idea what they were really doing. And as it turns out, they’re doing something very important. And I do have some things to say about this now that I’ve done some more investigation because my sources just didn’t mention this temple at all, and this temple is situated outside the pomerium, as far as we are aware.

Dr Rad 3:34
Yeah,

Dr G 3:34
and so you head out of the Porta Capena, and in between the first milestone and the second milestone, there’s supposed to be this temple to Mars Gradivus, a particular version of Mars, distinctly associated with war, as opposed to the other kinds of things that Mars can be associated with:

Dr Rad 3:55
chocolate, nougat, caramel, etc.

Dr G 3:57
Exactly, and because Mars in, I think by the time we get to the imperial period, is definitely just a war god. Okay, we tend to overlook the fact that from an italic, archaic perspective, Mars has a lot more going on in terms of his divine associations. This is true. He’s got connections to the harvest. He’s got connections to looking after children. There’s a whole range of different things that go with the god Mars that then get separated out as we get further into Roman history. And so this temple really marks a defining moment of saying this is the Mars for war.

Dr Rad 4:38
Okay,

Dr G 4:39
and it’s really important that it’s outside the pomerium because if Mars is about war in this case, dare not have any weapons inside the pomerium. So everything needs to be outside. This also means that you can have the troops gather there as a final blessing before they go out in on camp. You can meet there and head out on the Appian Way once that exists, which it might not to a very large extent at this point in time. But we do have some interesting details that come out about this temple. So, from an archeological perspective, I came across a paper published in 2016 by Dubbini talking about the records that are held by the Italian Ministry that looks after archeology, and there was an excavation done on the Appian Way,

Dr Rad 5:34
yeah,

Dr G 5:34
in the right kind of location by the Soprintendenza, this Ministry for Archeology and the Arts and things like that.

Dr Rad 5:44
Yeah,

Dr G 5:44
because they had to create a new sewer system. Rome was expanding. It was the 1970s. They’re like, we need to put in more sewerage works, and they dug up this whole section next to the IPM Way and came across, surprise, surprise, ancient ruins, and they didn’t do a formal archeological excavation at the time, but they did draw pictures of what they found along the way

Dr Rad 6:08
before destroying it. Is that the subtext of this?

Dr G 6:11
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Rad 6:12
Oh wow.

Dr G 6:15
Well, as it turns out, the the local people at the time were like, “You need to get moving with this sewage system, well, sure, yeah, just needs to be finished.

Dr Rad 6:23
I do understand the practicalities, but wow, ouch!

Dr G 6:28
Yes, so there are diagrams and no particular write-up, and the diagrams are suggestive that we’re looking at a temple from the right kind of period, about the fourth century BCE, because it is using the kind of stone that comes from the Palatine. Right. Okay. And the tooth stone from the Palatine was the preferred stone for building early on in the early and middle republic, and it becomes less preferable over time because it’s not a great stone to build with. But it was locally available, so it was close.

Dr Rad 7:09
I was going to say it was close. Yeah, it was there.

Dr G 7:12
So in the beginning, Rome used what was available.

Dr G 7:16
The tufa of the Palatine was there. They’re like, we can use that. That’s fine. And later on, they expanded and realized they were better stone elsewhere, and they started to bring that stone to Rome to do the things.

Dr Rad 7:27
And as Rome becomes more crowded, I mean, you’re going to be lugging that stuff through the streets.

Dr G 7:30
Well, exactly, exactly. And you can’t just cut down mountains all the time, or can you? And so we’ve got this temple, or at least the remains of this temple that seems to have been documented from this sewerage excavation work in the 1970 s, which could be the temple to Mars. We can’t know for sure. It’s almost impossible to go back and check things like that. And the thing that distinguishes this particular building out is that it has two distinct rooms, which, from a perspective of archeology for this period of time, means that there’s potential for two gods to be worshiped, a room for each. So we can’t be entirely sure, but there is some archeological record to suggest that it is at least feasible, there was a temple from the right time period in around about the right location between the first and the second milestone on the Appian Way. So that’s interesting. So there seems to be archeological evidence to substantiate this idea.

Dr Rad 8:39
So wait, wait, wait, wait. What I’m hearing is that, in effect, this archeological evidence is backing up Livy’s highly accurate account of events. Correct?

Dr G 8:57
Look, I’m not going to say no to that. Yes. Yes, score

Dr Rad 9:03
one for the Livy team.

Dr G 9:04
Could Livy be right? Yes, yes, he could. So, these are the things that I thought were quite interesting. Is that we do have evidence that Mars is developing a God of War in this period. Yeah, we do have this idea that there is potential for a temple along the Appian Way in this time period as well. It’s built from the right kind of stone, even if we can’t get back into the area to look at the details in depth. Because I don’t know if anybody wants to dig up a sewerage works, but fair enough. So that was that was exciting to find, I think, because in terms of the way that this temple matches up to the other temples that we know about from this time period, there are a couple of temples on the capital that use the same stone and date from the same period.

Dr Rad 9:59
Okay. And this would seem to make sense, given that Rome has just been through some sort of military disaster, and also that we have been noticing for a little while, maybe like 10-20, years, roughly, that Rome does seem to be getting more militaristic. It’s definitely entering an expansionist kind of area, so that all would seem to, I think, gel very nicely with the idea of Mars as a god of war, and maybe not looking so much at some of the other aspects of him. It makes sense.

Dr G 10:39
Yeah, it does. And these are sorts of things that are backed up by our literary sources as well. So, for instance, we have Vitruvius, who, talking about the architecture of where you would place temples to certain gods, indicates that it is appropriate to place Mars outside of the city boundaries, precisely because of that warlike association, and you don’t want to draw in the risk of war into the interior of the city itself.

Dr Rad 11:07
Because God knows, Rome is so peaceful. I mean, do they ever fight? It’s unhealthy, Doctor G.

Dr G 11:14
Only outside. No fighting inside, guys. So you can have plenty of temples inside as long as it’s not about war, but if it’s going to be about war, it’s got to be outside, you know, just to keep things safe.

Dr Rad 11:27
Sensible. We’ll see how that whole feng shui works out for them, shall we?

Dr G 11:33
We’ll see. We’ll see. All

Dr Rad 11:34
right, Doctor G. Well, I think that means that we’re probably ready to get into 386 BCE. It’s 386 BCE, maybe, kind of, circa,

Dr G 12:04
possibly.

Dr Rad 12:05
Can you tell me, Doctor G, who are our military tribunes with consular power for this year?

Dr G 12:11
Well, we’ve got a list. Let’s see what it’s like. We have Marcus Furius Camillus. He’s baaack. The

Dr Rad 12:20
crowd goes wild.

Dr G 12:25
He is followed by Servius Cornelius Maluginensis. He is joined by in third place Quintus Servilius Fidenas. We’ve seen him before.

Dr Rad 12:37
Definitely.

Dr G 12:38
We’ve also got Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

Dr Rad 12:42
Ooh.

Dr G 12:42
And. since I was like, where are we up to in this family of the Cincinnati? I went and did some delving, did some pos proofography. That also rolls off the tongue.

Dr Rad 12:56
That jet lag’s really hitting you.

Dr G 12:59
Pospo? Nope, I can’t do it.

Dr Rad 13:02
Prosgraphical.

Dr G 13:03
Thank you. I am smart, but I have jet lag, dear listeners. Yeah. Looking into family connections, essentially, and I was like, we’ve got our OG Cincinnati, the shirtless farmer guy.

Dr Rad 13:17
Yeah, very. This guy is

Dr G 13:19
a grandson, so we’re a couple of generations down now.

Dr Rad 13:22
Yep,

Dr G 13:23
I found him. I’m

Dr Rad 13:24
gonna go out in a limb. He’s not as good.

Dr G 13:27
Well, I haven’t heard any stories where he’s got his shirt off yet. So

Dr Rad 13:30
I know, right?

Dr G 13:31
Times are troubling. There’s

Dr Rad 13:34
ways to make yourself famous, and they are as old as time. Exactly.

Dr G 13:40
And he is joined by Lucius Horatius Pulvillus.

Dr Rad 13:45
Unusual,

Dr G 13:46
unusual, yes. And I also looked up this guy because I was sure you did. Pulvillus, little cushion. These are the looking for a soft spot to land. Easy guy.

Dr Rad 13:59
My my.

Dr G 14:01
So the the pulvillus is like the little cushion that sits on top of an altar stand, essentially. So oh,

Dr Rad 14:08
okay. It it

Dr G 14:10
has some significance, but it also comes from the hirati, very famous family.

Dr Rad 14:15
Yes, yes.

Dr G 14:16
And just to remind ourselves of how famous they are, there is the Horatii triplets.

Dr Rad 14:23
Naturally, yeah.

Dr G 14:24
First of all, who get into a battle with the Curiatii triplets, and that is a royal legend under Tullus Hostilius.

Dr Rad 14:33
Yep, and they all end up dead except for one.

Dr G 14:35
Yeah, look, and which one is it? Because it’s one of the Horatii, and then we have Rome’s first consul. One of them was Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, so little cushion again, back. So this is a family with some antiquity. Then we have Horatius Cocles, the guy who. Defends the bridge against Lars Porsena back in around about 508.

Dr Rad 15:06
He was an Etruscan dude. Yeah, and

Dr G 15:08
then we also have Gaius Horatius Pulvillus, the consul of 477 slash 457, and he

Dr Rad 15:20
wait wait 77 slash 57.

Dr G 15:24
Well, not yeah, like in both years. Not oh,

Dr Rad 15:27
I thought that in either role, and I was like, that seems like a bit of a gap.

Dr G 15:31
Not 477 dash 457. He doesn’t hold it for 20 years. Gotcha. He holds it on two separate occasions. I

Dr Rad 15:39
see. I see.

Dr G 15:40
But he also is famous for his military exploits against the Volscians, and so this is a family that has some reputation behind it. So even though we haven’t seen a guy from this family for a little while, and we’re like, little cushion, what do you what do you mean? He he does have a noble legacy for which to build his soft foundation upon.

Dr Rad 16:05
I thought it was a crack about his weight, to be honest.

Dr G 16:08
Well, maybe maybe the maybe the family is soft and cuddly. Who knows? Our final military tribune for this year is Publius Valerius Potitus Publicola.

Dr Rad 16:18
Oh my God, this is a very elite group of military tribunes with consular power. Another one that goes all the way back.

Dr G 16:25
Yep. So big names, big year. I don’t know what happens.

Dr Rad 16:33
Look, I’m telling you right now, warning everybody. I think this is going to be a multiparter. It’s we’re entering a very big time for Rome.

Dr G 16:42
Okay, I’m going to preface this by saying that I have some massive things that are coming up that spread over the next couple of years, and I wonder if they’re starting to come up, maybe in your account now.

Speaker 2 16:54
Possibly, possibly. The chronology is a mess.

Dr G 17:00
I’m intrigued when you say there’s a lot to be said for this year. I’m like, but is there? I’ve certainly got a lot of things to say for next year and maybe the year after that.

Dr Rad 17:12
Look, I just think it’s all this this whole middle 380 s period. I think is an interesting one, and it’s not just because of what Livy tells me it’s also because of some of the secondary scholarship I’ve been looking into. I’m not going to lie, so it’s not all Livy’s fault, but I am predicting a multi-party here.

Dr G 17:30
All right, I’m interested to see where this is going, so I see if I have anything to chip in whatsoever.

Dr Rad 17:36
Look, I just like looking intelligent, like I know what the future holds by saying this in advance, so that’s why I’m saying it. All right, so let’s set the scene a little bit, Dr. G. So one thing we didn’t flag in our recap was that we did talk a little bit about that marshy area, you know, the Pontine Marshes, which seems to be falling increasingly under Roman control in this time period. That was one of our big things that we talked about last time. How it would be absolutely hideous to live there because it hasn’t been drained yet, and yet people are fighting about control of that area because you know land is land, I guess. So the tribunes of the plebs are not going to let the issue of who’s going to control this territory, go. So we have a tribute of the plebs, Lucius Sicinius, bringing

Dr G 18:26
it up again. Okay.

Dr Rad 18:31
We don’t know much about this particular guy who is a tributary of the plebs, but as I think we flagged last time when we were talking about him as being one of the magistrates for he was listed, I think, in one of the one of the magistrates for the previous year. The family of the Sicinii are very much associated with plebeian leadership and activism and whatever else you want to apply to this kind of role that they tend to play. So we’ve got this guy. I think I smell trouble.

Dr G 19:02
Oh-O

Dr Rad 19:04
Yes. So there is a meeting that is therefore organized by the Tribune of the Plebs, and more people are starting shop now. Before the seems like the plebeians were a bit, you know, exhausted from all of the rebuilding, all the trouble that the girls had left behind, and they weren’t as committed to talking about land distribution and those sorts of issues, because they needed to find somewhere to live and survive, whilst Rome was still a shattered ruin of its former self.

Dr G 19:34
Fair enough. The

Dr Rad 19:35
people are now much more predisposed to get feisty with the patricians over the issue of land. Now, this is where I’m going to start flagging some of the secondary scholarship. You and I have had to deal with a lot of issues in the last 100 years or so, which we’ve often wondered: Is it real? Did it really happen? Or is this just some? Thing that seems a little bit like something that happened in the late Republic, and so our sources, which are written so much later, are kind of applying the knowledge that they have about issues that Rome was experiencing back into this time period to help it all make sense and you know flesh it out a little bit. However, as you have always reminded me, Dr. G, it has to be based on something. Like there must have been something in whatever records they were using or sources they were using that reminded them of the issues that they were familiar with in the first place. You would assume they’re not writing fiction here, technically.

Dr Rad 20:38
One of the things that we’re probably going to be talking about a little bit as we explore this narrative is how much we can say that this is something that is really going on, and I did come across this really interesting article, which kind of tied into what we’ve been talking about for a little while now with the early republic, which is that our sources make it seem like it was a relatively easy transition from the regal period into the republic. It seems like a lot of the institutions that we’re familiar with were, you know, set up fairly soon. You know, a lot of the positions and that sort of thing.

Dr G 21:20
Ah, yes. Like the question of like the consulship.

Dr Rad 21:23
Exactly. Exactly. Does the

Dr G 21:25
consulship really exist yet?

Dr Rad 21:27
Yeah. And there’s also been yeah. There’s also been so many things that have come up, and we’re like, well, are you actually doing that? Like military pay, for example, is that actually a thing? How much can we really trust our accounts and what’s going on here? And we’ve also talked a lot about the idea that perhaps Rome, particularly in the fifth century, is actually a lot more feudal than our sources would perhaps like us to believe. It’s not that they don’t have magistrates. It’s not that this is completely made up, but the state might have been a bit more loosely organized than our sources, you know, indicate basically, and there may have been more a situation where people were clients or associated with some of these really powerful families and strong men who existed around the place, and therefore the warfare itself was also maybe a little bit more loosely organized in the way that it functioned, we’ve talked about these sorts of things before. This also, though, may feed into these issues around land distribution and exactly how that worked. In the sense of, you would presume that these local families and strongmen probably also have some sort of relationship to the control of the land that Rome has power over at this point in time, and therefore the land issues, whilst they seem sometimes to be influenced by what happened in the late Republic, particularly post the Gracchi brothers, it may be something that was actually happening, particularly in this time period, because Rome is starting to expand a little more, and it does seem that we are seeing more of a transition as we head into the fourth century BCE, into maybe a different organization of the Roman state. So all of this stuff that we sort of talked about in the fifth century might be starting to morph a little bit as we get into the fourth century, and therefore I’m just flagging that now as something that we might talk about with the whole land issue. So my whole point being, is it fictional? Probably not entirely, but the reality of the situation is obviously very difficult to figure out.

Dr G 23:42
Yeah, it’s a tricky time, and I think we’ve got this landmark event of whatever is happening with the Gaulish incursion into Rome to really spark ideas around. Well, where are the boundary stones? Like, where is the common property versus the private property. Yeah, and if we have to rebuild this place, what does that really look like now? Yeah, and having that extend out further to thinking about family control, and particularly things taking this back to Mars a little bit as well. One of the scholars that I was looking at Serrati, who was writing a paper in 2019, talking about the language that is used, and the term Sodales, which is used to refer to the priesthood of Mars, is also a term used for a band of fighters that fights under a warlord, so there is a a connection to be made from a Latin perspective as well between what’s going on from this sort of like warlord feudal rampaging families type of thing to being like how do we make this. Something that sits within the realms of the state in a sacred and appropriate way, and be like, what if we make some of these guys priests? What if we had a god of war? Everybody,

Dr Rad 25:16
I like the way you’re thinking, expansionist Cap on,

Dr G 25:21
yeah. Those noble families, noble, may be trying to find ways to give credibility to the things that they have done and the things that they’d like to keep doing.

Speaker 3 25:32
Yeah,

Dr G 25:33
under a more under a system which is calling for larger formalization of like what is Roman, how does it work?

Dr Rad 25:40
Yes, and that’s I think what a lot of the articles I’ve been looking at are talking about. As we get start getting into the fourth century BCE, we do start to see a bit more formalization, perhaps, of the state, a bit more centralization happening as we are transitioning a little bit out of this kind of warlordish period. And as I say, it’s not that Rome as a concept or a state didn’t exist in the four hundreds, but it’s more that it just might not have been quite as cohesive.

Dr G 26:11
Yeah, and I think there is a sense in which there feels like there is a structure to what is going on in the fifth century because we get the names year on year. Yes, and the extent to which that might be an imposition on what is a far more chaotic period of Rome’s history is open to conjecture, really. But it does seem like we’re getting a slightly more solidified version of Rome as we move further into the fourth century.

Dr Rad 26:45
Yeah, and if you think about things like the 12 Tables, which obviously are supposedly a product of the mid fifth century BCE, we definitely get a lot of talk about patron-client relationship. We obviously get a lot of concern about agriculture and property boundaries and that sort of thing, which all makes sense for the kind of society that they would have had, and that gels though with the idea that patron-client relationships obviously might have been particularly important because you had a relationship perhaps with a local family who were very powerful and wealthy in your area, and that might have had something to do with the land that you had and where you lived, and if you went to war and in what capacity. So, but we’re starting to see that shift a little bit as Rome is at war more and more often, and does seem to be interested in really truly expanding and not just kind of raiding and terrorizing its neighbors, and having that done back to them. Let’s not forget that

Dr G 27:49
the Rome I know and love is over. I know,

Dr Rad 27:52
I know. So that’s what the people are up to. The Senate, on the other hand, are toying with the idea of going to war with their former allies, the Latins and the Hernici, and I have to have a little corrections corner here. And this is so alarming. I can’t believe I have been doing this for God knows how long. Honestly, I have somehow been mispronouncing these allies for so long. I just inserted an eye, and so I’ve been saying the Hernicians this whole time. I just inserted an eye. I just saw it, and it just kept being something that I saw, and I visualized, and I suddenly realized everything I’ve been reading has actually said the Hernicans, not the Hernicians. And so I’m sorry, it’s ruined every single episode because I don’t know how many times we’ve talked about these people, but it’s not meant to be the Hernicians.

Dr G 28:55
I mean, I don’t don’t blame yourself too much because I think when it’s written in an anglicized version, it gets turned into Hernicians. So it really does depend on whether you’re looking at the Latin versus the Anglicization.

Dr Rad 29:09
Look, very possibly. I’m hoping that because I was like, oh my god, have I just been inserting an I this whole time, and I never realized that this is not how it’s supposed to be?

Dr G 29:19
I mean.

Dr Rad 29:23
it’s crazy.

Dr G 29:24
I mean, this doesn’t seem like a good time for Rome to decide that maybe they don’t need their allies anymore. I’m just gonna put that out there.

Dr Rad 29:31
Well, no, but remember, there’s been there’s been some issues. Remember, there have been some issues. It’s been tense between their former allies and Rome. We don’t really know exactly the truth of the matter. The Roman accounts seem to be indicating treacherous behavior on their part. It may have been something to do with them renegotiating their relationship, but the Romans obviously are writing this very much like the. Guys, they got no honor. However, they decided that they were going to put this off because at this point in time, war with Etruria was seeming like far more of a problem.

Dr G 30:12
Ooh, ah, the old war with Etruria. All right, so I mean, in terms of like complexities, these are the Etruscans. They’re the Etrurians. They’re the Tyrrhenians. They have so many different names. They do these people to the north of Rome, who are different people, and I do have some details on this. There is an inscription of all things, and I even have a picture of the inscription, which is kind of amazing. An illustration, I should say.

Dr Rad 30:39
Yeah,

Dr G 30:39
and it relates to Camillus, so I don’t want to say too much.

Dr Rad 30:44
I’m about to talk about Camillus. Do you want me to tell you? Yes,

Dr G 30:46
please, because I have some things to say about this inscription, and I’m interested to see what Livy might be suggesting if Camillus is involved.

Dr Rad 30:56
Well, essentially, the Latins and the Hernici, Hernicii, whatever you want to call them. I don’t know what to call them anymore. I’ve completely confused. The people of H. They’re in one direction. They’re kind of in between the Aequians and the Volscians. Etruria, different direction. Even and as you say, it’s not just like one people that they’re fighting. But to the north is mostly where we’re heading here. The government is basically now falling under Camillus. He is one of the military tribunes with consular power. There are a lot of other super elite men from very prestigious families serving alongside him. But let’s be real, Doctor G. The five of them together mean nothing in comparison to one of Camillus. Such is his prestige at this point in time.

Dr G 31:49
He is very famous. It’s true.

Dr Rad 31:52
So they’re naturally just going to, you know, fall into line unto him. And so Livy’s Camillus show continues. So the Romans were not as worried about the war with the Etruscans. However, when some-and this is-I’m quoting my translation here-some fugitives. What exactly does that mean from the Pomptine area arrive to tell the Romans that actually the Antiates are kicking off now. This means people from Antium, which is a coastal town. It has bounced around a lot in terms of who controls it. It’s obviously in an enviable location, given the interest in this particular place. It was Latin. It then fell under Volscian control and does seem to become a very important Volscian location. The Romans have recently defeated it in around 408, so they’ve had some success against this place. So once again, we’re shifting gears a little bit in terms of where our attention should be, the Latins had sent some soldiers to assist in this war that was kicking off. But officially, their government policy was: we’re not a part of it. We have not come out in the open and said that we’re going to do anything. Therefore, Rome cannot be mad. We’re just saying that if some young men of around military age want to volunteer and help out in this conflict that seems to be arising, we’re just not going to prevent them. You know, it’s a it’s a free world, right?

Dr G 33:38
Fair enough. Yeah, get in there, guys.

Dr Rad 33:40
Yeah, the Romans no longer were going to just sit back and ignore these sorts of warnings when they arose. Doctor G, the Senate are eternally grateful at this moment, and they thank the gods that Camillus is there to help them in their time of need. Otherwise, they would have just made him dictator again because, c’mooon.

Dr G 34:02
Oh boy, not

Dr Rad 34:04
again! So it’s purely because he happened to be elected one of the military tribunes that we don’t have yet another Camillus dictatorship at this point in time. Now, as I say, the rest of the military tribunes openly say that look, when it comes to military matters, Camillus, you are the guy. You call all the shots. It is not an insult to us and our reputation. We acknowledge your greatness, and we are not going to try and steal the spotlight from you. You deserve it. And the Senate say, “This is what we want to see, guys.

Dr G 34:42
We want one man rule with all of the illusion of no man rule. That’s what we want. We want everybody to be falling into line with one guy, but we also want to be able to say we’re not ruled by one guy.

Dr Rad 34:58
Yeah. So the Senate. Incredibly impressed by this kind of behavior, and they’re obviously holding these military tribunes up as this is the example we want everyone to follow. No conflict, no fighting for glory. Thank you very much. And Camillus himself is also deeply, deeply moved and touched by their profession, and he thanks them as well. Camillus says that he feels very responsible for the Roman people and the Roman state at this point in time. I mean, he had to leave them just so many times. It’s basically his place now. They may as well rename it, call it after him. I’m just kidding. He didn’t say that. I’m suggesting

Dr G 35:46
an insertion from Doctor Rad sounds just like the source material, though. So exactly, exactly.

Dr Rad 35:52
And the Senate are definitely feeling this way about Camillus as well. However, he feels it even more heavily than usual in 386, and that’s because the other military tribunes have just openly said, “Hey, this is your show, pal. You tell us what to do, and we’ll do it. But we are looking to you for instruction. So it’s just really hitting him-the reality of his leadership. It’s a blessing, but also, what a burden, Doctor G.

Dr G 36:23
it’s hard to be at the top.

Dr Rad 36:25
Exactly. So Camillus says, you know, I just, I only hope I can live up to my previous great deeds, my amazing reputation. I need to make sure that everything stays right this way, and so we’re off war with Antium, Doctor G. Camillus, however, sees this as not a major problem. He doesn’t see Antium as a huge threat at this point in time, but he understands the Romans are feeling a little bit on edge. After all, Gauls, the trauma, the flashbacks, and the Romans had, let’s face it, always made their neighbors super jealous because it’s Rome who doesn’t want to be Rome. I mean, everybody wants to be like them. It’s no wonder they constantly have so many problems. So right now, he sees the strategy is being this: we’re going to need a few different armies and a few different generals to command them. So Camillus says, Publius Valerius, I need you to help me, and Quintus Servilius, I need you to set up your army camp near Rome and just keep a lookout for the Etruscans. Make sure they don’t try anything while we’re dealing with this other problem, and also our former allies, the Latins and the Hernicans. We need to keep a lookout for them too. They’re clearly up to something.

Dr G 37:54
Those guys, our supposed friends. Exactly.

Dr Rad 37:57
Yeah. Nobody’s trusting them at this point in time. Camillus feels very confident that Servilius is an incredibly capable person and would be able to distinguish his ancestors. After all, he has had lengthy service to the state at this point in time. I mean, it’s his sixth time as military tribune, Doctor G. It’s pretty impressive.

Dr G 38:18
Yeah.

Dr Rad 38:19
Now there’s going to be a third army under Lucius Quinctius. This is the Cincinnatus dude, and this is going to be made up of those who are too old or incapable of serving in the regular army, and they are going to stay in Rome itself and defend the city and the walls.

Dr G 38:41
Okay, good plan.

Dr Rad 38:44
He’s covering all his bases here. Yeah, keep

Dr G 38:46
the older and the infirm inside the city, but give them sticks just in case anybody approaches.

Dr Rad 38:51
That’s right. That’s right. Lucius Horatius, lest we forget him, he is going to be in charge of helping to organize the supplies. He is the guy you go to when you need food, corn specifically at this point in time, some sort of grain, missiles, arms and legs, anything you need. This is the guy you go to, and everyone swears to him. Camillus, we’re loving the direction you’re going, and we swear we’re going to do our best for you, pal. We want to distinguish ourselves for you.

Dr G 39:24
Yeah, look. I mean, this doesn’t sound like Roman history at this point. This sounds like the Camillus hagiography because the chances of all of these highly elite men, with some of them with, as you’ve noted, multiple military tribunates under their belt, just falling into step with whatever Camillus suggests seems so unlikely and so very

Dr Rad 39:49
un-Roman. I know it’s spooky, right? This is the power that Camillus has. He just sprinkles his fairy dust, and everything’s fine.

Dr G 39:56
I have concerns.

Dr Rad 40:00
Meanwhile, back in the reality that I’m living in, Valerius is on board with this. He’s very much seeing it as, even though it’s not an official title that’s being bestowed, that Camillus is essentially a dictator, and he is therefore serving as his master of the horse, given that he’s been chosen the prestigious role of assistant.

Dr G 40:22
Guys, I know nobody said it, but I am so master of the horse right now.

Dr Rad 40:27
So people are feeling very confident now. They’re feeling good about Rome’s chances. They’ve got all these guys in charge, and the Senate are saying, “Guys, I mean, there’s really no need for a dictator ever again if people like this serve as military tribunes. I mean, look at them working together, not caring about rank and glory. They’re just putting the well-being of Rome first, not stroking their own egos.

Dr G 41:00
This is the biggest red flag that this is a fictional story. I have to say, Livy

Dr Rad 41:05
wrote it, therefore it is true. Livy, what

Dr G 41:08
are you trying to do to me? This can’t be real.

Dr Rad 41:12
They’re just highlighting that this is the direction they really want Rome to go.

Dr G 41:16
That’s fine, but that is not the same as writing a history of how Rome went,

Dr Rad 41:22
Camillus and Valerius-they got to get busy, Doctor G. All legal business must be suspended. It’s time for a levy. We got to get this show on the road. Come on, people. Yeah, I think the fact that Camillus is doing this-it does show that they are taking this quite seriously. You know, they’re suspending business and whatnot. So they are heading out for Satricum first of all. We’re talking about Satricum. It is a little bit further in from the coast and Antium, as I understand it. Although you are the geography expert of of this show. I’m not going to pretend I really understand geography or directions.

Dr G 42:08
I do have some details for you on this, so I can jump in here. This comes to us courtes of courtesy of Diodorus Siculus, who really gives me nothing for this year, which is pretty on par for him, because he’s much more interested in what’s going on with Greece than he is with what’s going on with Rome. Nevertheless, he gets three quarters of the names of the tribunes right, so good for him. But he’s way more invested in Boeotia than he is invested in Rome right now. But he also says that the Romans dispatch 500 colonists who are exempt from taxes. Very important detail to Sardinia, and you might think that doesn’t sound relevant at all. But what we do know and what we do think is that Rome is not interested in Sardinia at this point because how could they be? One, it’s too far away, and they’ve got local problems, as you’ve well established already.

Dr Rad 43:06
Absolutely,

Dr G 43:07
and they don’t really become interested in Sardinia until much later on in the piece. We’re talking about the Punic Wars, but we think that this is a misreading of Satricum.

Dr Rad 43:18
Ah, okay,

Dr G 43:20
And however this story turns out, we end up getting some colonists sent there in the end. And Satricum obviously is in Latium, which is way closer to Rome, which makes more sense. And it is approximately 60 kilometers southeast of Rome.

Dr Rad 43:41
Yes,

Dr G 43:42
so it’s down in the Alban Hills region, and it’s just on the edge of the infamous Pontine Marshes.

Dr Rad 43:51
Exactly. So it seems to be this is the problem area, right? And it’s not obviously it’s not too far for the Volscians. It’s kind of close to the erstwhile allies, who Rome is now questioning: Are you actually at all? So that’s why we’re heading to this place, because this is allegedly where the Antietes are starting to gather up young men from the Volscians, traditional enemies of Rome, and also a large number of these volunteers from the Latins and the Hernicans, and it seems like they had lots of men at this point in time because potentially there hasn’t been as much warfare on their doorstep as traditionally there has been

Dr G 44:42
while Rome has been distracted with the Gauls for a single year. 20,000 new men have grown to full adulthood to the south. Watch out, everybody! That’s

Dr Rad 44:56
right. That’s right. The Roman soldiers. Are extremely concerned about this relationship that they see developing between their former allies and their traditional enemies. They don’t like it one bit, Doctor G. They don’t like it at all. The Centurions go to Camillus and they say, “Look, the troops are feeling a bit down at this whole situation. We’re not going to lie, Camillus. The morale has taken a serious hit. I mean, this is much worse than coming home and finding out that your wife has been cheating on you

Dr Rad 45:30
to see our former allies behaving this way. I mean, I just can’t take it. How am I supposed to fight a war under these conditions,

Dr G 45:41
Dear Marcia. I’ve lost all my morale.

Dr Rad 45:45
I thought Ted was my friend. We have fought side by side so many times, and then I see him on the battlefield with those Volscians, and I tell you, I was sick to my stomach.

Dr G 46:03
gonna have to rip his eyeballs out, and I’m gonna cry when I do it.

Dr Rad 46:08
I take no pleasure in this anymore. So they’re feeling outnumbered, outmanned. Camillus hears all of this and immediately, of course, jumps on his horse and gets ready to rally the troops because this is a Camillus moment. Yeah, yeah. Uh oh.

Dr G 46:51
Oh no.

Dr Rad 46:53
So Camillus says to the assembled Romans, “What the hell, guys? Do you not know who you are? Do you not know who you are fighting? Your Romans-they’re trash. What is going on here? The enemy is always just an opportunity for the Romans to kick ass and win glory. That’s what we do, guys. That’s what this whole reputation is based on. We’re gonna make history on this battlefield because that is what we have always done. And why should today be any different? And he starts to point out that when they have served under him, I mean, let’s listen, Doctor G. Why not against the Falerii, against the city of Ae, and lest we forget the Gauls, the Romans have proved themselves time and time again. The combination of Camillus and Roman forces is guaranteed victory. I mean, it’s a no-brainer. Lest they forget, it’s only just happened that Camillus celebrated a triumph for three victories that he seemingly achieved within almost a day.

Dr G 48:20
It was confusing that too. Not gonna lie. I mean, at

Dr Rad 48:23
most a week, he managed to triumph over the Volscians, very people they’re looking at right now, and the Aequians and the Etrurians. I mean, they’re basically fighting the same people right now. Or are they all freaked out in their heads? Do they have a problem because Camillus is somehow not a dictator right now? Is that affecting the way that they look at him, and therefore rattling them? I mean, Camillus is just such a superstar, Doctor G. He doesn’t want to have to have the power of dictator when he is commander. He’s the same guy, regardless of his title, and they need to understand that whether he’s a dictator, whether he’s in exile. Camillus is Camillus. Come on, he’s just awesome wherever he is. That’s his brand, Doctor G. The Romans should also feel the same about themselves, regardless of the situation. They are awesome, and Camillus knows as soon as the battle starts, they will show that, and they will be victorious, and the enemy will just flee. That’s how it always goes.

Dr G 49:44
This does not seem like the rousing speech he may have hoped.

Dr Rad 49:48
I don’t know, Doctor G. I mean, are you doubting Camillus? I

Dr G 49:52
am just a little bit, and maybe Livy’s version of Camillus as well. It just seems a little bit preposterous at this point.

Dr Rad 49:59
Temple of Mars. Just gonna say, always accurate. I mean,

Dr G 50:03
one example of accuracy does not an accurate historian always make. It’s

Dr Rad 50:11
all I need. So Camila Sen decides that he’s going to lead the charge personally, just to add that extra bit of inspiration. Yes, yes. This is what makes Camillus such a legend, Doctor G. And so he leaps off his horse. He grabs the nearest standard bearer and he races with him towards the enemy forces, crying out, “Forward, soldiers! Ah, the soldiers, of course, are like, “Oh my God, what am I watching just here? My commander is charging into battle. He’s got the standards, and I mean, lest we forget, Doctor G. Camillus, he’s no spring chicken anymore. For an old dude to be behaving this way, the Romans have no choice but to get all fired up and to follow his lead with the passion that he’s called for.

Dr G 51:06
Now this is a story which is also related by Frontinus, and I’ve just got a little very short excerpt which says that he seized the standard bearer by the hand, dragged him forcibly into the hostile ranks of the Volscian. The standard bearer

Dr Rad 51:25
is like, “What? What’s happening right now? Yeah, yeah. Why are

Dr G 51:28
you doing this? I

Dr Rad 51:29
signed up to hold the standard.

Dr G 51:31
My job is just this whole stick, guys. Why would you endanger the standard like this? You know, the sacred standard is now completely endangered by Camillus. Good job, but this. shames everybody into fighting because obviously, if you lose the standard, it’s an absolute disaster. So they need to get involved. So regardless of how they felt, and maybe they the morale was low, but for whatever reason they were hesitating. It seems like we have this story of Camillus going above and beyond, and also taking this huge risk because if he’s wandering into the enemy ranks, he’s like, “All right, guys, follow me. Stand a bearer beside me. Like, no, why?

Dr Rad 52:15
Why? Well, Livy’s does actually record that there is an alternative version to this story of Camillus taking the hand of the standard bearer and skipping gaily towards the Volscians, which is that he orders the standard bearer to throw the standards into the enemy forces.

Dr G 52:33
Even worse,

Dr Rad 52:34
yeah. Which means that obviously the Roman soldiers are like,

Dr G 52:38
oh man, now I have to. It’s like our ball

Dr Rad 52:40
going over the neighbor’s fence. Now we have to go and fetch it back. God damn

Dr G 52:45
it! I’ve been outwitted again. This Camillus guy really knows his stuff.

Dr Rad 52:50
Strategy, all the way. So the Roman enthusiasm and passion that has been stirred up by Camillus now freaks out the enemy forces, just as Camillus had intended. Doctor G. The Volscians are also naturally quaking in their little boots that Camillus is there at all because he’s been on a real winning streak recently, and they know that because they apparently were some of the people that he has just beaten,

Dr G 53:24
yeah. Look, I mean, they’ve probably been collecting the commemorative trading cards that have been going around, and it’s like, oh no, Camillus is here. He’s the special one. I don’t know. I’ve had him in my debt for a while, but I didn’t know he was going to be played at this event.

Dr Rad 53:39
Now, Camillus’s power on the battlefield can really be seen at this moment when the fighting has actually begun on the left wing of the Roman forces, because the Romans were struggling a bit there, even though obviously there’s no doubt that they’re going to win this battle. There’s a little wobble here, and so Camillus, of course, jumps on his horse, heads over to the left wing, and him just being there immediately turns the battle right around, and he’s able to tell them, “Hey guys, the rest of the army, they’re winning. What’s happening here? Let’s win here too. And the Romans say, “No problem, Camillus. We just needed to hear that from you. All good. We’re gonna win, don’t you worry. So the Romans are now doing very well. However, let’s not pretend that it was too easy. Still a challenge here because they are seemingly very outnumbered by the unity, I suppose, between the Latins, the Hernica’s, and the Volscians. So it is still challenging, and the Romans start to get a little tired. I’m not going to lie, Dr. G, and they realize, this is going to be a real slog if we’re going to continue fighting. Because they just keep coming. They’ve got endless supplies here. Apparently, how do they do it? Nobody knows. The math doesn’t add up. But then all of a sudden, a change in the weather, Doctor G. It becomes incredibly windy and super, super heavy rain. Not ideal conditions for a battle, and it meant that the battle had to finish there because nobody can fight in this kind of weather. Before the Romans could 100% be like, yes, we definitely triumphed on that battlefield. There is no doubt. There’s a little doubt. There is a little doubt. So they all have to walk off the battlefield, go get some shut eye. But it’s during this time period, whilst the Romans are sleeping, whilst time is passing, that the campaign starts to turn in their favor because those faithless Latins and Hernikans, Dr. G, they decide that they’re going to leave the Volscians and just go home. They didn’t sign up for this kind of weather.

Dr G 56:08
I thought it was going to be easier, to be honest, if they just change sides.

Dr Rad 56:14
You promise that Camillus like would not be here. I did not sign up for this, so yeah, an Audi. So the Volscians then have to wake up and realize that their allies, not allies, volunteer forces, whatever you want to call them, have abandoned them, and so they’re like, “This is a dangerous situation. I think we better leave our camp and go and retreat behind the walls of Satricum itself.

Dr G 56:45
This

Dr Rad 56:46
is Camillus’s specialty, Doctor. Now he can commence his assault on the city itself. So he is getting ready for a siege situation. However, the Volscians-they don’t kind of really try to stop him from assaulting the city per se. Okay. And Camillus is realizing, hmm, I don’t think these people are going to fight me tooth and nail right now. This seems like maybe this will be not too difficult a victory here. So Camillus tells his troops that this is not going to be another they kind of situation where it’s just endless resistance and a siege that never

Dr G 57:40
Years later, yeah,

Dr Rad 57:42
exactly, yeah. He’s like, I don’t think this is going to be too complicated. Therefore, what we’re going to do is take this nice and easy. He’s basically going to use the men that he has to approach the city from every single direction, and they manage to take it just by using ladders.

Dr G 58:03
What?

Dr Rad 58:04
And once they’re over the walls, the Volscians are like, “Oh damn, ladders!

Dr G 58:08
Wow, so clever! And they

Dr Rad 58:11
just throw their weapons aside and surrender. Okay, okay. I don’t know if I have much to add to that. That sounds almost wholly implausible, but here we are. Congratulations, Camillus. Well done, Rome. What can I say, Doctor G? I tried to tell you that he would be successful many a time, and you refused to believe in his greatness.

Dr G 58:39
Yes, I suppose that was a mistake on my part.

Dr Rad 58:43
Yeah, it really was. Now, this is actually an interesting moment. The Volscians allegedly just throwing aside their weapons and surrendering in this way. This is obviously meant to be indicating unconditional surrender on their part, and this would be seen as a very shameful position to be in. Like the Romans themselves would not enjoy being in that particular scenario. You’d also obviously want to be really certain that this wasn’t just a ploy on their behalf; that they’re not making a show of throwing away their weapons only to stab you in the back the minute that you start to let down your guard. So this is this is something that may be referring to a deditio, okay? Like basically accepting this kind of resolution of a conflict.

Dr G 59:52
Interesting. It doesn’t strike me that thereshould be a reason for that at this point in time. That seems like a quick turnaround from. Fighting with the possibility of victory to be just like I give up.

Dr Rad 1:00:05
Well, they’re allies. They they left them in the night, Doctor G.

Dr G 1:00:08
Well, sure, but it’s not like the Volscians aren’t interested in fighting Rome all of the time. Any time.

Dr Rad 1:00:13
Look, I’m not saying that this is going to be the end of warfare between the Volscians and Rome. It’s just in this particular moment, it might be the case that they are officially handing over their weapons. In other situations, they might be asked to hand over leaders. They might be asked to hand over hostages. All sorts of things, just to make sure that they are really surrendering, and it’s not just a trick.

Dr G 1:00:41
Well, I guess that remains to be seen. Well, I don’t think that there is any call for me to bring in my inscriptural evidence at this point. Epigraphy, it can wait because it’s got nothing to do with the story you just told me. Okay, well,

Dr Rad 1:00:55
I do have a little bit more to the story if you would like to hear what Camillus says next, because after Satricum has been taken, Doctor G, it’s now time to start thinking about Antium.

Dr G 1:01:05
Nope, that’s not what the inscription’s about either.

Dr Rad 1:01:09
This is what Livy’s talking about.

Dr G 1:01:12
Livy’s on a whole different trajectory to anything that I’ve got right now.

Dr Rad 1:01:16
Antium is to blame for the whole situation that just went down at Satricum, Doctor G, and therefore Camillus now has to deal with that place and the Volscians there. So you see, it’s just the Volscian forces at Satricum that he’s dealing with there. Now Camillus knows he’s going to need a huge amount of artillery and siege equipment to even think about taking on a place like Antium, it apparently has very strong defenses. So Camillus leaves Valerius with the army and goes back to Rome to ask the Senate to commit to taking down Antium once and for all. Because whilst the Romans seem to have obviously had previous victories there. It I think it definitely still seems to be under Volscian control, essentially. Now, as Camillus is talking to the Senate, envoys turn up from places called I think it’s Nepete and Sutrium.

Dr G 1:02:19
Okay. So this is

Dr Rad 1:02:21
modern day Nepi and Sutri. They are slightly to the north of Veii.

Dr G 1:02:29
Yes, we are now talking about Etruscans. Wait a minute, my inscription might be relevant.

Dr Rad 1:02:35
There you go. Now they are wanting help from Rome to deal with the Etruscans, and they say, “Look, Rome, if you do not come now, it might be too late altogether. Time is

Dr G 1:02:50
of the essence. Intriguing.

Dr Rad 1:02:53
So it seems that the gods were indicating that they do not want the Romans to take on Antium at this moment, and steal once and for all the jewel in the Volscian crown. Fortune herself is providing Camillus with a distraction, because he’s going to have to go and deal with those Etruscans after all, and the Volscians. I’ll have to wait for another day, Doctor G. The

Dr G 1:03:23
drama. All right. Well, I don’t think it’s time to bring in my inscription just yet, so I’m just going to leave that aside. I’m going to place that as a a moment of suspense for everybody. That inscription is coming, but this might be a good place to wrap things up.

Dr Rad 1:03:42
I was going to say there’s a whole lot more detail about what Camillus gets up to in 386, so that’s probably a good cliffhanger. What’s going to happen to Antium? What’s going to happen to the north of Rome? I can only assume it’s going to be more victory, Doctor G.

Dr G 1:03:58
More Camillus, more of the

Dr Rad 1:04:01
time. All right, Dr. G. Well, you know what that means. It’s time for the partial pick. All right, Dr. G. Please tell us how does the partial pick work.

Dr G 1:04:17
Well, Rome is judged by a number of categories, five precisely. They can earn up to 10 golden eagles in each category, and if they are successfully Roman enough, they’ll earn 50 golden eagles.

Dr Rad 1:04:32
I haven’t got close yet. No.

Dr G 1:04:33
Our first category is military clout.

Dr Rad 1:04:38
Well, I mean, 10 out of 10. Need I say more?

Dr G 1:04:44
I don’t. I mean, it is true that they’re victorious, but they do have some struggles along the way, including morale and having to throw the whole standard slash and the standard bearer into the enemy to get the thing. A

Dr Rad 1:05:01
smaller price to pay for victory, Doctor G.

Dr G 1:05:03
It turned out all right in the end, but it could have gone really badly. And they are aided by the fact that their frenemies-I’m just going to still call them Hernicians. I think their their Latin frenemies run away and make it make defeat a potential, whereas it didn’t seem like it was on the cards before. So, I’m happy to give them something like a seven or an eight.

Dr Rad 1:05:30
Are you seriously going to punish the Romans for the wind and the rain? They would have won, Doctor G. They were so close.

Dr G 1:05:36
I am not. I’m going to punish them for one not believing in themselves, and two taking very risky actions with their standards.

Dr Rad 1:05:51
Hey, the Romans are people too. Can they help it if they got a little sad when they saw their former allies had hooked up with their enemies, their traditional and long-standing enemies.

Dr G 1:06:03
Why are you leaving the party? I have to. My feelings are

Dr Rad 1:06:07
hurt. All right. Look, I’ll agree to an eight. I’ll accept eight.

Dr G 1:06:12
Excellent. Let us move on then to diplomacy, for which I think is a big zero.

Dr Rad 1:06:19
Well, okay. Hang on a second. Just hold your horses, there, Missy.

Dr G 1:06:24
Who do they negotiate with? Nobody.

Dr Rad 1:06:26
Well, no, no, no, no. These people have turned up from the north, and Camillus is willing, and seemingly also the Senate are willing to put aside their own immediate interests in taking down the Volscians and Antium to help them against the Etruscans, I feel like that is somewhat diplomatic.

Dr G 1:06:53
I will give them one point for that.

Dr Rad 1:06:55
Oh come on! Camillus was on a roll. He’d just taken a city, and now he’s got to take another one. But he has to stop.

Dr G 1:07:04
Those Romans know they can’t take Antium. They need a strategic break while they build up their siege engine material. I don’t think so. Come on,

Dr Rad 1:07:12
two, one for each place.

Dr G 1:07:14
One for each place.

Dr Rad 1:07:15
Well, yeah, they’ve you know two two cities, two towns coming and asking for help?

Speaker 2 1:07:20
No. Fine.

Dr G 1:07:24
I must resist this. No, this is an intestine inflation.

Dr Rad 1:07:29
You’ll be sorry. The Romans don’t get more diplomatic than that. Sure,

Dr G 1:07:34
I’ll fight some people for you. All right, expansion.

Dr Rad 1:07:39
So I don’t feel like we can give them points for expansion in this year with the whole Satricum situation because at the moment I feel like it’s more a military defeat per se, and there might be more to come on that in future years. But I don’t know if I’ll give them points for an expansion just yet,

Dr G 1:08:03
so no points.

Dr Rad 1:08:06
No points for that, I don’t think. But there might be points in the future. Yeah,

Dr G 1:08:10
listen in to future episodes to find out if Rome eventually takes Satricum for itself. All right. This leads us to the fourth category, which is virtus.

Dr Rad 1:08:24
Ooh. Well. Okay. I feel like maybe Camillus and the standard bearer deserve some weirdus points. You know, running into the enemy like that. Crazy kids that they are.

Dr G 1:08:34
It’s the kind of chaos that Romans in when it goes well would be like, yeah, that that was pretty weird to us, and when it goes badly, they’re like, “We have to kill him.

Dr Rad 1:08:47
That’s how it works, and you know, it’s worked out in this particular situation. So I feel like, and you know, he’s old.

Dr G 1:08:52
How old? I mean, what are we talking?

Dr Rad 1:08:55
He’s Yoda at this point. Does

Dr G 1:08:59
he have gray hair? I don’t know.

Dr Rad 1:09:02
Livy explicitly points out that one of the things that shames Romans into action is that Camillus is acting in this way, and he’s much much older than they are.

Dr G 1:09:12
I see. Well, okay. So the silver fox is out there doing what the young ones can’t.

Dr Rad 1:09:18
Yeah. I mean, technically, I feel like Camillus actually should have been part of those forces that stayed behind in Rome, defending the walls. You know what I’m saying?

Dr G 1:09:26
Wow. All right. Yeah. Okay. So, in terms of virtus, maybe a five.

Dr Rad 1:09:33
Yeah, I think so. Because I take your point about the risk, but that’s kind of what virtus is, isn’t it? It’s

Dr G 1:09:39
well, you can’t have glory without the risk, can you? Yeah,

Dr Rad 1:09:42
exactly.

Dr G 1:09:44
And our final category is the citizen score.

Dr Rad 1:09:48
Hmm, I’m conflicted on this note. They are going to war.

Dr G 1:09:55
Not good.

Dr Rad 1:09:56
Not great. However, they’re going to war under Camillus. Is it that bad? And there is that hint of the land issues, you know, bubbling away in the background. There,

Dr G 1:10:08
they have low morale

Dr Rad 1:10:10
for a moment. For a moment, jeez, really halfing on about that. Just

Dr G 1:10:18
following Livy’s narrative here.

Dr Rad 1:10:20
They have low morale for a moment because of the whole former ally situation, backstabbing, treachery, and whatnot. I feel like maybe like a three. Yeah, it’s not like the worst. Like they’re winning.

Dr G 1:10:37
Yeah, yeah, they’re winning, but yeah, I’m not sure that they’re having the greatest time. So and yes, the tension to do with the land issue that seems to be in the background cannot be overlooked. So three, sure. All

Dr Rad 1:10:51
right, that means Dr. G that the Romans have got a total of 17 golden eagles. Not too bad.

Dr G 1:10:59
That’s pretty good for them, I would say.

Dr Rad 1:11:02
Indeed. Well, as you can see, Dr. G, there is so much more to come in the rest of 386, and I dare say you might hear the name Camillus again.

Dr G 1:11:13
Oh no!

Dr Rad 1:11:23
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. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collectivemem.com. Today, we would like to send our gratitude to our newest Patreons, Medea of the Palatine, Captain Ducky, Lee, Ropetric, Saph, and apparently the one and only M. Furius Camillus. If you would also like to enjoy early access to our special episodes and ad-free content, please consider becoming a partial Patreon too. However, if you are also in the midst of some complicated land redistribution, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five-star review. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 176 – Throwing the Standard appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Things to listen out for

• Modern versus ancient conceptions of glory
• The power of translation to inspire
• Connections between near eastern mythology and Homer’s Iliad
• The shared stories of the Hittites and the Ionian Greeks
• The way the consequences of modern warfare can help us understand the depictions of warfare in the ancient world better

Books and scholars mentioned in this interview

Epic of Gilgamesh – There are many translations of this epic, one of the most recent is that of Simon Armitage

Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey

Robert Fagles – The Iliad (1998)
Robert Fagles – The Odyssey (1996)
Richard Lattimore – The Iliad
Stanley Lombardo – The Iliad (1997)
Emily Wilson – The Odyssey (2017)
Emily Wilson – The Iliad (2023)

Spartan poet Tyrtaeus

Bachvarova, M. R., From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic (2016, Cambridge University Press)

Carolina López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East (Harvard University Press, 2010)

Patrick Shaw-Stewart’s untitled poem “I saw a man this morning”

Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: combat trauma and the undoing of character (2004, Scribner)

Martin West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (1999, Oxford University Press)

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents.

The post Special Episode – Fatal Second Helen with Josh Cannon appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Land Allotment Anyone?

If there’s one thing you can count on in this era, it’s the cyclical focus on war and land allotment. And we have a tribune of the plebs on the record, which is a hint that there’ll be agitation for agrarian reform. We know this has a literary legacy for our late Republican writers like Livy, but that’s not to say that there wasn’t a need to reform in the middle republic. Enter stage right: the Pomptine Marshes!

A Temple to Mars

Back during the conflict with Gauls, the Romans had vowed to establish a temple to Mars. And we’re finally up to the dedication of the temple in 387 BCE. This is an exceptionally important event for the Romans as it is way of cementing their relationship with Mars. A temple requires some specific activities to establish and seems to have involved the duumvirs for the sacred things.

Side Quest: Carthage

Did you know that Carthage invaded Italy in 387 BCE? Neither did we, but here we are! The rivalry between the Carthaginians and the Sicilians is starting to hot up but unfortunately a quick plague makes everything very unpleasant.

Things to listen out for:

• Volscians and Aequians just over the horizon
• Who can fix it? Bob the Builder
• Livy and the post-Gracchan world
• An increased interest in ensuring divine favour
• It’s time for an interregnum!
• The Sibylline Books and their contents
• New tribes for the Romans?
• A Sardinian and Libyan revolt?
• Four new voting tribes: Stellatina, Tormentina, Sabatina, and Arniensis

Our Players for 387 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• Lucius Papirius – f. – n. Cursor (Pat) – will be military tribune in 385
• Gnaeus Sergius – f. – n. Fidenas Coxo (Pat) – Will be military tribune in 385? 380
• Lucius Aemilius Mam. f. M. n. Mamercinus (Pat) – previously military tribune in 391, 389?; later also 383, 382, 380.
• Licinus Menentius T. f. T. n. Lanatus (Pat) – will be military tribune in 380, 378, 376
• Lucius Valerius L. f. L. n. Poplicola (Pat) – previously military tribune 394, 389; will be also in 383, 380
• [?] Lucius Quinctius (Pat)
• ? Lucius Cornelius – f. – n. – – (Pat)
• ? Aulus Mallius (Manlius) – f. – n. (Pat)
• ? Fabius (Pat)

Tribune of the Plebs

• Lucius Sicinius (Agitates for distribution of the Pomptine land – Livy 6.1.1)

Interreges

• Marcus Manlius Capitolinus (Pat) – previously consul 392
• Servius Sulpicius Camerinus (Pat) – Consul suffectus 393; military tribune 391
• Lucius Valerius Potitus (Pat) – previously consul 393, 392; Military tribune 414, 406, 403, 402, 398

Duumvir Sacris Faciendis (the two men for doing the sacred things)

• Titus Quinctius (Cincinnatus Capitolinus) (Pat) – Was military tribune in 388 – the previous year. Will be Military tribune in 385? 384 (Dedicated the temple of Mars vowed in the Gallic War – Livy 6.5.8)
• ????

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 6.6.3, 13-15
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 15.24.1; Fasti Capitolini
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Oakley, S. P. (Ed.). (2016). A commentary on Livy : books VI-X. Vol. 1, Introduction and book VI. Oxford University Press.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Additional sound effects:
– Pixabay

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents

The post Episode 175 – Of Mars and Marshes appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Dr Jess Venner

Dr Jess Venner earned her PhD in Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology from the University of Birmingham in 2018. She currently holds the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Oxford. Jess is well known for her popular outreach via her channel ‘Life in the Past Lane’, and you can check this out on TikTok, YouTube, Substack and Instagram. You can also find out more about her various achievements at her website.

Things to Look Out For:

• The importance of material culture in understanding past lives
• The role of critical fabulation in constructing history
• The life of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus – The Ketchup King of Pompeii
• The cult of Isis – we feel a serious case of Egyptomania coming on! Get a doctor, quick!
• The fate of the survivors of the eruption – an oft-overlooked group
• Exciting new projects in the works for Dr Venner – keep your eyes peeled!

Cover image of The Lost Voices of Pompeii.

We are certain that you will want to grab your own copy of The Lost Voices of Pompeii after hearing all about Dr Venner’s extensive research and huge passion for her subjects. This book manages to combine a compelling story with the lates archaeological evidence from the site. Find it where all good books are sold from April 23!

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:54
me. Hello and welcome to a special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts. Dr rad, and

Dr G 1:03
I am Dr G

Dr Rad 1:05
and Dr G, this is one for the ancient history teachers out there, particularly those based in Australia, because we are going to be talking to a very exciting guest today, all about Pompeii. Dr Jess Venner is our guest for today, she earned her PhD in classics, ancient history and archeology from the University of Birmingham in 2018 she currently holds the Leverhulme early career fellowship at the University of Oxford. Jess is well known for her popular outreach via her channel, life in the past lane, and you can check this out on Tiktok, YouTube, substack and Instagram. You can also find out more about her various achievements@www.jessvena.com Welcome to the show.

Dr Jess Venner 1:56
Dr Venner, oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s so lovely to be here. Thank you.

Dr G 2:02
We’re really thrilled to have a chat with you about your debut book, The Lost Voices of Pompeii, The Final Day in Seven Lives. And I’m wanting just to get us started. If you can give us a brief overview, I know this is a big one, brief overview of Pompeii’s history.

Dr Jess Venner 2:23
Yeah, of course. So Pompeii is quite a melting pot. In AD 79 a lot of people are coming to the region, and have been for very many years. And it hasn’t been Roman for very long either, which will surprise a lot of people. It was only Roman for just under 200 years by the time of the eruption, and we think of it obviously as a very Roman town. But Pompeii was founded by these people called the Oscans, which are locals around the seventh century BC. And they sort of set up a small settlement there by the River Sano which is why they did it, because of the water source. We think that they had about five settlements, which gives us, potentially, the name Pompeii. It’s from the word five in Oscan, Pompeii. And then we have the Greeks and Etruscans coming in and mixing with the oscans. And there’s very much mixing. There’s not so much colonizing or casting out in Pompeii’s history. So the Greeks bring their influence, particularly in the architecture. So we start having Greek temples, for example, and the Etruscans, well, they’re a mystery, but they particularly brought some many cultural things to the region, and Pompeii, but also their religion as well. The urban layout and the material culture seems to change a lot around the times these guys are coming in. And then later on, we have the Samnites, and they come down from the mountains, and around the fifth century BC, and they start to influence Pompeii as well. And as time goes on, Pompeii is, you know, it’s quite happy, but there’s a lot of unrest going on in Italy. As we go into the late Republican period, a lot of the other towns are starting to fight back against Rome because they’re fed up with having to serve them without much in return, particularly citizenship. Pompeii is at the forefront of this. They do not want to give in, and they’re fighting to the last last hair. And so finally, when Lucius Cornelius Sulla So a general in the Roman army, but one that was very, very aggressive at this time. He manages to overtake Pompeii, and they make it into a Roman colony in 80 BC. And from that point on, we have Roman control in Pompeii, and it does benefit the city, probably much To their dismay, actually, in a way. But of course, it’s a very fertile region, and so we’ve got a lot of oil and wine being produced in the local area. So in the countryside surrounding the town and inside the town, there’s a lot of specialized manufacture, and a lot of people arriving in the town via the river and the roads. So Pompeii is very, very busy. Three in AD 79 with a lot of different cultures, religions and people.

Dr G 5:04
That was very succinct for what is a highly complicated history, I have to say, well done.

Dr Rad 5:11
Now you’ve taken a novel approach to telling the story. You’ve decided to basically take the approach of telling the story of the final 24 hours before the eruption takes place for seven different historical characters and their social circles. What made you decide on this particular structure?

Dr Jess Venner 5:33
I really wanted to focus on the people of Pompeii, because so often we focus on the destruction of the city and its afterlife, and what we don’t look at are the people and their stories. You know, there are certain people that come out and we know about because they’re talked about fairly often so and a good example is Julia Felix, who I did choose to represent, but this was for good reason, because she hadn’t really been represented from the perspective of archeological remains, in the sense of the most likely personality for her, and so I wanted to depict her life in the last 24 hours. And the same goes for the other characters. But we don’t really know about them. I do, because I’ve been studying them for about 12 years, and I felt like we hadn’t really spoken about it. So we’ve got the slave, we’ve got a politician. So we’ve got the, you know, the cut of Roman society. And that was mainly my, my aim was to have a cross section of culture and and politics and social status. We’ve also got women as well. Working women in particular was important to me. We have working men as well. So like the innkeeper euxines, he is one of those. But we also have someone at the top of that, also at top of their game, Alice and bricius scorus, who is a Pompa. He’s the Pompeii’s garum or fish sauce magnate. So he’s basically the ketchup CEO of Pompeii. So and then we have the priest as well. And again, religion doesn’t really get a huge amount of attention. In Pompeii, a lot of people ask about it. You know, how religious were they really? But in terms of things like Egyptian cults, which is a mystery cult, but we know a lot about it from the remains at Pompeii, so I really wanted to start telling their stories from what we had, and trying to do that as accurately as possible, so that they could have their voices back.

Dr G 7:22
I think it’s a really impressive approach, because it does something in terms of allowing you to dip into the imagination of like thinking about how people did actually live their lives. And the tragedy of Pompeii, in many respects, is the things that we do have that we can see today, which are things like the plaster casts and and you feel this the weight of the terror of the moment. But how do you go back further than that, and how do you reimagine it in a new way? And you talk about your methodology for this book as critical fabulation, and I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about some of the advantages and maybe disadvantages of taking an approach like this.

Dr Jess Venner 8:04
Yeah, absolutely so critical fabulation was a term that was new to me as well. Until I’d written the book, I hadn’t realized that’s what I was doing this woman called Saidiya Hartman, I’m Hope from saying her name right, she coined this term, and it’s essentially a way to reconstruct the experiences of people in the past, particularly marginalized groups, from the material remains that they leave behind, and also literary evidence too. But of course, literary evidence, as we know, can be very biased, and so the archeological record, or whatever material culture that we have remaining is a very good start to reconstructing people’s lives, and the basis of it is using our humanity and our common sense as human beings to reconstruct what could have plausibly or probably happened in their days. And so knowing Pompeii, so well as I do from my research and knowing these particular people that I kept coming across, I was able to reconstruct a day of a Roman so I started with the Roman day, actually. So this is generally accepted the structure of a Roman day. And they were pretty, pretty stuck to it, to be honest. You know, obviously today we do a lot of different things as our in our routines, as people, but they were pretty stuck to it, particularly if

Dr Rad 9:25
you were elite. The Romans stuck in their ways.

Speaker 1 9:27
What? Oh, I can’t even imagine. Imagine no

Dr Jess Venner 9:34
breaking news. I know exactly. So I’m starting with the elite, who we who are predictable. And so I start with Pansa, for example. So I started with a slave and trying to reconstruct how he would be supporting an elite man, because we know what the elite man would be doing, and I worked out from there. And so critical fabulation is perfect for that, because with someone like a slave Petrinus in the book, is a composite of slaves Petrinus did exist in. Pompeii, because he exists in a lone record between two women in the city. And so I started with him, but I was able to reconstruct his his day, from going backwards almost, and from the material remains. Otherwise, his story would be completely lost. Because, of course, we don’t have any records first hand from a slave, some from freedmen, but they’re very much trying to get away from their past, so they’re not really talking about it. So that was, that’s how this is perfect

Dr Rad 10:29
for that. Yeah, yeah. I must admit it reminded me a little bit of the way that Natalie Zemon Davis worked when she was writing. You know, that idea of having to bring a certain level of imagination, but like expert imagination, in order to recover the voices of stories that are too scattered to be like a clear cut narrative or anything in the sources that are left behind

Dr Jess Venner 10:57
exactly and you know, If it didn’t plausibly happen, or didn’t happen. I didn’t include it. I was very stuck on that, because there were some people that would say, Oh, why don’t you do you know, a murder? And I’d be like, I don’t know that there was a verdict. There might have been, but it’s not in my evidence, so I’m not putting it in there. But it went down as granular as you know, fish scales on the floor. Yes, having to be there for me to have a fish seller, you know, it was very, very granular. So, yeah, you wouldn’t believe the

Dr Rad 11:30
detail and you have noted throughout the book, you know, you have put little footnotes in to connect the story that you’ve constructed with the evidence that you’re using, not all the time, but just as a guide, so yeah, that people can see where you’re coming from. Basically Exactly, yeah. Now we did notice when we were reading the book that a theme throughout a lot of the stories is the impact of the sizable earthquake that happened in this area around 62 or 63 CE, what made you decide to include this as a bit of a focal point?

Dr Jess Venner 12:08
Yes, so actually, it comes from my own research. In my doctoral thesis, it was during covid that I started. So as you mentioned, I started in 2018 my PhD, and I was looking at Pompeii’s urban agriculture, and I quickly realized that the data I needed to do that, because I’m trained as an archaebotanist, which is the study of botanical remains in the archeology I realized that I couldn’t go and get those from Italy or study them or anything like that. And so I really had to quickly change my plan, and I started to study the space of the city. So during my doctoral thesis, I realized that this earthquake was a very, very key moment in Pompeii’s history. It actually changed the urban landscape, not only because things were becoming damaged, but also because people seem to be responding with in an opportunistic way. And when I was studying the agricultural gardens, these were vineyards and orchards and vegetable plots inside the city, I was trying to quantify and map them, and I realized that we had a 250% increase in these gardens after the earthquake of AD 62 which tells you everything about their priorities. They were so innovative. They they are right now in the area of Naples, they always respond in a very resilient way. And so it seemed very fitting. And so I wanted to talk about that earthquake, because it was very recent in their history. It was only 17 years before the eruption, and a lot of people were still struggling to deal with it. There were ongoing quakes that were still affecting the city, and people were still rebuilding. But people like euxines, the innkeeper, had remodeled their business after this earthquake and found new opportunities by creating a pub garden, for example, and he was also feeding into new trends at the time too. So it was really important I include that, especially as we never actually talk about the fact there was crisis ongoing before the big one.

Dr G 14:11
It might have been a warning sign people didn’t realize, but something was heading their way. Yes, yes, exactly that. So much challenge in terms of the physical remains as well, and being able to trace that through the record, I think that is one of the elements of Pompeii that increases its fascination for people as well, once they start to dig into those sorts of details you’ve mentioned, just how much evidence is sitting underneath the surface of the narratives In this book, and you paint a really rich picture of everything from the food that the characters eat to the physicality of the setting. And I’m interested in what we learn about the lives of people of the past through exploring the world in this way, through those physical remains.

Dr Jess Venner 15:00
Yeah, we call it material culture in archeology, and it’s really important that we include it, because historically, it was a very easy thing to just look at spatial areas of people’s lives, you know, Okay, where did they live? What frescoes did they have on the wall? But actually putting material remains into it completely changes your perspective of how someone was using a space. A really good example of this in Roman history is the atrium house. You have an atrium, which is the entrance hall, then you have rooms that are labeled traditionally, like the cubiculum, which is supposed to be a bedroom. Now we actually have no evidence for Romans using a bedroom in that very strict sense, like the Victorians might have, for example, it actually seems like they use these spaces a lot more flexibly, and they weren’t as worried about the same things as we are. So often you’ll find things being like, weird things being stored in a room that seems to be being used for sleeping, like a statue, for example, which you know might be down to the eruption, everyone was clamoring to hide their things from the falling debris. But the point is that they didn’t seem to be as bothered about these things as we do these lines between life and so material culture can fill those gaps. So when I was writing the book, I really wanted it to be a sensory experience. I wanted to reconstruct the sites and the things that people would be hearing, because I thought that was so important to really put yourself in the shoes of these people and experience them as humans, as a lived experience, and in that way, we can really connect with them in a one to one level, because just reading a non fiction book about Pompeii, you don’t have the same tug of your heartstrings that you do as you see Petrinus walk through the street and experience prejudice, for example. And so I really, really wanted to bring those experiences into it. And, you know, I definitely brought my own emotion and grief and joy and love experiences of those emotions into the book, and so bringing material culture into that enabled me to really recreate their lives in a huge amount of detail. I think this

Dr G 17:15
is really fantastic in the sense that when we think of history often, and we’re ancient historians by training. We’re often delving with literary sources, whether it’s epigraphy, whether it’s Cicero or whatever, but it’s often, so often very elite perspectives, and it really locks you into certain class structures and certain perspectives on the way that the Roman world worked and operated. And I think there is a huge value to be had in taking material culture as a way of being able to uplift the voices of the people who weren’t able, for whatever reason, to get their words into a written form that was able to stand the test of time. So there is something really class subversive about this work, which I really love

Dr Jess Venner 17:59
exactly that. And I’m so glad that came across because, you know, I come from a working class, like, lower middle class background, and so I felt like, particularly my my experience of growing up that way, I felt like we didn’t have a voice in that way. So I come from the East End, and my family do, and East Enders don’t really get a voice. It’s sort of, we’re spoken for working class people are spoken for a lot also. And so I felt like, of course, this was the same in Pompeii as you’ve just said. You know, with the literary remains these they speak for them. And actually the material culture shows a different perspective a lot of the time. Women are especially important in that Julia Felix was a businesswoman. She had an advertisement on the outside of her house, so clearly she wasn’t experiencing female life the way that the Roman elite were writing it. They were saying women should be seen and not heard, not involved in business, particularly if their husband wasn’t involved. And she seems to have been single and doing whatever she wanted, and was very, very successful at it. And actually, when I started looking at her, I started finding all of these women along the same street that she would have known and been friends with, because they were very community based in Pompeii, with, you know, political endorsements on the outside of their house. They couldn’t vote, but they were very much involved in it and involved in public life in that way. And so again, this isn’t showing us what we’ve read in the elite texts. We’re actually seeing a completely different perspective. So exactly that you’re right. It’s it’s able to, they’re able to speak for themselves through the material culture.

Dr Rad 19:36
Yes, I did particularly enjoy those all female gatherings in your book, because we don’t often get scenes like that where it’s just the ladies.

Dr Jess Venner 19:46
Yeah, I love, I love writing that bit because we’ve all had that sort of dinner, so we’re just chatting and bitching about people. So yeah, I really liked visualizing that one. I think. That was lovely. But it was also based on a fresco that was found in the town, which is in the book, I think, and which people can see these women just having this wonderful Symposium of their own and getting drunk. I think it’s pretty I think it’s brilliant.

Dr Rad 20:15
Now I’m curious to know which of the lives was more difficult to write about. I don’t want to assume that it was the ones where there was perhaps a the least evidence, because sometimes it can be can sort of pin you in, I suppose, a little bit more if you have more evidence. But I’d just love to know which ones you found, you know, the most difficult when you came to actually

Dr Jess Venner 20:36
writing them. I rewrote Petrinus the most times, which probably isn’t a surprise, because he’s the slave. And of course, I wanted to get that experience right, and so there were certain things that I wanted to keep including or take out that didn’t feel representative of the slave experience. And we’re learning more and more about the slave experience in Pompeii from the excavations now, because rightfully so, they’re starting to prioritize non elite experiences in the archeological remains, because these used to just be glazed over and ignored, and so now we’re learning more about them. So Petrinus was one of those. He was, he was quite difficult in the sense that, like I said, he was a composite, and so I had to, but he was also the first one I wrote. So I guess I felt very fond of him, and kept going back to him the others, I think the working poor family was another one. Interestingly, I actually wrote the whole chapter from the perspective of the husband, Lucius Aelius. And then I thought, What am I doing? I’m doing exactly what everyone else is doing, and I’m saying we shouldn’t do. So I changed the whole chapter, and I rewrote it, and it’s mostly from the perspective of Umbricia Fortunata, who is the mother of the family that I’ve created, you know, as, again, as a composite, but she did exist. She was a female businesswoman in the city, and a very successful one, by the looks of things. And I it was hard to recreate her experience, because she leaves traces, from a business point of view, she leaves her fish sauce bottles. And she was, you know, in a niche area of that she was actually selling kosher fish sauce. So she was very savvy, but she was very difficult to track down, very difficult because she was a woman because she was working poor and because she just has, has herself, didn’t really there wasn’t too much on her. However, there were lots of other experiences from other women that I could put into her experience, especially from a Pompeian point of view, from a business point of view, from her status point of you from a mother, there were lots of things to put into it, and so it became more and more easy. And funnily enough, she was one of the ones where I kept having coincidences. I would write her experience. I would go from memory of my research, I would go back and check the archeological remains, and there they were supporting what I had just written. And she was one of those lovely ones where it just sort of put all of all clicked, really. But yeah, she, she was an interesting one to write. I’m very fond of her, actually.

Dr G 23:08
Oh, look, she comes across well as well, I would say. And this leads in nicely to thinking about some of the other characters as well that come through in this text. And I’m sure I’m going to mispronounce this guy’s name, but I’m going to give it a try. My Latin pronunciation is doesn’t seem no matter how long I try to read Latin. So the chapter about Amisinuius even

Dr Jess Venner 23:40
easier than that. Yes, we’ve all had this problem with me too, especially as I was reading it from a from a wall, and I thought it says Amisusius, yes, yes.

Dr G 23:48
All right, that’s where the emphasis is. I’ll keep that in mind. So this is the gentleman who is the priest of ISIS, and obviously this idea of cults, and particularly cults that come from further afield, tend to accrue a great sense of mystery and interest for people. It’s the sort of thing that really stokes people’s curiosity. So I’m interested in knowing a little bit more about the cult of ISIS and its particular role when it comes to

Dr Jess Venner 24:22
Pompeii, absolutely, it’s such an interesting part of Pompeii’s history, and it’s something that, historically, back in the 1700s when it was excavated, really captured people’s imagination. For good reason. Pompeian religion was very, very diverse, as it was in the Roman Empire, and this was one of the things that the Romans were really, really good at, was absorbing other religions and allowing them to coexist with their pantheon of gods. And ISIS was very, very popular in ancient Rome, and this is because she was the Egyptian goddess of rebirth and motherhood, and she actually encouraged. Or her cults did worship from all social strata, so from slaves up to the highest people in society would worship ISIS. Now this point of rebirth is important because Pompeii, as I mentioned with the we were talking about the earthquake of ad 62 the temple was, you know, destroyed pretty much during this it’s in the part of the city that suffered a lot of damage, and it actually is the first temple to be rebuilt. In fact, it’s rebuilt by a child, not by hand. He gives the money to do worked really hard on that. So he is from the Papirii family, and his his mum and dad think, Okay, this is a really good opportunity here politically for our child. They’re freed men, so they can’t go into politics, but their child can, and they’re very rich, so they rebuild the Temple of Isis really quickly. It’s actually the first best public building to be rebuilt in the entire city. So clearly, this is important to the Pompeians, and I think this is because of this element of rebirth. So ISIS, her husband was murdered by Seth, and his body parts were scattered across the world, and she went and found these body parts and put them together out of love and magic. So this concept of scattered parts and having to rebuild was something obviously that the Pompeians were very much feeling like themselves were in that story. So rebuilding that temple was very important to them. And The Temple of Isis has had an incredibly interesting history, even since the excavation started in 1764, and from that point on, actually, they started excavating it really well, which is unbelievable for this time, because usually it was treasure hunting at this time. So I’m, I’m very glad, because if you go to the Naples archeological museum, you can pretty much see the whole temple there. They’ve they’ve put all of the walls out. They’ve put all of the material, most of the material out, because there was a lot of material. And we know exactly where things were found in the temple. This is, this is unheard of for excavations at that time, in fact, even 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, sometimes, sadly, things are not recorded where they are, which, as we’ve talked about with material culture, is very important. You know, if a cup okay, it makes sense if a cupboard is in a hallway, but you can’t just guess that. And actually, when you look into the records of, you know, recent excavation, they’re in weird places, like we’ve talked about, so it’s really important that they’re recorded. And in the Temple of Isis they are. And so when I came to, you know, talk about Amisusius’ experiences of him moving around this temple, where the statues were, where his objects were, even where he stored his, you know, record, written records inside a statue. It’s crazy amount of detail that I could work with. And so he was an easier one to write. But he his experience as well with connecting the pompeiian people was also easy, too. They’re all over the town, the worshippers of ISIS, yeah.

Dr Rad 28:07
And do you feel like there was a bit of Egyptomania going on? Yes, in Pompeii at this time?

Dr Jess Venner 28:14
Yes. I was just about to say, so Egyptomania was exactly that? Yeah, it was huge at this time. It’s so funny, because this seems to happen again throughout history. I think the Victorians had a bit of a moment with it too. So Egyptomania was was definitely rife in Pompeii at this time. And this is because Rome had very recently conquered Egypt within the last 100 years. And so more and more cultural influences, religion and material objects were coming over from Egypt to towns around Italy, and they absolutely loved it. It was both exotic but familiar to them. And so all across Pompeii, we can see frescoes on the wall of, you know, alligators, or are they alligators or crocodiles? God that shows my naive always get this wrong. We’ll go with crocodiles, crocodiles and hippos and little pygmies in the River Nile like fishing, this is a really common motive, and ISIS is another one. We see her worship all over the town. Julia Felix actively worshiped ISIS, even in her own house. And statues were quite common, and they would come into it in very small ways, you know, even jewelry. So they really loved Egyptian culture. And you know, Pompeii, as we mentioned, was a mercantile town. So people were frequently traveling out of Pompeii to very far flung places. And Egypt would have been one of these places. We have pictures in the town of the ships that they would have been traveling on, even in graffiti. So, yeah, yeah. Egypt, Romania was very, very rife in AD 79 Yes.

Dr Rad 29:55
It’s a disease that I think will keep recurring throughout humanity. Story just takes a tomb to be discovered, and then we’re all done. For you know, covered in angst now to turn from the Divine to something a little bit more every day. Many people have heard of garum, this famous fish sauce that was very popular in the Roman world. And there’s definitely a lot of evidence, as you’ve highlighted, for one of the biggest names in the biz in Pompeii. So please tell us a bit more about Aemilius umbricius scaurus, Aulus.

Dr Jess Venner 30:34
Sorry, that was all good. Aulus Umbricius Scaurus. And you know, it’s only, I only say, because names in Pompeii are so incredibly complicated. There’s so many that have similar, very, very similar names, and they sometimes have very similar lives. So it’s very it’s one of these things, it gets complicated. Yeah, no, that’s

Dr Rad 30:55
a legacy of where we’re at in the early Roman republic. I’m so used to saying the name Aemilius. It just, oh, I just, it just comes out when

Dr Jess Venner 31:05
I know exactly what you mean. I do this all the time. So Scaurus is fantastic. He he’s such an interesting character. We have so much information on him. So scorus was an old man by the time that Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 he’d been active in the town of Pompeii, in business for about 50 years, and he was in the fish sauce business, as you’ve mentioned. And his family seemed to have started this. And they came from a tribe just outside which was based traditionally just outside of Rome, and they seem to have come down and started being active in Pompeii for, you know, over the 50 years, of course, because he he was there for a while. And we know this partly because there’s mosaics that were made in the BCS. So I think around 20 BC there were garum bottle mosaics in scourus house put down then, I mean, these are literally ancient to him, and they’re from his own family, which is just incredible, and they have the name Scaurus in them. So this is a family business. We also know about scourus dependence too. So he has a son who sadly passes away, and we sort of see the experience of him dealing with this in the Lost Voices. But we know about this because of a tomb in Pompeii, and we also know where Scaurus lives as well. So he had an incredibly huge house overlooking the bay of Naples, which is appropriate right next to the harbor, again, appropriate for a man very involved with fish, and after the earthquake, he seems to have absorbed all these houses next to him and just made this really huge, ridiculous McMansion,

Dr Rad 32:52
appropriate for the king of ketchup.

Dr Jess Venner 32:54
Yeah. Was only suitable for a man of his status, I guess, as a Roman man, you have to be as over the top as possible. And so he created this ridiculous house, and he would have had, obviously, lots of huge extended family. Because the thing to remember, as you guys know, with Romans, is that you’re familiar extended to the slaves and freed people that you had. And he also had at least seven workshops in the city. One of them is talked about in quite detail in the book, but he was busy. And the thing is, there, there’s actually ongoing archeological excavations of some colleagues of mine into some of these workshops. There were actually more before this time, they were actually being decommissioned. And this is because he was outsourcing his production, probably to places like Portugal, which had huge, huge fish sauce making manufactories. And this was something that was going on in the mid first century, ad, and so he was a part of that his fish sauce was reaching as far as has been found in Britain and in Gaul, so in France. So it was going very, very far, probably further. We just haven’t found his bottles in other places yet, but I think we will do but he was very, very successful in business, yeah,

Dr G 34:15
just you wait, those scourus bottles could turn up anywhere next.

Dr Jess Venner 34:19
You never know.

Dr Rad 34:21
Yeah, the fish sauce just does not appeal to me as someone who’s very iffy about seafood. So I’m just like, how, how is this man so crazy rich?

Dr Jess Venner 34:29
Oh, my God, I totally know. And, like, it was pungent as well, because when excavators found one of his workshops with the dollier so the terracotta jars in the floor, yeah, they were sealed, and they opened them up and they still smelt a fish sauce,

Dr G 34:46
right? And that is how you know you’re getting a quality product. And it’s over 2000 years I have a big surprise we reveal to everybody. Yeah, amazing. Okay, I would not want to have been on the site on that day.

Dr Jess Venner 35:07
No, oh, my god, no. They literally write it in their diaries. They’re like, the smell is unbelievable. I can’t believe it, but it was fermented fish, so I guess it would still be there. Crazy. Lasted 2000 years almost.

Dr G 35:22
That’s incredible. So when we think about Pompeii, and then we also think about the other places that were caught up in the eruption, notably Herculaneum, which, for people who, if you have the opportunity to visit the area, you need to visit both, please put both into your calendar. Both are worthwhile. But for a lot of thinking and writing about these topics, it often stops at the eruption, and then it’s post eruption, and it’s everything to do with the aftermath, in terms not of the people, but of the place. And you include some really vivid scenes of what is happening for survivors in the aftermath. Why do you think it was important to include this as part of the story?

Dr Jess Venner 36:08
Yeah, so this was a really hard bit to write, because this felt like the most human bit is dealing with grief that is out of your control, and a lot of us have experienced that, and know the pain of it. And I thought it was really important, because, again, it creates this human connection between us and them nearly 2000 years ago. Because that never changes. Our response to grief and disaster doesn’t change, and we tend to pull together in those moments. But we’re also, in a sense of in a state of shock. And I thought that, you know, again, we talk about the excavations of Pompeii. We talk about it now, you know, as a tourist site, we tend not to speak about the part just after the eruption, what the survivors were doing, you know, the refugees of this city and of all the other cities in the surrounding area. You mentioned Herculaneum. You know, Herculaneum was buried under 20 meters of volcanic material. You weren’t getting down there again. And it even extended the coastline other towns, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of villas in the surrounding area. This was, this was huge. It wasn’t just Pompeii. And so I wanted to make people realize that there were different things going on afterwards. It wasn’t just like, okay, it got covered up and we move on. Unfortunately, the Roman state kind of did. They realized that there wasn’t anything they could do. They set up a Relief Fund. The emperitus went to the area. He looked at it, he said, You know, God, this is terrible. There’s nothing we can do. But, like, they started digging down to try and get some, you know, statues, because you could kind of see the tops of buildings in Pompeii, because it was about six meters deep the volcanic material, so you could see the tops of the amphitheater or the temples. So they started digging down to get materials to reuse those, because that was something that was very common in the Roman period. But apart from that, they sort of had to move on. And some people lived on top of the site, which is now again being found in excavations, which is really interesting, and it makes total sense. Where else would they go, you know? And of course, as we mentioned, it’s a very fertile area, and so it started being farmed again quite soon, because it had to be. They had to have this source of nutritional income from Italy and Campania was that it was described by Cicero, I think he said these, you know, the storehouse of Italy, so that they didn’t have to fully rely on other places like Egypt and so sadly, they had to. They just had to move on. But we don’t really know where anyone went. There’s some evidence of some families, but it’s disputed in the academic world still, and we’re still waiting for more evidence. But it’s like we said, with the names and how confusing they are, you know, to remember all the different names that are very, very similar. This is exactly the point. And a lot of people shared names. A lot of people were in extended families, and so tracing their names is, you know, it’s like trying to find John Smith from one country to another. It’s, it’s impossible to prove

Dr Rad 39:06
you’re all practical joke that the Romans played on all of us that they have such similar names.

Dr Jess Venner 39:11
No, literally, I think they would have been as confused as we are. I just don’t understand why they were all so similar. But, um, yeah, exactly so, so finding those people is is next to impossible with certainty. There are some, and I think I discussed them in the book, but yeah, it’s still disputed. So yes, going back to your question, I really wanted to create a human experience. And you know, for the when I was writing the conclusion, which is the eruption, I spent the week watching disaster videos, which was probably one of the worst weeks ever. But it felt incredibly necessary to understand how people respond in those immediate moments to something out of their control. And it’s it’s always very similar, and so I wrote those real events. Since 911 I drew on quite because it’s very, very similar disaster. And so I drew on on that, and spoke to people and put that into the book as well. So, yes, I think that was very, very important

Dr Rad 40:15
to do. Yeah, I think particularly the way that our climate is heading, capturing those moments, I think, is really important, because there are just so many people who, as you say, are facing these sorts of situations which are completely something that they cannot control. And unfortunately for a lot of people in the world, there is no safety net when those sorts of things happen. So it’s something I hadn’t really seen before in a work on Pompeii. And I thought, oh god, that’s a really interesting addition to this story, because so often we do just finish with the eruption and then we’ll go straight to, you know, the excavations, or we’ll be talking about the plaster casts or that sort of thing, but you don’t really think about the people that were left with nothing, presumably, and God knows what they had to depend on after that moment.

Dr Jess Venner 41:07
Yeah, exactly. And you know, it’s all it’s all very well. It’s exactly like you’re saying. It’s all very well today setting up a relief fund. But Is anyone actually checking on those people? Probably not. And you know, it’s a very human response to focus on the depersonalized experience of a disaster, such as an eruption, and not think about the people that are actually being affected or that we’re experiencing that it’s much easier for us as humans to cope with that and and put it into our heads and process it if it’s just a disaster, but if it’s about an individual story of a woman who loses her children, that’s very different, you know, and it’s harder to cope with as humans, and so it’s usually ignored. And this is why, historically, I think we’ve done the same with Pompeii, because it’s it’s easier to just think, okay, yes, exactly like you said. It stops at the eruption. Okay, next, you know, next historical story, and it wasn’t like that. And you know, sadly it was for the Roman state. They did treat it that way, but we should remember the people that were dealing with the fallout of that, who lost their homes, who lost family members, friends, they lost their occupations, they lost everything. And that is so sad.

Dr G 42:24
I think it is, and I think this gets to the core of, how do people even become historians in the first place? Like, Why does anybody go and look at the past? Because it’s something deeply human in us to want to understand how other people live their lives, and what drove them and what grief they faced. So by including that, I think, you open the gateway for more people who understand humanity innately within themselves, and want to understand more about the history of where we’ve all come from, because these are profound griefs that we will all share at some point, maybe not in the strict sense of an eruption of a volcano, because I don’t live on a continent that has any but chances are that there will be great grief in our in all of our lives at some point, for whatever reason. And so finding a way to empathize with others is a way of better understanding ourselves. So I think you’ve done a great service by including this kind of approach.

Dr Jess Venner 43:26
Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate that, because it is. It was very hard to write, and obviously putting your own grief into a book is very exposing also, and how you deal with those but I think, like I said, they’re universal, so I think everyone will be able to see themselves in that and hopefully connect with these people in a new way, and see Pompeii in a new way. Because every time I go to Pompeii, I’m an archeologist, and, you know, I still, you know, I look at it as material remains for my job, in a very diplomatic, rational way. I can’t get emotional about that, but when I go to Pompeii and I see the garden of the fugitives with multiple people on the floor, including children, looking at each other, I can’t help but tear up. It’s something that will never stop pulling at my heartstrings and making me exceptionally sad for those people that just didn’t have any option, didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what was happening. Some of them couldn’t leave. Some of them didn’t know to leave. You know, some of them went back during the eruption, when there was a lull, and that’s something that I will never, probably never get over, and I don’t think I should either.

Dr Rad 44:39
Now look, I think it’s been so valuable to chat to you today, because your passion for the past, and in particular for the city of Pompeii, really comes across. But I suppose the surprising thing is, our audience may not be aware that you didn’t actually originally intend to study classics, ancient history and archeology, the triple threat. Can you tell us a little bit about how you found yourself pursuing. Studies of ancient Rome.

Dr Jess Venner 45:01
Yeah. So I started reading a book on the first first empresses of Rome, or the first ladies of Rome. Loved the book, but I was doing a BA in publishing at the time at the University of the Arts in London, and I just got completely addicted to it. I’m actually moving house, but you this would usually be full of some of the books that I would it would look like your background. It was like, you know, I devoured everything to do with it, ancient texts, modern takes on it, and I just couldn’t stop. And my parents were like, No, you’ve got to, you’ve got to finish your ba which I was glad that they did. But when I finished that, I did a small course in Pompeii at the University of Oxford, one of their continuing education courses, and it was just sort of a test of seeing, okay, do I really like it, or is it just no loved it. And then I looked into doing a master’s, but I realized I couldn’t do classics because I didn’t have Latin. And it went back to my, you know, my education background not supporting me in that sense. And you guys were talking earlier about how your curriculum has ancient history in it in Australia, which I think is just brilliant. I’m so happy to hear that, because at older ages, it’s not taught at all. It’s taught at primary, as far as I understand, but it’s becoming less and less of a priority. And so I suffered from that, and had to go around the houses, and I did classical civilization instead, which is the study of people. It’s more of an anthropological point of view. Actually, best thing that could have happened, because I’ve never been very good at Latin, and I wasn’t really into the text as much. And as I’ve probably passionately put across, I’m not really an elite kind of person. And so I was really fascinated by these normal, ordinary people that I could find in, you know, their stories. And so I started looking for a PhD after that, and I got my scholarship from the AHRC to do so. And yes, and now I’m, you know, I’ve just been back from Rome at the school at Rome with an award there, and I’m also doing my Leverhulme early career fellowship at the University of Oxford now for three years, which was very long and a hard, long process to get that but it feels like a very sort of round, round circle that I started with this tiny course at Oxford, unofficial course, and now I’m now, I’m working there full time, but, yeah, it’s quite, quite a challenge of a career, but a really fun and exciting one. Never know what’s coming next. It’s the power

Dr G 47:33
of history driving you all the way. I love it.

Dr Jess Venner 47:36
And I’m very, very lucky that I’ve, you know, had the opportunity to apply for funding, but I’ve got to say, you know, for anyone out there, it’s, it’s very, very hard, but don’t give up, because I have experienced a huge amount of rejection and a huge amount of barriers because of my background, not having the classical background. And so I just want anyone listening to know that you can make it if you want to, if you just keep your passion at the forefront and remember why you’re doing it and and I always wanted to be able to give back and inspire other people, which hopefully I’m doing now, and also talk about the ordinary people and give them a voice too. No, I think

Dr Rad 48:17
that’s fantastic as someone who Dr G and I also come from, I think, similar ish backgrounds to yourself and our education in high school, don’t get me wrong, I had a good education, but certainly classical languages. I didn’t even know that was a thing in high school, and so when I got to university and was thinking of taking up the study of ancient history more seriously, my lack of any language background was a real barrier, and it continues to be a bit of a problem in some ways, but a podcast is a way around that listeners,

Dr G 48:51
yeah, my misconceptions around how ancient languages worked really didn’t sort of come clear to me until I was about in my second year of a history degree, and I was like, Oh, but I thought they’d been translated, aren’t we just reading the translation? I have to translate it. Like, what? Why exactly? So baffled. I was like, they’re like, you can’t be considered a serious historian unless you’re reading it in the original language. I was like, what?

Dr Jess Venner 49:22
Was like, what I know, I know I was the same. And, you know, I tried to take this intensive Latin course because I quit my job during this point. By the way, after my master’s, I thought, I’m just going to quit my job, I’m going to save up, I’m going to quit my job, and I’m going to retrain to do all of these things that you’re mentioning. Latin was one of them. And I was like, art is going on. Oh, my God. And I had like, three weeks of this intensive course every day, you know, like eight hours. And I am just terrible. And I’m, I’m happy to admit it, it’s really not great at it, you know, but I’m. The same, and it’s still something that’s like, you

Dr Rad 50:02
can join my club. I consider myself the poster girl for someone who’s terrible with languages but still loves history anyway, yeah,

Dr G 50:12
look, there’s a lot that you can do to get by with these sorts of things, and it should not be a barrier. And I think that’s the real thing to emphasize with people listening that there are different pathways into a study of history. It doesn’t just involve language expertise, and if you can gain it, that’s amazing. But it’s not the only path, and it’s certainly not something that should hold you back from your love of history in any way or shape or form.

Dr Jess Venner 50:39
Correct? Yes, exactly it great message

Dr Rad 50:42
with this book coming out and moving house and all this is probably the kind of question that’s going to make you want to punch me through the screen. But are there any upcoming projects that you’d like to tease for us before we wrap up our discussion?

Dr Jess Venner 50:55
Yes, I’m always very busy. So apart from my academic world, I am writing my second book now, which I’m very excited about. It’ll be, I think, of a similar ilk, that’s the plan. And I’m very much enjoying writing it. It’s a new challenge for me. It sort of under wraps at the moment, but, yeah, I can say that it’s fairly similar sort of way

Dr Rad 51:19
to do it, the last voices of Herculaneum. I’m just going to put it out there.

Dr Jess Venner 51:28
But I think people will really enjoy the perspective that I hopefully that I can bring. And then in other In other terms, my social media is called Life in the Past Lane, and for quite some time, I’ve been planning a new educational platform to bridge this gap that we’ve just been talking about, to bring opportunities to people that maybe want to switch career or just interested in ancient history. So that will be on YouTube, which I am on already, but it will also be a platform that I’m working on and hopefully launching at the end of this year. So so keep an eye out for that. It will be very exciting to bring people new things in that way. So yes, we will keep an eye out.

Dr Rad 52:10
Fantastic. Sounds like so many exciting things to look out for. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, listeners, as I’m sure you heard, but I’m going to repeat it again. The book is The Lost Voices of Pompeii, and you will definitely want to pick up a copy if you want the perfect blend of storytelling and expertise.

Dr Jess Venner 52:29
Well, thank you. That’s so lovely. Thank you so much. I’ve been it’s been so lovely chatting to you both. So thank you.

Dr Rad 52:45
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 Joy De Guzman. The partial historians is part of the memory collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive, to find more from the memory collective head to collectivemem.com you too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon in return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch. We have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on ko fi. And we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this. One possible. However, if your Imperial coffers do not overflow us, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five star review wherever you listen until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – The Lost Voices of Pompeii with Dr Jess Venner appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Camillus in Triumph

After seemingly managing to defeat three of Rome’s enemies at once, Camillus was back in Rome, basking in his glory. Unfortunately, his success seems to have meant a life in slavery for many of the conquered people. Camillus auctioned these prisoners off, using the proceeds to pay back the Roman matrons and buy the city some gold bowls, engraved with his name.

Citizens of Rome

The Romans were trying to get back to business as usual after the Gallic sack. This involved granting citizenship to any people who had switched sides during the conflicts of the past decade or so. Welcome to the cleerrrb.

There were also some reluctant Roman citizens still hanging out in Veii, and that just would not do. The senate issued a decree ordering them back to Rome – OR ELSE.

A section of Hadrian’s wall near Carlisle, featuring some modest hewn stones. Original image from zoonabar on Flickr, also located on World History Encyclopedia where it was uploaded by Jan van der Crabben on 26th April 2012.

Renovating Rome

The Romans had to do some rebuilding after the Gallic sack, as we know, but why not make some improvements whilst they were at it? Livy records that the Capitol was given a substructure of hewn stone, which he thought was still impressive in his own time.

Image

Spiteful Skirmishes

Never a city that revels in peace, the Romans decided to attack some of the people who had tried to take advantage of their moment of weakness in 390 BCE. The Aequians and some Etruscan towns found themselves the victims of sudden assaults. Payback is a bitch!

Our Players 388 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

T. Quinctius (T. f. L. n.) Cincinnatus Capitolinus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 385?, 384

Q. Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 402, 398, 395, 390, 386

L. Iulius -f. -n. Iullus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 379

L. Aquilius -f. -n. Corvus

L. Lucretius -f. -n. Flavus Tricipitinus (Pat) Cos. Suff. 393, Mil. Tr. c.p. 391, 383, 381

Ser. Sulpicius – f. -n. Rufus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 384, 383, 377?

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the partial historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, 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 0:58
Hello, and welcome back to the partial historians. I am Dr. G,

Dr Rad 1:04
and I am Dr. Rad.

Dr G 1:06
And today we are going to be looking at 388 or thereabouts, BCE in Roman history.

Dr Rad 1:15
Yeah, so, but before we get into that, Dr. G, we need to recap the very important things that Marcus Furius Camillus, the star of ancient Rome, who perhaps nobody outside Roman historians has ever heard of. What was he up to in 389 BC? Because that’s really what my ancient accounts are all about at the moment. Everything else is just a backdrop.

Dr G 1:39
He was up to everything, if we believe Livy, he was here, there, and everywhere. He was a man who could just turn up at the scene of a potential battle, and the enemy would fall at their feet, being like, ‘You’ve turned up, we couldn’t possibly fight now.

Dr Rad 1:54
Yes, he did carry victory entirely before him against the many enemies of ancient Rome, who were seeming taking great delight in the fact that the Romans had just had their asses handed to them by the Gauls.

Dr G 2:09
Yeah, I mean, when better to have a guy with such fearful charisma that the enemy literally falls down at their feet at the very sight of him than on the back of Rome having its lowest of lows in the Gallic sack.

Dr Rad 2:23
Yeah, so we saw him deal with the Volscians, then the Aequians, and then finally the evil Etruscans, who decided to attack a very pitiful ally of ancient Rome, and I say pitiful just in the sense that the way Livy described their conquest was very sad.

Dr G 2:45
Look, Sutrium was saved in the end,

Dr Rad 2:49
exactly. I mean, it might hold the distinction of being, you know, one of the only places in the ancient world to change hands several times in the course of one day,

Dr G 2:58
a noble distinction, I am sure,

Dr Rad 3:01
exactly, and you know, I do really love the idea that you know in the morning you thought you’d lost everything, and nighttime you were back in bed with your hot coco and blessing the name of Camillus.

Dr G 3:14
What a time to be alive! It’s a chaotic period. We really don’t know what’s going on very much, because the Fasti Capitolini, our list of magistrates is missing for these years. We also have highly fragmentary sources. Currently, Livy is pretty much the only source in town that has a continuous narrative to share with us, and

Dr Rad 3:35
he’s mine. He’s mine. I suppose the one thing that’s kind of interesting, which we did highlight last time, and then we can move on from all of this, but even though we might have some serious doubts about how involved Camillus was in some of these events, and even though the chronology is a little different between my account and your account, at the same time Diodorus did also include a lot of these same conquests that Camillus was apparently involved in, so clearly there is some sort of association between him and dealing with Rome’s enemies in the area of central Italy at this point in time.

Dr G 4:15
Yeah, definitely, this is the story that seems to get passed down and recorded by all of our available sources, and even to the extent to which some scholars would like to classify Camillus as a literary figure rather than a historical figure, somebody’s got to be doing something at this point in time, because Rome does survive the Gallic sack, and this is almost – we’re sitting at what feels like is going to be a turning point for Roman history, because once we get out of this sort of hazy period of what’s going on with the chronology, Rome is going to start being on the up and up in a way that we have not yet seen since the beginning of the city,

Dr Rad 4:57
that’s right, and so Dr. G, please do. With me in my time machine as I take us back to 388 BC

Dr G 5:20
Wow, 388 BCE. What a time to be alive as a Roman

Dr Rad 5:35
Dr. G. Please tell me, what kind of magistrates do we have, and who are they?

Dr G 5:39
Well, it is one of the few things I can tell you about this year. Let me commence. It is apparently a year where we have military tribunes with consular power.

Dr Rad 5:51
I shall try and conceal my surprise.

Dr G 5:55
We’ll be out of this phase of Roman history soon, but not yet. We still have some time to go. There are six, apparently, which is almost the maximum number we see for this group, and there are some familiar families in here. So we start off with Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus Capitolinus, a patrician, and this might be the first time we’ve seen him, but he will go on to hold positions in the future as well. We then have Quintus Servilius Fidenas. Now he was previously a military tribune in 402 also 398 also 395 also 390 So where anybody who’s listening who doesn’t remember this guy, get with the program, he has been around a lot.

Dr Rad 6:44
Well, he’s from the civili, or the civili if you prefer, and that’s a pretty famous family, and that name Fidenas, that would associate his family with the conquest of Fidenae, I suppose. Yes, yes,

Dr G 7:01
and so, yes, he comes from a family lineage of some distinction,

Dr Rad 7:05
exactly.

Dr G 7:06
Clearly, a patrician. We then have Lucius Iulius Iullus, also a patrician, but first time in this role. And then perhaps my favorite figure from this list, because I want to get into this guy a little bit later. Lucius Aquilius Corvus,

Dr Rad 7:25
Little red corvette!

Dr G 7:29
a man with two interesting bird names.

Dr Rad 7:33
Oh, okay, bird names:

Dr G 7:36
Aquila the eagle and Corvus the raven.

Dr Rad 7:40
Ah, I didn’t know Corvus meant the raven. Okay, cool, cool.

Dr G 7:45
And perhaps more interesting from our perspective, plebeian question mark.

Dr Rad 7:52
Oh, actually, you know what? I didn’t notice when I was writing all these names down that I didn’t have my usual little pat abbreviation after his name, intrigue, intrigue.

Dr G 8:04
Yes, put a pin in that. We’ll come back to this guy.

Dr Rad 8:06
Yep, yep, he’s

Dr G 8:07
number four on our list. Sitting squarely in number five is Lucius Lucretius Flavus Tricipitinus Patrician, previously a suffect consul in 393 and the military tribune in 391 and we’ll see him again in the future.

Dr Rad 8:26
Yep,

Dr G 8:27
he was the guy who famously waged a war against the aequians, and also proposed dividing up the territory of Veii.

Dr Rad 8:36
Controversial,

Dr G 8:38
and it remains controversial. We have not figured out what’s going on with Veii yet.

Dr Rad 8:42
No,

Dr G 8:42
and finally, last but not least, Servilius Sulpicius Rufus, also a patrician, and he’ll go on to hold some magisterial positions in the future as well.

Dr Rad 8:56
Excellent.

Dr G 8:56
Some debate about which Sulpicius Rufus this guy might be where we’re sort of in that period of time, where, and also, thank you, Rome, for always naming people with the same names, so when there’s any doubt about who somebody is, and it’s like, is it the brother, is it the other cousin, does it come from this line over here? So there are some question marks about which Sulpicius Rufus, but he seemed one of them was in there.

Dr Rad 9:20
It is kind of interesting, actually, because the Romans are so obsessed with being remembered, obviously, which I understand. I mean, I think all humans have that instinct in them for some reason, and I guess it kind of testifies to the way that for the Romans, even though, yes, your personal reputation means a lot, it also is about really, at the end of the day, the glory of your family, so it’s like, does it matter, the brother, the father, whatever, as long as it’s from the silpikii, that’s the main point, guys. It’s my family, we’re the ones that are awesome,

Dr G 9:55
somebody’s carrying the honor, and that’s what’s important

Dr Rad 9:58
around,

Dr Rad 9:58
exactly, exactly. Now, speaking of honor, Dr. G, Camillus is on his victory lap after his glorious triple triumph. He’s back in Rome. He, of course, gets awarded a triumph because apparently the Romans look at his conquests as being victorious in three simultaneous wars, which has got to be an accomplishment, simultaneous wars difficult to wage.

Dr G 10:26
Yeah, three at once as well. Goodness me, the myth, the man, the legend, that is Camillus,

Dr Rad 10:32
exactly. Now he has a huge amount of prisoners that he’s captured, particularly from the Etruscan peoples. Just thought that was something worth mentioning, that the Romans are imagining that they are already factoring into a triumph. We don’t often talk about the flip side of what the Romans are up to here, but, and it’s not just the Romans, to be fair, it is, I think, kind of standard understanding in a lot of ancient society is that if you lose a war, there’s a very good chance you’re going to end up being someone’s slave if you are not killed, which is a sad side effect of all of this. Now he decides he’s going to sell them under the spear, so that’s sub hasta. It’s basically the idea is that this a spear would be standing in the ground, and it’s like a representation of the authority of Rome as a state, and it comes to basically mean that he’s selling these people at a public sale, or at auction, is the way that we perhaps would understand it, and he makes so much money selling all of these Etruscan prisoners that the matrons in Rome have the value of the gold that they had contributed way back when the Gauls were around a couple of years ago given back to them. Oh, wow. Okay, they get a return on their investment. Camillus is like, you know, what? I pay my debts, and I’m going to do it in a horrible way by selling people into slavery. You’re welcome, Roman Matrons. He’s looking at you, kid.

Dr G 12:13
Yeah, okay, yeah. It’s hard to feel super positive about this.

Dr Rad 12:17
It is

Dr G 12:18
both good that the women are getting their money back, but it is unfortunate. Okay, so this is the undercurrent that runs through most of Rome’s history, and we’re starting to see its presence more and more, because Rome, through the nature of conquest, is taking prisoners. What do you do with prisoners? They become a resource that you sell.

Dr Rad 12:41
Yeah,

Dr G 12:41
so enslaved people are on the rise as soon as Rome goes through this process.

Dr Rad 12:49
Yes, and whenever we talk about the fact that people are fighting over the booty, or they’re keen to have booty, or the commanders aren’t dividing the booty up fairly, all of these sorts of references that we make, the sources obviously aren’t explicit at this moment in time about what that booty actually entails, and I know we joke that it’s just the one pair of sandals that’s being traded backwards and forwards in the area, but realistically it probably also does include humans who have been conquered or taken obviously, Rome’s warfare at this moment in time is not as gigantic as they would like us to believe. I mean, how else does a man wage three simultaneous wars at once if they’re not all in a fairly close geographic location in ancient times, but you have to assume that there is some conquest going on, and that slavery is sometimes a part of the deal. Hopefully, it’s not super large scale. I basically is what I’m trying to say at this moment in time, because it is fairly low-level warfare, and often it does seem to be raiding, you know, raiding each other’s fields, and you know, just actually genuinely being annoying most of the time, but it does show that there’s this shadowy undercurrent to these accounts, which, whilst we obviously have to question the, you know, how big these wars are and how important they are, and that sort of thing, I don’t doubt that there is some slavery going on at this early stage. That part I do believe it’s just a question, obviously, of how much, you know, how many people are we talking about, what kind of work are they being put to, and unfortunately that kind of detail often doesn’t make it into our source material.

Dr G 14:37
Yes, we will see this increase over time, for sure.

Dr Rad 14:40
To connect to what we were talking about before, actually, the reason why Camillus probably has so many Etruscan prisoners is that you might recall that one of the ways that he managed to deal with the situation in Sutrium, which the Etruscans had attacked, because it was a Roman ally, is he said he wasn’t going to kill anyone unless they were holding a weapon, and a lot of. People chose to, therefore, put their weapons down, and things resolved quite peacefully. But this is where we can see that, oh yeah, you didn’t get killed, but you still got taken prisoner. You basically had to choose life as a slave or death in that moment.

Dr G 15:21
Yeah, there is no just walk away, and we’ll leave you alone. There is still a price to be paid.

Dr Rad 15:26
No. And to be fair, I think, I think if the shoe was on the other foot, the Etruscans probably would have done a similar thing. You know, it’s.. I think it is kind of what a lot of people would have done at this moment in time. However, he makes so much money from the sale of these people that there is actually money left over. Dr. G, there’s extra in the till. Oh, I know it’s hard to celebrate this when we know where the money is coming from, but not only is he able to give the money back to the women. So, I mean, what an investment for them. They get to look like heroes, and they’re only out of pocket for two years. Well done, matrons, but there’s enough left over to make three golden bowls.

Dr G 16:09
Well, Camillus does like a golden bowl, we know this.

Dr Rad 16:13
He really does, it’s his thing. Yes, and they are inscribed with Camillus’s name, and apparently were stored in the Temple of Jupiter at Juno’s feet until there was a fire on the Capitoline in 83 BCE. Oh, those balls stick around for quite some time. They, well, I mean, they’re gold, Dr. G doesn’t tarnish.

Dr G 16:37
Okay, I this is a moment where I’d like to mention coinage,

Dr Rad 16:41
okay,

Dr G 16:42
because Rome doesn’t operate with coinage as far as we’re aware at this period of time, and actually doesn’t technically develop coinage until about 280 BC. We’ve got another century to go of, like, how is Rome doing economics, because when we say, you know, the matrons got paid, it’s not like they were handed a bag of coins, because that’s not how Ron did business at this point. They do seem to have things like bars of metal that they can sort of pass around, and it might also be the case that we’re dealing with a lot of economy in kind, so it’s like, what is something of an equivalent value that you could be given as payment for something else? I tell you what, Dr. G, if those matrons were given back the value of their gold jewelry in grain, I would have screamed. What am I supposed to do with this? I can’t wear this out on a Saturday night. How am I supposed to turn this into a pair of nice earrings?

Dr Rad 17:42
Exactly,

Dr G 17:43
I mean, you can, but it is more laborious because you have to take the grain around to a jeweler and be like, I will pay you five bags of grain for a pair of earrings, can you make it happen? The guy will be like, I can, but so this idea that there is limited resources and commodities and coinage is not quite a thing, but trading obviously is, and you can have, I think it’s difficult for us to imagine in our modern world, particularly because we deal now with imaginary currency in the form of like it’s a picture on a screen on your phone, you’re like, I have, I have money. It’s like, do you, though? Yeah, there’s numbers on a

Dr Rad 18:25
screen,

Dr Rad 18:25
definitely. Dan,

Dr G 18:26
so it’s become so abstracted for us in the modern world that I think we can anticipate that the idea of value exchange is one of these ideas that underpins how Roman culture operates. When they say they’re paying the soldiers, that’s not necessarily also handing them a bag coins, it again, it might be something like bags of grain or an allotment of some sort of other valuable material, and we’ve definitely had guests on the podcast in the past talking about things like fabrics,

Dr Rad 18:55
which

Dr G 18:56
take a reasonable amount of time and effort to manufacture, because there’s a lot of steps in that process. The final product is valuable, it holds value from all of the processes that have been done upon it. So, if you give somebody a bolt of fabric, that is actually quite valuable. So, those sorts of things are definitely things that we can keep in mind when we’re like, who’s getting paid, and just keeping in the back of our minds that how people get paid is actually maybe a more thorny problem that we don’t have all the answers to right now, in comparison, if we’re thinking about meanwhile in Sicily, they do have coinage already, we’ve got plenty of examples of their coins,

Dr Rad 19:37
the Romans really feel very late to coinage, and it’s weird.

Dr G 19:42
It is weird. It is one of these small, odd details about ancient Rome, where everybody around them already has currency.

Dr Rad 19:50
Yeah,

Dr G 19:50
and they don’t.

Dr Rad 19:52
So bizarre. Really cool currency with like owls on them.

Dr G 19:56
Yeah, like Sicily’s got a whole bunch of ones with like cool octopus. On them and stuff, and it’s like, like they’re way ahead of the Roman game. Romans are kind of like, would you like this egg I found?

Dr Rad 20:10
How about this fabric that I got one of my slaves to dance around in urine on? It’s great,

Dr G 20:16
exactly. So we don’t even tend to get into the sort of chunks of metal kind of stuff until a little bit later from where we are now, so it’s really interesting to think about, because they clearly have a functioning economy, and there’s clearly movement of value between people, and we just don’t quite know what that looks like.

Dr Rad 20:36
Yeah, animals, they would be another thing, wouldn’t they?

Dr G 20:39
I’d love your goat. Thank you for offering.

Dr Rad 20:42
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, now interesting detail here. Dr. G, Livvy now tells me that in the midst of all the conflict that’s been going on for quite some time, so we’re talking about, I think, about the past, you know, sort of 10 years, basically, of Roman warfare, there have been various people who, rather than stand by their original city, decided that they were going to switch sides to Rome. Kept that quiet up until this moment, Livy. So, we’re talking about people from Veii, people from Campana, people from Valerii. They have at some point decided that they’re just going to take up with the Romans at the right moment, and they are now made citizens and given some land.

Dr G 21:28
What

Dr Rad 21:29
I know,

Dr G 21:30
Diodorus is letting me down. There’s no detail at all about this year.

Dr Rad 21:34
Well, I find that really bizarre, in the sense that there’s so much dispute in Roman society, allegedly, about who has land, I’m like, you just gonna give this Johnny Come Lately from Veii some land because he happened to switch sides, and what it strokes your ego. What about the people that actually live here and don’t have land? What about them? Weird. All right, so I think

Dr Rad 22:00
this

Dr G 22:00
might be a retro fit by Livy, yeah, to try and explain some things that have been going on, because obviously Vae has been conquered quite recently. How many people would be switching sides is, I feel like a moot point. That place was done over, and it’s like it might just be some of the people in the northern regions of the countryside, just outside of Rome, and just south of a who were like sure, yeah, exactly,

Dr Rad 22:24
and like, what? He doesn’t give me any details, obviously. Like, when did they switch sides? How did they indicate they were switching sides? Some of these places were under siege. What do they do? Did they sneak out and join you? What happened?

Dr G 22:34
No, they made little badges that said I’m for Rome.

Dr Rad 22:39
Don’t kill me, I like you guys.

Dr G 22:41
Yeah, friend, not foe.

Dr Rad 22:46
Anyway, so very weird, but it’s interesting that we’ve got that little detail, and apparently they just get citizenship, which will become a much thornier issue later in Rome’s history about who gets citizenship and who doesn’t. Apparently, right now, though, it’s very easy. Just wave a magic wand and poof, you’re a Roman.

Dr G 23:05
Oh, Livy.

Dr Rad 23:07
Yeah,

Dr G 23:07
I mean, all of this struggle of the orders business, and now just people walking up, being like, what about it? And Rome’s like, yes,

Dr Rad 23:15
the answer is, you can stay. Yeah, now we apparently also have a lingering issue in that, as we know, during the Gallic sack, when there was that scattering that happened after Battle Allia, we had a bunch of people from Rome who decided that they were going to shack up in vain and just lay low until it all blew over. Smart move.

Dr G 23:40
Yes.

Dr Rad 23:40
Now, as it turns out, some of them decided I might just stay here. I’ve been here for a while, apparently. The siege of Rome by the Gauls lasted for many, many months, so I guess they got comfortable. Some of them might have been part of the group that thought it would be good idea to move to Veii before the Gallic sack. Who knows, but they never came back, so they’re still living there, and the people in Rome are not happy about that. As you know, Dr. G, we had a very lengthy speech from Camillus not that long ago about why you can’t live in Veii if you’re a Roman.

Dr G 24:18
Ah, yes, it’s problematic, at least from his perspective, I mean, I don’t really buy his rhetorical points about this, and it’s like, seems like a reasonable thing to do. Why not expand your territory? You’re happy to set up colonies elsewhere, Sutrium is one of them. Why wouldn’t you send some people to they?

Dr Rad 24:38
Because it’s sacrilegious, Dr. G, but there’s now an official senatorial decree saying get your asses back here now.

Dr G 24:49
I see

Dr Rad 24:52
they basically, they’re basically saying, you know, you guys are quitters, you’re giving up on Rome, you’re lazy, because, of course, Rome is going through. This rebuilding process, after all the destruction and whatnot, so perhaps those people are kind of hanging out in Vay because they don’t want to have to rebuild their house.

Dr G 25:10
Well, also I think this is one way that you can increase your property standing. I would be very inclined to become a squatter in Veii, and be like, well, I’m the king of the castle over here now, so why would I come back to you guys exactly? Surely we could be friends, and I can only imagine that from a patrician perspective, understanding that they is now conquered territory that now needs to be divided up in a way that suits the elite, not whoever is currently sitting in an old house in Veii, being like, look, I’ve done it up nice. I’ve been here for a few months, and it’s looking really good.

Dr Rad 25:44
I went to Ikea. It’s all furnished. Why would I come back now? They are 100% unhappy about receiving this order from the Senate. They drag their feet, they complain a lot, they’re bitching and moaning, and it kind of seems like they’re just going to pretend the senatorial degree got lost in the mail. I never saw that messenger word the Senate try and make sure that they have no excuses, because they set a firm date, a very teacherly move, where they’re not leaving it up to interpretation of you had to come back from they, and then just leaving up to them when they come back, they give them a firm date, and they say that anyone who refuses to return will be executed.

Dr G 26:31
Wow,

Dr Rad 26:32
yeah, they’re taking this very seriously, and so they come back under threat of death. That’s how much they love Rome.

Dr G 26:41
Okay, well, I suppose being Romans themselves, they’d be like, “Look, I really don’t want the military might of Camillus turning up on my doorstep, because I’ll immediately have to fall down.

Dr Rad 26:50
Exactly, exactly, it’s no point resisting. So, Livy sees this very much as a time period, therefore, where Rome is expanding, it’s getting more citizens, getting bigger, there are new buildings going up all the time, going up everywhere. The state is, as we know, apparently very involved in the construction. It even kind of seems like we’ve got the aediles functioning in a way that we would understand from, like, later in the Republic, like, you know, they’re helping with these building works, which we know is something that an aedile later on would be involved in.

Dr Rad 27:29
Is this

Dr Rad 27:30
true? Is this something that just makes sense in Livvy’s time, and therefore he’s kind of mentioning it. Who knows? But the Roman citizens are very driven, because they obviously just want the city to be complete and finished, so that they can actually, you know, live again as a result. Livy tells me they are so intent on finishing that the entire city, in its brand new expanded version, is finished within a year, completely rebuilt. Dr. G, not a stone left to be put in place.

Dr G 28:04
Wow, that is incredible. All right, okay.

Dr Rad 28:07
That’s how analytic history works.

Dr G 28:09
Of the things that I have questions about, and I think you’ve already flagged the aediles. I think that’s a good flag. Yeah, we’re not very sure about a dolls right now, although hopefully we’ll start seeing them soon, but because we don’t have the Fasti Capitolini for this period, we’ve got no names to go with, and if there are magistrates in that position, there’s no, there doesn’t seem to be any way to back that up, and if Livy doesn’t mention them by name, it’s like they’re not real, and he doesn’t seem to, the fact that the building program only takes a year. I think this tells us how small Rome is, more than anything else.

Dr Rad 28:45
Well, and also, as we’ve highlighted many, many times, potentially how limited the damage done by the Gauls was, that mostly they stole their transistor radios and televisions, and then got out of there

Dr G 29:01
anything that they could carry,

Dr Rad 29:03
exactly, exactly,

Dr G 29:04
yes, even the sacred hut on the Palatine survived, so guys, just a wooden hut, precisely.

Dr Rad 29:10
Now the capital also has some renovations done, which is mentioned because Livy thinks that the work done on the substructure here was so impressive that even in his own time he’s still blown away by it, and that’s because it is put together with using hewn stone. Now I am not a Mason, Dr. G, so I had to check out what that actually meant. That basically means that the stones were specifically shaped and smooth, so that they could, you know, build a particular thing, so a lot of effort is what I’m reading into that.

Dr G 29:47
I think that’s correct. Yes, effort, time, and effort, and also stone masonry.

Dr Rad 29:53
Yeah, I mean that sounds hard. I don’t underestimate the work of masons here, but it’s more that I was like hewn stone, I. Have no idea what that means, anyway. It’s still around for Livy to marvel at many, many decades, centuries later. So, well done, Rome. It’s at this point that he mentions the elections taking place, so towards the end of the year, and this is where we get all the people that you mentioned. Now, they decide once they’re in place that they are going to lead an army against the aequians, not because the Aequians had somehow managed to start yet another war with Rome, they had definitely been beaten by Camillus, I mean, of course, as if anything else were possible, but it is purely a war of spite and vengeance, Dr. G, the Romans intend to completely devastate their territory, so that they can never ever start another war again until 387 BCE,

Dr G 30:52
that is next year. Wait a minute. Okay, so whatever the Aquians have done sounds like Rome’s pretty unhappy about that. So, how does that campaign go for them?

Dr Rad 31:05
Well, Dr. G, Livy, alas, gives me very little information about what goes on with the Aequians. I’m imagining it’s just a bit of, you know, fear and terror on the Romans’ part. What he does tell me is that there is another force that is sent to deal with the Etruscans, who also were a problem for the Romans and Camillus in the previous year, so they invade Tarquinii, and they’re going to focus their attention on two towns, Cortuosa and Contenebra, I believe. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but as some more perhaps minor locations, shall we say, we don’t really know where these are in a modern sense. So, I can’t tell you much about where they are in a modern sense. I don’t know the answer to that. It’s possible that the last one I said, Contenebra, might be modern day San Giovenale, but really, really not sure.

Dr G 32:05
Big question marks,

Dr Rad 32:06
yeah, as usual with this point in time, really, really not sure. But Cortuosa is very easily captured. I mean, as you might expect from the fact that the Romans have just decided to do this out of spite, they had no idea that they were at war with Rome, and so they were completely taken by surprise. The Romans sacked their city and set it on fire. Yay!

Dr G 32:29
Thanks, Rome. Wake up one morning, you’re like, oh, this is not gonna go well. We were not prepared for this. I’m still in my pajamas,

Dr Rad 32:38
I’ve got the cucumbers on my eyes still. My coffee is over there. What is happening? Conten Contenebra Contenebra, it’s a little different. They do actually manage to resist for a few days, but the Romans are fired by a sense of injustice that few people understand in this world, and therefore they are not going to be put down by the resistance of this paltry little town. They overwhelm them to the point where they have no choice but to surrender.

Dr G 33:12
Okay, now the bad news about that is that does this involve more prisoners of war?

Dr Rad 33:18
Yes, probably there is booty talked about as usual, but as said earlier in this episode, it’s a little unclear exactly what that booty entails. The interesting detail I think about Contenebra and the conquest of this particular place is that the Romans take a particular strategy with this, which reminds me a little bit of one of Camillus tactics when he was trying to break the siege at Veii, where they seem to divide the forces up into even groups, and they take turns waging war against the town in like six hour shifts.

Dr G 33:59
Right. Okay.

Dr Rad 34:01
Now I think Camillus did that more with the construction of the, like, the secret tunnel that he used to get into Veii, but the same principle kind of applies, and the town is too small to do something similar to what the Romans are doing, and therefore they’re using the same men to just stand against the Romans, and therefore their men tire out before the Romans, because the Romans are doing it in shifts, and therefore getting a break, getting a rest, and this is why they are forced to surrender. Just thought that was interesting, because we don’t always get a lot of details about the tactics that the Romans are using at this moment in time. It’s just, oh, they set it on fire, and you know, steal all their stuff,

Dr G 34:42
yeah, and the idea that not everybody is involved all at once means that you can have this continuous onslaught, which would be very hard for anyone to resist, particularly if you weren’t expecting an attack, and you sort of see them in the distance, and you’re like, ah, oh. And you have to be on all the time, and they’re just sort of taking their time about

Dr Rad 35:04
it. Yes. Now, the last detail I have about 388 is about the booty, Dr. G, but not the specifics of what the booty entails, although I definitely think it probably does involve people. They are valuable, particularly at this moment in time when I don’t think Rome is exactly swimming in slaves, and they, they like slaves. The military tribunes had decided that the booty should go to the state, but they were little slow about telling everybody else that decision that they had made. So, in the meantime, all the soldiers who were with them had just helped themselves and divided it up amongst them, and the military tribunes were like, “Oh, oh, I was going to, you know, what? You just keep it, that’s fine. They realize that it’s going to be way too dangerous to try and take back whatever it is the soldiers have split up amongst themselves, because they’re obviously very happy with their new acquisitions. They’re like, “Yeah, you know what? You look great in those stolen clothes. Yes, you absolutely should wear that next week to the meeting. Keep it, it looks fab.

Dr G 36:08
Yeah, we don’t want to anger those guys, not after they’ve fought in six hour shifts. They’re like, I deserve this,

Dr Rad 36:15
and that is where 388 ends up for me, Dr. G. Basically, a lot of other, you know, rebuilding news, and another Roman victory, but with a bit of a sad tinge

Dr G 36:27
to it. Okay, well, I think piecing together a couple of things, the fact that you, that Livy seems to think that the rebuilding process in Rome takes so little time, but we also have this narrative of enslaved people coming into the city, being sold, suggesting this sort of trading.

Dr Rad 36:48
I see where you go.

Dr G 36:53
I see these things maybe weaving together. I mean, like, how did they rebuild so quickly? Well, conveniently they weren’t paying the labor, potentially everybody’s been handed their public tiles,

Dr Rad 37:05
yeah,

Dr G 37:05
and they’ve immediately passed them on to their newly acquired enslaved person, be like, “You build it for me.

Dr Rad 37:12
Yeah, good point, good point.

Dr G 37:15
So, in terms of what’s going on with Diodorus Siculus, I really have so little to give you. He gives us the names of most of the military tribunes, and he does get most of them right, which is quite telling, because sometimes that doesn’t work out for him. But he places this series of events for whatever events they are, because he doesn’t talk about Rome after he lists the tributes, is that the archon in Athens is a guy called Pythias, and his archonship dates to 380 to 379 which means we’ve lost almost 10 years in terms of the chronology, potentially at this point in time, but to take us through some of these names, so I mentioned this guy, Lucius Aquilius Corvus. We finally, after a long period of time, have what appears to be a plebeian in the military tribune with consular power role, which is hugely significant,

Dr Rad 38:22
and no mention, no mention of it in Livy, just slides right by,

Dr G 38:27
slides right by, but maybe he shouldn’t. Military tribunes with consular power nominally were created by the patricians in order to facilitate keeping the plebeians on side, who wanted to hold some sort of magisterial position, but they didn’t want to give them the consulship, so they’ve created this lesser position, nominally so that plebeians could hold it, and then we’ve rarely seen plebeians in the role,

Dr Rad 38:52
and as we’ve highlighted, that’s probably because that’s not at all why this position was created,

Dr G 38:58
doesn’t, yes, the more logistical, pragmatic reason would be because you’ve got wars on a number of fronts, and you want to be able to have people who have legitimate imperium to be able to lead forces against multiple enemies at the same time,

Dr Rad 39:12
and we also question when the consulship per se really becomes part of this conversation. Are we talking about praetors before then? It seems much more warlordy in the ancient Roman world in the four hundreds when this position was apparently created. It’s just a lot of stuff where it’s probably far more chaotic and almost feudal than the Romans would like us to believe.

Dr G 39:38
Definitely, definitely. And then we get this guy who just sort of pops up as seemingly out of nowhere,

Dr Rad 39:45
yeah,

Dr G 39:45
and he comes with this plebeian name, Aquilius is plebeian as far as we know, it also is sometimes considered patrician, but also the other note about this. Yes, which the writers of the Brill New Pauly talk about, is that it might not be historical either. So, in terms of hazy territory, this is where we are. But we do have some stories about previous Aquilii. So, there are the Aquilii brothers from the end of the sixth century BCE, and I don’t know if we mentioned them, I can’t remember. It was so long ago since we talked about that, would have been

Dr Rad 40:08
10 years ago.

Dr G 40:10
Yeah, of all the details that I may or may not have held on to, I have no idea whether we’ve mentioned these guys before.

Dr Rad 40:32
Yeah,

Dr G 40:32
but they apparently conspired against the newly established Republic.

Dr Rad 40:38
Oh, so this would have been part of the whole Brutus’ sons story,

Dr G 40:44
yeah, and they were executed. Those guys were

Dr Rad 40:47
done. Okay, then

Dr G 40:48
we have a guy called Gaius Aquilius Tuscus aftermark consul in 487 BCE, and he fights against the Hernucii, who at this point in Rome’s history have long been allies of Rome, yeah, but we’re not in that period, and received am ovatio, so that sounds like more of a patrician than a plebeian,

Dr Rad 41:11
yeah,

Dr G 41:12
holding the consulship, that sort of thing, and then we’ve got this guy Corvus, and that’s that’s it,

Dr Rad 41:20
and he does not seemingly accomplish anything individually.

Dr G 41:27
Maybe nothing is noted.

Dr Rad 41:29
No, that’s what I mean. Yeah, nothing is specifically.. I mean, to be fair, nothing that specific is noted about any of these guys for 388 in terms of what they actually managed to accomplish. There is some trouble brewing on the horizon for the following year, but I won’t get too much into that.

Dr G 41:51
And so the other thing is that I was just looking at some of the patrician names, just to sort of give myself something to hold on to for this year, and I was like, Who are these people? So Titus Quintius Cincinnatus Capitolinus. So the Quintius folk, they are a family of quite some distinction, and with a whole bunch of names involved, including Cincinnatus, Capitolinus, and later on Crispini and Flaminii, which gives you a sense that they might be end up moving into more religious positions over time as well.

Dr Rad 42:31
Yeah,

Dr G 42:31
but this is a family with a long history and connection with Rome that goes back to the kings.

Dr Rad 42:37
Yeah, well, I mean we had so much to talk about with Cincinnatus in his escapades, he was like the Proto Camillus,

Dr Rad 42:44
yeah, the

Dr G 42:45
original and shirt off man,

Dr Rad 42:48
exactly,

Dr G 42:48
par excellence, yeah, and this family seems to have been one of the families that came to Rome under the leadership of Tullus Hostilius,

Dr Rad 43:00
wow, okay, so that’s the third king of Rome for people keeping score at home,

Dr G 43:06
keeping track, and so this is a family from Alba originally, and he’s these are this is not the only family that crops up in this year that also has that connection, because the civili also are thought to have migrated to Rome in that same period from that same region, so it wouldn’t surprise me that there were a lot of interconnections between those two family groups based on that history alone.

Dr Rad 43:35
Well, and this is something that we used to talk about, I think, a bit more when we had consuls, allegedly.

Dr Rad 43:42
Mm. which

Dr Rad 43:43
is that you do see people from similar families often sort of running together, you know. We definitely see these associations between particular gens, where they, they are, they do have an association with each other, and it does seem like there is intermarriage, perhaps, going on. They do have these historic connections. We know the tradition is very important for the Romans, so we know there are allies and rivalries between these rival families, even though there aren’t that many of these clans.

Dr G 44:21
Yeah, even in this early period, and so because Romans are so interested in families and family history, the other group that’s worth mentioning here is the Julii, because again they are one of these families that seems to move into Rome under Tullus Hostilius from Alba, and so we’ve got these three big gens in this moment in time, and they’re all taking up spots in the military tribunate with Consular Power for this year, so it seems like we’re leaning into old families for the most part, except for our maybe our stray plebeian,

Dr Rad 44:58
so random, yeah. Yeah,

Dr G 45:01
I mean, I hope he’s a plebeian, but it’s hard to know. We have so little to go on, but certainly the name stands out for being a little bit different, and one that we’re not used to seeing.

Dr Rad 45:12
I was gonna say, I don’t recognize it. Yeah, not like the others.

Dr G 45:16
Yeah, and so all of a sudden I was like, oh, does this bear more investigation, perhaps, but that is about all that I have for this year, because I really, I don’t have a narrative to hang my hat on, and so that’s where I’m at, 388 BCE.

Dr Rad 45:31
That is great, Dr. G. I think that means it’s time for the partial pick. All right, Dr. G, please tell me, in case I have somehow forgotten, how does the partial pick work?

Dr G 45:48
Ah, the partial pick, so Rome is capable of winning 50 golden eagles, but only if they manage to score 10 golden eagles in five categories.

Dr Rad 46:00
All right, Dr. G, what is our first category?

Dr G 46:04
Military clout.

Dr Rad 46:06
Well, not a lot of detail, but it goes well for the Romans in this year. Not perhaps the most impressive conquest to capture a couple of cities that weren’t expecting you in the slightest, but nonetheless, it all goes well. Not a lot of death, it would seem, on the Roman side.

Dr G 46:27
Yeah, look, I don’t think the Romans would be fussy about was it just or unjust at this point in time. They decided it was just, so they

Dr Rad 46:36
definitely think they’ve got a cause. This is really just them saying, “Oh yeah, you want to start a war for no apparent reason. Guess what, you could play that game.

Dr G 46:45
You started it, but we’re gonna finish it

Dr Rad 46:48
exactly. So, what do we say? Like a, like a six, a five? I don’t know. I don’t

Dr G 46:54
know, maybe a five. It’s not like a glorious.. it doesn’t.. I think from our perspective it doesn’t feel just, but from their perspective it seems reasonable enough, and they seem

Dr Rad 47:03
it does, but there’s not a great sense of triumph about it. I guess it’s not like they’re adding heaps of territory or something like that.

Dr G 47:11
That’s true.

Dr Rad 47:12
Yeah. Okay. Five. It is

Dr G 47:15
all right. Then we move on to diplomacy

Dr Rad 47:17
again. When there is warfare, there tends to be little diplomacy. I don’t think so.

Dr G 47:26
Yeah, no mention of any ambassador at any point in time in this year, it’s a zero.

Dr Rad 47:30
Yeah, yeah.

Dr G 47:32
All right, expansion.

Dr Rad 47:33
No, there’s no mention that these towns that they attack added to their territory, per se. I mean, they capture them, but I think that just means they get to take all this stuff and set the rest on fire.

Dr G 47:49
Wow. Okay. Zero.

Dr Rad 47:51
Yeah.

Dr G 47:52
We’re tous

Dr Rad 47:54
again. In spite of the fact that there is military success, no one is really singled out for doing anything exceptionally daring or heroic.

Dr G 48:04
Yes, exactly. So, even though we’ve got all of these names, it’s not like they were like, you know, Lucius really stood out on the battlefield today because he did a thing, then everyone was like, “Wow,

Dr Rad 48:16
I don’t even hear who decided on the whole six hour shift tactic.

Dr G 48:20
Wow. Okay, so another zero. So far, so good. Rome, can you climb from the depths with the final category, the citizen score?

Dr Rad 48:31
Well, I think it’s actually quite a good time to be a citizen, because we’ve got a bunch of new citizens. So well done, them. They got land magic, the Romans don’t give that away easily. They’ve apparently managed to rebuild their city entirely and add some fancy things like hewn stone substructures.

Dr G 48:54
Very impressive. Okay, but what about those Romans that were living in Veii and were demanded to return?

Dr Rad 49:01
Well, look, they might be a bit grumpy, but let’s face it, they’re coming back to their home, and perhaps they managed to drag their feet long enough that everyone else did the rebuilding for them, and their tactic worked. They were threatened with death. Yeah, but you know what? I feel like the Romans are not shocked by that. They’re like, yeah, yeah, all right. I’ll be there on the 15th, or you’ll cut my head off, yeah.

Dr G 49:27
Oh

Dr Rad 49:29
my god, god senators, so embarrassing.

Dr G 49:34
Yeah, I mean, that’s not good though. I can’t.. we’ve got to take a few points off whatever the score is for that.

Dr Rad 49:39
Oh, yeah, look, it might not be a 10 out of 10, but I guess it’s just.. I don’t know, I guess I’m just.. I’m not shocked by the whole ‘you can’t live in Veii’ narrative, like for the 100th time. How many times do we have to say this? You can’t live in vain demonstrably untrue. Was doing it for ages until you threatened me with death. I don’t know. No, no, Roman lives in Bay. That’s our next T-shirt. No Romans live in Bay.

Dr G 50:12
On the other hand, and obviously we’re in murky territory, but the matrons get their money back.

Dr Rad 50:16
That’s what I mean. The matrons are getting their money back. There are gold bowls with Camillus name sitting around the city’s rebuilt in record time, and in an improved way. There’s just so much, and on top of that, okay, bad for the people that are captured, but as usual, we have to take it from the Roman point of view here, because that’s what this podcast is about. From their perspective, there is wealth coming in from all these military victories, even though it might be informed we find highly morally repugnant these days.

Dr G 50:50
All right. Well, yes. So I’d say we’re dealing with maybe a seven,

Dr Rad 50:55
an eight. Could you go an eight? Well, come on, like I mean, really, for the citizens, they often have a terrible time.

Dr G 51:04
That is true. Yeah, only some of them were threatened with death,

Dr Rad 51:09
and you know what? It was the lazy ones, the ones that hadn’t bothered to come back to Rome and help with the rebuilding effort.

Dr G 51:16
Did you even see what I did with that apartment in Veii? I don’t see if you’d seen it, you wouldn’t say I was lazy.

Dr Rad 51:22
Okay, come on. Eight

Dr G 51:27
fine. Yes, I accept.

Dr Rad 51:29
Thank you. All right. That means, Dr. G, that the Romans end up with a total of 13 golden eagles, surprisingly low. The funny thing is, I think often these sorts of years where like stuff is happening, but it’s not these pivotal moments. It’s often in those important moments, even when they’re bad for Rome overall, like the Gaelic sack, because they are such dramatic moments and such important moments in Rome’s history. You do get so many stories of how people reacted and behaved, that often they get higher scores, oddly, because of things like virtus and stuff like that. In peaceful times, our scoring system does not fare well.

Dr Rad 52:14
Rome

Dr G 52:14
is not designed for peace,

Dr Rad 52:15
that’s what I mean, that’s the problem. Yeah, Rome is not designed for peace, so they score low, and that’s the thing, I think, by their, we’re judging them by their own standards, right? So, by their own standards, this is a bit of a

Dr G 52:27
yeah, we haven’t done the things, you know, we could have been better on the battlefield, we were there, could have been waiters, there wasn’t. Oh, well,

Dr Rad 52:35
all right, Dr. G, well, that wraps up 388 for us, and I’m very excited to get into what happens next. I have to tell you, there might be a return to the conflict of the orders. All

Dr G 52:47
right. Well, I’ll look forward to that.

Dr Rad 52:57
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. The partial historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collectivemem.com You can support us by buying us a coffee on Kofi, but you can also support our show and help us to produce more amazing content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon, in return you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad-free content. Today, we would like to say Salve to our newest Patreon, Captain Ducky. Welcome aboard, Captain. However, if you are trying to save up for some hewn stone. Please just tell someone about the show, or give us a five star review. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 174 – We Built This City on Big Hewn Stones appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Jeremy Swist has a PhD in Classics from the University of Iowa, and his research interests include imperial Greek and Roman historiography and rhetoric, late antiquity, classical reception in heavy metal music. He is currently Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Michigan State University. Jeremy has published and presented extensively, and he has a particular interest in the intersection of heavy metal music and the classical world – we suggest you check out his blog, Heavy Metal Classicist, or our previous episode with him to find out more. In 2024, he translated and produced a dramatic reading of the Emperor Julian’s Symposium of the Caesars, which starred some of the finest podcasters and actors in the WORLD! (Maybe us)

The Emperor Julian, who ruled Rome between 361 and 363 CE, is one of Jeremy’s great passions, and we are thrilled to talk to him about his new volume on this unusual ruler. The book is published by Oxford University Press and is entitled Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth, and the Refounding of Rome.

Abstract from Oxford University Press:

“The Roman emperor Julian employed both words and deeds to return the empire to paganism and reverse Christianization, inspired by his conversion to the Neoplatonic philosophy and radical pagan Hellenism of Iamblichus, and promoted by his own production of Greek literature. These works present a coherent vision of the providentially guided history and destiny of Rome as a series of (re)foundations enacted by rulers such as Romulus, Numa, and Augustus. Julian offers an Iamblichean approach to interpreting Roman legends, Platonic allegories, and myths of his own creation to articulate his own role in the refounding of the empire. Approaching the wider examination of Julian’s imperial self-image on these terms ends up nuancing and challenging common assumptions influenced by the rhetoric of his contemporary proponents. In his reverence for the gods and for philosophy, the emperor’s self-construction embraces the identities of a statesman and solider more than philosopher, Roman more than Greek, and mere human rather than semi-divine being. Julian’s unique positionality as emperor let him invert the conventions of panegyric whereby rulers equal and surpass the demigods and heroes of myth and history. While distancing himself from the ideal models of virtue and founding that inspire him, he adopts a different set of exemplary figures as mirrors of himself. Statesmen such as Pericles and Scipio, and especially Augustus, serve as precedents for Julian’s more realistic conception of his role in refounding the empire, as student and champion of philosophers, guardian of law and tradition, and servant of the gods.”

The return to the old gods

Julian’s rule was short but it left quite an impact. We chat with Jeremy about some of the ideas Julian put forward about Rome, the foundation stories that underpinned its self-definition, and what might have been if weren’t for an unfortunate spear that wounded Julian and ended his life just two years into his reign.

Sound Credits

Our music is by the superb Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents

The post The Emperor Julian with Jeremy Swist appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Camillus is dictator in Rome and Ahala is his trusty master of the horse. It’s time for Rome to make things right in their immediate area. There are a bunch of neighbours to deal with, including the Etruscans, the Volscians, and the Aequians.

We’re in a hazy period where our sources appear out of sync with each other. Livy offers the most fulsome narrative that has survived for this period whereas sources like Diodorus Siculus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus are fragmentary or have their focus elsewhere.

The Power of Camillus

By this time, Camillus’ reputation is so cemented in the region that his mere presence at the head of a military is enough to leave their enemies shaken if not stirred. The Volscians are certainly not happy when Camillus and crew turn up on their doorstep. When Camillus turns up at the city of Bolae of the Aequians, will they also fall at his feet?

Things to listen out for

• Burning ramparts!
• Booty and payment of soldiers?
• Seventy years of conflict with the Volscians?
• Deditio – total and unconditional surrender
• Central Italy as the site of a zombie apocalypse
• A very fast back and forth of city taking – hello, Sutrium!
• The survival of the scared hut to Mars on the Palatine
• The Tyrant of Syracuse is back for our ‘Meanwhile in Sicily’ segment
• Philoxenus, the dithyrambic poet
• Plato’s sojourn to Sicily

Our Players 389 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• L. Valerius L. f. L. n. Poplicola (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 387, 383, 380
• L. Verginius – f. -n. Tricostus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 402?
• P. Cornelius – f.-n. —– (Pat)
• A. Manlius (T. f. A. n. Capitolinus) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 387? 385, 383, 370
• L. Aemilius Mam. f. M. n. Mamercinus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 391, 387, 383, 382, 380
• L. Postumius – f. – n. Albinus Regillensis (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 381
• [?L. Papirius (-f. -n. Mugillanus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 380?
• ?M. Furius]

Dictator

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 393, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

• C. Servilius -f. -n. Ahala (Pat)

Censors

• ?M. Furius (Fusus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 403?
• ?L. Papirius (Mugillanus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 380?

Interreges

• P. Cornelius Scipio (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 395, 394?
• M. Furius Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 6.2
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.117, 15.2.1; 15.6-7; 15.8.1; 15.22.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 14.2-3; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16.22; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 5.17
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Oakley, S. P. (Ed.). (2016). A commentary on Livy : books VI-X. Vol. 1, Introduction and book VI. Oxford University Press.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Linguistic map of Central Italy with the major locations marked for convenience. For the source of this map, see Wikimedia Commons.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Additional sound effects:
– Pixabay
– Sample Focus
– BBC Sound Effects

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents

The post Episode 173 – Nobody Beats Camillus appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Dr Elliott (now forever known as Dr E) is a historian, archaeologist and broadcaster. His PhD is in Classics and Archaeology from the University of Kent. Dr E is the author of nineteen books (yes, nineteen!) on the ancient world, including Early Imperial Romans, Pertinax: The Son of a Slave Who Became Roman Emperor, and Roman Britain’s Missing Legion. To find a full list of his many endeavours, check out his website.

Dr Simon Elliott

Introducing Septimius Severus

However, it is Septimius Severus, ruler of the Roman Empire from 193 to 211 CE, who we want to focus on today. You may not be particularly familiar with this emperor, but if you have seen Gladiator 2, you have met his children. Severus was the father of Caracalla and Geta who do not have the best reputation. But there is much more to his story than his disappointing children.

Dr Elliott takes us through the remarkable rise of this man: from Leptis Magna to the imperial purple. In this interview, we tackle the following questions:  

• How did Severus emerge victorious from the chaos of The Year of Five Emperors?
• What made him the most successful Severan emperor? (Aside from not being murdered with his mum)  
• Was Septimius Severus responsible for a genocide during his campaign in Britain?
• Is there a case to be made that Septimius Severus deserves to rank alongside the likes of Augustus and Trajan?
• When is Netflix going to make I, Julia – a series revolving around all of the Julias from the Severan dynasty?  (Copyright, The Partial Historians, 2026)

Join us for the fascinating life story of the founder of the last dynasty before the near collapse of the Empire in the third century CE. And don’t forget to grab yourself a copy of the book, currently a Sunday Times bestseller.

An image of the cover of Dr Elliott’s book on the emperor, Septimius Severus.

Please note: at around 39:11, when Dr E is discussing the women in the Severan dynasty, he makes reference to Julia Domna’s sister as Julia Soaemias. A slip of the tongue, as Julia Domna’s sister was Julia Maesa, and her daughters were Julia Soaemias (mother of Elagabalus) and Julia Mamaea (mother of Severus Alexander).

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
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 battle’s waged and when citizens turn against each other, I’m Dr Rad

Dr G 0:32
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 0:43
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.

Dr Rad 0:57
Welcome to a special episode of the partial historians, I am one of your hosts. Dr Rad,

Dr G 1:04
and I am Dr G.

Dr Rad 1:07
Dr G, would you believe we have another very special guest joining us today? His name is Dr Simon Elliot, and he is a historian, archeologist and broadcaster. His PhD is in classics and archeology from the University of Kent. Dr Elliot has a whopping 19 books on the ancient world. His latest book is entitled The African emperor, the life of Septimius Severus, a volume that focuses on the life of Guess who and his rule of the Roman Empire from 193 to 211 CE, welcome to the show, Dr Elliot

Dr Simon Elliott 1:46
Guys, guys, so I’m Dr E and thank you very much for having me on. I really, really looking forward to chatting to you. Thank you.

Dr Rad 1:53
Oh no. We are thrilled. This is a part of the empire that we haven’t explored too much. We are well and truly stuck in the early republic. At the moment,

Dr Simon Elliott 2:04
that’s way too complicated. I feel like this is going to get complicated as well. That’s my sense.

Dr Rad 2:13
At least Rome is tiny at this time when we’re talking there is really no empire to speak of, no matter what they tell you otherwise. So let’s dive into it. Septimius Severus may not be a name that everyone is familiar with, yet his imprint is definitely still felt. Can you tell our listeners where they might have encountered the remnants of his rule?

Dr Simon Elliott 2:35
So when you look at Septimius Severus, the first thing to remember is he was, he was the most well, if you look at the Roman Empire at the time of Severus, we’re talking about the late second century and the early third century. So in terms of chronology, this is towards the end of the first half of the Roman Empire, which is the Principate phase of empire. And he’s the founder of the Severan Dynasty, which leads because it’s not a very successful dynasty, as we’ll see. Please ask me what happens to all the other emperors in the Severan dynasty? Because actually quite, quite gruesome, and your listeners will love it. And the failure effect of the dynasty by two through five leads to the Christ of the third century, where the Roman Empire almost implodes, and it’s only another great warrior, Emperor, Diocletian, who drags it kicking and screaming out of the morass of the crisis to reform the Empire as a dominate so basically, the Severan dynasty ushers in the end of the Principate phase of Empire and the founder of the Severan dynasty, Septimius Severus, not only by far the most successful of the Severn emperors, but almost certainly the most powerful of all Roman emperors, simply because he had more legions than any other emperor. And also he expanded the territorial expanse of the Roman Empire to its greatest extent. And also, he’s North African, so this is a man of superlatives. And if he’s the Roman emperor in charge of, and he’s from North Africa, in charge of more legions and conquering more territory than any other Roman Empire emperor. You can make a very good case. Is the most powerful in terms of military and political power African who’s ever lived. Okay, so it’s a big deal, actually. And the thing with Severus is, it’s almost an untold story, because he gets lost in the in the focus on the likes of Hadrian or Trajan or Augustus, or in the Republic Caesar or Constantine, the first Christian emperor. But very much, Severus is an emperor which very few people have heard of, because he almost gets glossed over. And yet he was the biggest deal of all of them.

Dr G 4:42
All right, so you’re setting a great scene here. It’s like this guy overlooked possibly the most powerful guy that we’ve yet to encounter in terms of thinking about Roman emperors. And you’ve mentioned that he’s from North Africa as well. So I’m wondering if you can go a little bit into his background. What about Do we know anything about his early years? For instance?

Dr Simon Elliott 5:05
Yeah, we do actually. I mean, as a Roman emperor, he’s very well sourced, actually. So you’ve got the likes of Cassius Dio that all classical sources are clearly flawed, but cross referencing can actually get sort of a broad picture. So in terms of near contemporary sources, or contemporary sources, Cassius Dio knew him. So you have Cassius Dio, you have Herodian. You have the story or Augusta, which is anonymous, but it’s still a useful history. And between those three and later histories, you can get a good cross cross reference. He’s born in the blazing heat of a North African spring, in 145, ce sort of in late April. He’s born in Leptis Magna, which is one of the great Carthaginian, mercantile founded cities in Tripolitania. Tripolitania is the eastern part of the great, hugely wealthy African province of Africa, pro consularis. So remember, the Roman Empire is a Mediterranean empire. So where I’m sitting today in Britain, where the Boltons were the odd ones, Gaul Britain, where the Northwest European boltons, broadly the Roman Empire is a Mediterranean empire. So North Africa was an absolutely normal part of it, and Africa pro consularis capital, provincial capital, Carthage was probably the richest part of the whole Roman Empire, richer than Achaea, which is Greece, richer than Asia, which is Western Asia, minor. So he’s he’s born there, and he’s born into a senatorial family who are super wealthy. So join the dots. He’s born into a super wealthy family, into a super wealthy town, into a super wealthy province of the Roman Empire. So he’s got it all in front of him, and he’s an aristocrat. He’s a senator, so he’s a patrician, so he can look forward as he grows to a career along what we call the cursus honorum, the career path of a Roman aristocrat. And by the time he’s 10, he’s in Rome having what we would say in the UK is an Oxbridge education equivalent, you know, the finest that money could buy. It’s like going to Harvard in the states with the finest education money could buy. But Intriguingly, he was very loyal to his North African roots, and he never forgot where he came from. So while he was having this cut glass accent education, he deliberately kept a guttural North African accent, and that’s important, because actually, we do know his lineage, right? This is very important to the age in which we live. He’s very often He’s certainly the African emperor, because he’s from North Africa, which is in Africa. He’s often called the Black Emperor because we have a contemporary portrait of him called the Severan Tondo, which shows him in real life with his wife, Julia Domna, his second wife, the love of his life. He’s very, very dark skinned, so he’s often called the Black emperor. We know his lineage, though, on his father’s side, because his great grandfather was called Septimius Macer, and Macer is a Carthaginian name, so his family heritage has more in common with Hannibal than it does with Julius Caesar, which is a line I love saying. And the Carthaginians, as you will know, were settlers from Phoenicia, and that’s the modern Lebanon. So his family originally came from the modern Lebanon, and there were settlers with the Carthaginians in North Africa. And then the lineage comes through to the time of Severus. So this takes us through to Severus, getting his education in Rome and beginning his career on the cursus honorum. So he’s now a young man ready to make his mark in the Roman world.

Dr Rad 8:34
So this sounds very impressive, but nonetheless, even with this incredible background that he has. It’s one thing to be an elite man in the Roman Empire. It’s quite another thing to become emperor. So he actually rise to power.

Dr Simon Elliott 8:47
That’s that’s a really, I mean, it’s a great point. That is because so if you’re if you’re a member of the Roman aristocracy, especially if you’re a senator, so you’re a patrician, the three things you need to good at, be good at in your entire life are fighting, because you’re always going to be fighting the law, because you’re always going to be suing or being sued, and politics, because you’re always going to have to be appearing in public, getting public support. So he’s owned in all these skills, but his first major posting, which makes a difference to his career, is a posting to Syria. So he becomes the legate, the general in charge of a legion. They’re called Legio III Cyrenaica, which is based on the Syrian border. And at this time, in fact, all the way through the Roman Principate. And in fact, the Roman Republic Principate and dominate. The only real symmetrical threats the Romans have got in terms of fighting are in the east, which are the Parthians, later the Sasanid Persians, who are the Persians. So I’ll call them, for the sake of our part, I’ll just call them the Persians to avoid confusion to your listeners. So Severus is based in Syria, on the border in a legionary fortress called zuegma, which is near Antioch, the provincial capital of Syria.

Dr Simon Elliott 10:00
Him, and there his job is to hold the line on the eastern frontier. And it’s a great posting for a young man wanting to make his mark on the cursus honorum, because it means that he’s getting really, really good experience being a military leader, which is so important and very important for this emperor, because, as you will see, within about two minutes, he becomes the Emperor at the point of a sword. He then gets a posting to his next province. But this time, he’s not the general in charge of the Legion. He’s the governor of the province. Very big deal. This is to be the governor of a place called Gallia Lugdunensis. So the clue’s in the name guys. It’s in Gaul. It’s the very rich bit through the middle of Gaul so running from the Alps to the Channel Islands. Its capital is in Lyon, which is a place called Lugdunum, very relevant later in Severus story. And it’s here that he marries his second wife, the love of his life, Julia Domna. And the two of them together are very much the power couple of their age. And they’re their first son, Caracalla is born, and then later, as Severus gets dragged back to Rome to become the Consul, which is the senior magistrate, their second son, Geta, is born, you’ll recognize Caracalla and Geta if you watch that not so good movie, in my opinion, Gladiator Two, because they’re the protagonists in the movie. You should have made a movie about Severus, because Severus is far, far more important, interesting than than anything in that movie. But there you go. So at least some people know what their names were, Caracalla and Geta goes to Rome, becomes a consul 190 very important, and they were almost into him become the emperor in 190 he gets made the governor of another province, which is Pannonia Superior, which is on the Danube, just north of the Alps. It’s a crucial, crucial province, because it controls access from the north of the Danube, where the Germans are, through to northern Italy. So it’s a frontier, barrier province, and it’s just been the scene of the 30 year Marcomannic wars, where the Romans only just won there the that’s the conflict which appears in the movie, the rise of fall of the Roman Empire in the original gladiator movie as an example.

Dr Simon Elliott 12:06
And while he’s there, the Emperor Commodus is assassinated in Rome over New Year’s Eve. 192 193and when he’s assassinated, the first emperor to replace him is the city prefect. This is January now, 193, the city Prefect is called Pertinax, who Severus knows because he’s earlier been his mentor. And when Pertinax becomes the emperor, he wants to be a really worthy emperor. So when the Praetorian guard comes to him at the end of January and say, Can we have some money, he says, No, oh, dear. Where this is going? At the end of February, the Praetorian girl go and see him and see him and say, Can we have some money, or we’ll kill you. He says, No. So the end of February, they kill him. Well, at least he was one. So work goes out around the Roman Empire to three candidates who are now going to play for the throne. One is Severus on the Danube. One is Clodius Albinus, the governor in Britain, in London, and one is Pescennius Niger, who is the governor in Antioch. And they all make a play, but clearly Severus is closer. It probably takes five days to get from the Danube to Rome. It’ll take you 11 or 12 days by the quickest route, usually maritime, to get from London or Antioch. So that’s Britain or Syria to Rome. So Severus arrives with five legions, Parks them in the middle of the forum Romanum, goes into the senate house with his sword drawn, and he says, in fact, actually, I’ll show you a Roman Gladius. This is a Roman Gladius.

Dr Simon Elliott 13:37
So for anybody who can’t see this, that is a Roman Gladius, and the draws his sword, his troops are with him. He says to the senators, I am the Emperor. And the senators, guess what? They say? They say, Absolutely not a problem. You’re the boss. So that that’s how he becomes the Emperor at the point of a sword.

Dr G 13:58
Oh, goodness me. What. What a dramatic turn of events. This guy likes drama, by the sounds of it. This is a obviously, this is taking place over the course of several years, going up the cursus honorum, it takes a while. You’ve got to know the right people, you’ve got to make the right connections and all that kind of thing. And you’ve also mentioned that he deliberately holds on to his Punic accent as well, which I think is great, because this is defining him against a sort of a Romaness that he is encountering everywhere around him. So while he’s working hard within the Roman system, he’s making it very clear that Rome is not just about this part of the Mediterranean. It’s also about other parts of the Mediterranean. And he’s well involved. So once he’s in power, how does he maintain his connection to his North African roots?

Dr Simon Elliott 14:54
Well, firstly, you make some really good points there. He absolutely hates the political climate in Rome, right? So he hates the Senate. When he’s the emperor, he only spends time in Rome four times, and mostly for a matter of months. He can’t wait to get away from Rome. He loves being on campaign. This is a very militaristic emperor. Also, his family are always on campaign with him as well. So Julia Domna gets the cognomen the mother of the camp, and Caracalla and Geta are always with them as well. So I think Caracalla and Geta is younger men, a little bit older. They quite like Rome, as we’ll see. But broadly, the Severans didn’t really like Rome, to the point actually, where, when Severus dies in York in 211 and I’m jumping ahead, but I know we’ll go back, so I don’t I think we’ll be fine. He’s effectively created a reset of the Roman world. I call it the Severan reset, or even a hostile takeover, because 80% of the legates in charge of legions across the Empire and 80% of the governors in charge of provinces are North African.

Dr G 15:59
Oh, wow. Okay, that’s massive.

Dr Simon Elliott 16:01
Many of them are family members, right? So he’s running the place like the mafia. And one of the things that comes through in my book, actually, is the Severans are very, very inward focused on the family and North Africa. And actually, when this is my second book of Severus, the first one is about the end of his life in Scotland, one of the things that came through my research for this book, which I did pick up with the first one, is they were really avaricious as well. So for example, we’ll talk about it in a minute. I think how he maintains himself as emperor and where he campaigns. He kills 200 senators of the 600 over a period of two years without trial, just executes them, often sent to the beasts in the arena. And usually when this happens, it’s not that unusual. Actually, when this happens, the wealth from their landed wealth which is immense, or their portable wealth which is immense, will go into the Imperial Fiscus treasury, not the Severans but half of it went into the Severan back pocket. And what’s more, they didn’t care who knew.

Dr Simon Elliott 17:05
So he’s got to he’s got to power at the point of a sword. It’s not totally unusual in the Roman world, certainly later, particularly the crisis of the third century. But these guys don’t care who knows. You know, they just want to reason. And you know, if you know, if you go to the forum Romanum, the next time you’re in Rome, the largest arch you will not be surprised to know is the arch of Septimius Severus. You won’t be surprised to know it’s actually at the very top of the Forum Romanum, beneath the Capitolini Museum, which is where the temple of Jupiter Maximus was. So it’s beneath the most important temple in the Roman world. And also the foundations are built on the foundations of the curious Senate House. So that’s a very direct message saying, if you don’t behave, you know who the boss is, to the sound of a sword slowly being scratchingly being drawn. So this is that’s, that’s if you want to get into service as headspace, that’s where you need that’s where you need to go. I’ve got no idea why I like him. Actually, I’m often, that’s what I’m giving talk. And I’m a military historian. Principally, I’ve asked him, that’s why I’m giving talks. Why do you like him? I actually can’t answer the question because, because, actually, the more you talk about him, more you realize actually, although he’s one of these the toughest of tough guy emperors, he was very brutal about sort of, sort of doing it.

Dr G 18:21
You know, look, I’ll let you in on a secret. I have a similar problem with Augustus

Dr Rad 18:25
I was gonna say. I’m glad you can admit it. DR, G,

Dr G 18:30
Yes, this is my admission. It is recorded. It is out there for the world. Now, yes, Augustus, it’s a problem, but I do like him

Dr Simon Elliott 18:37
Both of them great survivors, both of them in complete control of their own life and destiny. Both of them, crucially for a Roman Empire, died in their own beds.

Dr Simon Elliott 18:48
Now, you could make a case. Could make a case in actual fact, I’ll let you into I’ll let you into a secret. My next book coming out in July, which we should talk about, because I hope you’ll like it. It’s called Women of Power in the Roman world.

Dr Rad 19:00
Oh, that is right up our alley.

Dr Simon Elliott 19:02
There is a chapter on Livia Drusilla. And then I’m writing a book for next year called death on the Palatine cold cases of the Roman emperors, where I look into, how about 12 Roman emperors die, and we don’t really know why, or it might be a bit dodgy, so I just look into the cold cases as a detective. One of them is Augustus, whether Livy you drew still have poisoned him or not. I’m not going to tell you what I come I’m not going to tell you tell the outcome. I’ll tell you next year, if you do a pod about that book. But crucially, with Severus as well, there is a theory that Caracalla may have killed Severus as well. So there’s always a question mark over both these great, great emperors. You know, if you want to get and you’ll love this with Augustus, if you really want to get in the headspace of Severus, no Roman Emperor managed to conquer the Persians and then the Britons in the Far North. You have a poem by Horace at the end of the first century BC, beginning.

Dr Simon Elliott 19:59
The first century CE where Horace says, Augustus will not be a God unless he conquers the pesky Persians and Brits. And Augustus does neither. He’s far too clever to get dragged into that. He’s far too canny. Severus isn’t though he’s a bit of a nutter. So Severus does conquer the Persians, and at the end of his life, tries to conquer the far north of Britain. I think at the point he died in York in February 211 I think he had actually, I think he believed he had. And I think he died thinking he was the greatest Roman emperor of them all, because he’d done something which even Augustus had not done.

Dr G 20:39
Food for Thought.

Dr Rad 20:40
Could this be a new candidate for your heart.

Dr Simon Elliott 20:43
Anyway, back to your script. Sorry to throw loads. Sorry.

Dr Rad 20:46
We love a tangent. Don’t you worry, particularly when it’s about Augustus. Dr, G, can’t talk enough about him. So let’s maybe take a step back for a moment and put Severus into a bigger perspective, which I think you were starting to do there. You’ve said that he was the most powerful person ever born in Africa based purely on military and political agency. Now I think you’ve given us a hint about why you think that. But this is ever this is in World History. So Can you unpack that a little bit for us,

Dr Simon Elliott 21:16
he’s the emperor of the Roman Empire, which, in their known world, was it right? They knew something was happening in China, though almost certainly completely, uh, ignorant of anything happening in South America. There may have been in there, may have been aware of things happening in the rest of Africa or elsewhere in the world. But as far as they were concerned, they were the most important empire, political entity anywhere ever, as far as they were concerned. And North Africa is a full fat functioning part of the Roman Empire. Roman North Africa is like a layer cake. Chronologically. You start off with the indigenous Berbers, so the Garamantes in southern Libya, the Numidians in Algeria and Tunisia. And then the Morocco, the Maureen in modern Morocco, then you have the Carthaginians, then you have the Romans, then you have the Vandals, then you have the Byzantines. And finally, the Arab conquest. The only phase we look at today is through the eyes of the Arab conquest, because North Africa is part of the Arab world. But until the Arab conquest, it was an absolutely normal part of the medicine the wider Mediterranean world. And if you look at political agency, I can’t think of anybody until the modern world, who’d have any more political agency than a Roman Emperor. And in that context, if you came from Africa, I can’t think of anybody else who was born in Africa who had that level of political agency.

Dr Rad 22:41
It’s a convincing case. I must say,

Dr G 22:43
He leaves quite a legacy. I’d like to sort of rewind a little bit, because I think you in really broad brush strokes, have talked about like the consequence of this year of the five emperors, but this seems like a pretty crucial moment we’ve seen. I would imagine listeners might be quite familiar with the year of the four emperors, for instance, which is considered a real chaotic time at the end of the Julio Claudian period. And yet, the year of the five emperors sounds worse on paper, but I’m thinking that it’s probably got the same level of chaos and confusion like who’s going to come out on top? What’s going on there? How does this chaotic political moment really help elevate Severus to the top job?

Dr Simon Elliott 23:30
It’s a great question. So you’ve got the big difference of the two four emperors, of five emperors, 68-69, through to 193, broadly, the year of the four emperors has played out in the Imperial center, whereas the year of the five emperors has played out across the entirety of the Roman Empire. So firstly, Severus at the point his emperor has got two potential usurpers either side of him to the east and west, with Albinus in London, who’s declared and Niger in Antioch, who’s declared. So Severus is very canny. He buys Albinus off by making him his Caesar, Junior emperor. Remember, in the Roman world, you’ll appreciate this. In the Roman world, the most famous Roman of them all in the Roman Empire was Augustus, and then Caesar and the Republic, but, but it was always Augustus. It’s flipped. In our world, everyone knows Caesar less. People know Augustus, but, but in the Roman world, it’s always Augustus. So the senior Emperor is the Augustus. This is Severus, the junior emperor. His Caesar is now Albinus in Britain. So Albinus has bought off Severus then goes and campaigns in the east in one line four, defeats Niger, kills him, appropriates all his wealth, puts half of it in his back pocket, and then he knows that to get martial glory in the Roman world, you don’t get that you won’t have a triumph through civil war. So he needs to have a foreign war. So he invades Parthia of the Persians, and he’s just at the point of crossing the border when word reaches him at the in 195, early 196, that Albinus has seen through Severus Ruse and he’s usurped again. So Severus has to hot foot it all the way back along the riot Danube and Rhine to find Albinus has crossed over with Britain, with all three British legions joined by a Spanish Legion. And then he’s hold himself up the place where Severus was the governor and married Julia Domna, and where Caracalla was born, which is Lugdunum Lyon in Gallia Lugdunensis. And he knows Severus can’t ignore that, because that’s a that’s a deliberate slight. So Severus has to fight him, and they fight this incredible, two day titanic battle, which probably was the largest Civil War battle in the entirety of the Roman history. And dealing with the Roman Republic, you’re dealing with the likes of Philippi and Pharsalus, well, this is a bigger battle than both of those probably put together. Dio says involved 150,000 men either side. That’s got to be an exaggeration, because the entire Roman military establishment was about 300,000 establishment was about 300,000 men. But there’s a lot of people involved. Two days, Severus gets knocked off his horse twice. Later in life, he’s associated with having a leg injury, which is interpreted today as being gout. I often wonder whether actually, one of those two events being knocked off his horse in battle, he may have had a leg injury which didn’t heal well, which might cause his later in later troubles, but he does win. Captures Albinus, chops his head off, sticks it on a pole, sends it to Rome, prances over his beheaded body on his charger to ceremony show who the boss is then. And this is a kicker. I love this, being being British, and having spent a lot of time in Kent and London, having spent 25 years working in London, in the City of London, so Severus to bring recalcitrant Britain back into the Imperial fold, sends his military inspectors to Britain, and they have to start rebuilding the British legions, which have been butchered already because of the Battle of Lugdunum. But then to show the people in the provincial capital London, who is the boss, they build the land wall of Roman London. So it’s built by Severus to show if I can do this, you imagine what I can do if you misbehave again. There’s no external threat. There’s no river wall built on the Thames. So it’s not a defensive circuit. It’s a statement. And this is this wall, which becomes the medieval wall of London, which to this day still delineates the square mile in London. So this financial powerhouse of the world is delineated to this day by a boundary set in place by a dark skinned Roman Emperor from North Africa. Absolutely, absolutely love that fact. And so from that point, he’s the sole emperor. And then he goes back to the east, where he does is the first Roman Emperor since Trajan, and only the second Roman Emperor. And there’s only three who do it. Charis later does it, only the second Roman emperor who conquers the Persians and he captures Ctesiphon their capital. Then he does this triumphal parade through North Africa, starting in Egypt, which is where the portrait was painted, which is like a fayum portrait. And then he goes through all the North African places that he knew and loved and everywhere he goes, they monumentalized His presence by building a Severan phase. The Severan this that everywhere, even in Rome, by the way, which he hated, a third of what you see today classical Rome is Severan. And I delight in showing people these things because of like the Temple of Vesta in the forum Roman a very, very famous temple of Vesta built by Julia Domna. That one is the iteration built by Julia Domna. And then he finds himself back in Rome, and it’s around 207, and he’s really bored. So it does take quite a good deal of time for him to sort of wrap it all up in a way. So even though he’s Emperor on paper 193 there’s still that sort of tail end of the civil conflict to get through to really secure it for him, I think it’s the same for any, any emperor who came to power at the point of a sword. Actually, you’re always going to be looking over your own shoulder. Because if you I mean, you could say it was a usurper. It was the first, it was the first to market, shall we say, in Rome, to seize the throne. But you could argue, as a usurper, any Roman usurper is going to be looking over the shoulder for the shoulder for the rest of their life. That’s why Severus, by the way, famously, on his deathbed in York in 211 tells Caracalla and Geta, look after each other. Will return to that look after each other and look after the military completely ignore the rest. Wasn’t in charge of anybody apart from the military. He always his first Roman emperor that allowed a Roman legionary within his 25 years term of service to legally marry as an example, and he increased the salary of a Roman legionary by a third. So he’s always been faithful to the military, because he knew that they were the ones who got into power, and they were the ones who would keep him in power.

Dr Rad 29:56
Well, this seems like an opportune time to talk about one of his. Is more important military campaigns. Let’s talk about what he gets up to in Britain.

Dr Simon Elliott 30:05
So it’s 207-208 and he gets a message from the governor in Britain, who’s a chap called Senecio, which says, there’s trouble in the north, which there may have been because, remember, the legions are undermanned and being rebuilt. There’s trouble in the north. And then he says, very interesting line, the entire island. So the whole island is in danger of being overrun. We need either your help or reinforcement. And this is when you get the Severan surge, because Severus decides at the end of his life to come over in person. And he actually arrives in York in 208 with the imperial family and with half the Senate, with the Fiscus, Treasury, the Praetorian Guard. And they turned York, actually, in the north of Britain, into the imperial capital, the proper capital for the last three years of his life. And then he spends 209 and 210 campaigning in what we call today Scotland. Leave with Caracalla, leaving Geta and Julia Domna in York to actually administer the Empire, and you have these two really brutal campaigns. You know, when in Britain, when we talk about our weather, we we laughably call it changeable, but the Romans didn’t mince their words. They just said it was miserable and wet, which is very accurate. The Roman contemporary authors say at this time, the weather in Britain was worse than usual. So it must have been really, really bad. And also in the campaigns in the far north the natives, because the Roman that, I mean, the Romans were leading 50,000 men. Remember, that’s the largest campaigning force ever to fight on British soil. They blocked the coast off with a clash of Britannica fleet. They cut the the natives off from the highlands by blocking off all the Glens. And so they trapped all the natives in the Far North. There were broadly two confederations called the Maeatae and the Caledonians, and they just trapped them. And then once they were trapped, they just went straight through five flight, through a soft underbelly, and butchered them. And the natives didn’t get a chance to coalesce into a fighting force for a battle to take place. So the whole thing is this hideous guerrilla war in terrible weather conditions. And even Dio says that although the Romans won through weight of numbers, they suffered a lot of casualties. But eventually the Romans win Severus and Caracalla go back down to York, and they leave the troops in the north. Now, when the Romans have been up there before, the troops have come back down, but the natives notice the Romans aren’t leaving, so they realize the Romans are trying to stay. So they rebel again. And so Severus actually not Severus, because he’s now too ill. In 210 Caracalla repeats the whole campaign again, but Severus is recorded by Dio as saying that Severus ordered them to commit a genocide. So the line that DIO uses is kill everybody, including their babies in their mother’s wombs. And the archeological record does show there’s a massive depopulation event in the far north of Britain, which is evidence, all the way through to the end of the third century. So it looks as though the Romans did attempt to genocide, actually, in that campaign, which is not unusual for the Romans, dealing with the rebellion, but it’s a particularly brutal one, given you have this proper depopulation event, victory is declared. Severus and Caracalla. Take the cognoma Britannicus. Coins are minted in Rome. Hurrah Severus dies in February 211 right? Probably of some kind of pulmonary illness in in sort of the 65 the miserable kind of a fog or the British winter is in York. And Caracalla and Geta hate each other. They hate each other, and they hate York and Britain, so they can’t wait to get back to the flesh pots of Rome. So separately, with their own entourages, they race themselves back to Rome, and with them gone, there’s no political imperative to keep the troops in the far north of Britain. So everything drops back down to the line of Hadrian’s Wall, which it stays up for the rest of the Roman occupation. Interestingly, there is a major repair of Hadrian’s Wall at this time leaving Severin inscriptions. And when Hadrian’s Wall was first when the inscriptions were first deciphered in the 17th and 18th centuries, the wall was called Severan the Severn wall, because the first ones deciphered were Severan. It’s only in the 19th century you get the Hadrianic ones, and Caracalla and Geta get back to Rome, and then within a year, probably by Christmas, our Christmas Roman Saturnalia, Caracalla killed Geta, either killed him or had him killed, and Geta allegedly then dies bleeding to death in Julia Domna’s arms in the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill. And then you have this cascade of seven emperors. You have Caracalla, the survivor. He’s assassinated four years later, for six years later, 217 while he’s relieving himself against the tree. Be visiting a temple in the east, and he’s stabbed in the back. That’s a hell of a way to go. Very briefly, the Praetorian Prefect Macrinus then becomes the Emperor. He’s also assassinated with his son. Then the Severans are back with Elagabalus and his mum. Elagabalus is assassinated with his mum, and then finally, you have Alexander Severus with his mum, who was assassinated with his mum. So it’s not a good job being an emperor’s mum in the Severan dynasty, either. So that is it. So the dynasty peaks massively with Severus, and then suddenly you have this failure of a dynasty which finishes in 235, which causes, I think, the cascade into the crisis of the third century, which could have brought the Roman Empire down. Actually, to my point at the beginning of our chat, it takes another great warrior, Emperor, Diocletian, to rescue things. Otherwise, you know, our world would have been completely different.

Dr Rad 35:56
Yeah, God, if those two brothers had just got along, things could have been very I was gonna say,

Dr G 36:01
I feel like a counterfactual history moment is required for something like this. Like imagine if those two brothers, Caracalla and Geta, could have found a way to have followed their father’s advice, because it seems like everything takes a really bad turn, and I hate to bring up gladiator two back into this conversation, but that movie would have just been way more interesting if it had focused on the history, which is incredible,

Speaker 1 36:27
I tell you.

Dr Simon Elliott 36:27
I tell you. I tell you. Like, as you know, with you all over the Roman world, it’s more Game of Thrones and Game of Thrones. It’s more Tolkien than Tolkien. You know, it’s all there. Of course, Tolkien himself was obsessed by the Roman world and the Dark Ages, etc, which informs a lot of his writing. But for us, it’s all there, and if it’s done well on screen, it’s great TV or great movie. I mean, gladiators not close to history, but it’s good movie. Yeah, the HBO BBC series Rome was fabulous. The first series of that was fabulous. You know, a very good recreation of that particular world, so you don’t need to muck about with it that much to actually make fantastic narrative.

Dr Rad 37:07
No, it is one of the big mysteries as to why they decided, I know, let’s go against what’s known about this time period and create a far less interesting story.

Unknown Speaker 37:16
They should

Dr Simon Elliott 37:17
should have spoken to us shouldn’t they?

Dr Rad 37:20
If only we put the call out to Ridley Scott many times, still no reply.

Dr G 37:25
So I think in terms of the brothers, you’ve painted a pretty strong picture of what’s going on with those two in the wake of Severus death, I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about the love of his life, Julia Domna, and how she comes into it, because later, mothers seem to not fare so well. What about her?

Dr Simon Elliott 37:47
I think Julia Domna is is literally half the story, actually, because they were a real power couple. First thing to know is that she’s a lot taller than he was. So if you go to the Forum Boarium meat market in Rome, which is at the bottom of the Palatine Hill, where it meets the Circus Maximus. So it’s quite easy to find. There’s two or three arches there, and it’s on the Tiber and there, there’s an arch, the arch of the argentari, where you who the money lenders, where you have a sculptured Julia Domna and Severus, who would have seen it, they’d have seen the sculpture. Severus is about foot shorter. Now bear in mind that the sculptor with this most militaristic of emperors would definitely wanted to have made him as big as he physically could without actually ending up in the arena or doing something silly. So you can guarantee Severus was probably a lot shorter than Julia Domna, for a start, and I think it was probably like a middleweight Olympic weightlifter all square and muscle. Julia Domna Is is portrayed as being very tall, and bear in mind where she came from. She came from a Emesa which is modern Aleppo. And her father was the chief priest of the sun god Elagabalus. That family had previously been the royal family of a Emesa before it became part of the Roman world. So there were some of the richest people in the Roman Empire. So very much a very, very good catch for Severus marrying into that family.

Dr Rad 39:10
How convenient that they fell in love.

Dr Simon Elliott 39:11
But I think, I think it was a love match. I really think it was a love match. Very unusually in contemporary sources, as you know, all Roman contemporary sources are all late middle aged men, or old men writing who are rich writing for other late middle aged men who are also rich in a very gender unbalanced society. Okay, so doing my research, for example, for Women of Power of the Roman World, you’re immediately faced with that that you have to hack through before you get to the true story of the women involved. But even then Severus Julia Domna is really well written up. Actually, she became a key patron of the arts in Roman across the Roman Empire, much more so than than Severus. And you know, the family were close. This is really unusual. What happened to Caracalla and Geta. They were very close for most of their life. They followed Severus and Julia Domna, the kids around the Roman world. When it was on campaign, they went to everywhere in the Roman world, and Julia Domna would have been very much a steady influence there. And I can only think that as the boys got older into their early teenage years, they end up with their own coteries around them who then can see a path for their own benefit by championing one of the siblings against the other sibling, which is probably what sparred out of control. Julia Domna’s end, though, is really sad. I mean, when Caracalla was assassinated, she’d had enough. She was in a Emesa, and she just turned a face to the wall and died because she just had enough, and she was heartbroken. In the Women of Power of the Roman World book, there is a chapter called The Severan Julias. Julia Domna wasn’t the only one of the Severan Julias. Her elder sister, Julius Soaemias, was like The Godfather. So Julius Soaemias was more powerful than Julia Domna, especially after Severus died, and she pulled the strings of the early Severan dynasty. And then it’s her two daughters who are the mothers of Elagabalus and Alexander Severus who died. Chances are Julia Soaemias, the elder sister of Julia Domna, was the one who ordered the assassination of Elagabalus and her own daughter, his mum, because they weren’t up to scratch, and then put her younger daughter and his her son, Alexander Severus, in power. And that lasted about decades. So that actually almost worked, but ultimately didn’t. So this is a really interesting story about the Severan Julias. There’s definitely, definitely a second pod here for us to talk about, about, about these amazing women who, because it’s very difficult to find women who held true political agency in their own right in the Roman world, because the sourcing issues and because it was a very gender unbalanced and unbiased, a very, very biased society. You can make a case that Livia Drusilla may have done. I do anyway, you can make a case certainly that Zenobia, who was a Palmyrene Queen, did you can make a very good case that Galla Placidia, who was the daughter of Theodosius, the first, the sister of Honorius and Arcadius, and the mother of Valentinian the second, she was a regent 16 years so being a regent meant you have proper political power. So she probably did have political agency. And then it comes to the Severan Julias, Julia, Domna, probably had a degree of agency, but she would always be in the shadow of this militaristic emperor, Severus Julia, Soaemias and her daughters, I think they are real political agency. So there’s a real story there. The Severans and Julias.

Dr Rad 42:40
I know I was thinking of a, you know, multi series television show that could follow the women. Be great. It’d be absolutely great. Are you listening Netflix? They’re crying out for content. Yeah, I Julia, that’s what I’m pitching.

Dr Rad 42:56
So let’s return, if we may, to Severus end, because you’ve hinted at some possible controversy around that and his legacy. I mean, obviously you could say that this dynasty is part of his legacy, but I think there’s probably a bit more to it than that as well.

Dr Simon Elliott 43:10
So in terms of his end, well, the controversy, there’s a reference in the primary sources that as the first peace treaty is being signed after the 209 campaign in the far north of Britain, Caracalla, who’s behind him on a horse, draws his sword, and it’s the Praetorian Prefect that stops him stabbing Severus in the back. Only one source may be true, maybe apocryphal. Will never know, but that that is there. I think he did die a natural death. I think he died a natural death because we know that he took his funerary urn, which was Porphyry, to York from Rome. So you’re not going to do that unless you think you’re on your last legs, are you? So he did take his funerary urn with him, and later, when he’s buried in Rome, like many Roman emperors, he’s buried in the mausoleum of Hadrian today’s Castel Sant’Angelo. So I think he knew it was the end of his life anyway. But I think, I think as he died, I think he thought he succeeded, and I thought he said in, I think he thought he said in trying a good succession as well, clearly didn’t read his sons particularly well later in life, because you have this cascade of events then which you have this dysfunctional dynasty. In terms of his legacy in Britain, you can argue there was one success for the Romans from a Roman perspective, in that you do have peace on the northern border for almost a century afterwards, which is the longest period of peace on the northern border in Britain until the modern era, by the way. But it was at a great cost, because certainly, almost certainly, was a genocide in that second 210 campaign. Did he conquer the Far North? Well, no, he didn’t. Did he because he dies, Caracalla and Geta can’t wait to clear off so the political agency is gone. So the all that effort, all those casualties, all the economic dysfunction, all that genocides complete waste of time, because the Romans then just go back down to the line of age as well, and actually do find.

Dr Simon Elliott 44:59
Find this in the far north of Britain only two times can you say the Romans actually or conquered it in the far north, the first times by Agricola on behalf of the Flavian emperors. And that probably was a proper conquest for at least six months. And then you have with the severance and the Severus dying, that fails so without the political imperative which drove Agricola because the mission called him back without the political imperative, with the severance the northern border always drops down. Probably it’s quite expensive to maintain troops that far north, so far from the Imperial center. So in actual fact, although, although you could say he was the most powerful African who ever lived. He was probably the most powerful military Roman Emperor terms of his legacy. At the point he died, he thought he’d done it, but he hadn’t.

Dr Rad 45:47
That sibling rivalry really screwed things up for everybody in so many ways. Not a crazy man. What a crazy guy. Heated Rivalry season two, Caracalla and Geta

Dr Simon Elliott 46:00
That’s a good idea.

Dr G 46:03
There’s so much potential in this material to wrap things up, I’m going to leave with a an easy question, a super easy question. It’s about the source material. Challenges with the source material, and challenges for the historian, looking at the types of source material that we have for Severus life.

Dr Simon Elliott 46:24
Oh, well, as we know, it’s always a challenge, because you’re dealing with it’s what we’ve got. I am an archeologist, though, so I am always keen to triangulate anything I get from a contemporary source than anything in the archeological record, which actually, with the Severan book was pretty easy, because there’s a very good archeological record of those campaigns in the far north, especially the marching camps where the Romans In fact, one of the fascinating facts about the Severan campaigns in the far north is because he was leading 50,000 men through the Scottish Borders, the largest marching camps in the whole Roman world are there actually from that campaign. But in terms of the written sources, they’re what we’ve got, so you just deal with what you’ve got, and you always take them with a pinch of salt. You always try and triangulate. I still love going back to them, though, because it’s what there’s. There’s a line. I’ll give you my favorite line from DIO and it’s not about service. It’s about Commodus, who is my least favorite emperor, because I think Joaquin Phoenix, when he portrays him in Gladiator, nails it. Absolutely nails it. I think he was exactly like that. There’s a scene in Dio where Commodus is is showing up, pretending to be Hercules in the in the Colosseum. And of course, all the senators are in the front seats, and they’re all having to applaud, yeah, it’s brilliant. Wonderful emperor. The guy’s mental. Wonderful emperor. Great, great. He’s mad. Wonderful. Well, great and Commodus. Big trick was to fire crescent shaped arrows to chop the heads off ostriches. On one occasion, apparently did 200 in one go. Dio describes Commodus picking up an ostrich head from the ground, going up to a Dio and the senators are sitting dear as a senator, and then wags the head up and down in front of them, and says, You better laugh, boys, because if you don’t, this is what’s going to happen to you, and they all have to start laughing.

Dr Simon Elliott 48:15
So even if that’s not true, I love it. I love it. I love having to go back to the primary sources, reinterpret them time and time again. The moment I’m dealing with Ammianus Marcellinus writing a book about Galla Placidia and again, just any going back to any source is an absolute joy for me. I think there is a real thrill as well. When you know that the writer that you’re reading is a contemporary of the people that they’re talking about, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be any more useful, necessarily, but you feel that there’s a sense of an aliveness between the writer and their subject matter. And to have Dio there talking about these people that he’s living under the regimes of, I think is absolutely fascinating. Do you think? Do you think Dio so I’m going to Procopius now. Do you think Dio might have also written his own secrets. I would love that.

Dr G 49:05
How much worse could it get? Oh, my God.

Dr Simon Elliott 49:09
Tune in. Everybody. Just go through it. Just just get just go through the list of the I just love doing this when I’m giving talks in public. Severus died in his own bed. Caracalla, assassinated Geeta, assassinated Macrinus, assassinated Elagabalus assassinated with his mum. Alexander Severus assassinated with his mum, who wants to be a Roman Emperor. It’s a dangerous, dangerous job, really, is stick. Stick with being historians not killing Sure. Well. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m sure our listeners will be dying to get their hands on on a copy of this book. Would you like to tell them where to follow you, where to find you as well. You

Dr Simon Elliott 49:48
can find me across all social media platforms, at Simon Elliott, 20 my email address, and I’m very happy for your your followers to get in touch. Simon dot, Elliot at Sentinel communications, or one word or.Dot co.uk, and the African Emperor is a Sunday Times bestseller, by the way. So who knew there was so much interest in a Roman Emperor with with from North Africa? But now you know why? Because it is amazing story, and that’s published through icon books. But also, crucially, Belinda audio, based in Australia.

Dr Rad 50:20
Love the connection.

Dr Simon Elliott 50:22
So thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you.

Dr G 50:25
It’s been an absolute pleasure. I’ll show a couple.

Dr Simon Elliott 50:28
There you go. That’s Beinda audio in Australia. Lovely. And it sounds like we will have more to talk about in forthcoming episodes. I would love to talk to you guys again. Fabulous. Talking to you. Thank you so much for having me on Thank you.

Dr Rad 50:52
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 Joy De Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive, to find more from the memory collective head to collective mem.com. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch. We have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on ko fi. And we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this. One possible. However, if your Imperial coffers do not overfloweth, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five star review wherever you listen. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – Septimius Severus with Dr Simon Elliott appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Transcript

Dr Rad – Welcome to the Partial Recap for the 390s BCE!

Dr G – I’m Dr G 

Dr Rad: and I’m Dr Rad

Dr G: and this is our highlights edition of the 390s in Rome. We’ll take you through from 399 to 390 in an epitome of our normal episodes. 

Dr Rad: Perfect for those mornings when you don’t want some lengthy rhetoric with your coffee – but please be warned – the Roman world is a violent one.  

Dr G: Get ready for a recappuccino. 

399 BCE

• In  399 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Cnaeus Genucius Augurinus, Lucius Atilius Priscus, Marcus Pomponius Rufus, Caius Duillius Longus, Marcus Veturius Crassus Cicurinus, and Voler Publilius Philo. 
• After finally electing ONE plebeian as military tribune with consular power in 400 BCE, the Romans decided to go all in and elect an almost entirely plebeian line-up. Hey Marcus Veturius, IS one the loneliest number? 
• You would hope the plebeians could revel in their power, but Rome was hit by an incredibly hot summer, right on the heels of the frigid winter of the year before. 
• The Senate was concerned enough to turn off their fans, put down their iced teas and consult the Sibylline Books. 
• The duumvirs in charge of the books decided that they needed to hold a lectisternim for the gods. In other words, time to partay! 
• The images of the gods were placed on fancy couches and presented with fancy food. Nothing says fun like watching delicious food sit in front of some images. 
• Everyone in the city joined in the celebrations and Rome became one large frat house. 
• Meanwhile, the Romans kept trying to take out their old enemy, the Etruscan city of Veii. 
• Their siege of the city showed no signs of success, especially as they were attacked by the allies of Veii – the Capenates and Faliscans. 
• Learning from their previous disasters, the Romans responded quickly to this double whammy. Let the attackers become the attacked!
• Back in Rome, it was time for elections for 398. The patricians had found the last year to be incredibly tough. So many plebs in power – GROSS. Clearly the gods agreed with them. Freezing winters and putrid summers were their way of saying that the plebs should ever hold power. 
• They had to put their best foot forward and get themselves back where they belonged – at the tippetity top! 
• With the most dazzling patrician candidates flashing before their eyes, and the gods frowning down from their passing clouds, the plebs had no choice but to vote them into office. 

398 BCE

• In 398 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Lucius Valerius Potitus, Marcus Valerius Lactucinus Maximus, Marcus Furius Camillus, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Quintus Servilius Fidenas, and Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus.  
• The Romans enjoyed success against the allies of Veii, the Falerii and the Capenates – thanks to Potitus and Camillus. 
• Unfortunately, there was no further progress made in the siege at Veii. 
• Portents began to appear, but the Romans found it hard to understand their meaning – where were all the Etruscan soothsayers??? Oh right… in Veii. 
• The Romans could tolerate a few odd signs here and there, but when the water rose to abnormally high levels in the lake in the Alban Woods, they decided this was TOO MUCH (Ha!)
• In a panic, the Romans dispatched some ambassadors to see the Delphic Oracle. 
• Before they heard what the Oracle had to say, a man from Veii chimed in. Uhhh guys, it clearly meant the Romans would have to reduce the level of the river if they wanted to defeat Veii. 
• The Romans were a bit suspicious, so they decided to kidnap and torture the man. There’s just no better way to make sure someone is telling the truth. 
• But the man from Veii stuck to his story – apparently the gods would watch over Veii until the Romans managed to draw the water off the lake. 
• Pass me the shovel, Dr Rad! Looks like we have some digging to do. 

397 BCE 

• In 397 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Lucius Julius Iullus, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Lucius Sergius Fidenas, Aulus Postumius Albinus Regillensis, Publius Cornelius Maluginensis, and Aulus Manlius Vulso Capitolinus.  
• The Tarquinii decided that since the Romans had a full dance card with their wars against the Volsci, the Aequians, the Capenates, Faliscans and the Veientes, they may as well do some sneaky raiding. 
• The Romans were STUNNED by the bad manners of the Tarquinii. I mean, it’s just not the done thing, old chap!
• The military tribunes, Postumius and Julius, set off to teach the Tarquinii a lesson in etiquette. Wanting to avoid provoking the tribunes of the plebs, they didn’t call a levy and used a volunteer force to provide an unwelcome surprise for the enemy as they were on their way home with the stolen goods. 
• Everyone in Roman territory could breathe a sigh of relief – their possessions were returned safely. How could they be expected to live without their scented candle collection?      
• The rest of their military expeditions were not going so well. It was stalemate city. At least the rest of the Etruscan cities were still refusing to help Veii to drive off the Roman forces. There were mysterious strangers on their doorstep and they needed to priorities themselves. Only volunteers were allowed to join their fellow Etruscans. 
• Clearly, the Romans needed to get the gods onside. 
• Just as well they had sent those legates off to the Delphic Oracle! When they returned they confirmed everything the captured soothsayer from Veii had said about the Alban Lake. Time to start draining! And someone send the Oracle a fruit basket. 
• The Romans also needed to toss out their magistrates before their used-by date. The magistrates had not been proclaimed properly during the Latin festival for Jupiter Latiaris – perhaps this was why the Romans were having problems? 
• Interreges were selected and elections were organised; however, the tribunes of the plebs arced up, demanding that the majority of the magistrates be from the plebeian class.   
• Not liking the way this was #trending, the moderate Publius Licinius Calvus was sought for office – even though he wasn’t running! Once again, Licinius Calvus managed to please both the patricians and the plebeians. Turns out all you need to put out a fire is a little vanilla sauce. 

396 BCE

• In 396 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Lucius Titinius Pansa Saccus, Publius Licinius Calvus Esquilinus, Publius Manlius Capitolinus, Quintus Manlius Vulso Capitolinus, Cnaeus Genucius Augurinus and Lucius Atilius Priscus – quite a few names from the year 400 but not the whole team, as Livy indicates.
• 396 did not start well for the Romans. Two of the magistrates – Titinius and Genucius – tried to take on Veii’s allies, the Faliscans and Capenates and it ended in disaster. At least Genucius died fighting bravely at the front of the army. 
• Rumours quickly sent all the Romans into a major panic. Come on gods! Show Rome a bit of love! They’ve tried really hard to please you. 
• They’ve drained water from the Alban Lake and everything!
• It was time for a dictator! Marcus Furius Camillus was chosen with Publius Cornelius Maluginensis as his trusty sidekick.
• Camillus has been around the block a few times, but this is the first year that he will come into the spotlight. Keep your eyes on this guy – he’s going to be a hero for the ages.
• A dictator was just what the Romans needed to give them a positive, can-do attitude. 
• Camillus set his sights on Veii after making some big promise to the gods, especially the ancient goddess, Mater Matuta and Pythian Apollo.  
• Feeling #blessed, Camillus started implementing his ideas – such as digging their way to victory! No really, you need to dig all the way under the citadel – but quietly. Sssshhh…
• Once the tunnel had penetrated into the heart of Veii, Camillus launched a diversionary assault, allowing his sneak attackers to burst through and undermine the enemy from within. 
• There was a heated debate over what to do with all the booty – Veii was CASHED UP. It was Publius Licinius Calvus vs Appius Claudius in a plebeian-patrician ultimate smackdown – of rhetoric.
• Licinius carried the day – meaning that the people of Rome were told that if they wanted their slice of enemy pie, they could go and fetch it. An ancient cash and carry scheme.
• But the people did not get everything! The many people who were captured were sold into slavery and those resources went to the treasury. Way to be cheap, Camillus!
• However, the people of Rome were still pretty thrilled about this victory over Veii and – Rome has more than doubled in size. I think the Romans would have been obsessed with size…. 
• With such a monumental conquest, the people were happy to see Camillus receive a triumph… until they saw the triumph in person. 
• Camillus went over the top by Roman standards – being drawn by FOUR white horses. Who does he think he is? Jupiter? 
• Camillus did not want to limit himself to the capture of the city, he wanted to take Veii’s chief deity too. He asked Juno Regina to switch her allegiances and the lady appeared willing.  
• The whole process of transferring a deity involved the ritual of evocatio – you can’t just pick them up and plonk them anywhere.    
• Juno’s cult was successfully transferred to the Aventine and Camillus also dedicated a temple to Mater Matuta – and with those tasks complete, he could finally resign as dictator.  
• The Volscians and Aequians sent some envoys in this year to ask for peace – aren’t we all getting a little tired of war? YES, yes we are – so take the peace, but don’t think for one second that the Romans actually like you. 

395 BCE

• In 395 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Publius Cornelius Cossus, Publius Cornelius Scipio, Kaeso Fabius Ambustus, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Quintus Servilius Fidenas, and Marcus Valerius Lactucinus.  
• There was limited time to bask in the glory on conquering Veii – Veii’s allies still needed to be subdued.
• The Cornelii were placed in charge of the war with the Faliscans and Valerius and Servilus were sent against the Capenates. 
• They adopted a scorched earth kind of strategy to the areas surrounding the cities. 
• The Capenates quickly sought peace, but the Faliscans confidently resisted. Was this going to be Veii 2.0? Another siege?  
• Back in Rome itself, the patricians and plebeians came to blows over that ongoing issue – LAND.
• The patricians wanted to establish a colony on the Volscian frontier but the plebeians were unimpressed. Why not live in Veii? Location, location, location, patricians!
• The patricians were sickened by the thought. Romulus would spin in his grave if he hadn’t possibly been chopped up into little bits by angry senators. This was all the doing of one of the tribune of the plebs – Titus Sicinius! 
• The former dictator Camillus made things worse because of the vow he had made to the gods during his campaigning at Veii. He had promised that Apollo would get his slice of any victory BUT forgot to let the people know about that until after the booty had been divvied up and the pontiffs were clear – the people needed to bring some of it back in to keep that sun god shining down upon them. 
• A bitter pill to swallow!
• However, finally, it looked like that whole unfortunate affair could be put to rest – the gold was collected (partly thanks to donations from dedicated Roman ladies) and  fashioned into a beautiful golden bowl.
• With the vow finally on its way to being resolved, the tribunes of the plebs started doing what they do best – unleashing mayhem for the patricians. The plebs had been gypped with this whole Veii deal! And Camillus was the most to blame. 
• A verbal smackdown ensued – trash talk was flying – but nothing was actually getting resolved. The populace were going to need the kind of tribunes of their side who would keep fighting the good fight. 
• The patricians knew they also needed a fierce team to resist, so get ready for another all-patrician line-up, starring Camllus himself! 

394 BCE

• In 394 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Marcus Furius Camillus (naturally), Lucius Furius Medullinus, Caius Aemilius Mamercinus, Lucius Valerius Poplicola, Spurius Albinus Regillensis, and Publius Cornelius – possibly also someone called Catlus Verus, but the name seems incredibly out of keeping with convention. 
• The tribunes of the plebs held themselves back until Camillus went off to deal with the Faliscans. 
• Unfortunately, the delay meant that the plebeians themselves were less keen on the whole idea. Getting a colony – ugh! –  so much effort! 
• Camillus managed to return to his full and dazzling glory – and not just because he was a military genius. He was the very model of a moral Roman general. 
• When a Faliscan teacher/traitor gave Camillus the opportunity to use the children of the leading Faliscan citizens to score an easy victory, he refused. The children were sent straight back home – with their former teacher as their prisoner to beat all the way back to the city. Don’t get any ideas, kids!
• We may have seen some virtuous Romans before, but this is something else! EVERYONE on both sides was blown away by Camillus – they would like to marry him, and then divorce him, so that they could marry him again! 
• The Faliscans promptly surrendered – if the Romans could produce someone like Camillus, then they didn’t want to resist any more. If loving Rome is wrong, then we don’t want to be right. 
• Camillus took it all in his stride of course, but there was still the matter of the vow. The bowl was made, but it was just sitting in Rome. 
• Time to get this bowl rolling! Lucius Valerius, Lucius Sergius and Aulus Manlius were sent off to deliver the gift to the Delphic Apollo. 
• They did not make it far before they were captured by Liparaean pirates and taken back to their lair. Yarrr! 
• These have to be the most respectful pirates we’ve ever seen, because once they understood the GOLDEN BOWL SITUATION™ they helped the Romans on their way. No one wants to mess around with the gods. 
• The Romans showed their gratitude by entering into a covenant of hospitality – just to say, THANK YOU for not ruining our special mission. 
• If the Faliscans and the pirates weren’t enough, the Romans also had to deal with war against the Aequians. 
• The military tribunes, Gaius Aemilius and Spurius Postumius, were placed in command. 
• At first they worked together, but eventually they decided to divide and conquer. 
• This did not play out seamlessly. 
• Due to some arrogance on Postumius’ part, the Romans had a serious setback, but in an extremely chaotic way, the Romans managed to score a victory – which was a huge surprise to the Romans back in the city. They had heard that they had all been slaughtered! What a nice surprise for everyone. 
• And so ended 394 – heretofore known as the year of crazy surprises and surprising morality.  

393 BCE

• In 393 BCE, there were consuls for the first time in around 15 years! – and that honour went to Lucius Valerius Potitus and either Publius or Servius Cornelius Maluginensis. 
• Rome also had some suffect consuls who had to come in and take over – Lucius Lucretius Tricipitinus Flavus and Servius Sulpicius Camerinus. 
• The Aequians tried to capture a Roman colony, but Lucretius quickly put them back in their place. 
• However, it was hard for him to truly enjoy his win, because back in Rome it was a Conflict of the Orders EXTRAVAGANZAAAA
• Two of the tribune of the plebs from two years before – Aulus Verginius & Quintus Pomponius – were placed on trial – probably something to do with their collusion with the Senate to block the proposed move to Veii – something that was still very much on the mind of the plebeian tribunes. 
• The patricians wanted to block the wily tribunes, hence the appointment of consuls. 
• But they could not prevent Verginius and Pomponius from being found guilty and hit with large fines. The Senate and Camillus were incensed. 
• Sure, the plebs could feel bitter about it, but how had these men done anything illegal? 
• This is actually the only case ever brought against tribunes of the plebs for their actions in office. 
• Camillus’ anger fuelled his campaigning to keep Rome for the Romans – Veii was for losers, man!
• A vote was held, and the decision for everyone to stay put in Rome squeaked in. 
• The Senate were so thrilled that they decided to give every freeborn plebeian male a whopping 7 iugera of land in Veii. 
• Seems a bit of a weird gift in the circumstances, but the plebs liked it! Perhaps there was a slight shortage of men around? 

392 BCE

• In 392 BCE, we had consuls again! Can you believe it?
• Lucius Valerius Potitus and Marcus Manlius Capitolinus were in charge for the year, but the plebs were too busy mowing their new lawns in Veii to care. 
• Many of Camillus’ promises to the gods made during the siege of Veii were fulfilled in this year.
• There was the usual squabbling with the Aequians, which meant that both of the consuls were rewarded, one with a triumph, the other with an ovation.  
• War with the Etruscans in Volsinii loomed on the horizon, but then famine and pestilence hit Rome HARD, brought on by drought and a heatwave. The Romans had to shake their fists from their sickbeds as they were so ill – they were in no condition to fight a war!
• Rudely, the folk from Volsinii and their allies, the Sappinates, decided to raid Roman fields anyway. 
• No one was spared by the disease – not even the censor or the consuls! 
• Fresh auspices and an interregnum were ordered – this was a very worrying situation
• Six military tribunes with consular power were eventually elected after the interregnum passed – and surely no plague would kill all six of Rome’s leaders. Right? Right?

391 BCE

• In 391 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Lucius Lucretius Tricipitinus Flavus, Servilius Camerinus, Lucius or Marcus Aemilius Mamercinus, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Agrippa Furius Fusus, and Caius Aemilius Mamercinus. 
• After that horrible bout of pestilence, the Romans were ready to teach their enemies some manners. 
• The Volsinienses and Sappinates were soon defeated, and Volsinii agreed to a 20 year truce with Rome and to pay the salaries of the Roman soldiers. Cha ching!
• It seemed like everything was going rather well for Rome, but then an unusual portent appeared with worrying news. 
• Marcus Caedicius, a plebeian, suddenly heard a booming divine voice warning him that the Gauls were on their way to Rome and he had better tell the magistrate – toot suite! 
• The magistrates chortled when the worried pleb appeared before them – oh, the lower class! So gullible. Gauls in Rome – an insane notion. 
• Little did they know that this was indeed a divine voice speaking – that of Aius Locutius. Don’t worry – he’ll eventually get an altar out of this. 
• Camillus also found himself facing charges from one of the tribunes of the plebs – Lucius Apuleius. The way Camillus had stuffed up the handling of the spoils of Veii – well, he could not let that slide. 
• Camillus may have been hoping for a flood of support, but he received more of a trickle 
• Realising that he was probably going to be convicted, Camillus decided to go into exile – but not without asking the gods to make the Romans sorry for what they had done if they judged him innocent! 
• Meanwhile, something serious was developing in northern Italy 
• For a couple of hundred years, Gallic tribes had been migrating over the Apennines and into the area, including one called the Senones. 
• This may have been the tribe that went to the city of Clusium, making everyone there panic, and for some reason, reach out to the Romans for help. 
• The Romans were similarly puzzled to receive this message, but out of the goodness of their hearts, they sent three of the Fabulous Fabian clan as envoys to chat to the Gails 
• Gee, I hope the Fabians can use some of their fabulousness to calm this situation down before something catastrophic happens.    

390 BCE

• In 390 BCE, the military tribunes with consular power were Quintus Fabius Ambustus, Kaeso Fabius Ambustus, Numerius Fabius Ambustus, Quintus Sulpicius Longus, Quintus Servilius Fidenas, and Publius Cornelius Maluginensis 
• This – or another year very close by – was a watershed year for Rome 
• At Clusium, the Fabians went from Fab to Foolish. Their aggressive behaviour quickly escalated the tension between the Gauls and the Clusinii – and when a fight broke out – they actually joined in! 
• Quintus Fabius even killed one of the Gallic leaders and despoiled his body, right there on the battlefield. 
• The Gauls were ever so slightly offended – perhaps Rome could apologise by handing over the offending envoy or some other token? 
• The Senate had sent the Fabians straight to their room with no dessert – but they could not hand over such elite men to these barbarians, and the Roman people agreed. Why not make them magistrates instead? 
• And so it was war, with the Romans being led in part by the same trio of idiots that got them into this mess
• Perhaps we are being too harsh – this may have all been an unhappy accident, with the Gauls simply deciding to ransack Rome as they passed by on their way to serve the tyrant of Syracuse as auxiliaries…  
• The Gauls, powered by rage and injustice, managed to get their army to Rome far too quickly for Rome’s liking
• The first confrontation took place at the River Alia and it was a disaster for the Roman forces 
• Roman forces were scattered in the confusion of defeat – some fled back to the city and holed up in the Citadel, others sought refuge in Veii.
• The Gauls travelled to Rome to complete their victory but found the City deserted – the people had scattered after trying to protect all the sacred objects.
• Almost deserted – a band of valiant Romans had decided to defend the Capitol to the death and the elderly patricians awaited the Gauls, boldly prepared to face death 
• A brutal siege ensued    
• Exactly what happened during the siege is disputed – did the Gauls completely trash and sack the city? Or did they just grab the valuables? Did the Romans manage to hold out against the attackers? Can you travel down the Tiber from Veii with a secret message just using cork to stay afloat? Were there geese involved? When did Camillus get recalled and made dictator? 
• There are just so many questions about the exact order of events 
• The key details seem to be that there was an attack by the Gauls, the Romans got the worst of it and they had to pay a hefty sum to get them to leave  
• Camillus is often credited with recovering the gold somehow – possibly by slaughtering the Gauls at the moment of payment – or perhaps while on a supercharged rampage shortly after they had departed 
• Of course, there are hints in the sources that Camillus had nothing to do with getting the ransom back – but who wants to hear that? 
• With the Gauls out of the way, the Romans could return to the city and think about their future
• They may have toyed with the idea of relocating to Veii but Camillus again was not having it! 
• He gave a speech that lasted for the length of entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition) and managed to convince everyone that rebuilding was the right thing for the gods and for themselves
• After ignoring so many signs from the gods, the Romans really needed to ensure that they restarted on a correct footing 
• Camillus may have started the Capitoline Games for Jupiter Optimus Maximus at this point, the god who never abandoned the Romans in their time of need 

Dr Rad: And that was the 390s in Ancient Rome… or was it? 

Dr G: Remember, this has just been the highlights from the ancient sources, so if you want to delve into the complexities of the different evidence from this period, check out our narrative episodes. Jump in at Episode 155: A Feast for the Gods  to join us for a deep dive into the 390s BCE. 

Dr Rad: Thanks for turning in to this Partial Recap!

The post The Partial Recap – 390s BCE appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

A Turning Point?

Livy would like us to see 389 BCE as a turning point. He has more sources, better sources than ever before, just you wait! Historians are less confident than he is about how reliable his material is, but there is no doubt that this century is going to see Rome enter a new phase in its history. In spite of the many battles we covered so far on the pod, it is really in this century that Rome’s territorial control will start to expand in a meaningful way. This journey will lead to other exciting political, social and military developments along the way, and we might find Rome starting to look more recognisable by the end of the 300s BCE.

The Clash of Historians

It depends on whether you believe Diodorus or Livy as to what unfolded in 389 BCE. The dating is still shaky, in spite of Livy’s grand promises. However, we certainly get a sense that Rome suffered a crushing blow at around this time, and their neighbours, including their allies, tried to take advantage of that. It would the logical move. Thank God Camillus is still around to make sure that Rome hangs in there!

Things to Look Out For:

• Horrific behaviour from Dionysius ‘They-don’t-call-me-a-tyrant-for-nothing’ of Syracuse against the Rhegians
• The launch of our bizarro world podcast – The Objective Historians
• The suspicious death of one of the Foolish Fabians  
• The publication of some Roman laws – but only some!
• Some calendar redesign – partly due to some dodgy sacrificing by Quintus Sulpicius Longus
• Evil Etruscan plotting at the Shrine of Voltumna
• An interregnum
• Slick thinking from a lower-class lady named Tutula

Our Players 389 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• L. Valerius L. f. L. n. Poplicola (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 387, 383, 380
• L. Verginius – f. -n. Tricostus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 402?
• P. Cornelius – f.-n. —– (Pat)
• A. Manlius (T. f. A. n. Capitolinus) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 387? 385, 383, 370
• L. Aemilius Mam. f. M. n. Mamercinus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 391, 387, 383, 382, 380
• L. Postumius – f. – n. Albinus Regillensis (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 381
• [?L. Papirius (-f. -n. Mugillanus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 380?
• ?M. Furius]

Dictator

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 393, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

• C. Servilius -f. -n. Ahala (Pat)

Censors

• ?M. Furius (Fusus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 403?

• ?L. Papirius (Mugillanus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 380?

Interreges

• P. Cornelius Scipio (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 395, 394?
• M. Furius Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Tribunes of the Plebs

• Cn. Marcius

Prefects

• L. Furius Camillus (Pat) Cos. 349

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 6.1-2
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.113-117; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16.22; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 5.17
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Oakley, S. P. (Ed.). (2016). A commentary on Livy : books VI-X. Vol. 1, Introduction and book VI. Oxford University Press.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

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 battle’s waged 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 0:57
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am Dr G

Dr Rad 1:04
And I am Dr Rad, and we are

Dr G 1:06
Currently in the very, very edges of time, the end the liminal space of 390 BCE

Dr Rad 1:16
Yes. Dr G, boy, has this been an epic year! Gauls marauding around Rome itself, the Romans almost starving to death. Camillus. Was he there? Was he not? Lots of debate there in our last episode on the Gallic sack of Rome, and we’ve been barreling our way through 390 BCE, my account was basically just a gigantic speech from Camillus where he was trying very, very hard to convince the Romans that they did not want to just pick up sticks and move to ve because it was just, quite frankly, easier than trying to rebuild The damage to Rome the Gauls had allegedly been responsible for, and at the end of all of that, he managed to convince them, and the Romans did indeed start rebuilding, which apparently all happened in a year. And that’s why Rome is the way that it is today, a higgledy, piggledy, confusing layout.

Dr G 2:20
Yes. I mean, there’s reasons to poke holes in most of those stories.

Dr Rad 2:25
Poke holes? We do that at the partial historians?

Dr G 2:32
Not usually, but I’m gonna take this rare occasion to suggest that we’ve got some issues here. First of all, if a city has been destroyed, as they claim, that Rome has on some level, then surely the real building process is a great time to lay down some order, some straight lines, some roads that intersect with each other, but no chaotic. Rebuilding commences, and everybody gets their own public tile to stick in their house. It’s like they prioritize the pottery aspect, but not the planning aspect,

Dr Rad 3:05
which seems very un roman, I have to say. I mean, the Romans of the popular imagination are quite orderly folk.

Dr G 3:12
This is true, and I think Rome is trying to now explain to itself why their main city, their personal stronghold, does not replicate the Roman camp system and the Roman colony system that develops later on. It’s like they only get into straight lines in the future, and they have to kind of backtrack on this.

Dr Rad 3:31
It’s like when someone really immaculate invites you to their home, and it’s like, disgusting, and they’re like, oh yes, sorry. It’s just been a really chaotic way.

Dr G 3:41
It’s been tough. I haven’t had a chance to clean up. And you’re like, what?

Dr Rad 3:45
But why? How? How does this happen? You’re so put together. How is this where you live?

Dr G 3:50
Like every time I see you out, you’re looking great, and it’s like, oh yeah, I just threw that on. But at home, I’m just like a little gremlin. So that is how the Romans seem to be treating the story of their origins, and how the topography of the city really looks in later periods of history. And so for to some extent, I think I’ve mostly done with 390 BCE, and I know that in the previous episode, we talked about a whole bunch of things, or I talked about a whole bunch of things that the Romans were supposed to have done, particularly Camillus in the latter part of this year, which you assure me he could not possibly have done, because that is all still to come in Livy,

Dr Rad 4:33
he was too busy giving speeches. Dr G he had some convincing to do. There was some serious rhetoric happening.

Dr G 4:39
It was a lot. This was reminiscent of the moment maybe 20 or 30 episodes ago where I was deep in the bowels of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and every single person in the Senate gave an epic speech, and you just have to wade through it and listen. And I’ve got my chance now, because Camilla’s boy can he talk.

Dr Rad 4:55
I know, like you know, it’s actually making me quite nostalgic for our old

Dr Rad 4:59
episodes. Words, where it would just be basically a speechifying

Dr G 5:03
back and forth, having an argument. So before we move on from this year and the general chaos that may be some of the events that cover more years than just 390 there is some detail that I’d like to bring in, which is kind of like my side series from Diodorus Siculus, which is Meanwhile in Sicily.

Dr Rad 5:27
Yeah, yes. Dr G’s side hustle,

Dr Rad 5:28
My side branching out from Rome, I know, like, let’s check out what the Greek colonies are doing greater I know well, I feel like it’s going to become important later on to appreciate what’s happening here. But also we have this supposed connection between Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, and the imputation that he might be involved with the Gaulish force as well. And some of our sources suggest that maybe he had paid the Gauls to like swing around further into Italy than they were planning to initially and to do something about Rome. Now, why he would care about that is anyone’s guess, because he himself is really bogged down in minucii, in the toe

Dr Rad 6:13
of Italy. We see one of my accounts, I can’t remember, which did suggest that he had hired the Gauls to serve as auxiliaries in his own little shenanigans, so in the in the conflicts that he was caught up in. And it was just that the Gauls happened to be passing by see Rome and say, Hey, that looks like a nice place to raid. And so it was kind of an accidental sacking

Dr G 6:41
well to rub salt into Rome’s wound, we weren’t even planning on stopping here. Yeah, this wasn’t our game at all. We were just passing through and you looked pretty so another account. And again, because there’s so many sources for this, I legitimately cannot remember which source told me this, but the idea was that after the Gauls left Rome, one of the accounts has them heading south rather than North, and they get all the way down into the Calabrian region, and they do have contact with Dionysius of Syracuse’s forces as well, before they decide to swing back and head north and leave Italy all together, apparently. So there’s a lot going on that suggests that this potential interconnection, it sounds a little bit like a conspiracy to me, where people are like, doing the red string everywhere, being like they’re all connected. And whether that’s the case or not, I’m not sure that we’re ever really going to be able to solve but it is certainly the case that in this moment of time, Diodorus Siculus tells us that the tyrant of Syracuse has taken a whole bunch of his forces across to the toe of Italy and has been engaging in a very long siege of rhegium. And Rhegium is you can see it from Sicily. It’s on the west coast of Italy, and he has managed to cut off all of the supplies into Rhegium. So this siege has been going on for quite some time. This whole process has led to substantial problems for the population of Rhegium, apparently, obviously, they’ve eaten through their food supplies. First of all, then they start to eat their animals, beasts of burden. They also then start boiling up the skins and the leathers in order to get nutrients out of them. Yeah. Yeah. And eventually they’re forced into a situation where they feel like there is legitimately nothing left for them to eat inside the walls of the city. So they go out of the city and they start eating the grass. Yes. So this is a horrifying siege situation, much more devastating it sounds than the sorts of descriptions we had of the Gallic siege of Rome, and potentially because it’s just been going on for months longer, some of the suggestions in our sources about the Gallic sack of Rome is that the siege went on for about six or seven months. The siege of Rhegium has been going on for almost double that amount of time, and it has led to some really tragic consequences. So there is no way for Dionysus of Syracuse’s forces to find out what is happening. They’re clearly besieging this city. They have been for a long time. You would notice people in a really weak physical condition leaving the city in order to eat the grass surrounding the city. There is no sense of compassion that comes from the Syracusan forces. When Dionysius learns that this is happening, he basically brings out his own cattle to eat all of the grass in front of the city walls.

Dr Rad 9:59
Oh. My God, and see this is why he’s called the tyrant of Syracuse, not the cuddly wuddly Teddy Bear of Syracuse.

Dr G 10:06
Exactly. This is not a nice guy, and it is so grim what he is up to here, but he ensures that all of the surrounding land of the city is stripped of anything that could be edible, and as a result, the people of regium have no choice but to surrender.

Dr Rad 10:28
Sad after going to all those lengths to try and hold out against him.

Dr G 10:33
Yes, they tried to hold out as long as they could. They weren’t able to do it. When the Syracusan forces enter into Rhegium, they find heaped up dead bodies in the streets. People have just been starving to death, and the people that he does capture are completely weakened, very emaciated. He takes 6000 captives, and he sends most of them back to Syracuse, and they’re obviously going to become enslaved, that is, if they survive the whole process of becoming re nutritioned. Because that is a real issue as well when you’ve really nutritioned, yeah, so if you go into a period of starvation, there is a point where your body cannot handle taking in nutrition.

Dr Rad 11:23
I know I was just, I was just enjoying your word play re nutrition.

Dr G 11:27
I mean, it’s pretty horrific. And I suppose the contemporary example that is worth mentioning is what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza and the challenges that are there, and we’re seeing a very similar situation in the ancient world, in terms of people who have been so starved that it’s going to be very difficult to bring them back to a good, healthy condition, even if you were to enslave them, which seems to be The intent so beyond that, which is the horrifying nature of siege warfare and the devastation that wreaks upon people. The general of the regians, a guy called Photon, is also captured.

Dr Rad 12:14
Ooh, I remember this guy.

Dr Rad 12:15
This guy, and Dionysius, first of all, takes Photon’s son and drowns him in the sea. Bloody hell yes. And Photon himself is then bound to the siege engines and sort of driven around by the Syracusan forces so he can look upon the devastation of the city treated pretty terribly. And Photon says to Dionysius, reputedly, according to Diodorus Siculus, that he had been more fortunate than his father in one day about the drowning of his son, that his son had received a greater sense of peace and closure by being drowned in the sea than what was happening to him, and Dionysius then leads him around the city, flogging him in front of everybody with a herald announcing the vengeance of the Syracusans, and particularly against Photon for having lead, led the resistance movement against the Syracusans. And the Syracusans have turned up from a different island. They come from Sicily. What are they even doing in Italy? So it seems really legitimate that the regians would be like, This is our place. You cannot have it. So Photon really pays the biggest price for that in terms of his treatment by the Syracusan forces and particularly by Dionysius. So he’s now his legacy in terms of the historical record, is that he is recognized as a hugely brave General has endured a lot of pain and suffering, and this is suggestive of his high courage and spirit, and this doesn’t leave a good reputation for Dionysius of Syracuse, obviously, but he is gaining a reputation that people are going to fear, for sure.

Dr Rad 14:15
Well, thanks for that peppy little episode to kick off.

Dr G 14:21
Just in case we thought the galaxy of Rome was was bad. It seems it’s a time of sieges in Italy in general, and some of them are going pretty terribly. Yeah, all of a sudden

Dr Rad 14:34
it seems like the Romans were more having a pleasant vacation when it came to the Gauls, rather than what they could have been enduring Exactly.

Dr G 14:41
They still had their jewelry. They still had their sacred geese that they hadn’t eaten yet.

Dr Rad 14:45
You know, hey, gold stashed away somehow.

Dr G 14:47
Exactly. So there is what seems to be. The larger issue at play is that Italy seems to be increasingly unstable. Places are not able necessarily, to defend themselves. Themselves against invading forces, and we’ve got two examples in 390 or thereabouts, of foreign invaders coming into mainland Italy and making a real dent in local populations, which gels with what we’ve been talking about probably for the last decade or so, where it seems like Italy’s not doing great. There’s been a lot of pestilence, there’s been poor harvests, and it seems like trade is not at its greatest extent either. And we’re now seeing what could be some of the opportunistic moments that emerge from that process, which is people being like, now’s my chance to get in on Italy, and definitely what we get from Dionysius of Syracuse is a very mean and uncompassionate approach to siege warfare. This is probably of the descriptions of sieges that we’ve encountered so far in broader Roman history up until this point, this one sounds like the worst to me in terms of the nature of the suffering of the people and how the generals are treated in the aftermath of their defeat. So that that concludes 390 BCE, from me.

Dr Rad 16:24
What a note to end on. Dr, G, thank you so much for that. That will haunt me in my dreams later tonight.

Dr G 16:30
You’re most welcome.

Dr Rad 16:32
But I think what you said is really interesting. If we look at that wider view of you know what’s been happening in the period that we’ve been talking about, probably for us, over the course of a couple of years. But you know, in terms of Roman history and the history of Italy and this region, you know talking about the last sort of 10-20, years, if we are seeing hardship brought about by things like, as you say, poor harvest and pestilence and that sort of thing, these are exactly the kinds of trends that people who are trying to understand what history can teach us about what our future holds are studying. The idea is, obviously that in times of hardship, it would often be easier if humans could pool resources and also pool ideas, band together and work as a community in order to solve these problems and deal with hardships, you know, spread resources out and that sort of thing. But realistically, if we look at what humans have done in the past, generally, it’s actually kind of easier. It’s the easy road to just take, to just steal what you need and what resources you feel like you want, rather than to work towards a solution. And that’s kind of what we’re seeing with the impact of climate change. So often humans are taking that easy but incredibly slippery route, you know, and also giving money towards band aiding the damage, rather than investing in the solutions to prevent those kinds of things from happening in the first place, and and that’s the real concern, as climate change starts have more and more of an impact on resource shortage, particularly things like food and water, which is so crucial. Are we going to see more war as people are fighting for access to those resources because it’s easier to take than to work towards a solution, or are we going to take the other path, which probably is harder because it requires patience and dedication and and maybe a bit of self denial and those sorts of things, and, you know, hardship in the in the short moment, but in the long term, hopefully it would lead to a better solution. Now the good news is, obviously that the history of the future isn’t written. We can decide what path it is we want to take. But I do find it interesting to sort of look at these examples from ancient history, because I feel like they actually do have some bearing on our present moment, even though, for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in wealthy parts of the world. We might not be feeling it right now. It is something that I think in our in our lifetimes, we’ll probably have to

Dr G 19:08
start thinking about, yeah, definitely. And I think one of the great benefits of history as you know, is this, it gives us a whole bunch of exemplar where be like if this was the situation, and these are the ways that it played out. This is potentially a way that we could anticipate that this would play out as well. It seems a reasonable expectation that if we don’t make systems change, that people will be forced into a situation of reactionary change, where warfare and theft the predominant drivers in order to continue survival, rather than a slow implementation of systems change which will allow a more equitable distribution of resources for everybody. And so I think there is a sense in which being a historian is also tied very much into. To your political activism in the sense that you can see where these things have gone in the past, you have a potential to be an influence on what the future is like, knowing what those consequences look like if they play out in a certain way rather than another. And then you can think about how you’re going to push your personal energy and think about how that looks to create that systems change that you’re really interested in for that equality later down the track. So dear listeners, whip out your political activism. Stay strong.

Dr Rad 20:36
Stay strong. I’ve never been political in my life.

Dr G 20:43
We are an apolitical podcast.

Dr Rad 20:45
Absolutely never had an opinion. You know, objective, objective history. That’s what we’re all about here.

Dr G 20:51
It’s all about the facts, and only the facts.

Dr Rad 20:54
That’s why we’re called the objective historians. Exactly, exactly. All right? Dr, G, well, it gives me great pleasure to announce that I think that this means that we might be moving into 389, BCE, no, it can’t be possible. Did this day come? Were my prayers answered?

Dr G 21:15
I refuse to believe there must be so many more things that happened in that year. In fact, all of Roman history happens in 390 BCE, and I refuse to leave that year until we’ve done it all.

Dr Rad 21:26
All right, let’s do it. Dr, G, let’s go into the future. You.

Dr Rad 21:53
All right. Dr, G, it feels like way too long since I have asked you this question. But can you tell me who were the magistrates for 389 BCE?

Dr G 22:02
Oh, I’m so glad you’ve asked. I have a pretty long laundry list of people to get through. It is long. Yeah, it is so long. All right, we have military tribunes with consular power. First of all. And excuse me, dear listeners, it’s been so long since I’ve had to pronounce so much Latin one after the other that this might go terribly, terribly wrong.

Dr Rad 22:24
Doing our transcriptions, I must admit, has been a lot easier in some ways, for the Gallic sack of Rome, because without the magistrates, there’s been far fewer corrections from the generative AI Exactly.

Dr G 22:36
Well, first off the ranks is Lucius Valerius, son of Lucius, grandson of Lucius Publicola. He is a patrician. No surprises there the great Valerii Publicii.

Dr Rad 22:51
Yes. This is

Dr G 22:53
a very old name. This is a very old name at this point. Now, he was also a military tribune with consular power in 394, and he’s also going to hold the same role in the future. But I won’t spoil that for you by telling you those years yet.

Dr Rad 23:06
Please don’t

Dr G 23:08
We also have Lucius Verginius Tricostus. Now we think he might have been previously military tribune in 402, but frankly, in my mind, that was so long ago that I can’t recall well,

Dr Rad 23:21
Even Broughton has a question mark there. So I think you’re entitled to your lack of certainty.

Dr G 23:26
I have questions. Publius Cornelius, and we think he has a third name, but we don’t know what it is.

Dr Rad 23:35
Well, I mean, if he’s a patrician, he probably does.

Dr G 23:37
He probably does, but we’re not sure about it. Aulius Manlius Capitolinius, and we’ve seen some Manlii before, so I think none of these names are going to be surprising, but it is confusing because they all sound kind of the same. Yeah. Lucius Aemilius Mamercinus, Lucius Postumius Albinus Regillensis. So that gives us what 123456, military tribunes with consular power, which is kind of like the upper limit of what we’ve seen in terms of this cohort. Nevertheless, our trusty friend Broughton also has another couple of possibilities on this list a guy called Lucius Papirius Mugillanus.

Dr Rad 24:25
I remember that horrible Latin name – Mugillanus.

Dr G 24:32
And also big question marks are Marcus Furius, which sounds like maybe it would be Camillus, but maybe we’re not really sure anyway. Suffice it to say that Camillus seems to still be the dictator, or is reinstated as the dictator of Rome. So Marcus Furius Camillus is back in the role as dictator, but he does have a new master of the horse, which suggest that he’s come out of the role and then gone back into the role because he’s appointed a new guy to be his second in charge.

Dr Rad 25:08
He’s just your side kick Robin to his Batman, indeed.

Dr G 25:12
Indeed, And the Robin to his Batman is a guy called Gaius Servilius Ahala.

Dr Rad 25:19
We know this name. They so often crop up as master of the horse. I mean, one might be suspicious of what the historians are doing.

Dr G 25:27
I am concerned about the list of names that we have, yeah, but he is a new guy. Last year’s master of the horse was a guy called Lucius Valerius, either Publicola or Potitus. I’m not really entirely sure there. So there’s some confusion, but this guy has a sufficiently different name that we’re pretty sure it must be a different guy, right? We also have some really large question marks about censors. It’s been maybe a hot minute since Rome has decided to count its population.

Dr Rad 25:59
Well, they were, they were spread out everywhere. Dr, G, and then they weren’t there. They were.

Dr G 26:04
Some of them were hanging out in Veii. Some of them wanted to leave for they. Some of them were in the countryside, hiding from the Gauls in a tree.

Dr Rad 26:11
Yeah, don’t get any way. This is my tree house, mine.

Dr G 26:14
I’m pretending to be a statue, like, so realistic. And I say, like the statues. And so we have some question marks, one, because we don’t know whether there are later things that happen a few years from now that mean that they needed to have senses in this year for those things to be true, or whether those things that happen in the future could have been done without the senses and they just got around it some other way. So there’s a high level of doubt, but we have potentially Marcus Furius and Lucius Papirius Mugillanus again, because he was question mark, one of the military tribunes with consular power, and this Marcus Furius is obviously the other question mark on military tribune with consular power. So these two guys might have been the censors, but we’re not entirely sure. And we also have some interreges,

Dr Rad 27:13
oh yes, which

Dr G 27:15
it’s like stepping back in time, because I think to myself, the interreges are kind of like this lingering role from the kingship period of Rome’s history and interreges is the guy who fills in when you don’t have the king, but he must have a slightly different role at this point, because it does not make any sense whatsoever to be like we just got the interim King

Dr Rad 27:37
hanging around, right? I think it’s just about the transfer of power, because they have been cropping up all throughout this Republican period. So I think it’s just about those times when Rome needs a placeholder. Every now and then you need a placeholder. Dr, G, yeah, and they just

Dr G 27:51
haven’t updated the name. Yeah, they’re never going to have kings, but they’re they don’t mind having interim guys. That’s right.

Dr Rad 27:58
We’ll never have kings again, except temporarily in this weird shift system that we’ve got going every now and then.

Dr G 28:04
So there may have been a moment where they’ve yet to hold elections, which would make sense. They’ve had a pretty devastating year. They might not have gotten organized in time, and the previous magistrates have exited a role, and they just need somebody to cover the reins of power while they get the next election organized. Something like that would make sense to have interreges for. And according to our list, we have Pubilius Cornelius Scipio and Marcus Furius Camillus. Well, who else this guy’s everywhere. There’s not a role this man doesn’t hold. And so these two, apparently, are sort of getting things organized for a transfer of power, which I don’t know, conveniently ends with Camillus being the dictator.

Dr Rad 28:50
I was gonna say, from Camillus to Camillus as interreges, and then to Camillus again as dictator. On the other side.

Dr G 28:55
This man has sticky fingers, and we also finally, oh, no, not finally. Correction, I’ve got more to go. There is a named tribune of the plebs. Yay, Power to the People. Hey, yes, up until now, I haven’t emphasized this, but up until now, every name has been a patrician name, and the tribune of the plebs is Gnaeus Marcius, so we’ll see how he goes in the role. And we also have the name of a prefect who just so happens to be the son of Camillus, yes, it seems. And this prefect is Lucius Furius Camillus, so we suspect that he wouldn’t be the first son, because the first son would definitely be called Marcus, if this family has held on to the Roman traditions of always naming the first son after the dad, so he might be the second kid.

Dr Rad 29:54
It’s definitely evidence of a conspiracy against the Romans to make things difficult for. Of the people that would study them. Yeah, we’ll have these really complicated names, and then we’ll force the first son to always have the same name as the father, just to really confuse them.

Dr G 30:12
Which Marcus are you talking about? And this is why I suspect greatly that the Romans mostly operated in their day to day life on nicknames, because otherwise you would just spend your whole time being like Lucius and 20 guys turn around. It’s not okay. Everyone would have to have a nickname for their day to day life, even if it doesn’t make it into the inscription, I think all right, so that is my really long list of our players for 389, BCE, oh, it just, it doesn’t even roll off the tongue properly.

Dr Rad 30:48
I think you did very well. Dr G, it was hard to go back to and then to have such a long list as your first time in a while. Oh, it’s tough.

Dr G 30:55
So what’s happening in this year? That’s my big question.

Dr Rad 30:59
Well. Dr G, this is the big question, isn’t it? Because Livy, in this moment, I think, wants to paint the transition from 390 to 389 as somewhat of a turning point, as you shall see, historians do question the nature of the turning point that he highlights. However, there is no denying that there are some notable changes that we start to see in terms of Roman history after the Gallic sack of Rome, whether it happened in exactly 390 or maybe a few years later, who knows. But around this time, we do start to see a shift. And for some historians, this is really kind of the true beginning of the Roman Republic as we understand it, because so many of our sources come from later in the Roman Republic. By that, I mean we start to see Rome truly embark upon a period of expansionism, where conquest, conquest, conquest is the name of the day. They’re going to be engaged in a lot of warfare, as we will see. And by the time we’re getting towards the end of this century, we will start to see more of Central Italy under Roman control. Sorry, everyone, spoilers.

Dr G 32:17
Oh my No, goodness,

Dr Rad 32:19
I know I always forget to say spoilers before I say the spoiler.

Dr G 32:23
Can I just note as well is that we’ve talked a little bit about how Livy book one to book five is kind of like his setup for the rest of his history. And 389 I’m not personally reading Livy, but 389 sort of marks his shift into book six. Yes, which is so we’ve got this narrative turning point that we see for Livy as well, which is where we start to feel like we’re going to get more solid Roman history before. Up until now, we feel like we’ve been wading through a lot of question marks, and I’m sure we’ll still have a lot of questions. But the history of the fifth century, of the Republic and this early fourth century, has been tricky in terms of, how do we know what we know? We don’t have a lot of archeological evidence to sort of support one way or the other, the way that these things are operating. We’re not sure about the Gaelic sack at all in terms of stratification layers and things like that. So we end up in a situation where the literature is fundamental to our appreciation of what might be going on, but this means that we’re also limited by the narrative frameworks that our writers are interested in using. How do they want to see Rome themselves? And what does that also tell us about the history?

Dr Rad 33:50
Absolutely, and so we’re also going to see some changes for the conflict of the orders. I’m not going to spoil that. I’ll just say plebeian and patricians. There’s some big things that are going to happen in this century. So that’s going to change a little bit. And perhaps we also as a result of the expansion that Rome is going to undergo over the next sort of, you know, 50 to 70 years or so, we’re going to see a bit of a change in terms of the way that the Romans conceive of their government, things like citizenship. And we’re also going to see some military changes. It seems to be in this century that we start to see the inclusion of the Scutum and the pilum in, yeah, as weaponry. And we also see the transition from the hoplite phalanx to the manipular Legion. Oh, hello.

Dr G 34:41
Okay, so the Scutum is the fancy shield. It is the rectangular one. I believe.

Dr Rad 34:47
I believe so.

Dr G 34:48
And the pilum is the little javelin, which you can also, you can throw it, but you can also stab somebody with

Dr Rad 34:54
it, bop it, switch it, change it.

Dr G 34:58
It’s universal. Yeah, got a problem. Hit it with your pilum.

Dr Rad 35:04
Hit it with your pilum stick. And so, yes, it is that kind of shift to what most people probably think of like the as the Republican Army. You know, a lot of the things that most people would sort of know about. And so, yeah, it’s kind of an interesting phase that we’re getting into. So now I’m going to actually that was something I was borrowing from. Jeremy Armstrong, Thanks, Jeremy. I’m now gonna get into Livy

Dr G 35:26
himself also, Jeremy, come on the show.

Dr Rad 35:29
Let’s chat. I was, you know, we should ask him to come on the show. I was thinking that when I was reading this chapter, I was like, Yeah, this guy, he is on the same wavelength. So Livy, he starts book six with his big sort of transition speech where he’s like, Look, guys, I’m going to be real with you. It’s been tough to write rooms history up to this point. I know I’ve been doing it for a really long time, but I’m not going to lie. Didn’t really have great source material, not really sure how true. What I’ve told you is

Dr G 36:03
disclaimer, the last five books may have been entirely made up.

Dr Rad 36:07
And he says, you know, really, it’s because early in Rome, people just didn’t write things down enough those archaic knob heads rude and so that’s an issue. But also the sack of Rome. The sack of Rome meant that whatever little records he had, like, you know, things that priests were keeping track of, and, you know, recording their commentaries, all of that had been burned when the Gauls had attacked and sacked the city, but now everything is going to be different. Dr G Livy assures you that he has 100% reliable records from this point on. Did you say 100% I’m bringing in my Australian vernacular to our show.

Dr G 37:01
This is not a good sign. Livy, not a good sign. Yeah, look, I’m

Dr Rad 37:07
going to then immediately swell that by saying most historians think this is total bullshit.

Dr G 37:12
Well, exactly. I mean, if the city has been sacked, as you say, and things like the linen scrolls haven’t made

Dr Rad 37:18
it through the fires, well, they’re made of linen. Dr, G, I mean, it’s one of the most lovely materials. But delight,

Dr G 37:25
not sturdy, not fire proof, yeah. So the idea that somehow, from this point onwards, there would be immediately a great profusion of written material surprises.

Dr Rad 37:38
They’re writing everything down now they’ve learned they left.

Dr G 37:41
It’s got to be documented, and you’ve got to put it in the filing cabinet, and there needs to be a backup.

Dr Rad 37:47
Well, I do like the way that my translator has put this little quotation from Livy. He talks about writing as being the sole, trustworthy guardian of the memory of past events.

Dr G 37:59
Oh, that’s actually really beautiful. I don’t know if I 100% agree with that, but certainly it’s very useful when people write stuff down and it lasts and we

Dr Rad 38:08
can read it later, precisely, yeah. Look, most people don’t think as we know, because we’ve been through this in enough detail that Rome was set on fire, to the extent that Livy would like us to believe. So the idea that all written records in the city were destroyed questionable, but also probably not true, that Livy has really reliable records. There’s definitely still some development. I think that needs to happen before we can safely say that what he is reporting is probably really reliable.

Dr G 38:50
And you’ll see why, yes, and look and that’s okay, I think yeah, our doubt about the source material and where it comes from is going to continue for a little while, and I think this is where having alternative sources becomes really useful, because we can see to a certain extent, where they might have taken a piece of information from a similar place, or they’ve consulted a similar source, or whether they’re just operating in a sort of rogue fashion, or maybe have access to sources that other writers aren’t getting their hands on. So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Dr Rad 39:29
Yeah, look and humans do look for turning points in their histories. That’s kind of natural. So I can understand how, in the way that Livy’s conceived of everything, particularly with his seeming obsession with Camillus, that he wants to see the Gallic sack of Rome, I think, as a real transition point. And he obviously has a sense that his records get better from around this time. And so, you know, when you’re writing things down, it’s nice to make a grand statement that, you know, we’re starting fresh guys, everything’s. To be different after the Gallic sack of Rome. Except it’s not because Camillus is still everywhere.

Dr G 40:07
Yeah. So Well, I mean, Camillus has a lot of places to be, and my sources went through them and thought that they all happened in 390 but Livy seems to think that he was a bit slower off the bat.

Dr Rad 40:19
I assure you, that is not the guess so okay, where we’re at at the beginning of 389 so Rome has obviously been heavily reliant upon Camillus. In my account, as we have seen, he’s a big deal in 390 they’re very reliant on him during this rebuilding period. And they basically say, No, Camillus, you can’t put down your dictatorship until you’ve held it for a full year, because we need you, buddy. We need your power. Now this is unusual. Perhaps it doesn’t sound crazy because of what we know of dictatorships that happen later in Rome’s history, but up until this point, even though we have had quite a lot of dictatorships, when you actually step back and look at what’s happened during those dictatorships, you realize that, like two weeks have passed. It’s not something that people have necessarily helped for a really long time. I haven’t actually added up the statistics, and I now I’m regretting that, but I reckon that the longest dictatorship we’ve generally seen, pre Camillus’ time, I reckon at most was probably a couple of months.

Dr G 41:22
Yeah, we’ve got this sense, and this comes from later history than where we’re at now that the dictatorship is something that you hold for six months. But what we’ve tended to see in these very early versions of the dictatorship that it’s about just getting a single job done, yeah, and as soon as that job is done, and it’s this emergency power, then the dictator steps back down. And we’ve got this really unusual situation now, because it seems like Camillus is being asked to continue well beyond a strict time frame. And they’re kind of saying you need to hold it until X amount of time, which is very different from the idea that as soon as the job is done, you step down, they’re anticipating that he will have to keep going, and they’re not letting him step down to a certain extent, or they’re reinstating him in a way that’s going to force the role to continue.

Dr Rad 42:15
Well, really, he got everything done he needed to in six months, but then that speech he gave lasted for six months, and that’s why they were just factoring in time for the

Dr G 42:25
speech. Yeah, look, that speech

Dr Rad 42:27
was a whopper. Now, eventually, obviously, camilius dictatorship has to come to an end, and this is when Rome decides it’s time to have an interregnum. Dr, G, now, the reason being was that it had been under military tribunes at Rome had been captured, and so they think, you know what, let’s just, let’s take a beat. We need to refresh, and let’s just have an interregnum and not hold the elections straight away. So the Roman citizens are completely oblivious to this, apparently, and just working away at doing their rebuilding. Chip, chip, chip. Dig, dig, brick,

Dr G 43:01
brick, brick. And I assume that Romans are trickling in from the countryside, returning to the city. They’ve heard the news people are randomly turning up being like, do we still live here?

Dr Rad 43:11
And so I’m told that Publius Cornelius Scipio and then Marcus Furius Camillus, are holders of the interregnum, and that eventually Camillus will arrange the elections. So, I mean, I’m like, Come on, guys, is this really necessary?

Dr G 43:27
I’m the guy, and then I’m the guy, yeah, and then I’m gonna be

Dr Rad 43:31
the guy again. Yeah, you thought I was joking when I said it goes from Camillus to Camillus to Camillus. I’m not joking.

Dr G 43:36
No, I can see it in in the list of people for the year. He’s in every

Dr Rad 43:40
role, yeah. But meanwhile, whilst all this election stuff is going on in the background, we have a trial on the horizon. So Quintus Fabius is no longer a military Tribune, one of the foolish Fabii, after the whole Gallic sack, helped to contribute to that whole shimozle, and he is indicted by a tribune of the pleb, one, Gnaeus Marcius. So he’s basically indicting him because he says, Look, you violated a Roman law because you got into a fight with one of the goals when you were just meant to be there as a representative, as an envoy. You really screwed the pooch, man. And so he was 100% going to be put on trial, but he died suspicious.

Dr G 44:33
Question mark,

Dr Rad 44:35
yeah, I think that even Livy believes this is far too convenient and that it might have been a suicide or something like that, because I think he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get out of this one. Yeah, he

Dr G 44:46
definitely stabbed somebody he shouldn’t have.

Dr Rad 44:50
Yeah, and this, this, I kind of love going back to that moment in the sense that this, I think, shows this transitional period where we’re perhaps starting to see Rome. Come out of that more sort of archaic Republican period and into maybe a new phase, perhaps, because it does seem like the fabii were maybe behaving like these sort of elite war leaders, and that’s maybe how all this began, in the way that they were conducting themselves with the Gauls and the Romans when they were writing the history, there’s hints of that behavior, but they’re not conceiving of it that way, and that’s where perhaps the confusion arises.

Dr G 45:28
Yeah, I do like this idea that we’re seeing what is potentially the start of a slow transition from Warband leaders doing what they want to heading up their family and Rome is their second consideration and maybe a small increase in understanding that Rome is the thing that has to come first, and your family is part of Rome, and that’s why you can’t just go out and stab somebody when you’re supposed to be a Roman ambassador. Yeah, yeah, stabbing

Dr Rad 45:56
someone when you’re meant to be an ambassador is not a good idea. I mean,

Dr G 46:00
it seems risky at best.

Dr Rad 46:03
All right, so back to our elections. Dr, G, so there are question marks around this because of Camillus repeated involvement in this whole process. As we know, Camillus seems to have been inserted into events where maybe he wasn’t originally involved, so not entirely sure if there was actually an interregnum or not. However, given that the Romans definitely have been through something traumatic, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing for them to be thinking about, like the renewing the auspices, trying to make sure they’re on, you know, the right path with the gods. So it’s possible that there was an interregnum of sorts at this time period to ease with the transition and sort of, you know, start afresh, basically, now our military tribunes, as you’ve highlighted, we’ve got Lucius Valerius Publicola in Livy’s account, Lucius Verginius, Publius Cornelius, Aulus Manlius, Lucius Aemilius, and Lucius Postumius in Livy’s account, the new military tribunes asked the Senate immediately about some matters concerning religion, because they also are on the Camillus campaign trail. It’s all about doing right by the gods. And so one of their first decrees is, all right, everyone, get your Sherlock Holmes outfits out. We need to find the Twelve Tables and some of the laws that were made by the kings, if it’s even possible, after our city’s been burned to the ground,

Dr G 47:29
somebody find the tablets we need to have law and order around here. They do,

Dr Rad 47:34
apparently, do this investigation, uncover some of the laws, and then some of the laws are even made public so that your average Roman citizen knows what they are. This is

Dr G 47:47
incredible stuff. This is a huge development in Roman history. Everybody, Alert, alert. People can read the laws for themselves.

Dr Rad 47:54
They actually know the rules that they’re supposed to be playing by. It’s outrageous, shocking. However, there is a very deliberate decision made that anything that touches on the sacred rights, and I’m directly quoting my translation there, is only allowed to be known by the pontiffs, basically because, and again, I’m going to directly quote this, they want to hold the minds of the populace in subjection through religious fear.

Dr G 48:29
Look, you win a point and you lose a point, these patricians really okay. So this, unfortunately, makes a good deal of sense for the ancient Roman mindset, particularly the patricians.

Dr Rad 48:43
Oh, look, it’s what we’ve seen time and time again. Dr, G, they really want to keep a stranglehold on that religious aspect. They do,

Dr G 48:50
and we know that religious positions tend to be filled almost exclusively by very elite patrician families. So there’s a sense in which they are holding those secrets very close, and they can decide in the moment what might be best, either according to the things that they’ve kept hidden, or potentially the things that they’ve decided not to reveal to the people. Yeah, so I

Dr Rad 49:16
like that they also start discussing which were going to be the days of evil omen?

Dr G 49:24
Oh, okay, so we’re starting to see the emergence of some calendar details. Which days will be fast, suitable for business, and which days will be nefas, unsuitable for business,

Dr Rad 49:36
unsuitable for business. So the 18th of July. No shock. This is known as a particularly awful day, because not only is it the day where the Romans were defeated by the Gauls at the Alia, but it also was coincidentally, the same exact day of that huge Fabian loss at the Cremera, like way back in the early republic. Hmm. Yeah, they decided to call it the day of the Alia. No public or private business to be conducted on the day of the Alia.

Dr G 50:07
Dr, G, yeah, terribly nefast will have none of that around here.

Dr Rad 50:11
Now, there are also some days that fell out of favor because of the conduct of Sulpicius during this campaign. So basically, on a day after the Ides of July. So like a full moon, sort of period, he had made a dodgy sacrifice, and then, without the divine approval to do so, had led the Romans against the goals. We all know how that turned out.

Dr G 50:35
Oh no, dodgy sacrifices.

Dr Rad 50:38
Good. Yes. Me, not good, not good. So it means that, and I am just going to read this part out, because I think it’s just easier afterwards, it became traditional that the morrow after the Kalends so after the first day of the month and the nones, actually, is it knowns or nones?

Dr G 50:58
I say nones, but don’t let that stop you.

Dr Rad 51:01
Okay, and nones that these should also be avoided because of the issues around the conduct of Sulpicius. Wow. Okay, so, yeah, it all is basically, I think, to do with like, moon cycles and whatnot.

Dr G 51:18
Yeah, interesting. Very interesting. The Romans

Dr Rad 51:23
are now, obviously interested. Now they’ve dealt with all this, the Romans are trying to get themselves back together, back on track, when the Volscians decide to kick off. Because what better time to attack the Romans than now, when they’re still down, and I think that they had come into your account last episode, I see that

Dr G 51:45
Livy is falling behind on the narrative history of Rome. This has already happened, Livy, this all happened in 390 BCE, yeah.

Dr Rad 51:55
And it gets way more sinister, because the Romans also hear through the trade grapevine that the elite from all the major Etruscan cities had met up at the old shrine of Voltumna, which we actually think was more a place of sort of, you know, religious and social and cultural importance, but it pretty much exclusively turns up in Livy’s account as a place of evil plotting against the Romans. They get together and they decide it is time to wage war against the Romans. There’s a lot of evil now we’re not even entirely sure. I’m just going to remind you exactly who Livy’s talking about with the major Etruscan cities. We can be fairly certain of some of them, so probably places like Kari, which is featured very prominently in our account, Clusium, Cortona and that sort of thing. But we’re not entirely sure exactly who would be included in this fabled Twelve. We’re not even sure exactly where this shrine of Voltumna is. Well, I hope it’s in

Dr G 53:01
Etruscan territory for what it’s called. What it’s worth.

Dr Rad 53:04
I think we can say that. I think we can say that. And while we used

Dr G 53:07
to be able to say that they was part of the Twelve, they no longer exists as an Etruscan. I was gonna

Dr Rad 53:12
say he’s on my list, but obviously it does

Dr G 53:14
not exist anymore. Does not count. So if there’s 12, it turned out that there was 11, and they immediately opened up an additional spot for another Etruscan city who was just on the outskirts, being like, why can’t I be part of the 12? And they’re like, No, we have 12. They lose Veii. And they’re like, a place has opened for another city to

Dr Rad 53:34
join us. Yes, only my opportunity. Finally I’m in and then to really cut things off and make 389 a terrible year when Rome really just needed some good news. Dr G the Latins and Hernicians also decide to revolt, which is bizarre, because they have been very loyal allies of Rome for almost a century at this point,

Dr G 53:59
wow, this is where you really find out who your friends are. First you get sacked, and then your friends decide that they’re going to attack you, frenemies at best, as it turns out.

Dr Rad 54:09
And look, there is confusion about exactly what was going on here. And there are a couple of different accounts. I believe Plutarch gives a different reason. It’s possible that there is kind of something else going on in the background here between the Latins and Hernicians, and it’s not really to do with, say, the sack of Rome. Plutarch gives some story about the Latins asking for Roman virgins from the their elite families, and they want to, like, intermarry with the Latins as a way of symbolizing the renewal of their alliance, but the Romans see this as well. If we give you some of our women, it kind of makes it seems like maybe you’re holding them hostage. I’m not sure about this whole scenario

Dr G 54:53
sounds a bit too much like what we did to the Sabines.

Dr Rad 54:57
Yeah. And then there is apparently a servant girl called Tutula, who says that the Romans should pretend like they’re agreeing, but really they’re going to trick them and teach them a lesson. How so the Romans are going to get together some somewhat attractive women of low birth, if such people even exist in the lower classes? Dr, G, I mean, but they dress them up, give them a pretty woman makeover, make them appear like women of high status, and then hand them over to the Latins. Be like,

Dr G 55:36
No, never. We found these women in a swamp.

Dr Rad 55:41
Yeah. And then it does become a bit Trojan War. I’m not gonna lie, the Latins are obviously partying. Be like we’ve got Roman virgins, we’ve got Roman virgins, and so they’re going to get drunk, they’re going to eat a lot, and then they’re going to sleep very deeply because of all of this. And then that’s when the girls steal their Latins. Tutula climbs up a large tree, she lights a torch to send a signal to the Roman leaders that it’s time for the Romans there and their soldiers to leave the city and they enter the Latin camp and slaughter them all and capture the camp. Wow.

Dr G 56:16
Okay, well, that is hugely dramatic. So we’ve got the volscian threat. We’ve got the Etruscans meeting at their secret shrine of evil plotting. And we’ve got the Latin and Hernicians, who have been sort of meek as mice for quite some time, being like it’s our time. Our time has arrived, and almost instantly

Dr Rad 56:36
regretting that decision. Look, even Plutarch says, I’m not sure that this really happened.

Dr G 56:42
Well, thanks Plutarch. I mean me neither.

Dr Rad 56:45
So regardless of whether we think there was indeed a savvy little servant girl called Tutula who managed to devise an ingenious plot based entirely upon the Trojan War to get back at the latinians, it is probably true that there are some issues about the alliance between the Romans and their allies, not that anything’s necessarily going hugely wrong. It’s more just the fact, perhaps, that it’s time, it is time to renew and maybe renegotiate this arrangement which has been in place for some time. So that’s probably what this whole thing is about. It’s actually probably not really to do with the Gallic sack, per se, although

Dr G 57:29
potentially the Gallic sack, having placed Rome in a slightly defensive position, sure means that maybe the Latin and Hernicians feel like now is a good time to renegotiate the treaty in order to get a better favorable deal than what they’ve previously had.

Dr Rad 57:43
Absolutely yes. So Rome is feeling incredibly sorry for itself. Dr, G, it’s sitting there with its head in its hands, saying, Does

Dr Rad 57:52
nobody like me? Do I have no friends, just enemies. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this?

Dr G 58:04
Yeah, look, I feel for them to a certain degree, and on the other hand, they did just send a whole bunch of low born women as a trick to their only allies that they have left. But did they don’t you? Well, apparently, look,

Dr Rad 58:23
Plutarch is writing much later than Livy.

Dr G 58:25
That’s true. That’s true. So, yes, it is a shocking time for Rome. They’ve had their city sacked, and it turns out that everybody around them sees this as an opportunity to take them down a peg, rather than lift them back up, and I can imagine that they’re feeling a little bit bereft,

Dr Rad 58:45
yes, and I think that even if we put aside evil plotting and Trixie servant girls, we can definitely see that the Gallic sack might have taken roam down a peg in everyone’s estimation, and that’s why there’s some room for movement, in Some people’s opinion at this moment in time. And it’s because of all of this that the Romans say, You know what, if I only have enemies, then it’s time to use my knowledge from history and go back to the plan that has always worked to put me back in the number one spot, and that is to make Camillus dictator.

Dr G 59:26
You know? What will solve our woes that man? And he’s like, yep.

Dr Rad 59:30
And I think that’s probably a really good moment to wrap up this episode, because, believe it or not, listeners 389 still has a long way to go in my account.

Dr G 59:39
Oh, goodness me. All right. Well, that means it is time for the partial pick.

Dr Rad 59:53
All right. Dr, G, tell us, how does the partial pick work?

Dr G 59:56
Please. Well, the partial pick the Romans, they’re really trying. Thing to win 50 Golden Eagles from us according to the categories that we made up.

Dr Rad 1:00:06
Hey, if look like and Livy are making up things, I don’t see why we should stop.

Dr G 1:00:11
It’s a great barometer of how they’re going. So they can potentially get up to 10 golden eagles in each of the five categories. And let’s see how they do based on what we’ve talked about in this episode.

Dr Rad 1:00:25
All right. Dr, G, what is our first category, please, military clout. Hmm, well, not really. There’s not really. I mean, there will be, there will be a lot of military action in this year, but at this point,

Dr G 1:00:40
no, no, I suppose we could count their sacking of the Latin and Hernician camp

Dr G 1:00:49
as true. If we think it is real, let’s,

Dr G 1:00:53
let’s say for a moment that it’s something that they might have done that probably gives them a two at the very most,

Dr Rad 1:01:01
yeah, yeah, I think so yeah, top those Latins lessons,

Dr G 1:01:05
yeah, all right. Our second category is diplomacy.

Dr Rad 1:01:10
Well, again, Latin camp, probably not a great example.

Dr G 1:01:15
Well, and that’s that too lost. So who do they negotiate with almost nobody, yeah, not really.

Dr Rad 1:01:22
I mean, everyone is kind of turning on them, I think, and they have yet

Dr G 1:01:27
to figure out what they do in response to that. So that’s a zero, yeah?

Dr Rad 1:01:31
Expansion, definitely not. They’re still just hanging on to their own city and trying to rebuild it. Quite frankly, yes, it

Dr G 1:01:39
is a shattered moment for Rome. We’re to

Dr Rad 1:01:42
us, definitely no opportunity for that.

Dr G 1:01:45
All right, another zero citizen

Dr Rad 1:01:49
score, okay? I mean, they know some of the laws now. Camillus is basically been in power the entire time somehow, which they like, apparently,

Dr G 1:02:01
yeah, they’re into that. And they are in this, what is, what we think is a rebuilding phase, yes. So that’s better than being in a destruction phase.

Dr Rad 1:02:11
Yeah, they’re in their rebuilding era, building maybe like a five, yeah?

Dr G 1:02:17
I mean, it’s not terrible yet, although there are a lot of threats that are now clearly on the horizon.

Dr Rad 1:02:23
Look, there are, and I feel kind of bad rating Rome on just the first bit of 389 to be honest, because there’s just so much to come. But for now, for now, I feel like, you know, we’re not seeing the persecution of plebeians or anything like that. We’re seeing we’re seeing a clever lower class women at work, which is unusual.

Dr G 1:02:45
Yeah, that’s true.

Dr Rad 1:02:47
We know probably fictional.

Dr G 1:02:48
It is very unusual for us to get named women in Roman history in this period, so the fact that we have one is pretty impressive. We have a citizen who was not a patrician, who was also a woman who has a name, and came up with an idea that made it into somebody’s version of history?

Dr Rad 1:03:07
Absolutely, yeah, even though Plutarch might be like, Hmm, at the same time, somebody’s talking about it, if it survived down to plutarch’s time. I mean, he’s writing, God, what the second century?

Dr G 1:03:18
CE, he’s a lot. I’m so used to saying BC,

Dr Rad 1:03:21
I had to stop myself for a moment. There. Moment. He’s writing so much later.

Dr G 1:03:24
Yeah, yeah. So whatever this story is, and whenever it cropped up, it’s, it’s come up in such a way that Plutarch is, like, it’s worth mentioning, even if I have doubts about it, which I think is quite interesting. So it is and,

Dr Rad 1:03:40
oh, I always almost forgot foolish Fabians to account for all the damage that they unleashed. I mean, it’s basically all their fault. I don’t want to point fingers.

Dr G 1:03:53
Finally, there shall be justice for the people. Yeah, all right, five. I think five is good based on that?

Dr Rad 1:04:00
Well, I’m afraid that that still only gives the Romans seven golden eagles. And to be honest, they’re very shaky. They’re not on solid source material. But we have to keep in mind that’s just the first part of 389.

Dr G 1:04:16
There shall be more, dear listeners, shall be blood. Well, unsurprising to me.

Dr Rad 1:04:26
All right. Dr, G, thank you so much for joining me in a new era. It’s exciting.

Dr G 1:04:31
I’m glad to be here. I’m looking forward to Livy retelling the things that have already happened. Frankly, what Livy does best. I’ll catch you next time.

Dr Rad 1:04:50
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, the Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive. To find more from the memory collective head to collective mem.com. You can support us by buying us a coffee on Ko fi, but you can also 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 and ad free content. Today, we would like to say somewhere to some of our newest Patreons, Meryl, Jacob, Cindy and Vivek. Welcome to our Partial band. However, if you are surrounded by enemies on all sides, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 172 – A New Republic? appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

As with all aspects of the archaic period, it can be difficult to find reliable and detailed source material for certain aspects of religious life. However, the gods were hugely important to the Romans, so there are a variety of sources that we can use to piece together an accurate picture. This includes:

• shrines, temples and tombs
• inscriptions
• votive offerings
• the religious calendar
• artwork, such as frescoes and sculptures
• coinage
• the priestly colleges
• details of rituals
• Records, including from groups like the Arval Brethren, a group of 12 priests who worshipped Dea Dia, an agricultural goddess  
• Roman law
• Extra special sources like the Iguvine Tablets from the mid to late Republic, which were written in Umbrian
• as well as literary sources  

Where did religion sit in ancient Rome?

We discuss the nature and role of Roman religion in society, whilst trying to mythbust the belief that the Romans just stole everything from the Greeks.

Archaic Roman religion is fascinating, with deities like Quirinus and Robigo (goddess of grain mildew) seeming to date back a long way. As Rome progressed, the state cults became more formalised and ritualised, and new gods were incorporated. You may recall that when the Romans conquered Veii in 396 BCE, they went to great lengths to coax the resident goddess, Juno Regina, to their city. Roman expansion allowed them to come into contact with a greater variety of deities.   

There were several important priestly positions in Rome that we refer to in this episode, so here’s your cheat sheet:

• Rex sacrorum/ Rex sacrificulus – The rex sacrorum was a patrician and seems to have assumed the priestly duties of the kings in the Republic.
• Flamen Dialis (Jupiter)
• Flamen Martialis (Mars)
• Flamens Quirinalis (Quirinus – eventually associated with Romulus)
• Pontifex Maximus (chief pontiff or priest)
• And then there were minor flamens, who served gods such as Vulcan, Ceres and Flora  
• And, of course, we also talk about the Vestals! Dr G would never leave these ladies out

Image of lararium from the Thermopolium of Lucius Vetutius Placidus. The lares stand on either side of the central figure, the Genius of the household. On the far left and far right stand Mercery and Bacchus. Courtesy of Becks on Flickr.

Getting Personal

On a more personal level, the Romans were also surrounded by the lares, guardian spirits who were seemingly connected to place, such as the hearth, streets, neighbourhoods and boundaries. If you have been to Pompeii or Herculaneum, you may have seen a lararium, or one of the shrines that people could have in their houses for these deities. Their origin is debated, but no one can deny their presence in the Roman world.

Things to Look Out For:

• Augury – and our musings on how the Romans would have responded to kookaburras
• The importance of nature  
• The invention of a new dessert: Flamines banana
• The sacred tree house where only patricians are allowed  

Our Sources

Cicero, De natura deorum

Cicero, On the Reply of the Haruspices

Seneca the Younger, Letters, 41.3

Flower, Harriet I. The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner. 1st ed. Princeton ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400888016.

Forsythe, Gary. A Critical History of Early Rome : From Prehistory to the First Punic War. Berkeley, Calif. ; University of California Press, 2005.

Scheid, John, and Clifford Ando. The Gods, the State, and the Individual : Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291988.

Tellegen-Couperus, O. E. (Olga Eveline). Law and Religion in the Roman Republic. Edited by Olga Tellegen-Couperus. 1st ed. Vol. 336. Leiden: Brill, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004219205.

Warrior, Valerie M. Roman Religion. Cambridge ; Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
P 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 battle’s waged 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 0:59
Hello and welcome to a brand new special episode of the partial historians. I am Dr G, and I am Dr Rad, and today we are talking about ancient Roman religion.

Dr Rad 1:17
If ever there was a topic that is right up your alley.

Dr G 1:19
Dr G, I know I’m so excited. Oh, there are so many things we could talk about, but I’m going to try and contain myself to a very specific time limit.

Dr Rad 1:28
We have got a request from a Patreon, actually, quite some time ago. So sorry about taking so long to do this. But you know, there are just so many books coming out, so many people to be interviewed. We are going to be looking at archaic Roman religion, which is obviously very in keeping with the time period that we have been covering for the last decade.

Dr G 1:51
Yes, it’s an interesting, really interesting period of Rome’s history, partly because of what we simply don’t know, as listeners will be well aware the written historical record doesn’t kick in for quite some time. So the traditional foundation date of Rome is 753 BCE, but our real historiographical style of writing doesn’t really start to crop up until about the second century BCE, and then we only have sort of fragmentary things until we get into the first century BCE. So this means there’s a huge chunk of Romans history’s time where the Romans understand themselves and talk about themselves and maybe write it down, but we don’t have the evidence for it, and this means that trying to figure out what their practices were, what they were into, what they believe, a lot of that is, on some level,

Dr Rad 2:49
unretrievable, absolutely. However, the good news is that, because we are talking about religion, it’s obviously something that is pretty important to the Romans. And so there are certain types of material, certain kinds of sources that we can turn to that give us little clues. So obviously, there are inscriptions, there are certain kinds of records. They’re nothing like a narrative history, but we do have certain kinds of records that seem to have been around for a long time, which might give us some indication. And of course, you can also look at, you know, etymological kinds of tracing things, try and figure out why that name. What would that mean? How can we trace that back? So there are certain types of material that are around, but you know what? Dr, G, I have to go back to an old story at the start of this episode. I know you heard this many times, but for people like me who were raised on the 1950s golden era of Hollywood, kinds of movies about Rome, the impression I think you often get when you watch these sorts of movies is that the Romans didn’t really believe in anything like they do have Gods Absolutely, but they’re not gods that they have any sort of deep investment in. It’s kind of a tokenistic sort of religion. It comes across as just about decadence. And I think that’s because obviously in those sorts of movies, either you have the Romans being very unfavorably contrasted to the Christians, because it’s usually that sort of a storyline, or it just sort of feeds into the general cynicism of Roman characters. Now I am, of course, thinking about Spartacus, in which there is directly a scene in in which the senator Gracchus, who’s kind of a bit of an anti hero, I suppose he’s the best person on the Roman side, which isn’t saying a ton, but he is meant to be kind of a good guy. He says that he publicly believes in the gods, but privately, of course, it’s. He knows it’s rubbish. And so I always kind of had this impression from movies that the Romans, Therefore were not a particularly religious or pious people, that it was just all about, you know, show, and it wasn’t anything particularly important, since studying that is either mental view I’ve had to really overcome, because I kind of think it’s the opposite. What do you think?

Dr G 5:29
Yeah, what a great setup. It is. Definitely not all that it appears. Thanks Hollywood. I would say that what the Hollywood films are really offering us is big Christianity and its propaganda, which has been incredibly powerful over 1000s of years at this point in terms of demonizing what came before in terms of belief systems and relationships with the divine, because what we see In those films is Roman belief systems being positioned as merely idolatry and a veneration of the object and the decadence that you mentioned, but with no substance behind it whatsoever. And this would be a mistake, because the Romans are deeply, deeply spiritual people and will not move a muscle unless they feel confident that they have divine approval on their side.

Dr Rad 6:26
I have a joke for you. Dr, G, why did the chicken cross the road?

Dr G 6:30
Why did the chicken cross the road?

Dr Rad 6:33
You know what? It’s not so much about why it’s that we have to watch the chicken cross the road, and that will tell us what the gods want us to do.

Dr G 6:39
It’s very important, always, always keep a good eye on the birds. One of the things that I will never get over, I don’t think, is the way that the murmuration of birds above the city of Rome, which you can still witness today, gives us a sense of what it must have been like to be an augur in the ancient Roman world, and an augur is the kind of priest who does spend their time watching the patterns of birds. And because murmurations are so patterned across the sky, this beautiful sort of flow effect that’s created by these birds following each other in patterns which you don’t necessarily see everywhere. I’ve never seen a murmuration in Australia, for instance, you don’t have those kinds of birds. We have very different birds here.

Dr Rad 7:29
So can I say we do have birds that laugh?

Dr G 7:31
We do. We have incredible birds.

Dr Rad 7:34
I am what would the Romans make of that a bird up in the tree laughing?

Dr G 7:38
I am not going to….

Dr Rad 7:39
Just freaked out!

Dr G 7:40
Yeah, the beauty and the magnificence of Australian birds cannot be underestimated, but they are very different from the birds that you would see over the city of Rome today and in the ancient world. And so I can understand how augury developed, and this idea of taking the auspices, because it’s fundamentally embedded in the patterns of nature. And this is where, when we think about archaic Roman religion, the basis in nature is the first place to start. So we’ve got a really beautiful insight from Seneca the younger where he talks about the powerful effects that nature has upon people. And he talks about, if you ever go into a glade of trees, where the trees have grown up so tall and that their canopies intersect with each other in such a way that it feels like you almost cannot see the sky anymore, this will generate within you a very specific type of feeling. And he calls this feeling, the feeling of numen, a sense of the Divine. And likewise, he also talks about, if you are in a cavernous spot where you can see the rock formation naturally created, creating a crevice above which there’s a whole nother section of land, you’re going to have a feeling of awe, a feeling which is described in the Latin as religio, which is where we get our idea and the term religious from.

Dr Rad 9:09
See etymology, etymology.

Dr G 9:12
So, but the Romans think about these things, not necessarily as religion, because I think again, we’re in a very tricky spot as human beings in this point in time, in this point in context where we tend to think about things like a separation between state and religion and all of this kind of stuff. And for the Romans, it wasn’t like that state and religion are not separate things. They are intertwined things. The Divine is everywhere, present in reality. And it’s how do you navigate that? How do you ensure that your relationship with the gods is appropriate? How do you maintain a good relationship with the gods in order to ensure favorable outcomes for yourself and those that you love

Dr Rad 9:56
absolutely and this is where we come back to that very. Wrong idea I had from the 1950s ethics, which is, as you say, Roman religious beliefs, practices. It just permeates every aspect of life like you wouldn’t start any sort of meeting of a political nature without observing the proper rituals, without having certain ceremonies, which would be somewhat unthinkable in certain places in the world today, where we do pride ourselves on having those things quite separate, although sometimes I don’t think they’re as separate as people like to believe. But yeah, definitely the idea that it’s just everywhere, particularly if you even think about things like the lares. The lares are something. They are particularly household gods, which we might get into a little bit later. But they’re also the kinds of gods that you would find out in the streets everywhere, like it’s just everywhere. And if you think about walking around places like Pompeii, the amount of religious imagery you know, relating to gods or mythology, it’s just everywhere. So it just wouldn’t be something that you escaped. It would just be part of your day to day life. But I also want to say how much I loved what you were saying about nature until, yes, Dr rad’s about to get a bit preachy here, but I do think that sometimes people when they look at other cultures, particularly ancient cultures, and they look at their religious beliefs, and the type of religious beliefs, when you bring up things like it being rooted in nature or sort of coming from natural observances, there’s sometimes an attitude that you get from certain types of people where it’s like, oh, how simplistic. You know, they looked at the trees. They looked at the birds. You know, they don’t have an understanding of science and kind of looking down on that sort of belief system as being somewhat primitive compared to what people have access to today in terms of information. Now, obviously it’s illogical to expect people in the ancient times to have a scientific understanding of the world akin to anything like what we have now. They just can’t, obviously. But I also don’t think that it should be dismissed as simplistic or primitive or anything like that. In fact, I think we actually probably need a little bit more of that these days. Now, I am a city girl. I am aware of the dangerous pedestal I am ascending right now, but genuinely, I think that part of our problem when dealing with current environmental issues is that we actually don’t pay enough attention to nature going on around us. And it is actually really miraculous what we have around us, the variety of animal life, the way that this planet functions, the gifts that we are given, and what we’ve been able to turn them into, and how we’ve been able to harness a certain lifestyle from entirely the natural resources around us, we are not paying enough attention to nature and the signals that are being sent to us, and that is a huge problem. We know. You know from so many studies how much nature is connected to human well being, and yet, instead, we turn to other things, rather than just embracing the need, we have to connect with nature and have a deeper, a deeper relationship with nature. And yeah, I just, I just see it as a huge problem. So I don’t see it as simplistic or primitive. I see it as something that actually probably really did bring the Romans something really powerful.

Dr G 13:25
Yeah, definitely. And I see where you’re coming from when we’re thinking about the sustainability of the planet and having an outlook like the early Romans did, I wouldn’t necessarily get on board with maybe their later Imperial cult business, but certainly early, archaic religion from a Roman perspective, very grounded in nature, very grounded in observations about the natural world, and then considering quite carefully, what is our relationship in response to those things, what are these signs from nature trying To tell us about the will of the Divine and and then thinking about what would be the best behavior and the best action to take in order to cultivate the best outcome, not just for yourself, but ultimately for your synergistic relationship with nature. So those things, I think, are really interesting, and in this sense, the ancient Romans share many parallels with a lot of indigenous cultures, and having seen the powerful effects of what nature can do and how you can respond to it and nurture it and care for nature around you, that is something that has a really strong and powerful force which we could harness today, I think, in a much more robust way. One of the things I was thinking about when researching for this topic was the other sort of big misconception that people often bring to the table when I say, Oh, I’m an ancient historian of ancient Rome. And the first thing. A lot of people will say, as a bit of a joke, but with a relative undercurrent of seriousness, is oh well, they just copied everything from the Greeks, and they just stole stuff.

Dr Rad 15:11
Wait, you mean they didn’t,

Dr G 15:15
I mean, the thing is that Rome, as it develops, does really encourage syncretism over time. They are not an exclusive kind of people when it comes to their belief systems. They’re very open minded in this respect. If they come across a group of people practicing something, they are more likely to welcome it into their own space and to incorporate it into their own culture, maybe with some little changes that make sense for them, but they certainly don’t dismiss other people’s gods or other people’s practices. They’re more inclined to bring in rather than push out. So in this sense, by the time we get to our written sources for what ancient Rome is like, the Greek influence has already been there for centuries, and so then it gets very hard to disentangle, because they’ve done a lot of work to be like Jupiter is a bit like Zeus, and Aphrodite is a bit like Venus, and they’ve created and established all of these relational parallels, not like the other Yeah, they’ve done so much work to be like, yes, we can bring it all together that people are like, Oh, well, the Greeks were earlier in history, and therefore the Greeks did it first, and then the Romans were just like,

Dr Rad 16:37
but as you say, you’re totally right, particularly When we’ve been looking at this earlier period for so long, whilst Absolutely, there’s a Greek influence, and that’s also not just because the Greeks literally exists earlier, but as we’ve talked about, the Greeks are in Italy.

Dr G 16:53
They have colonized South Italy. They are in Sicily. They are in Campania. They are in Puglia. The Greeks, you can’t avoid the Greeks. They’re already they’ve already turned up, and they’ve already been like, this place is also ours. And the people who are indigenous to Italy are like,

Dr Rad 17:12
okay, and that’s exactly it. So it would make sense that when the Romans are presumably engaged in trading and coming into contact with these people that they are, of course, exposed to their beliefs, and vice versa, and it’s really hard to trace that exact process, as you said. I mean, even if we turn to Greek sources, we don’t have the complete story of exactly how those interactions go, particularly really early on, certainly not ones that we would stake our lives on, or anything like that. So we do have that. So of course, the Romans have probably incorporated that into their own system. But we absolutely have come across stuff that is decidedly italic and doesn’t come from the Greeks, particularly from these earlier cultures. Because, of course, we’ve got all these little italic cultures, the ones that the Romans keep fighting. So they’ve obviously got the Latins, who they presumably have things in common with, like their language and certain structures that they have in their society, because they’re really, really close to each other. But there are all these other people, the ones that the Romans keep fighting, or having alliances with or fighting again. They also have their own religious beliefs, and it can be hard to trace those too, because they get subsumed by Rome itself. And then, of course, we’ve got the Etruscans to the north, yeah. And we know that a lot of their religious practices and stuff are influenced by the Etruscans, as far as we can tell, including probably augury, which you were just talking about, yeah, definitely.

Dr G 18:41
So we’ve got very few sources actually to help us out that that sort of sit within the realm of sort of written evidence. So it gets quite tricky, but we do have a few things. One of them is Etruscan. So we have a piece of evidence that is called the liber lintius, oh yeah, linen book. And this is an Etruscan piece of evidence, written in Etruscan and dates to the third or second centuries BCE. So even an Etruscan piece of evidence, we’re not talking about it being an archaic piece of evidence, it still sits firmly within Rome’s written historical record, but it does detail things that we think come from earlier periods of Etruscan history, and it talks about a duality of gods. There’s a God of lightness and a god of darkness. This is a concept that we don’t necessarily see come through in later religious practice and details of offerings being made to these gods, things that include roasted barley and oil and fire as a medium for ritual practice, all of which pretty standard in terms of the ancient world and in terms of Italy. Okay, and the other big piece of evidence that we have, it’s a much smaller piece of evidence in comparison, but it’s called the Iguvine tablets.

Dr Rad 20:09
And, oh yes, I did come across these. These are written in ancient Umbrian

Dr G 20:15
so the umbrians are a bit further south and east, and the Etruscans are a bit further north and west, and these two influences give us a sense that there is something different going on in Italy, as opposed to elsewhere. So these tablets include references to a number of Gods which seem to then end up having some parallels with Roman gods. There’s a reference to a god called Iuve which seems to be similar to Jupiter, Marte, a reference to Mars and Vufiune, a reference that ends up being to Quirinus, we think. But we also have animal sacrifice described there, which was not true in the Etruscan evidence, libations being made of both wine and Mead and then some practices also associated with augury. So this idea of watching birds seems to be quite prevalent throughout the Italian peninsula, and whether it came from the Etruscans first, or whether it sort of developed sui generis throughout this period of the archaic Italian epoch, hard to know. But it doesn’t seem like something that has come from somewhere else. It seems very much about what is happening here, and how can we make meaningful understanding of it within this context.

Dr Rad 21:43
Yeah, and we’ve also got things like tombs, which can give a little bit of light. I mean, unfortunately there’s not when you’re talking about tombs, if you’re talking about artwork and things that have been left behind, and the way that bodies have been buried, it’s obviously highly open to interpretation. We don’t have written explanations of what these things mean. But certainly, if we’re going way, way back into the pre regal slash regal period, because we’re not exactly sure when there were kings of Rome, or even if there were kings of Rome. I mean, no, I shouldn’t say that. I think there were.

Dr G 22:17
We wrote a whole book on the kings of Rome. They definitely existed.

Dr Rad 22:21
It’s written down. It must be true. I think we can safely say they were kings, but we don’t know exactly, you know, we can’t be 100% sure about exactly when they were, exactly who they were, and all of that kind of For more details, read our book, exactly, yes. But if we go like way back, there definitely are tombs in this region. We’ve got also tombs from, you know, the etrurian area, which, some of them are extremely lavish. They’re often called princely tombs. And that can tell us a little bit about, obviously, some sort of spirituality and belief systems. And the interesting thing is that, as we start to see, I think, less of these styles of burials, what is suggested to us, at least by the material record, is that we do start to see the erection of these quite monumental temples compared to what has gone before. And we can’t obviously be 100% sure why, but it’s theorized by one of the academics that I read that maybe it’s a shift in terms of the way that the elite in these societies are sort of competing in their displays of wealth and in an effort to obviously demonstrate their power in the community. Maybe previously, one of their ways of showing off was having these extremely lavish burials and tombs and that sort of thing. But as we shift into a different political scenario over the centuries, it becomes more an area of competition of what you can do for the community and how you can have a very physical presence of yourself and your family and also show your dedication to the gods a different way. And so we start to get more of these monumental temples being built. And in spite of the fact that the Romans have this very powerful story about Rome being razed to the ground during the Gallic sack in 390 we do actually have buildings that are referenced that clearly survived that. And a lot of these are obviously things that were pretty substantial, like temples. The most notable one that we’ve talked about a number of times, of course, is the temple of Castor and Pollux, which way back in the early republic, is something that is dedicated after the Roman victory over the Latin league in the Battle of Lake Regillus. And we do also have, in the accounts that we’ve been talking about, it sort of comes up from time to time. Also reference to these spaces which seem to exist, you know, cultic spaces where it’s not just the Romans, it’s something that’s used by the people of the area, and it seems to be where they come together, not necessarily for political reasons, but probably because, you know, socially and culturally, the. This is a cultic space that is important to all of them. So we’ve referenced there’s a particular space which the Etruscan cities and the Etruscan people seem to share. It’s often, I think, probably misrepresented in Livy as a place where they come together for political powerhouse and to plot the demise of the Romans.

Unknown Speaker 25:17
Well, we’re here, guys,

Dr Rad 25:21
but it’s actually probably more likely a cultic space where they come together, maybe for trade, but probably more religious rights and that sort of thing. And we’ve also made reference to spaces like the Temple of Diana, one at arikia oricia, depending on how you want to this was

Dr G 25:38
exactly the one I was going to mention. Now that you’ve brought up sacred space, well,

Dr Rad 25:42
I’ll let you take it over. Dr G, because I am no expert in this area.

Dr G 25:46
It’s not that I have that much to say about it, but Diana of Nemi is positioned within Aricia. And so we’re talking to the southeast of Rome, but we’re going into the Castelli Romani, so we have to hike up a hill a little bit. Your favorite people, the Tusculuns. They’re hanging out there as well. So the Latin people tend to gather in these sacred spaces, usually at particular times of the year, to perform specific rituals that are important to all of the peoples in the area. And it seems that these sorts of places are quite common. And people will travel around to these sacred areas, knowing that these rituals need to perform, be performed at certain times. And Diana of Nemi stands out to me because I made it my mission to find her sacred spot. Various travels to Rome. The local people do not want to tell you the location, but with a little bit of wandering around in the area, you can find the remains of one of her later temples in that area, and there are still people who offer modern ritual offerings into that space, which I think is a beautiful sense of cultural continuity. Oh,

Dr G 27:28
thinking about other evidence that might help us understand archaic religion in this area, the one thing that we do have that stands out as being very specific and different from things like a Greek influence, are the votive offerings that have remained. So we’re quite lucky to have a number of ceramic remains. These votive offerings are really specific to Italy. We don’t tend to see them elsewhere, they’re often in the shape of body parts or internal organs, which are, how did they know? How did they know? Let’s not ask too many questions about that.

Dr Rad 28:14
I hate to spoil it for you. Dr G, but actually what you found is the ancient remains of the Roman version of operation

Dr G 28:22
at all. Everybody was into that game. Everyone had a different addition. So these votive offerings seem to be particularly body parts, often hands, feet, but also organs, and sometimes depictions of swaddled babies. Is the other really common one, and we think that these votive offerings are probably elite offerings, rather than from everyday people, and partly that’s because they’ve been designed to symbolize the object, whereas we think a lot of the votive offerings probably would have been actual objects. So things like an offering of food, an offering of hair, a piece of clothing, a tool doesn’t survive. Yeah, the sorts of things that are probably not going to make it through in the archeological record, just because they’re natural materials, conditions have to be so specific to preserve those for a long period of time, whereas the beauty of ceramic is that it toughens up, it holds up shape, and 1000s of years later can be like, Aha, I found a foot. So we don’t really know what these votive offerings are doing, necessarily. They they seem to be some sort of personal conversation between the offerer and the divine. But what that practice meant, what people might have thought while they were doing it, these are the things that still and probably will always elude us, because we simply don’t have this kind of source material that would. Get inside somebody’s head for things like that, but there’s enough of them that we’re like something’s going on here.

Dr Rad 30:06
Dear Marcia, today I went to the shrine and left a little statue of my foot. Yeah, I’ll leave the guards to decide what that means exactly. I must admit, whenever I’ve thought about votive offerings, because you say it’s not like this is an uncommon practice in many ancient cultures to make these sorts of offerings. I’ve always wondered if it’s some sort of connection to someone suffering in that part of the body, or maybe a relative is suffering in that part of the body, or that part of the body symbolizes something to do with something that’s going on in their life, and that’s what’s sort of going on in this and this is something I think that highlights, perhaps something that probably is true in terms of the way we understand religion, as far as we can tell, in the archaic Roman period. And to be honest, beyond the Archaic period. Roman religion doesn’t exactly offer ethical guidelines in the sense of in the way that someone who comes from a different kind of religious tradition would perhaps understand it, you absolutely have lots of rules and lots of things that are really important in terms of how you live your life. It tells us a lot about cultural taboos. So there are rules and things like that, but it’s not quite the same as, like an ethical code, that this is how you personally need to live your life. Would you agree with that?

Dr G 31:34
Yeah, definitely. And I think for the Romans, that sort of idea of an ethical guideline comes far more through their legal system than it would through their relationship with the gods. This is more a system of acknowledgement that there are greater beings and greater forces at play. And can you establish a strong enough reciprocal relationship that things will work in your favor when push comes to shove and to circle back to this idea that the Romans didn’t care about the gods at all, very, just very pragmatic people just waiting for Christianity to come

Dr Rad 32:12
and get them. They just care about cement and the army. Yeah, as

Dr G 32:17
long as I can build this bridge and hit somebody with my sword, I’m a happy camper. Exactly nothing else matters. Cicero does talk a lot about religion. He wrote a number of books, many things. Thanks Cicero. Whether you love him or whether you think he’s annoying, doesn’t really matter. He does leave us a lot of information that has stood the test of time. And he tells us, in his De natura deorum, On the nature of the gods, that most thinkers have affirmed that the gods exist most and that there are a few outliers, a few who are like not sure, and some who are strongly there are no gods, but the bulk of people, in Cicero’s view, believe in the divine existence. And it’s more a matter of the quibbles about how divinity is having an effect in the world around them, and that is another matter entirely. So yeah, but from the Roman perspective, this starts to firm up as we get more into the historical period, it firms up into a set of behaviors and ritual practices that define the Roman calendar. So the way that they think about time is very much embedded with how they think about the gods and what things need to be done when, whether it’s a matter of preparing for something that’s going to happen in the future. And the gods are also participants in those kinds of actions. And we get to a point where it becomes so formalized that we get situations like we get with the Vestal virgins, where they must be able to speak without impediment, because every word that they say in a ritual practice needs to be said perfectly to align with the needs of the gods in order to ensure the right relationship. So the Romans become more fixated, I would say, with their ritual practices and their relationship with the gods over time, rather than

Dr Rad 34:21
less well, I think it goes back to what we were actually talking about in a narrative episode the other day, which is the other day. Look at me in the same outfit, trying to pretend like we’ve had recorded on two separate days when we were talking earlier today, actually in a narrative episode, we were talking about the fact that we do have these narrative histories. We have the annalist tradition, and we have narrative histories which start to develop as we get into sort of the mid to late Republic. And we’ve also got things like family histories, which actually can tell us things about religion. If you look at someone like Julius Caesar claiming that Venus is his home girl, etc. There are obviously connections between particular families and particular cults and religious practices and that sort of thing, particularly if we’re talking about the elites who we can mostly track in the written sources. But in this late Republican period, when there’s so much conflict, where it obviously seems like things are somewhat coming apart at the seams, and then we have this transition into empire. There is this renewed fascination for the Romans themselves in understanding their ancient past. And so we do also get these records from people who are now referenced as the antiquarians, who are interested into looking into the, I suppose, kind of the minuci in a way, although they give us some really important evidence, but things like explaining place names, explaining practices, explaining why Romans do certain things the way that they do. And we do, obviously get some of our information about religion and cults, and therefore, from these sorts of people. And I think that ties into like Cicero, is very much a part of that time period where there’s that interest in figuring out who they are, what they are, and looking back to their past in particular, to try and understand their own history and practices as well as possible.

Dr G 36:15
Yeah, definitely. And it becomes a matter of formality. It’s ingrained in everyday life. So you talked about the lares, there’s these family gods. So there is a domestic aspect to cult that develops, and probably that, I would say, probably always existed, regardless of what time period we’re in, the way that people personally venerate gods, and then we have things that are much more sort of state run, where it’s like this ritual is happening on behalf of all of the people, and Rome is broken up into a whole bunch of priesthoods by the time we sort of start to get into the mid Republic. And we think some of these priests definitely pre date the Regal period, at least, augurs seem to be crucial to the foundation story of Rome. And so this idea that we’re observing birds comes through the whole time, and augury doesn’t disappear as Roman history progresses. It goes right up to the part where what I think it’s Honorius does something terrible to his chickens. Remember that let’s not talk about when we get into that period of Roman history, many decades from now, but the idea that the birds play a really important role, hugely significant. They end up keeping chickens in order to observe them. Do they eat the food? Do they not eat the food? All of this is very important, but there are priests for just about everything. We think the flamins, of which there are 15, three major flamens, 12 Minor flamens, we think they’re very early in terms of priesthood, and they’re related to the fundamental gods, the Flamen Dialis, connected with Jupiter, the Flamen Martialus, connected with Mars. And the Flamen Quirinalis, relating to Quirinus, a God which is also connected with Romulus. These are really early priests, and they seem to have a lot of restrictions placed upon them. At least the major flamens do in terms of what they’re allowed to wear, where they’re allowed to go, what sort of actions they’re able to participate in. And many of them come in a set, because not only do they run a priesthood specifically related to a particular God, but their wife is also a sacred Priestess of the same God, and they operate as a pair. And if one of them dies, you could get a whole new set one. Can’t just

Dr Rad 38:55
Collect all five!

Dr G 38:56
You can’t just have one. You gotta have two. Well, and this is definitely

Dr Rad 38:57
something interesting to talk about with the interesting to talk about with the priesthoods, because we can’t exactly pinpoint all the details about where these priesthoods come from and exactly when they become in, you know, more and more influential in Roman society. But something that’s interesting, which I hadn’t really thought about, because we, we do have references, obviously, to people who are acting in in certain priesthoods in our narrative accounts, because sometimes, obviously, they intersect, obviously, when we’re talking about those major flamins That you were talking about, or flamines, I don’t know how to say the plural out loud,

Dr G 39:36
Flamines is correct.

Dr Rad 39:37
It sounds like some sort of fancy dessert, you know, like flamines banana

Dr G 39:42
Delicious.

Dr Rad 39:43
They are patricians, which, given all the stuff that we’ve been talking about with this narrative that we’re fed, that very early on in the early republic, there seems to be this real concern by the patrician class, who we. Don’t know who they are. We don’t know where they came from. We’re not even entirely sure if they existed straight away or something that had developed over time. But let’s go with the narrative. Just to keep things relatively simple, they apparently have this real concern about dominating the knowledge about sacred law, sacred practices, and there’s this real impression that things would be sullied somehow if plebeians had access to these roles. And so it’s probably, perhaps no surprise that these major flaminais from patrician background traditionally, and something I hadn’t really thought about is the fact that obviously Rome is all about electing magistrates. They serve their period, and then they move on. You can serve more than once, but you still have to be re elected and that sort of thing. But priests are appointed for life, unless something untoward happens.

Dr G 40:57
Something untoward, yeah. So there is a sense that within the context of the elite of Rome, the patricians, as they like to call themselves, perhaps they’re hard to know it’s one of those chicken or the egg scenarios, like, is it the fact that some people are in charge of these ritual practices and have been given this responsibility, which leads to them becoming focal points for the development of an elite class, or is it the case that these families, through virtue of having greater power from a physical sense, were able to co opt that power into a soft power that was the divine understanding and the ritual knowledge, and it might be a little bit of both. It’s difficult to note, but certainly, once we have this idea that Rome has a set of priesthoods and that there is a way of honoring the gods that is good and appropriate for Rome as a whole, and that’s the point where we start to see a real consolidation of secret knowledge. Because, yes, priests don’t want to have that stuff written down. Or if they do write it down, like we we get sometimes in stories of the early King Numa, if they do write it down, they then immediately hide them somewhere so no one can look at it except for them.

Dr Rad 42:27
It’s a secret clubhouse. You’ve got to have the password.

Dr G 42:30
Yeah, you are not allowed in the tree house.

Dr Rad 42:34
But the thing I’d never realized before, because as I say, it’s not really a thing like I know obviously how important religion is, because it comes into our accounts all accounts all the time in terms of the Romans being out of kilter with the gods or being blessed by the gods. It’s all about maintaining that relationship, and this is where, obviously priests would play a really important role. Because whilst Roman religion might not provide like an ethical code of conduct in the way that say, maybe Abrahamic kind of religions do. It does have those rules, and it’s almost like the Public Religion, the kind of state religion it is about like the joint wellness of the community and observing what needs to be observed in order to maintain peace and prosperity, which makes total sense when you think about it, working as a community to make sure that you all benefit from a state. And if something goes wrong, well, you know you need to get to the bottom of that and fix the relationship so that things prosper again.

Dr G 43:37
And at the root of that is a real fundamental truth, which is that natural signs are telling us things. Yes, so if we look at the most fundamental and earliest understanding of augury, bird movement in the sky is telling us something absolutely and I, like you, am a city girl, I could not tell you what the birds might be trying to tell me. But if we think about people who are less certified than ourselves, much more ancient, what are the things that they have to hold on to in terms of their understanding of the natural world? One of these things that can reliably be seen and then hopefully reliably interpreted, is the movement of various animals, including birds. I would say birds would not be the only animals that you’d be interested in observing, for sure, but they’re showing you something very clear. They do different things at different times of the year. They can be a good indication of what is happening seasonally, or what is about to happen seasonally, in the same way that observing the trees could be very useful as well. So keeping in touch with the landscape, being aware of river systems, the Tiber floods all the time, but not without a pattern. So when the snow melts further up. And then you get in, or you get a high flow of rain. In another part of Italy, you’re going to have a flood with the Tiber. And if you’ve got somebody who is able to sort of pick out the signs around that, start to maybe make some judgment calls ahead of time about when might be important to move a little bit further away from the edge of that river. All of those things become really important. We know that the forum consistently flooded for centuries, and it’s very low lying, and it’s only after they do some dramatic earthworks that they’re able sort of to minimize the flooding that happens to the forum, which is kind of incredible because it’s their it’s their meeting place, like, let’s just go down the hill.

Dr Rad 45:45
Any other Wellingtons on? Not looking good out there today. Yeah, I can’t believe we’ve

Dr G 45:49
got another meeting and all this mud.

Dr Rad 45:52
Damn Wellingtons really don’t match my toga.

Dr G 45:55
Why can’t we do it on a hill? For a change? We’ll have none of that around here, Valley or bust. But all of these things mean that as we get further and further into the modern world, we feel more and more removed from these kinds of observations. The Tiber still floods, but because the walls have been built around the Tiber to prevent the flood from having a destructive capacity, by and large, you notice the river rising, but you don’t notice the effects of a flood. Yeah, things like that change the way you engage with a landscape. The same sort of thing as a comparison would be the flooding of the Nile and fundamental to ancient Egyptian way of life and understanding of the crop cycle. And yet that river system has been completely altered by modern technology to the point where it’s no longer recognizable as a life giving River in the way that it would have been to the ancient Egyptians.

Dr Rad 46:50
Yeah, and I’d say there’s a certain logic to me. I mean, we were joking about the fact that, oh, the Romans aren’t really these really pragmatic people, but in a way, it is pragmatic. It is completely logical to pay attention to the world around you and the well being of the planet that you depend on. And if something really unusual happens, like a really crazy storm, happens in a way that doesn’t normally happen, or, as you say, something’s flooding at a time it doesn’t normally flood, you actually stop and pay attention to it and think, why is that happening, and what can we do to fix it, rather than just ignoring it or claiming it’s some sort of government conspiracy. That’s illogical, that’s dumb. Where’s my insurance? Yeah, if you have bushfires happening abnormal amounts of times. If you have a number of record days hitting massively high temperatures in a country, if you have animals dropping dead from the sky in huge numbers, if you have fish that are dying in rivers that they would not normally die in en mass, then yes, you should be paying attention to that and trying to do something about that as a community. That’s just logical, the way that we live our lives, not logical because we actually know exactly what’s happening. We have exactly the tools we need to fix it, and yet not happening, having to fight these ridiculous battles. But anyway, I’m getting sidetracked to go back to the priests, the Roman priests. One thing I hadn’t realized, and this obviously suggests the very archaic nature of certain aspects of Roman religion. I have to admit, I always thought it was kind of funny that Roman priests were called flamen. Again, it sounds kind of disgusting. It sounds kind of like a side effect of a disease that you might get like, oh, just get so much flamen. And I never really understood why Roman priests had that title, and I don’t think I can offer a full explanation of it, but it was really interesting that one of the academics I suggested that I read, suggested that it comes from the Hindu priestly title of Brahman, which would obviously take it way back, in terms of Going right back to very antique times. And also, similarly, when we think about Quirinus. So Quirinus being like an embodiment of, you know, Romulus, in a way, and having associations, and therefore being a very specifically Roman God, not something stolen from the Greeks, but the idea that that like the sort of stem of that name, the Quir- bit of the of the Latin might sort of come from a Sanskrit word, again, making it seem really, really ancient, and maybe being something that was brought to the area by people who sort of moved in there. I mean, that makes it even more archaic than I could possibly have imagined, if it’s true? Obviously, this is all speculative.

Dr G 49:43
But well, these are the things I mean, the Indo-European language branches. They’re all really interesting. The one that seems to struggle to fit into them is the Etruscan and aside from that, even there, there are some sort of crossover. Over, but we do get a sense that there are at least some connections to a broader east to west cultural movement. And it’s happening really gradually, it seems. But it does end up definitely in Italy, and we get some connections also with the idea of fire. And I can’t remember the root term for that right now, but that concept of fire in the Sanskrit coming across, gradually hitting Greece, getting to Italy, and then we get things like Hestia in Greek and Vesta in the Latin, yeah. And even though those two goddesses are both virginal and are both associated with the hearth fire, there’s also lots of differences between how the ritual practice associated with the two goddesses in the different cultures plays out. So there’s a sense in which we might be looking at sort of an independent, sort of flourishing of ideas in two different locations. But the root language behind both is similar. The other god, which seems to be distinctly Roman, is Janus, the two faced God,

Dr Rad 51:23
yeah. We’re in the month of January at the time of recording.

Dr G 51:25
At the time of recording, we are in Janice’s special time.

Dr Rad 51:29
We are, hey, Janice

Dr G 51:32
and I do like that. There are little moments that come through for us where we’re like we we can’t quite pair Janus up to anything else, and we’re like, Aha, this might be a hint, whereas, definitely there seems to be ideas about Gods and ideas about their areas of influence, which seem to have gradually moved east to West. And so things like Apollo and Artemis become Apollo and Diana, that seems to be something that has come across. And the Etruscans have a pairing that is very similar, although slightly different in name, and we see this with also things like Dionysus and Bacchus. And it’s like you look at those two words, they don’t look anything alike, but there is a real overlap in sort of how they end up being even if they started off being slightly different, they end up becoming quite similar over time.

Dr Rad 52:32
So, and let’s face it’s not like Dionysus was something that the Greeks invented, like, like, he’s definitely considered to be a god that migrated from elsewhere, exactly.

Dr G 52:41
And then we’ve got the idea that Rome does seek out foreign gods as well. When we get further into the historical record in the mid and late Republic, they’re encouraging and sometimes taking foreign gods. I mean, like you see that sacred rock you’ve got that represents that particular goddess, Cybele, come with me, get in this boat. We’re heading to Rome. So they do also have moments where they’re like, We don’t have enough gods to deal with the specific issues that we’ve got right now. The ones that we’ve got are not enough.

Dr Rad 53:15
The world is not enough. Yeah,

Dr G 53:16
expand the Pantheon. Expand.

Dr Rad 53:20
It’s so funny, isn’t it, that when we actually look at Rome’s history, particularly the period that we’ve been looking at, as you say, we’ve not that long ago, dealt with the Romans, inviting Juno to come with them from they come to them, but they also, even though they promised her lots of things, they’re also like, we’re not going to put your temple inside the pomerium. We don’t trust you yet, the way that they do these sorts of things, it does actually kind of go against that popular image that we have of Rome, of being a representative of very intolerant imperialism, and understandably so, in the sense that there are a few notable exceptions to the embracing attitude of the Romans. But I don’t think that people know exactly how that particular relationship with notably, say, Judaism and Christianity, have actually evolved from that early period into when the Romans obviously themselves start becoming more Christian and eventually officially adopt Christianity as a state religion, because it is that complex relationship between the communal well being being tied to religious well being and political well being, like you can’t separate those things, and that’s partly why we do have these notable clashes between People of certain faiths and the Romans, it’s not just, oh, they don’t like your religion and they don’t understand it. It’s very different, obviously, but there are efforts made to under to have some sort of a relationship with obviously, Jewish people in Rome. It doesn’t go well overall. But there are efforts. It’s made. But yeah, it’s that complex overlap of the politics of the situation, the religion of the situation, and how they all feed in together, on top of which just probably the very particular people that are alive at that moment, making those decisions, which I think lead to the combustive situations that we get. I think

Dr G 55:20
there’s also a bigger systemic matter at plays, because, if we’re thinking about because we’ve been talking predominantly about sort of archaic and also touching on some Republican ideas about Roman beliefs, and Cicero falls into that category as well. But I think we’re dealing with a very, very different ball game when we get into the idea of the imperial period of Rome, totally, yeah. And we’ve moved into the idea of the Imperial cult, and that produces a top down Roman hierarchy, yeah, of this is how it is, yeah. And if you don’t like how it is, we’re gonna, we’re gonna have some problems.

Dr Rad 55:59
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. No, you’re right. It is. It is. It is completely different. But I do want to take you back to the beginning, Dr G, because I do have some questions. If we’re talking about priests and the people who are very significant in early Roman religion, we actually can’t avoid talking about the Roman kings and also this very shady character of the Rex sacrificulus, and also, eventually the Pontifex Maximus, a part of Roman religion that obviously still has something of a legacy to this day, because that is the title of the Pope lives in the Vatican.

Dr G 56:38
Hello, Mr. Pope. He has a long and storied history, the Rex sacroficulus, yeah, and I sort of a parallel to that. Might be the Rex sacrorum as well. So there seems to be a priest that is aligned with a specific building called the Regia, which is also got all of this monarchical connotation about it, this weird, little trapezoidal building that is on the Via Sacra, right near vesta’s Temple and the rec sacrificius hangs out in this building. We’re not really sure what he’s up to, necessarily most of the time, but there does seem to be a sense in which this priest functions as a sacrificial victim, or a figure in which you can place the idea of communal pollution upon, and then they will carry that pollution away from Rome. So it’s not necessarily a huge honor to become the wrecked sacrificial list, because you often will end up dead at some point.

Dr Rad 57:41
Sounds pretty gross. It’s part of the deal gotta be done. Someone’s got to do it. Someone’s got to take one for the team.

Dr G 57:47
Yeah. In the same way that a lot of the behaviors and ritual practices are designed for the right relationship with the gods, the Romans also have this conception of pollution being quite an issue, which is fair enough, because if you don’t look after the mess, it leads to disease outbreak and all sorts of things. And so that really dictates, like, where you can place dead bodies. This is why they’ve got to be placed outside the pomerium. All of these things make sense from a practical measure, but also from a divine one, ultimately, and the rec sort of fits into that category. Sometimes somebody comes into that role, and they’re not necessarily a high level, elite person, but what their job is is to live a really rich life like a king, and they’re treated as such for the time that they’re in office, right up until the point where it’s time for their role to

Dr Rad 58:44
come to an end. Well, that’s kind of what the name implies. Isn’t it like the sacrificial King, the

Dr G 58:48
sacrificial King, and I kind of love this. This is something that fades out of Roman practice at a certain point

Dr Rad 58:55
well, and it’s something the link to the kings, obviously, is that it’s thought that this is something that comes into being when the Kings go,

Dr G 59:01
right, yeah. So the king has a whole bunch of priestly functions. And so if we think about Romulus, he was an augur king. He was able to read the signs, and he was also somebody who ruled, and as they got further into the king,

Dr Rad 59:16
so he says, I don’t know if Remus would agree with you on that one.

Dr G 59:20
Remus himself may also have been an auger king, but only for like, one day. Yeah, it did not work out for him. But Romulus certainly has this idea like associated with him, of being able to read the signs of the birds and to be able to rule that flows on to NUMA as well, to a certain extent, because he hangs out with the augurs as part of the process of deciding whether he’ll take on the kingship. So he becomes a bit of an auger king as well. But that concept fades out, and we then start to see a split between augurs and people who rule. So instead of having all of the powers enmeshed in one single person, they tend to split them up and. And so when the kings are eventually expelled from Rome, there is a whole bunch of ideas around priestly things that are still embedded in the concept of the king, even though they’ve tried to split them up a little bit. And this seems to be where figures like the rax Rex, sacrificulus and the Rex sacrorum, who may or may not be the same person, may or

Dr Rad 1:00:24
may very shady characters.

Dr G 1:00:26
We really don’t know a lot about them. They’re both really fascinating, but they could be the same figure, we’re not sure. Certainly, they’re both connected with the Regia, and they sit underneath the Pontifex Maximus, and I kind of love the Pontifex Maximus. What a dude. We need, a man in charge of priests.

Dr Rad 1:00:47
Yeah. I mean, this is such an interesting idea, because eventually, and we’re not going to go into this, but eventually, that’s also something that Augustus will take on, as one of his many things that he takes on.

Dr G 1:00:59
Well, he has to, because Caesar was Pontifex Maximus, of course.

Dr Rad 1:01:05
So yeah, it’s really it’s interesting that it remains significant, but obviously I feel like the nature of it changes a bit. But certainly the Pontifex Maxis is someone we should talk about, especially because I’m hoping you’ll also use this as a bit of a segue to talk about another important Priestly College, which is, of course, the

Dr G 1:01:23
vestals Don’t mind if I do. So we’re not sure why the Pontifex Maximus becomes so important, like, by the time we get to Augustus, he makes a big deal about it, yeah, and it seems to be a big deal, but we’re not sure why. Over time it’s become such a big deal because the pontifices are a college, yeah? And then there’s one pontificate, there’s the pontificate, Pontifex Maximus

Dr Rad 1:01:48
One ring to rule them all!

Dr G 1:01:49
exactly, exactly, but he’s just the chief of the college. But it seems that as Rome’s religious practice develops, that college becomes in charge of other colleges, right? So they’re a hierarchy of sorts develops.

Dr Rad 1:02:04
And so isn’t the name something to do with bridges? Yes, yes.

Dr G 1:02:08
Very important. A Pont and a Pontifex, yeah, and yes, nobody agrees about that either, but it is a possible etymological connection that they’re interested in bridges. And of course, bridges are very important, because how do you cross

Dr Rad 1:02:22
a river? I again, it’s something I never think about, and I should think about more. Yeah, quite important.

Dr G 1:02:28
Yeah. And bridges are hard to make. I would not want to have to try and make a bridge.

Dr Rad 1:02:33
They bring people together, just like a lot of these religious practices that we’re talking about in the Archaic period, it’s about the community.

Dr G 1:02:40
Man, just build a bridge and get over it exactly. So the Pontifex ends up being in charge of other priests, in addition to having their own Priestly College, which is in itself quite interesting. But then obviously, as we get further along, the pontefx Maximus is seen as the chief of all of the priests. Essentially his name implies, yes, well, but why wouldn’t there be a Flamen Maximus,

Dr Rad 1:03:05
you tell me? Dr, G, you tell me. Well,

Dr G 1:03:07
yeah, that’s the thing. And it’s like, because we do have other colleges and we’ve got the augers, why isn’t there an auger? Maximus? Maybe there is. And so this is the thing we’re like, why is this guy the head of all of them ultimately, does he become that that kind of sitting above them all, when each of the colleges will have their own chief priest within it? So even the vestals have their own chief Vestal, absolutely so. But she’s not in charge of everybody.

Dr Rad 1:03:36
Gotta have a head nun. How do you have the sound of music without a head nun? I’m waiting for the Vestal version of that story.

Dr G 1:03:44
So the Pontifex Maximus ends up being in charge of the Pontifical college. And the pontificate seem to be a pretty politicized priesthood by the time we get into the historical record, and their job seems to be overseeing other priesthoods by and large and making sure everything is running correctly. How bureaucratic? Yeah, like the flamens sit underneath them, the arval Brethren sit underneath them.

Dr Rad 1:04:10
Yes, and they’re potentially very ancient too. Yes, the

Dr G 1:04:13
vestals sit underneath them, although I don’t know that I have much to say about the Arval Brethren at this time, but certainly the vestals run into bureaucratic issues, really, that involve the pontificate

Dr Rad 1:04:26
like you mean burying them alive? No, the paperwork involved. My God, it’s just so frustrating when they interfere with our business. Another vessel has been smiling too much. Does she understand the forms I need to fill out. That’s right, Louise,

Dr G 1:04:43
gonna have to get out my whip and my bed sheet. It’s really annoying.

Dr Rad 1:04:47
The vestals are meant to be very ancient, though, right? I mean, as far as we could tell, the Vestals are meant to be

Dr G 1:04:51
very ancient. The vessels are very ancient, yes, yeah. Their Temple is to is one of the places in Rome that’s considered the center. Of the universe. The other is the Umbilicus. But let’s not muddy the waters too much. Both are circles. It’s fine. But yes, the vessels are considered very ancient, very attached to the location, and they end up very

Dr Rad 1:05:16
Roman, even though they come from elsewhere, seemingly according to the myth.

Dr G 1:05:20
Well, it’s like Each place has its own Vestal group. So each Vestal group becomes very specific to the place where it is located, right? And this is true, I think, for most of the italic peoples, and maybe Rome is the greatest expression of it, in the sense that right. They’re like, this is the landscape in which meaning is possible for us in terms of our relationship with the gods. But if you go across the road and 50 kilometers down the street and you talk to the people there, they’d be like, this is the place where our relationship with the gods is the most important thing. So the location is relative, and so you then get local specificity as a result of that. So Roman vestals are not necessarily completely similar to the vestals of Aricia or other

Dr Rad 1:06:10
places, but as Rome itself becomes more important and gains control over these other places, it allows, I suppose, their Vestal cult to be put into more prominence in historical record and to maybe be made more meaning.

Dr G 1:06:25
Yeah, definitely, yeah. You know, doesn’t ever get over talking about itself.

Dr Rad 1:06:30
So it’s not like they can let me tell you about what they’ve been up to exactly.

Dr G 1:06:36
So even if other places are engaging in similar religious practices, and we have this idea of Romanization that is happening as the Empire expands and expands. People in those different locations may or may not have festivals, but also their practices may or may not be mirrored within what is happening at Rome, because how would they know? You’d really have to be in touch with somebody specific to find out.

Dr Rad 1:07:03
Smoke signals, get it,

Dr G 1:07:08
send the sacred fire.

Dr Rad 1:07:10
For those are not in the know, Vesta is represented by flames, like a lady.

Dr G 1:07:15
Gotta watch the fire. The vest will sit under the Ponte, facts, Maximus, and when something goes wrong, from a row perspective, it’s the Pontifex Maximus that conducts and leads the investigation into what might have happened with the vestals. And we have to assume, although we don’t have heaps of great evidence for it, that if something similar happened in other colleges that sat underneath the remit of the pontificate, they would also investigate that. And I’m not going to make any claims on that front, because that’s not what I’ve specialized in my study, and I don’t know the answers to any questions anyone might have about that.

Dr Rad 1:07:54
Yeah, it’s really fascinating, in such a patriarchal society as Rome, that there is a Priestly College that is female only, even though they still have this man technically sitting above them and obviously monitoring their behavior, etc,

Dr G 1:08:12
yeah, and for the most part, that wouldn’t necessarily be something that played out in any way in your day to day life.

Dr Rad 1:08:18
Exactly so too much flame watching. What can I say?

Dr G 1:08:22
Keep your eyes on the prize.

Dr Rad 1:08:24
Now, something I thought that might be interesting to maybe wrap up with is to maybe go back to this question of the Lares is because I think we’ve kind of established that when we’re talking about this Archaic period, whilst we can’t know for certain what was going through people’s minds, what we can say is that it’s definitely stems from this need for the community to be safe and protected. That’s what these practices are about. And as the Rome, as Rome, develops as a as an institution, as a government, as a political entity, it becomes more of this, like Public Religion, not just beliefs that are common to those people, but we do have this aspect, which we’ve talked about, where there is a level of personal religion, not in the way, again, that People of certain cultural backgrounds will imagine where you’re praying and having, like, a personal relationship with God. But this is where I want to come back to the lares, maybe, to sort of wrap up on, because the Romans themselves didn’t actually really know where the lares came from, and they do seem to be something very present, very important to the Romans.

Dr G 1:09:44
Hmm, definitely. I mean, so we have this sense of like maybe there. I tend to think about it as being sort of split between there being sort of the state apparatus, and then there’s the sort of private veneration. And. And people will have their beliefs regardless of what is happening at the top. So that’s true. Yeah, as we increasingly get into Rome’s historical period, the mid and late Republic, we’ve got a really formalized, public religious setup. There are priesthoods. People get co opted into priesthoods. They hold those priesthoods for life. They have particular sway over certain things. But if you are, let’s see what would be a good name, Lucius. If you’re Lucius, Lucius the Roman, let’s say you’re a butcher. It’s, you know, it’s all fun and games for the fancy highfalutin people to wander around and be like today is the is nefas and there shall be no business people still got to eat. What are you going to do? You’re a butcher, things like that. Maybe there is space always for the personal as well as the public. And I think this is probably where the idea of lares come into it, because nobody can tell you how you pray to your household gods. They’re yours. And you can go and visit a friend, and you can see the way that they’ve set up their shrine to the lares in their house, and you’d be like, Oh, I love that style. And before you know it, it’s like, Instagram beige or whatever. And everybody set up their altar in the same way, and they’ve

Dr Rad 1:11:30
got their little avocado toast, yeah?

Dr G 1:11:32
And it’s like, Oh, I’ve seen, I’ve seen what Sue is up to with her lares. And I’m just thinking I might redesign our altar. So I think there is an element of like what matters to you personally in your own sense of spirituality, because I think all humans have that capacity for spiritual understanding of themselves within the context of the life that they live. And while you might be really on board with the public religious system that is operating around you. There might also be moments where you’re like, I just need to connect with some gods for my own personal benefit. And to what extent this might be connected with the idea of the ancestors, because we know that funerary masks have a big role to play in homes. And this may be true for non elites as much as elites in terms of like commemorating family. And there is that ancestor aspect to what the Romans are doing in their own households as well. And the lares might come into that a bit. And we do see a sense in which Augustus in particular, tries to co op the lares into a more public setting by coming up with the lares competales and setting up local public shrines to lares, exactly as a way of maybe formalizing some of his reconfiguration of the topographical space of Rome and being like, let’s reshape this into a different sort of neighborhood and give people something to hold on to from a collective experience in their own little suburb. And I’m not sure that that would ever have properly replaced people’s personal gods in their own house. The other thing to keep in mind is that every hearth fire is a place of Vesta, so you have the cult of Vesta, obviously, in the very fancy, round temple. And it’s everybody gets to see these priestesses, and they dress very differently from every other type of woman in Rome, so they’re instantly recognizable. And yet every hearth fire is a place where Vesta resides. So within the context of any home that has a fire, you already have a godly presence that can never be taken away unless that fire goes out. And if that fire did go out, well surely you would relight that fire, because the house fire is essential for your capacity to be able to eat good food. So there is always a divine presence in every household. Even if you were like, I only have one lares, whatever got into it, or even if you didn’t have an altar at all, there would still be something that people would immediately associate with, some sort of numinous presence in your household.

Dr Rad 1:14:20
Yeah, no, I just find it so fascinating that when the more I looked into these, because I’ve always known they existed, obviously, I’ve seen lots of larariums, you know, because I’ve been to places like Pompeii and Herculaneum, so I always just thought, yeah, household gods, whatever. But the more you look into it and start to try to unravel who the lares were, where they came from, in Roman religion, it’s such a mystery. The Romans themselves didn’t really know, as you say, like they were everywhere, and they certainly were important. But the Romans themselves didn’t seem to exactly know from whence they came, and there are definitely different opinions amongst the Romans about exactly who they are and how they should be interacted with. And as well as modern scholars about are they some sort of representative of like deceased peoples connected to your family, perhaps? Are they household gods? Are they protective spirits? Are they friendly spirits? What exactly are they? And I never really thought about the fact that the way that the lares commonly are represented visually, they actually don’t look anything like a Roman that you would admire as like a statesman or something like that. You know Roman statesmen, you think about those statues right, with the very impressive drapery being held into place and the very serious face old man wrinkled, Battle Scars everywhere, that’s what the Romans would tend to look at as a figure of admiration. The lares, the way that they tend to be represented, they’re associated with drinking, with feasting, with general good times. That’s partly kind of what the festival that grows up around them is associated with as well. They’re sort of neighborhood festivals you talked about the compitalia, and they’re youthful, and the way that they dress is also much more simple, much more dressed down, maybe even associated with the way that perhaps a slave or someone lower class might dress in, just like a simple tunic. It’s unusual, now that I think about it, that they’re kind of represented that way, when they’re so central to every Roman household look.

Dr G 1:16:21
Now, now I’m curious, because I wonder if the lares from elite households might be more fancily dress. I now have questions

Dr Rad 1:16:31
if you if I think about the very fancy larams from places in Pompeii, for example. Now I know the people who are living in the city of Pompeii are not the elite of the Roman world, like the elite Elite. They’re rich people living in a nice place, you know, a middle class and that sort of thing. But generally, I think the way that they’re represented is fairly consistent in the way that they are dressed. And I did not even know that there is actually a figure referenced in written material about like the mother of the lares, who is never represented visually, ever. And yet, there is apparently a mother, and again, we don’t know the exact relationship. Did she give birth to every single lares, ouch, by

Dr G 1:17:23
the too many. Everybody’s got a few Exactly.

Dr Rad 1:17:27
It’s like, what is it? But apparently she receives offerings from the Arval Brothers. So again, one of the, one of these interesting groups that we kind of you know that kind of date back as well. They have a really ancient hymn to the lares. And it does seem to me, to be honest, the more read about the lares, my personal view is that they are protective, and that’s why the Romans are personally invested in them, because they’re protective of spaces that they might have, like property and their homes and their businesses and that sort of thing. So that’s how I kind of look at them personally, even though not everybody would agree with me, but she also, I think, receives some sort of offering and rituals and but she’s never, I don’t think, ever named or visually represented, which I I had actually never heard of that before, until I started looking into this for this episode. Fascinating.

Dr G 1:18:16
Yeah, this is something I haven’t come across before, either.

Dr Rad 1:18:19
Really interesting. Yeah, like, did she just give birth to some lares? And then those lares just like, multiplied, like the broomsticks in Fantasia.

Dr G 1:18:26
Are they? Like the Egyptian shabties, where all of a sudden there’s 1000s of them? Yeah?

Dr Rad 1:18:34
And interestingly enough, there’s obviously talk about, okay, so they have a mother who’s the daddy. Do?

Dr G 1:18:40
Daddy? Always a pertinent question in a paternalistic type of society.

Dr Rad 1:18:48
Well, but it actually takes us back to stories that we’ve told many times now, the idea of, obviously, people being born from the half, like you were talking about, you know, like that, being a place of divinity, I suppose, potential divine origin. We’ve got this idea, obviously, of, you know, Servius Tullius, potentially being born from the fire. He’s one of the kings of Rome. And just yeah, these connections with these stories that we have talked about, and the idea of being born from the hearth, whether that means that Vulcan is your father or like the Lares familiares…. It’s just, there’s just so many questions about exactly how all of this stuff that we’ve got fits together, but the idea that there is a single lady who is like the mother of the lares, it’s just, it’s just weird. It’s something we can’t really fully explain.

Dr G 1:19:39
Well, I think that’s a fantastic note to end on, because the there is always a mother. If you go back far enough, there’s always a mother. The story always starts with a woman.

Dr Rad 1:19:51
Were they born of an interaction between a woman and a fire? Again, again.

Dr G 1:19:59
I’ve seen enough. Fire palaces to last me a lifetime, never again.

Dr Rad 1:20:03
How can we explain all of this? Well, yeah, and there, and there are no myths about them. They just exist, like they’re just there it. And that’s the thing. It’s, I mean, I shouldn’t say no myths, but yeah, there’s no, like, big mythical tales like you get with people, like we’re not

Dr G 1:20:20
people, yeah, Ovid doesn’t devote a story in his Metamorphoses to the lares and things like this. So, yeah,

Dr Rad 1:20:28
all right, so we’ve got it. We’ve got archaic at Roman religion being obviously very ancient, not stolen from the Greeks, not stolen from the Greeks.

Dr G 1:20:38
Greek influence creeps in over time. Colonization is a thing. Be aware everybody. The Greeks colonized Italy first, and then the Romans went and got the Greeks back a few 100 years later, that was a thing. The Romans are very open minded up until a certain point. They encourage gods into their realm. They embrace different traditions, then they become an empire. Things go a bit downhill from there in terms of their relatability and acceptance of others. Then the Christians win the war, and Golden Age Hollywood gives us some tales.

Dr Rad 1:21:16
Guess, have a field day. Yeah, yeah. Look, I think, I think the thing that I’ll take away is that actually, whether we’re talking about public or private religion, if we want to put those labels on it, just to make sense of it in our own head, is that it is about the world around you, and it is about finding safety and security, which I think is still something that most religions are about these days, really, whether it’s internal or external, safety and security are looking for with, I think, the very archaic origins of Rome. I mean, sometimes we think that their gods and goddesses weren’t even represented in like, you know, human figures, like they, you know, were, as you say, more tied to natural world and agriculture and that sort of thing. I even found reference to a goddess of mildew, which I didn’t know existed. There you go. Yeah, I hate mildew. But certainly I think that idea of paying attention to the natural world and even the lares, if we do think of them, as being associated with place, of being protective of your home, of being about boundaries and property, it’s really all about the spaces around you and how you interact with that, and how you observe what’s going on around you in the romancy, that is something very important, being observant and connected to those things and respectful of those things, which I actually don’t think is a terrible thing to take away from this, even though I know we shouldn’t be too presentist about it. There are lots of things about Roman religion I don’t like, but I don’t like animal sacrifice, and I never will Rome. I think that that sort of aspect of it being very about being observant of the world around you, and finding that security and having protection that I can understand.

Dr G 1:22:52
Yeah, definitely. And I think there is really interesting developments along the way in Roman history, in terms of what we can find in the archeological record, what is suggested by the way, other italic peoples are engaging with the divine, because we’ve got little pieces of evidence here and there. Some things from the oscan language, some things from the umbrians, some things from the Etruscans, as well as the Latins and all of this is building a really robust picture of people who are incredibly observant of nature and are looking to understand their place within nature and to take corrective action if it looks like things are not happening in a way that’s appropriate. So if you have a plague, or you have a pestilence that is understood as an interpretive sign that something needs to be done differently and fair enough, because nobody wants to live through a pestilence every year. So what can you do differently? And the way that that transforms, over time, into highly formalized priesthoods that are locked and bound into the elite, is something that we’re going to increasingly see in our narrative episodes as well. And then that next transition into an imperial cult, which is taking another step away from that is, I think, also going to be a really interesting transition period. So it has been a real pleasure.

Dr Rad 1:24:23
Something we probably should mention, as in this wrap up as well, in terms of their observance of what’s going on around them, is the fact that, for if we’re talking about the Archaic period, and these very early times that we’re in, the Romans, are operating on a lunar calendar, and it’s not until 300 BCE that they switch to solar calendar for various reasons. And, yeah, that changes things a little bit as well. I believe that there’s, like, a rise in number of priests. It also means that, as you say, I think, I think things become a bit more formalized in terms of people knowing what days you can and can’t bring legal business and that sort of thing. But it again, means that you, you are looking to. People to tell you how the gods are dictating your day to day life in terms of when you can and can’t do certain things and and how you operate on a on a day to day basis, the gods are everywhere. For the Romans, they are present everything. Of course, you can break the rules, but then being there and you knowing, you knowing about it, that’s that’s definitely like an interaction on a on a day to day basis, which we can often overlook in our grand narratives, where it’s all about, whoa, indeed.

Dr G 1:25:32
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure to discuss Roman religious practices with you. Dr, Rad, I

Dr Rad 1:25:38
always learn so much from these conversations. Dr, G because, as I say, it’s not something I tend to focus on. So thank you.

Dr Rad 1:25:53
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 Joy De Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive, to find more from the memory collective head to collective, mem.com you too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch, we have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on Ko fi. And we’d like to say big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this. One possible. However, if your Imperial coffers do not overflow, us, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five star review wherever you listen. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – Archaic Roman Religion appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Once again, whilst there are similar elements in our sources, it is astonishing to see the different way the authors weave the details together.

Episode 171 – The Gallic Sack of Rome – Part 6

Another Amazing Camillus Montage

It is not often that Diodorus Sicilus is praised for his accuracy, but this is one of those rare moments. Savour it, everyone! Dr G takes us through the details of his account, in which Camillus is on a military rampage. Forget the Rocky training montage that Livy includes. This is a Rambo montage, with Camillus kicking ass all over Italy. He’s taking down the Volscians, the Aequians, the Etruscans…. where does he find the time?

It is during his escapades that Camillus recovers the ransomed gold, not the rather more dramatic intervention included in Livy’s history. However, Diodorus and Livy are not the only sources to have different explanations for the return of the gold! Some sources claim it was the people of Caere who retrieve the ransom after defeating the Gauls in a battle, and others claim it was one of the Emperor Tiberius’ ancestors who won it back in a battle with a Gallic chieftain.

We will let you guess which version Dr Rad prefers…

Gold bullion, image courtesy of World History Encyclopedia. Original image by Andrzej Barabasz .

There’s No Place Like Rome

Unlike Diodorus, Livy is content to keep the focus on affairs inside Rome. Camillus gets a triumph and then keeps his dictatorship because things are not yet as they should be. Camillus needs to make sure that Rome remains on the good side of the gods. Purification and restoration of the temples was the name of the game.

However, most of the remainder of Livy’s account for this year is dedicated to Camillus giving the MOTHER of all speeches. The tribunes of the plebs were stirring up trouble by pushing for Rome to be moved to Veii. Urgh, the tribunes. They were the only people Camillus did not miss whilst he was in exile.  

Why go to the effort of rebuilding the city when there’s a perfectly good abandoned one right over there?

Well, Camillus can tell you exactly why and in a painful level of detail. To cut a long story short:

• Rome is far too amazeballs to leave
• It seems incredibly DUMB to have defended it fiercely against the Gauls if they just planned to up sticks
• Um, the location?! The views?  
• You can’t just relocate your religion – we JUST patched things up with the gods, guys
• This is just lazy behaviour and he doesn’t like it. In fact, it is UN-ROMAN

Camillus’ rhetoric was incredibly powerful, but a sign sent straight from the gods helped to seal the deal. The Romans were staying put! Time to get Bob the Builder on the phone.

Whichever historian you prefer, we both end up in roughly similar places by the end of 390 BCE (or thereabouts): the gods have been taken care of, the city has been rebuilt, the gold is back in Roman hands, and Camillus is the most awesome general… well, ever!

And THAT brings the Gallic Sack of Rome to a close.

Things To Look Out For:

• The famously preserved head that was allegedly discovered on the Capitoline
• The possible founding of the Capitoline Games for Jupiter Optimus Maximus
• The building of a temple to Aius Locutius who TRIED to warn them about the Gauls. Schwoops!
• Matrons! Yes, finally some women briefly grace our podcast once more
• A mention of the Social War (91-87 BCE) between Rome and its Italian allies over their rights. Some of Camillus’ speech may have been shaped by pro-Roman propaganda that originated during this conflict.
• Ancient building programs – state-funded, no less
• Very sweaty historians by the end of this show

Our Players 390 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• Q. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat)
• K. Fabius M. f. Q n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 404, 401, 395
• N. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 406
• Q. Sulpicius -f. -n. Longus (Pat)
• Q. Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 402, 398, 395, 388, 386
• P. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Cos. 393? Mil. Tr. c. p. 397

Dictator

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

• L. Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 389, 387, 383

OR

• L. Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) Cos. 393, 392; Mil. Tr. c.p. 414, 406, 403, 401, 398

Pontifices

• ?-390: M. Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 433
• Pontifex Maximus; slain by the Gauls
• C. or K. Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

Augurs or Pontifex

• 439-390: Q. ? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus or Structus Fidenas?) (Pat)
• Successor: [—- Furi]us Q. f. P. nepos Fusus Mil. Tr. c.p. 403

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.50-55
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.113-117; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Appian, BC, 2.50; Appian, Gallic History, 1-4; Justinus, Epitome of Pompeius’ Trogus’ Philippic Histories; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Eutropius 1.20

• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Roth, Ulrike. “The Gallic Ransom and the Sack of Rome: Livy 5.48.7-8.” Mnemosyne 71, no. 3 (2018): 460–84. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568525X-12342339.
• Roth, Ulrike. “Was Camillus Right? Roman History and Narratological Strategy in Livy 5.49.2″ Classical Quarterly 70, no. 1 (2020): 212–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838820000385.
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of BBC Sounds and Orange Free Sounds.

Automated Transcript

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 battle’s waged 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 Rad 0:56
Welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts. Dr Rad,

Dr G 1:04
and I am, Dr G, and we are deep, deep, deep in the Gallic sack of Rome.

Dr Rad 1:12
Is this our longest kind of series, if you will?

Dr G 1:17
Dr G, our longest mini series. It might be. It could possibly be rivaled by Coriolanus, but nevertheless, we are now in what is part six of 390 BCE, and that is a lot of parts.

Dr Rad 1:33
It is, I feel like the decemvirate, it lasted for a long time that dragged on.

Dr G 1:39
That’s true. I don’t even think forgotten, yeah,

Dr Rad 1:42
I don’t even think that the decemvirate it lasted as long as 390 BCE, but there’s just so much drama. Listeners, we have to explore every detail,

Dr G 1:52
so many of those details. And in our previous episode, it was a lot of Livy’s details, if I recall rightly.

Dr Rad 2:01
It was so to give a broad recap of where we have been, the Romans have been very rude to the Gauls interfering in something that really was, quite frankly, none of their business. Whereas maybe what actually happened is maybe we had some sort of Fabian rogue warlords who did something a bit trashy that they weren’t supposed to do, like, I don’t know, kill a Gallic leader and strip his body during the battle, sparked off some resentment between the Romans and the Gauls, if we are to believe it, although, again, alternative accounts would suggest that maybe Rome was just something that the Gauls encountered on their way to somewhere else, and they decided, Hey, that looks like a cool place to sack.

Dr G 2:46
Yeah, there seems to be competing theories. Either

Dr Rad 2:49
way, we have had a military encounter between the Gauls and the Romans. Didn’t go well for the Romans. The Gauls have then followed them back to Rome itself. They’ve set up siege. Lots of Romans have had to flee to various places, including just randomly, the countryside or other cities for safety. But we have a valiant band of Romans who remained in the city, Dr G and they were holding out for so long, but finally, in our last episode, they realized that they couldn’t hold out much longer in my account, they were waiting for Camillus to turn up, because Camillus had somehow been appointed dictator, even though the Romans are scattered throughout Italy at this point in time. And indeed, Camillus does show up, not in time to stop the people who are defending the Capitolini and the citadel of Rome from the Gauls from surrendering, but he shows up just in the nick of time to prevent the Romans from having to hand over this ransom that they were going to pay to the Gauls in order for them to go away, which was very opportune. And then Camillus proceeds to use the soldiers that he’s been training whilst in exile to kick some Gallic butt. Excellent.

Dr G 4:08
It strikes me that Livy is offering us a very convenient narrative that really positions Camillus as the Lord and Savior of our grand city, Rome, and yet his account does not tally up very well with Diodorus Siculus. And I have been flagging this for a little while, and it is, it is now time, I think, to see the great divergence that happens in our source material. Because up until now, they’ve agreed about a lot of things, stories like the sacred geese, stories like people approaching Rome from Fay being like, we’re here to help. There’s a secret force in another place, and all of that kind of stuff. The offensiveness that has happened from the Fabian side that has precipitated this insult, all of these details seen. Him to be part of various narrative sources. But when we get to the issue of what is going on with Camillus, we have Livy’s suggesting that he’s made dictator in absentia and has been preparing even though he’s been in exile for quite some time. And yet, when we turn to Diodorus Siculus, we get a very different sort of recount of the unfolding of these events. So I’d like to take you through some of them.

Dr Rad 5:31
I’m not sure I want to hear this. Dr G I would rather Camillus remained on his pedestal. But if you insist, I shall not be rude.

Dr G 5:40
I’m not sure that I’m going to tear his pedestal completely away, but just to add a bit of complexity.

Dr Rad 5:50
You mean, I haven’t added complexity where I basically questioned almost every detail. I mean, last episode, we basically agreed that there’s very little archeological evidence that the Gauls actually did sack Rome, even though we’re in part six of the Gallic sack, we’re going to

Dr G 6:06
work with the premise for now. Yeah, there was some sort of Gallic sack, yeah, but obviously, a lot of this is open to question, and from an archeological perspective, we’re a little bit confused, and particularly because our sources do emphasize this idea that there is a rebuilding phase, yes, so we have the Gauls take the gold, and the Romans do hand over this huge sum of money, and the Gauls do walk away.

Dr Rad 6:37
Do they agree on the amount of gold that was handed over? At least Diodorus and Livy.

Dr G 6:41
Oh yes, oh yes, yeah. It’s 1000 pounds of gold. It’s, it is a huge sum for this time period. I mean, it would be a huge sum at any time if somebody came to say 1000 pounds of gold, I’d be like, I cannot.

Dr Rad 6:54
I didn’t even have any gold jewelry to give you. Yeah, my

Dr G 6:57
earthly possessions, if you converted it to gold, would not tally up to anywhere near that. So it is massive what has been asked and what has been handed over. And in Diodorus Siculus, there is no Camillus on the scene.

Dr Rad 7:14
Well, suspect immediately, suspect.

Dr G 7:18
Questions need to be asked. So the Gauls start to leave. They take the gold with them, and the Romans immediately turn to rebuilding the city, because there has been plenty of damage created by the siege. And we get this idea that the Romans gather together, they decide that there will be a state funded rebuilding program,

Dr Rad 7:42
essentially sounds very formal,

Dr G 7:44
very formal. Yes. Sign on the line here, and you’re entitled to 10 Roman roof tiles which you can use to rebuild your home. Yeah. So these, this idea of roof tiles being manufactured and given out to Roman citizens seems to be part of the rebuilding program, and Camillus still nowhere to be seen. People are like, I’m just gonna rebuild my house. I got these public tiles. I’ve got my willpower, and I’m just gonna try to rebuild So fair enough at the same time. And I think I’ve mentioned this previously as well. The Volscians have seen this as a prime opportunity. Rome is at its most vulnerable, and they can see from afar that presumably there’s like a sort of a pile of trash where a city used to be, and there’s some people picking through it being like, I can rebuild. It’s our time to take the spot we can take them. So that’s what they decide to do. They roll up to Rome, essentially, and the Romans can see them coming, and they’re like, Oh, we better try and muster as many people as we possibly can. This is a Roman force that has just endured a siege. They’re probably not most robust in their physicality right now, but they do try to field an army to propel the Volscians. And it is only at this point where, and we don’t know where Camillus has been all this time, because it’s not entirely clear.

Dr Rad 9:21
Ardea, obviously, he’s been doing a rocky montage.

Dr G 9:29
He has been very busy with his rocky montage, that’s true, and he is now appointed dictator. So finally, he re enters the narrative way too late for the Gallic sack of Rome. He misses it all not there. Just want to underline that point. He missed the whole thing.

Dr Rad 9:50
Livy has far too many rhetorical gems for this to be untrue. Dr, G, I mean, what are you suggesting that he can. Instructed most of the first of his 10 books, and almost certainly book six to 10, around the figure of Camillus, because he had such a grand reputation in the late Republic.

Dr G 10:13
Maybe, certainly, certainly Livy’s operating under the constraints that Diodorus Siculus is not and this might mean that for this portion of Diodorus’ history, for which he rarely focuses on Rome, because let’s face it, he’s more interested in what’s actually happening in the broader Mediterranean, which is Greece, naturally. But when he does decide to focus on Rome, he might be a little bit more objective than say, somebody like Livy putting it out there.

Dr Rad 10:49
You’re gonna be very sorry when I tell you what else Livy has to say about this whole deal, my friend. Because we haven’t even got to the end of this year in Livy’s account, there is plenty more Camillus to come.

Dr G 11:01
Oh, and there’s plenty more Camillus to come in Diodorus Siculus as well. So there might be moments where this all starts to make sense again. On some level, Camillus forces are able to take down the Volscians, and apparently they are slaughtered, almost to a man. So that’s pretty bad. And it’s at that point that Camillus then starts to go on what appears to be an all over Italy sort of rampage with his forces, because once he locks in the victory over the volscian he immediately turns towards the city of bola, which is thought to be the same place as modern Labici, 35 kilometers south east of Rome. So we’re in the Castelli Romani region. Something’s been going on there. Bola is being besieged by the Aequians. So, you know, while the Gauls have been doing things, all the neighboring people have been getting up to naughtiness. As far as the Romans are concerned, Camillus goes and clears them out as well. So he immediately heads 35 kilometers south. So we really need, like, a map montage for the things that are going to happen, because he starts off with the volscian He then marches south east, deals with the Aequians. He then marches all the way to Sutrium, 50 kilometers north of Rome, a Roman colony there is being plagued by the Etruscans, so they need to be dealt with as well.

Dr Rad 12:33
This all adds up. Now I see where Diodorus is going. And look, I think this has to do with our confusing chronology for the events of this year. Because, of course, we’re saying that the Gallic sack of Rome, Gaelic attack on Rome, whatever you want to call it, happens in 390 but of course, that’s not 100% certain. In fact, I would say it probably didn’t happen in that year. It’s just the confusing nature of the chronology of this time. And certainly in Livy’s account, Camillus is about to do all of those things, but not yet. Dr G, he has something else to deal with. And this is again, where you can see how Livy’s very much making this the Camillus show, and he’s focusing on something totally different to what you’ve just been talking about, because that’s going to come later.

Dr G 13:21
So he takes Sutrium back, because apparently it was a Roman colony and it needed to be returned to Roman control. So the Etruscans, they see Camillus coming and like, Oh no, Rome’s back, and it’s a disaster for them. And then it turns out that the Gauls have not really left Italy. After all, they’ve taken a small break at a city called Vascium, which is 125 kilometers north of Rome. Camillus hears wind of this, and he’s like, this is our chance we can get the gold back. And so it’s another quick march further up into Etruscan territory, they attack the Gaulish force. Slay them in huge numbers, because obviously the Gauls are also sort of suffering from the siege aftermath, and they’re not having a great time. And it is there, apparently, all this way north of Rome, deep inside Etruscan territory, that Camillus is finally able to take back Rome’s gold and return it back to the city. So this is a quick fire, sort of moving south, moving north, moving north again, attacking everybody. Camillus comes in like a train, and nobody can, nobody can resist the power of his militarism, and he gets back the gold.

Dr Rad 14:46
So Diodorus still has Camillus being responsible for the return of the gold, which is interesting, because we do have these snippets in other sources, like Suetonius tells the story about one of Tiberius’ ancestors in. Getting into like a duel with a Gallic character, and winning the gold back that way. We also have a little tidbit in Strabo, I believe, where he talks about the people of Caere which was the city you might recall, where the Vestal virgins took, apparently, a lot of room sacred objects when the siege was imminent. And it’s perhaps because of this and the people from Caere recovering the gold and giving it back to the Romans, that the Romans have this special relationship with them, which we’ll get to, I’m sure, in both of our accounts very shortly. So it’s interesting that Diodorus is still maintaining that Camillus is responsible for it, even though it happens in a very different order and a different way.

Dr G 15:42
Yeah, so we have a certain amount of consistency with Livy. It’s just that the timelines really don’t match up at all. And Camillus does all of these sort of really what sounds like fantastical, sort of military movements in quick succession, one after the other, and is kind of everywhere in central Italy, and then all of a sudden, is like, Haha, I found it. And then comes back to Rome,

Dr Rad 16:06
the goal at the end of the rainbow,

Dr G 16:09
definitely, as far as he’s concerned, he’s found the treasure. Yeah.

Dr Rad 16:13
Okay, so in Livy, the timeline is quite different. He gives a lot more detail to these, these military escapades that you’re talking about, and they happen in, I think, different years. So that’s why it’s it’s kind of a bit more spaced out. And this is, perhaps, again, as we talked about, like the the slight padding that might have gone on with some of the years in this time period, and the way things are, the way things are adding up, and perhaps also, as you have highlighted, the way that Livy may or may not have inserted Camillus in moments where Camillus did not actually belong. So we will see. But in my account, Camillus goes from basically killing all of the Gauls immediately so he prevents the gold from leaving Rome. He then uses the troops that he’s been training in exile once he knew that Rome wanted him back and wanted him as dictator to absolutely annihilate them. The Romans are thrilled. Everything is looking much, much better, even though, obviously it’s still not great because they still just come out of the siege and their city apparently has been burnt to the ground. However, this is where we need to switch to the classic conflict of the orders kind of material?

Dr G 17:24
Ooh, yes, yes, do tell

Dr Rad 17:28
we’re going back to an issue which has been flagged in some of our previous episodes, which is that ever since the Romans have conquered they there has been a group that think it would be a good idea to move at least some of the Romans to ve to live there. So this is where this issue comes back up. The tribune of the plebs, who we haven’t talked about for a while, decide to be bothersome ruin camilius good time, because they desperately still want the Romans to move to vain now they have a real reason to argue for that. It’s not just, Oh, hey, there’s this whole city just sitting there. Why don’t we move some people over there? Now they’re looking around and saying, Hey, did you notice that our city’s just been burnt to the ground by some invading Gauls, rather than hanging around here, which is depressing and there’s no shelter, etc, why don’t we just take this opportunity to pack up and move to they the plebs are listening because they can see the sense in this. Because they’re looking around too and saying, Oh yes, I see what you mean. Burnt city seems like a lot of hassle when there’s this empty city just sitting right there, not that far away from Rome. However, this is absolutely abhorrent to Camillus. He completely shuts it down. Won’t hear talk of this at all, and he actually gets to keep his dictatorship, even after he has dealt with the Gauls and massacred them, because the Senate feel that they need him in this position of authority in order to make sure that this whole crazy Veii plan doesn’t gain any traction. So he’s still got some time. He’s managed to accomplish everything very quickly, saying once he’s back on the scene in Livy’s account. So he’s still got some time. And so they want him around to oversee the process for Rome at this point in time, post sack by the Gauls. Okay?

Dr G 19:41
So he’s kind of in a disaster relief position,

Dr Rad 19:45
yes, and they the Senate feel safer because, again, this is lending, This is lending to that conflict of the orders narrative. We’re presuming that most of the senators, at least in Livy’s account, are meant to be, obviously, patricians, we presume, even though we know that. That’s not always the case, apparently, and Camillus would be protecting their interests and what they want to see happening at this point in time. So what ends up happening is Camillus decides that religion needs to be his focus as dictator. Because this is a very big characteristic of Camillus and Livy’s account, he’s extremely pious, and as I’ve been trying to highlight with Livy’s account, he is at pains to emphasize when the Romans have been displeasing the gods, and then to emphasize when the Romans are actually doing things by the book, and therefore kind of deserve the God’s favor. And what we’ve seen is that ever since the Gauls started attacking Rome, and things went bad for them at the Alia in that initial battle, the Romans have been trying to do things correctly. So we’ve had, you know, Fabians wandering about with seemingly not a care in the world in order to carry out family rituals. And we’ve seen Camillus, you know, refuse to be accepted as a refuse to be appointed as a dictator unless the proper procedures have been followed. So this is carrying on, this idea that the Romans are back on track. They’re laser focused. Dr, G, they’re not just to do anything to upset the guards. This time around, they’ve learned their lesson.

Dr G 21:19
It is a very bizarre time, and it’s a confusing time within the source material as well. So this is where I would start to have a look at plutarch’s Life of Camillus, because he is obviously trying to write some moral edifying biographies. And it’s like, what can we learn from people, and what would be the appropriate things to do. And he taps into some of this. And there is a sense in which Camillus becomes fundamental in certain narratives, and certainly in plutarch’s narrative, to the proper and right way of doing things when it comes to ritual practice in the wake of the Gallic sack. So we first of all hear about the priests all returning, so slowly the news gets out that the Gauls have gone and people can start coming back to Rome. That’s really important, because a lot of Rome’s ritual practice is dependent on the geography. So you can’t be a Vestal virgin in practice, unless you’re in the temple in the Aedes Vestae. Likewise, what would it mean to read the signs of the birds if you’re not standing in the right location? Because it would be bird signs for somewhere else, not for where you are. All of these things become dependent on geography. So having the priest come back, super important moment in terms of getting Rome back on track, and that seems to be facilitated by the Gauls leaving. And Camillus seems to also be involved in this, to a certain degree. He apparently starts to restore some of the temples that have been damaged in the wake of the sack. And plutek makes reference to one that we really don’t know anything about, called a temple to rumor and voice, which is a new temple, apparently.

Dr Rad 23:11
Yeah, that might be related to the, you know, how there was that plebeian who heard the voice warning? I think that might

Dr G 23:18
be that was ignored. Yes, quite possibly it’s called the Ara Aii Locutii, yeah, that’s the one, yeah, and we kind of don’t hear about it again, but it’s apparently very important, and Camillus is involved, so there is that. But we also have this continuing discussion, as you mentioned, between what about they versus what about Rome? And it seems to be an almost irresolvable question for the Romans about what do we do with this place that we’ve we took so long to take but now we’re not really doing anything with it’s

Dr Rad 23:57
Valuable real estate. It’s just sitting there.

Dr G 24:00
Yeah, I’m just gonna let it accumulate value in this late stage capitalism. It’s gonna be great. So they’re just sort of sitting on Veii, but not actually utilizing it. And I can see, from a plebeian perspective, why that would be such a waste. And I’m not sure that I understand the mindset of these very conservative patricians about nobody can go there, and maybe they’re just worried about having rivals, because obviously a new elite would emerge in a different location. So I find these things really quite interesting, because it’s all happening at the same time. We’ve got Rome expanding and then immediately contracting, and now having to deal with its expansionist legacy in a moment where they’re still recovering from the contraction, which is the Gauls arrival.

Dr Rad 24:50
Well, Dr, G, you could not have given me any more perfect a segue. You want to understand the mindset of the conservatives that don’t want to go to Veii. You’re about to get pages of it be. Because Livy’s about to give you a giant speech from Camillus. No, before I get into the speech, I will give you the exact details that Livy tells me Camillus focuses on first. So he goes to the Senate and he gets them to issue a decree so that he can actually go about the religious program that he thinks needs to happen in order to make sure that everything is square for the Romans. So exactly as you said, shrines and temples, they obviously need to be purified. They need to be restored after the Gallic sack. If we think of the Gallic sack as maybe being more about the Gauls seizing any portable wealth that Rome had as a city, that would make sense. Shrines and temples are places that the Gauls definitely would have gone to to see if there was anything valuable inside those buildings, which presumably would have been a bit more monumental or perhaps well cared for than some of the other dwellings that would have existed in Rome at this time. And I kind of do think that that’s probably what the Gauls were more after. I don’t think they were actually that interested in setting Rome on fire, and certainly there’s no evidence of that. And we also have this reference to duumvirs, who who are asked to look through the sibylline books to make sure that the proper rights are followed. And the sibylline books come up again and again in our histories of Rome. These are books that the Romans tend to turn to in times of trouble when they need to look to the answers for things in this collection that has been put together and and also make sure that everything is is going according to plan, as seems to be what they’re doing here. This is where Camillus also suggests that Rome needs to have this covenant of hospitality with car a now in Livy’s account, that’s because car a took in the refugee Romans, so the vessels who were fleeing with the sacred objects, carre took them in and kept them safe. And this is why it’s important to honor that. Because of that, the Roman gods have still been able to receive some worship whilst the galaxy was going on, which, as we’ve talked about in a previous episode, apparently, was like six or seven months, so quite a long time. However, it could be, as we were just talking about, that the people of carre are the ones that actually retrieved the gold for the Romans, and therefore that’s why they have this reputation. But that is not mentioned by Livy,

Dr G 27:33
yeah, we owe you big time.

Dr Rad 27:37
He also wants the Capitolini games to be held. So these are games that are set up in honor of Jupiter, because Jupiter did not allow Rome to completely fall. They held that tiny piece of territory amidst all the trouble, even though some modern historians don’t actually think that that is true, and that Rome was maybe captured in its entirety. We’ll run with the version that the Romans have, which is that they held that Capitolini Hill till their dying breath.

Dr G 28:09
They held out that little square where Jupiter’s temple also stands. They managed to salvage that. Thank you, Jupiter,

Dr Rad 28:18
yes, and in order for this to happen, he puts together a college of priests who are going to be involved in organizing and holding the Capitolini games called the Capitolini, once again, Rome with the clever names.

Dr G 28:36
They do love a clever name.

Dr Rad 28:37
These men are chosen from the men who were involved in holding the hill originally. Obviously, that can’t be true forever, but he chooses from amongst those men who had stayed behind in Rome the whole time and helped to hold the hill. Now, we actually don’t know for certain when the Capitolini games were first held in Rome. We, as usual, have varying accounts that show the Romans themselves are a little confused. Certainly, Camillus is a popular choice as the person who founds the Capitolini games or sets up the Capitolini games, but we do also have references to figures like Romulus organizing the first Capitolini games. What we can say safely is that they old. They real old,

Dr G 29:22
quite, quite old. Yes, okay, that’s really interesting. I think tapping into the idea of having held the Capitol line, and that being the foundation story essentially for the capitolini’s games is it feels like a nice, neat narrative. So I can see why it would be an appealing sort of backstory, so an etiology for what’s going on here. Yes, there are some weird sort of connections that sort of crop up amongst all of this, and I don’t want to destroy what might be coming up for you, but. But are we going to talk about the head?

Dr Rad 30:03
Yes, but not quite yet. That comes up in the speech, okay. Oh, building up. We’re talking about the same head.

Dr G 30:12
Wink Wink. Listeners, watch out if you already know about the head. This is a spoiler.

Dr Rad 30:19
So this is where Livy also tells me about the temple being set up to Aius Locutius. So that’s the God that is now recognized because of the omen that was given to that plebeian who was ridiculed and not believed before the Gallic Sack actually happened. And now, of course, Camillus also has to decide what to do with the gold because in this account, the Gauls never got it. The Romans collected it, but they kept it. Now, this is where it gets a bit confusing, because, as you know, Livy was very clear that the gold was somehow taken from state funds and also topped up by contributions from people like the matrons, this group of random women that we get to reference every now and then,

Dr G 31:04
oh, look. And Diodorus Siculus also backs up that idea that the women contributed to that fund. So that is a sort of an enduring, kind of repeated narrative as well, that the women were involved.

Dr Rad 31:16
Sure, I believe that the women were involved. Do I believe that the Romans didn’t borrow a little bit of their funding from maybe some temple treasury. I don’t know that I do. Dr G,

Dr G 31:30
it’s hard, you know, you’re stuck on a hill. What are you gonna do?

Dr Rad 31:33
Yeah, well, the Romans had gathered up certain temple treasure and stored it all in the temple of Jupiter, because, of course, that’s on the Capitoline, which is what they were defending. And now that the siege is all over, they can’t remember where it all came from. They’re like, Ah, I guess we should have labeled this. Oh, this is awkward. I don’t know what to do.

Dr G 31:56
Did nobody keep a spreadsheet for this guys? Guys, I

Dr Rad 32:00
know this is what Excel was invented for Jesus Christ, Marcus. So they decide that they’re just going to wave their magic wand and say, poof, all of this gold is now sacred and it’s going to be placed under Jupiter’s throne.

Dr G 32:18
Ta, da, ooh. All right, well, at the risk of making all the other gods that have their temples elsewhere in the city, that have had their treasure poor loin to go up to the top of that hill. Well, that’s bold move Rome.

Dr Rad 32:32
It didn’t happen. That’s why we don’t have to worry about it. Now this is where the Romans also decide they’re going to give a vote of thanks to the matrons for their contribution, and they are, once again, recognized in the traditional manner that matrons usually are when they help the other Romans out, which is they get to have eulogies at their funerals, like their superior men or something.

Dr G 32:59
This is big, all right, somebody’s going to talk about you after you die. It’s a special privilege, exactly.

Dr Rad 33:06
It’s very unusual for women to get this sort of honor. Again, we’re not entirely sure that this would have happened, but sure, let’s run with it. Give the women something in return for their contributions.

Dr G 33:19
You can have a gift, but you have to be dead first, so make the most of it.

Dr Rad 33:23
Well, I think that in See, this is the thing in Livy’s account, as you say, it is very neat. In Livy’s account, the Roman women contribute this. They contribute their gold so that sacred treasure can be left untouched. So they’ve got their state funds secured on the Capitol. They don’t have quite enough to pay the Gauls, so the Roman matrons chip in, and that way it’s all nice and neat. No sacred treasure is touched in Livy’s account. But as we say at this point in time, what is money? What is goods? What are we talking about? And it just seems really unlikely that these besieged Romans, when everyone else has fled the city, actually had this large lump of capital just sitting there that wasn’t temple treasure. But anyway, I’ve talked about this enough. Once all of this stuff is taken care of, Camillus can rest easy. Dr G he’s got all his piety out of his system. He feels like Rome is now in a good place. Now is when he can turn to properly deal with these troublesome tribunes and the question of they so he goes to an assembly, as do the Senate, and he’s about to give the mother of all speeches.

Dr G 34:38
Dare I ask? How many pages this runs to in the translation.

Dr Rad 34:42
Oh, pages. Well, I mean, for Livy, it’s long, like it’s nothing compared to probably what you used to have to go through with Dionysius back in the good old days. But it’s long as far

Dr G 34:51
as when I had a source. Okay, all right, I’m gonna strap myself in.

Dr Rad 34:56
Yep. Get ready for it. Yeah. Camillus is particular. Ly distressed by this whole situation, because the one thing that sort of made him feel somewhat okay about being in exile in Ardea was the fact that he actually he hated the idea that people even wanted to go to they kind of made him go, You know what? Maybe I shouldn’t be in Rome. Maybe Rome does suck. Maybe our deer is not so bad, because the Romans are actually considering going to Veii – disgusting,

Dr G 35:29
such a low move, he

Dr Rad 35:31
actually says he would never have even gone back to Rome, even if the Senate and the people had begged him just so he could avoid tribunes like this.

Dr G 35:44
I just this Roman mindset is baffling. It really is.

Dr Rad 35:48
He really only came back because Rome was just in such a bad situation. He felt like he really couldn’t say no. But I mean, if it had been a little bit better, maybe he wouldn’t Dr G because tribunes, they’re the worst. He then points out, annoyingly logically, why even bother to fight the Gauls? Why drive them out of Roman territory if you’re then just going to turn around and abandon the City immediately? Why did I do all of this? Why did I come out of exile? Why did I do the Rocky montage?

Dr G 36:21
But counterpoint, counterpoint. It’s not all Rome moving to Veii. It’s just some of the people moving to ve like we’re not talking about leaving Rome in the dust and pretending like it never existed. We’re just saying some people are now living on this hill over here.

Dr Rad 36:38
That was the initial proposal back before the Gallic sack had happened, you’re absolutely right, they were talking about maybe dividing the population and only sending some I think at this point though, Rome is so atrociously destroyed in Livy’s account that maybe it’s more we actually all relocate. Even worse, even be like,

Dr G 36:59
Guys, yeah, everything’s been burnt down here. Like, let’s Veii still has some building standing. Like, bite the bullet, just let’s move.

Dr Rad 37:08
Yeah, so Camillus so Camillus then says, you know, the Romans have managed to hold the Capitol and the Citadel all throughout this terrible time. Again. Why would you put yourself through that. I mean, basically the brink of starvation and all that deprivation. We can’t even imagine what those guys went through, and then they’re just going to walk away and leave it voluntarily, that patch that they defended for so long. I don’t think so. Camillus also brings in his religious side here. Of course, he feels like Rome’s gods, their religious traditions that had endured for hundreds of years at this point had always managed to protect Rome, even in this moment, there has been that level of protection. How could the Romans think of turning their backs on their gods now? Because, as you pointed out, there are certain things which are very much tied to the city of Rome itself. You can’t just move them to a new location, at least the way that the Romans have done them in the past. Camillus points out that if the Romans actually do their math, get out their Excel spreadsheet over the past few years, whilst Yes, they’d had some very high hives and some very low lows, but the highs had always coincided with moments where the Romans were listening to the gods. Need he say more? Dr G, this misfortune with the gods had all happened because the Romans had started turning their backs on the gods and not listening to the many warnings that were provided to them that could have helped them to avoid this whole situation. Once the chips were down with the Gauls, then the Romans started to get back on track again, get religious again. They had made sure that they held the capital and Jupiter Optimus, Maximus had helped them out as well. The Gauls had never managed to take the Capitol line. They’d also buried their holy relics, because the Romans were trying to make sure that such things could not fall into barbarian hands as mere loot, mere booty. It had all been protected. The earth of Rome itself had protected their holy relics. How could the Romans think of leaving the earth the soil? Dr, G,

Dr G 39:31
well, I feel like Camillus is getting carried away, because part of the trouble that Rome has faced is because he’s forgotten some of his oaths. Like, lest we forget that Camillus is part of the problem.

Dr Rad 39:45
Look, maybe he’s not trying to deny that. Maybe he’s trying to, I think the thing is, here’s the thing is forgetfulness. You know, once you realize you forgot something, he’s like, Ooh, this is going to be awkward, guys, but I need some of that booty back. Yeah, he always tries and does the right thing. He just sometimes he seems to be a little bit of a buffoon,

Dr G 40:12
debatable, but yeah, look here he is getting up and being like, you just got to make things right with the gods. I’m like, buddy, you need a mirror.

Dr Rad 40:20
Nonetheless, he’s very much on this bandwagon that once the Romans were facing danger, they did the right thing. They made sure that everything was safe, that was holy, kept the temple treasures safe, and due to this, it’s because of this that the Romans managed to get back their land, not necessarily because of him, but because the gods were now back on their side, and this is something that Livy also mentioned, that fortune was now back on the Roman side. When they were able to massacre every living goal, there are no goals left. Dr G, the Romans have killed them all, and the Gauls got their punishment, because when they tried to do their trickery with the scales, what happened? They didn’t get the girl, did they? No, no, the gods made sure that Camilla showed up at just the right time to make sure that they would be punished. I mean, do you need any

Dr G 41:21
certain scholarly accounts only for certain types of evidence?

Dr Rad 41:28
Camillus really wants the Romans to realize that they have only, just by the skin of their teeth, managed to avert total disaster, and yet, if they decide to relocate today, they’re just going to be running headlong into another one, and he is here to give them their wake up call. The entire city of Rome is completely shot through with their religion, their gods, the sacrifices that need to happen every year, the Holy Days that have to be observed every year. Are the Romans really thinking they can just leave? He comes back to this point a lot. Do the Romans really think they can just leave? Not just the state deities. Dr G, think of the family gods. So I presume he’s referring to things like the lares, which FYI we’ve done a special episode on archaic religion in Republican Rome that you might like to listen to to understand more about that. But they are definitely important to the Romans. He thinks, how does this stack up when you also compare the conduct of the Romans right now where they’re thinking of leaving to that of Gaius Fabius during the Gallic sack. I mean, he had risked death to make sure that the appropriate rituals had been carried out. He did not let the worship slip. Famine or no famine, Siege or no siege, and now the citizens we’re not even faced with any danger are again thinking that they can somehow be more cash about all these rituals when there’s no immediate reason for them to ignore what is going on? What are they thinking?

Dr G 43:20
Just a slight question, is it the case that when Livy is writing that there seems to be some concerns about people leaving Rome for other places? Is Is there some sort of contemporary anxiety around robe itself at this point in time when Livy is composing this history? Because this sounds like somebody who’s a little bit scared that maybe things aren’t going well in contemporary, late Republican Rome.

Dr Rad 43:47
Well, I mean, I think the Gallic sack is meant to be a pretty bad time, even if it didn’t happen exactly the way that Romans say it happened. I mean, we’re calling into question a lot of the details that we’re given, but I don’t doubt there was some conflict with Gallic peoples at this point in time. I absolutely don’t dispute that. There’s way too much evidence to the contrary, and not just in Rome. Definitely there are Gauls about they’re looking, probably for land. They probably are looking for portable wealth. So I’m not disputing that. It might be a bad time, but they, I think, is the big thing here about Romans sort of deciding its destiny, as we’ve talked about. It seems odd, given that the siege of Veil lasted for 10 years, and then when the Romans finally win, they seem somewhat surprised and don’t really have a plan as to what they’re going to actually do with Veii once and conquer it.

Dr G 44:36
But this is one of those classic lessons from history where people do not anticipate the consequences of their actions, and then things work out in the way that they were hoping, but they do not have any idea about the next step. And you’re like guys, you’re now in the position where you have exactly what you want.

Dr Rad 44:55
Now this is where Camillus also starts to try and anticipate some of the arguments that the tribunes. Going to throw back at him, of course, he says, you know, maybe the tribunes are going to say, don’t worry about it. You can just transfer all the rites and rituals and all the family gods to Veii. Or what if the pontiffs and the flamens, they just visit the old side of Rome when they need to for the rites. You know, they just fly in, fly out, they’re there and back in the day. No sweat. But to this, Camillus says, No, this will not satisfy the gods. It is not good enough. So don’t even think about it. The gods have high standards. You cannot hold the feast of Jupiter anywhere else but the Capitol period. Now, what he is referring to here is a banquet that was held on the 15th of November where a couch would be set up for Jupiter and Juno and Minerva had little stools on either side, and they would have this feast for Jupiter. So that’s what he’s particularly referring to, and you’ll like this. Dr G, this is where he brings up the Vestal Virgins. What about Vesta’s fires? They can’t just be moved. They belong to Rome itself. He also brings up, and I’m going to quote my translation directly here, the image which is preserved as a pledge of empire in her temple, which is a reference to an image of Pallas known as the Palladium, which was supposedly brought to Italy by Aeneas, so very much part of the Roman foundational myths, linking them to the Trojan Wars, something very important to them. He also brings up what he refers to as the sacred shields. Yes, these go back to the reign of NUMA Doctor G Another favorite of yours, indeed. Yes. So it started up with Mars Gradivus, or Gradivus and Quirinus, the idea of the sacred shields, and they’re sometimes, I think, called the ancillia. I believe, I think we probably actually referred to these things before, but supposedly the original one came from heaven. There were 11 replicas made, and each one was given to one of the 12 Salii Priests of Mars. No one knows which one the original one is, but there is an original. Dr G and Camillus is not happy about this situation.

Dr G 47:32
There is an original. And the priests of the Salii are the ones who look after that, right? And it is very important, and you do not want to lose any of the shields, because each one of them could be the one that fell from heaven. And Camillus is tapping into ideas here that Romans do have about location being a primary feature of their devotion to the gods, because there is no doubt, from a Roman perspective, that you would not be able to perform the rites of Vesta in a different location. Each city could have priestesses to Vesta, but if you went to Veii, they would be priestesses of Vesta in Veii. So it’s fundamentally not Rome anymore. So this taps into a kind of fundamental sense of like, what is Rome? In terms of like, the broader understanding of self and Rome is at least in part, fundamentally about the location. It’s that spot on the Tiber. It is those hills on which they have built those structures, and nothing is able to replicate that. And the real concern is that their understanding of their relationship with the gods is dependent on that location as well. So there’s no guarantees if you move to Veii that things will work out for you, because the gods are the same, but you are now different. And what does being in a right relationship with the Roman gods really look like? And because they have this sense that it’s tied to location, it’s impossible to leave, and we see that coming through in other things as well. So I think we talked recently on Let’s Talk about Myths, Baby podcast, about the triumphal procession, and that in two is geographically tied to the city of Rome. You wouldn’t have a triumph somewhere else. Romans up expanding a lot, but some things are fundamental to location, and so Camillus is tapping into a deep Roman definition of self, which is about this place, and only this place which is really quite fascinating. And I think Livy is doing something interesting here by tapping into that as well, definitely.

Dr Rad 49:51
And so even though this might be a speech invented for Camillus by Livy, maybe May, May. See at the same time the stuff that Camillus is referring to as examples of things that are particularly tied to Rome. As you’ve just say, they are definitely of tremendous antiquity to the Roman people. You know this feast of Jupiter that was held every year, it does go all the way back to a point where we can’t really trace when it started the Palladium. Again, there’s definitely question marks about how Aeneas supposedly brought this to Rome. But nonetheless, the idea of it is something again, that’s it’s quite old. It’s meant to be quite an old example, and it just goes to show some of the stuff that the vessels were put in charge of protecting the vessels themselves, obviously very ancient. You know that there’s a lot of stuff here that he’s tapping into that is so archaic we can’t be 100% sure of the origin these things. So he is tapping into those really, really archaic traditions, including like the lares, for example. You know, when we were talking about religion, the lares, the Romans themselves, didn’t even know exactly when that all began and when that started, and exactly where that came from. They have lots of theories, and some of them are probably tapping into something, but we can’t say for certain this is how it began and this is how it evolved. So he’s bringing in all of that kind of stuff, which makes sense, because at for this time period, obviously that stuff is a little less ancient than it is for someone like Livy writing many years later. And so Camillus goes back and points out there’s just such a contrast he feels between the Romans that he’s addressing now and the ancestors of the Romans who helped to establish these temples, these rites. I mean, they set them up as rituals to be passed down and to be carried out. And what are the current day Romans actually going to do with them? Just leave them, disregard them. He points out exactly what you said. How can they actually move cities and move all this ritual without it ending up being absolutely horrific. I mean, they thought the Gallic sack was bad. That was just after ignoring a couple of things and getting a few things wrong. What are you gonna do now

Dr G 52:13
when you ignore a plebeian, what if you ignore the whole geography of the city? Yeah, exactly, guys, it’s too risky. Yeah.

Dr Rad 52:21
And he also points out the effort they went to to entice Juno over when they conquered they’re like, why did we even try and tempt Juno over to Rome and then build her this whole temple on the Aventine? Why did I just build the temple to Aius Locutius? Why did I found the Capitoline and games if you’re all just gonna leave, because this is all stuff that’s obviously, you know, happening in the city. The vestals always stay in their same place, unless there is an extremely serious enemy attack, like the one that just happened that absolutely forces them to leave the flamen diailis, which, again, we talked about in our episode on religion. As you said, there are so many rules that the Flamen dialis has to follow, including they’re not allowed to sleep outside of Rome even for one night. So how is that going to work if you just want to move to they? Is he just gonna stay there by himself, all alone?

Dr G 53:23
Well, obviously he’s not moving, so, yeah, well, he’ll be there with his wife. So cute. Those two can stay. Everybody else has to move.

Dr Rad 53:34
Yeah, sorry. I probably should actually say, sorry, he Flamen dialis is one of the most important flamens In the Roman system, there are three big ones, and he’s one of the three big ones. Very important, very important. And he says, And what about all the other stuff? What about the pomerium? We have a sacred boundary. Have you not noticed it’s a pretty big deal. We have all these rules about what you can and cannot do inside, outside that line. You know, there’s all these rituals that have to go with making it bigger. What are we going to do about that? How is that all going to work? How does that work if we just going to move posh? What about how the declaration of war happens? That has to do with the pomerium. It has to do with where people meet. It has to do with the curious Comitia. Okay, all the rules around them. How is that all going to happen? How the auspices going to be taken exactly as you highlighted so you and Camillus, you’re not as opposed to each other as you think. We’re in sync, yeah.

Dr G 54:35
Oh, I’m not opposed to Camillus. I just think that you know his story has been overblown

Dr Rad 54:39
for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Now, once again, Camillus tries to anticipate what the tribune is going to come back with, because they haven’t been allowed to say anything yet. It’s just the Camillus show. Still, he thinks his enemies will say, look, it’s not that we’re saying that all of this stuff that you’re highlighting isn’t valid, but we really have no choice. Rome is completely. Be unlivable. Veii is untouched because of the genius way that you managed to take it by that sneaky tunnel and then basically everyone just sort of gave up. Veii is in pretty much perfect, pristine condition. We just have no choice. We have to leave because, you know, what’s the alternative that we rebuild actually go into construction? I don’t think so. But Camilla sees this as just a sneaky excuse, because this question of moving some people to they had existed before the Gallic sack, so they’re just being opportunistic, and he sees through them. He has a completely different perspective to the tribunes. I mean, a more redundant sentence has never been said. He thinks the destruction is actually less reason to leave. Okay? He’s like, no, wait, it would be basically admitting that the goals have won. You know, we we’ve managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, if we were then to turn around and leave. Now we’re basically giving it right back to them. You know, we’re giving them what they wanted. We’re doing what they were aiming for. It just doesn’t make any sense. He says, Look, I may have massacred all the Gauls that I could see because I’m Camillus, but rumor has it that the Gauls are incredibly numerous. There might be more of them out there. In fact, he’s pretty sure there are. What if they came back? What if another Gallic group came back and found Rome deserted and decided, hey, why don’t we live here? This is a pretty cool place. I can’t believe some idiots just left it here for us to take over, and the Romans would then have to live with the knowledge that they allowed that. Yeah, they let the Gauls just move in, pull up a chair, put their feet up in front of a fire, and live in Rome. He can’t even think of

Dr G 56:55
it very dramatic now, so dramatic.

Dr Rad 57:00
And this is where he also highlights some people that you’ve been talking about. Let’s not ignore the fact that Rome has plenty of enemies that are actually quite close by, the Volscians, the Aequians. They’ve been fighting them for ages. Again, abandoning Rome itself would be just handing them Rome what they’ve been after for seemingly centuries. At this point that cannot be allowed to happen are the Romans seriously okay with all of these suggestions that Camillus has run through just because they can’t be bothered to do some building. It seems insane. Dr G,

Dr G 57:38
it does seem relatively insane, but you could also read this as being like the biggest doubling down argument of all time. It’s like we’ve been here, we got to stay here. We’ve been here, we got to stay here. You know it’s okay to cut your losses, Camillus, so you could move to the next hill over.

Dr Rad 57:56
Absolutely no, no, no, no, never. Camillus thinks it would be more honorable and a preferable situation overall for the Romans just to go back to their roots living in simple, very old fashioned huts, because at least then they’d be near their family deities. They’d be near all the sacred monuments they wouldn’t be. And I quote a nation in exile, which is exactly what they would be if they moved to Vay after all, the Romans had managed to build their city up relatively quickly. Is it really that hard to just do that again. If the Romans, who were their ancestors, could do it, surely, the Romans of his own day, the people that had conquered Veii in the first place, could do it. And let’s not forget that the Capitol and the Citadel, they are still in perfect condition, Dr G, thanks to those valiant defenders of Rome. So they have a good starting position, you know, and they have this really important part of the city this kernel preserved. So that’s something to give them a bit of hope and inspiration.

Dr G 59:10
Surely, I kind of like the idea that Camillus is giving this speech amidst the ruins of Rome, and everybody about him is like, but, buddy, just look at this place. It’s been destroyed.

Dr Rad 59:23
Well, he’s starting, he’s really starting to, he’s starting to lose me a little bit with this part here. Dr G, don’t worry. We are getting somewhat near the end. He then says, Okay, let’s say that I allowed this to happen. Okay, that myself and the very conservative patricians said, Okay, let’s move to they. Is this going to be the way that the Romans conduct themselves all the time? Is this the way you live your life? Fires, not uncommon. What if somebody didn’t watch their fire carefully enough and they caught. Poured on fire, really badly damaged, and Romans all moved there. Are they going to just get up and leave again if he allows them to leave this time? Is it just going to always be on to the next and better thing that hasn’t been burnt down, having no real attachment to where they live? Is this really how they want to live their lives? Do they really value just having, you know, a roof over their heads, more than places with actual meaning to their culture, to their people? Camillus himself, he Dr G values the land, the landscape of Rome. These were the things that he actually missed the most when he was in exile in aedea. It wasn’t the fancy temples, although they’re important because of the gods and all, but he really missed the landscape most of all, and that is something that you cannot transfer. You would miss that in Wow.

Dr G 1:01:02
Now, I mean, Camillus is, it turns out, is a romantic and I had no idea, but you know, his love for the landscape, his love for place, it’s like he’s just stepped out of an early 19th century novel.

Dr Rad 1:01:18
Well, this is where I could spoil it a little bit, even though we’re so close to the end, and say that Livy’s Probably borrowing a little bit from some Greek examples that exist where there are people who give these sorts of speeches about, you know, the beauty of the landscape and, you know, ties to soil and stuff In other sources that would have been available to him at this time.

Dr G 1:01:44
This is shocking news. I know Alert, alert. Tell everybody

Dr Rad 1:01:49
the fact that he’s using his probable education to put this all together. Shocking news, indeed, that’s it, Livy. It’s over now. He also says the gods of Rome and Rome’s ancestors had not just stumbled across this location by accident. It had been obviously deliberately chosen for good reason. It’s amazing. Have they not noticed all the natural advantages that come from this particular place, I mean, the Tiber, dr, G, do we need to actually say the Tiber in order to convince these plebeians to do the right thing? It’s so easy for transport, and they’re not right on the coast. So it’s not super easy for, you know, pirates just to come and raid their city. They’ve got a little bit of protection, and yet, still, the advantage of a river like the Tiber for transport the hills, the healthful Hills all around them. I mean, Rome is just clearly an awesome place. They keep being able to beat the Etruscans, the Volscians, the Aequians, their track record speaks for itself. He also then talks about other important religious moments which really should have already proved that the Romans can’t just get up and leave. And this is where I come to the head, Dr, G, and I hope we’re talking about the same head here.

Dr G 1:03:15
Ooh, well, we’re about to find out, aren’t we? This is

Dr Rad 1:03:19
where he reminds the Romans of the discovery of a human head on the Capitol. Now, was this the head you were referring to? Yes, the head nodding doesn’t fly on a podcast. I’m afraid

Dr G 1:03:33
I know Yes, so yes, definitely the head that is on the Capitol. So this severed head is found when the foundations for the Capitol line are dug up, and this idea is then translated in Roman understanding in that Rome will be the place that becomes the head of Italy itself. It becomes a symbolic thing. So this is part of an idea that goes back to really archaic Roman times, that this is the spot where the city needs to be. It’s not just about the birds that Romulus saw. It’s also about the physicality of this place. And that idea is also tied to, again, that idea of the sacred fire of Vesta, where the fire has to be in a certain location the Capitolini Hill, has revealed a severed head, which helps us to understand that the Capitolini is incredibly important and must be looked after at all costs. And it was during the Gallic sack even and really honing in on that idea that physicality is everything to the Roman definition. So it’s just reiterating the same point. And Camillus has been doing this in this speech as well. He’s really nailing it with all of these details. It’s like there’s no way we could do these things anywhere else. What could possibly happen? If we leave, it will be a disaster. That’s what will happen. Yes, everything about Rome is about here.

Dr Rad 1:05:05
Yes. And he, once again, brings up the flame of Vesta in connection to things like the head that was found on the Capitol. Again, it’s not something that can just be moved. The Goddess wants it where, if she wants it, he can’t just move it around. It’s not a candle, guys. So he goes through all these sorts of things, and he and I think he’s finally run out of examples, run out of steam. You’ll be relieved to know Dr G Camillus speech is finally over. He has convinced them with this plethora of examples of why Rome is the best. Nobody beats it. You can’t just move to Veii. So the Roman people agree with him, particularly the points about religion. That’s what’s really swayed them. Their whole relationship with the state gods, personal gods, it’s all very overpowering for them. So he has won the day. I’m sure you’re not surprised after the force with which he delivered that argument.

Dr G 1:06:01
You were channeling Camillus. But the real

Dr Rad 1:06:03
clincher came during a senate meeting. So they were debating things in the curio hostilia and some cohorts of Roman soldiers came back from guard duty. What are they guarding? I have to ask. I mean, it’s a city in ruins, the population, I suppose whatever’s left all that gold,

Dr G 1:06:22
yeah, that pile of wood over there that was burnt.

Dr Rad 1:06:25
Yeah, they happened to be traveling through the forum. When they reached the comitium, one of the centurions was heard to ask the standard bearer. So the standards are very important to the Romans. They’re not just a marker of, hey, this is this group of soldiers, they come to have, like a sort of spiritual significance for the Romans, so very important, he turns around and asks the standard bearer to place his standard down in that place which he refers to as the best place to remain. The Senate see this as an omen that the gods are trying to tell them where they should live. So they obviously still had, even though Livy says Camillus’ speech was so convincing, they’re apparently still talking about this point they have the doubt.

Dr G 1:07:08
Yeah, there are things to chat about here. It’s a debate, yes, so the

Dr Rad 1:07:12
Senate come flooding out after they’ve heard this incidental remark about the best place to remain, and they proclaim right there and then that this is the way they have been shown the way. And all the commoners who are just flocking about, they also join in the celebration, and they’re like, yes, yes, this is the way. They’re thrilled with the decision that the Senate has made that they’re going to stay in Rome, and this is when, in Livy’s account, Rome finally starts to be rebuilt. I guess while they’ve been debating, they’ve been doing nothing. They’ve just been living in the ruins. Nothing like animals.

Dr G 1:07:53
We can’t We can’t do anything until we’ve made a decision. Guys, hold off on the rebuilding. We’ve got to decide where we’re doing that. So don’t waste your time. This story also comes up in plutarch’s account. So he gives this sense that Camillus gives this rousing speech, although I haven’t looked into all of the details of whether he recounted the speech itself, because I was focusing on Diodorus instead of Plutarch here, but he does have the moment where Camillus hands the floor over to the first senator, where it’s like, okay, well, that’s my speech. How are you going to vote? And it’s this guy, Lucius Lucretius, who sees the standard bearer walk past, is given the command to put it in the best place. And that’s the thing that turns Lucius vote essentially where he’s like, Well, the gods have revealed that sign to us. I’m going with the gods. And that makes that brings all of this together, because Camillus is really emphasizing the divine aspect here, and Rome’s connection to place. All of a sudden, the standard, which, as you’ve mentioned, is a sacred object and does have a ritual significance about it as well, seeing it being placed right outside where the meeting is happening, and having a sense that that’s the best place for the standard. And it’s like, okay, we all need to do this. And once one guy votes a particular way, there is no secret ballots in Senate voting. Everybody’s then openly voting. And usually the weight of the first senator is quite significant, because they’re usually the oldest or the most prestigious, and it just flows from there. So Camillus gets the job done. They’re going to stay in Rome, absolutely.

Dr Rad 1:09:43
And as you say, the first senator, if that’s the account that Plutarch goes with, that makes total sense. I mean, that’s where Augustus kind of draws some of his influence from, as well. This idea of being the first man to speak, because once you’ve spoken, and you’re the person with the most auctoritus, probably the most experienced, therefore. Or and you’re probably an old gent, people are going to bow to the weight of your opinion, because you’re obviously someone who’s highly respected in the Roman community. His name is not specifically mentioned in my account, but certainly the idea is that Camillus has given a very convincing speech, and they’re just wrapping up the details, and then this omen is given. This is where Livy mentions something which most people find hilarious, which is that he says that this is why Rome is very higgledy, piggledy in his own day. He says, Yeah, look, Rome is a bit of a hot mess in my day, and that’s because of this. Basically we have the reference to the formal state rebuilding program. Again, very funny, if you think about it, given where we’re at in Rome’s history, we’ve got the tiles being provided. The people are told they can just help themselves to whatever stone and wood they need. But in Livy’s account, they are given a very tight deadline of just a year. We’ve got to rebuild this whole city in just a year, guys, because otherwise, this analytic way that Livy’s writing just isn’t gonna work. We want to move on from this whole scenario. You’ve got one year and so snappy. Guys keep it snappy. Yeah, it means that the streets become overcrowded. Things aren’t necessarily set up in the most logical way. They’re not carefully planning out exactly how the city should look. Afterwards, they’re just basically grabbing vacant land and being like mine, I’m going to build here. This is my spot. Finders keepers, losers, weepers. And therefore, by the time you get to Livy’s day, Rome is a mess. Pretty much no one believes this explanation at all for why Rome is overcrowded or not particularly well planned, it’s probably to do with the fact that Rome just expanded in a somewhat haphazard fashion, and people who live in Sydney can appreciate how that might happen to a city, and the influence of, say, the Greeks, with their ideas of City Planning, probably hadn’t really reached Rome before. The core of it had been set up in this kind of chaotic way, and yeah, it was just kind of left to develop from there.

Dr G 1:12:10
Yeah, it does not ring very persuasively in our source material to be like we told the people that it’s a state run rebuilding program, but we didn’t actually tell them where they could build. We just said, here’s some tiles. Knock yourselves out, and it’s been chaos ever since. Now. You would think if it was a state run system, that maybe they’d be more systematic, but apparently not. And I think there is something to be said for the fact that Rome is way too early in its history to have a coherent sense of its own organization, and that’s not the sort of thing that the Senate or the elites have ever been particularly across that’s a very bureaucratic way to think about city creation. And if we’re thinking about examples from Australia, Melbourne is a highly planned city, yes, but Melbourne was also not the city that was started first when Europeans decided to turn up and pretend that Australia was inhabited by nobody, they started in Sydney, and Sydney has a very organic structure to it. A lot of the streets follow the lines of the traditional owners, paths that they used. So we know that it’s not following a grid like structure. And certainly we live in a city that does not present any kind of grid most of the time. But Melbourne, for instance, really does. And that has both pros and cons. In terms of both cities, there are some elements of an organically grown city that really work, and there are some that really don’t. And Rome is very organic, even today, it is very organic structure about it, if you look at the maps. So Rome never gets over this. And even when it does become more organized under imperial rule, the chaotic aspects are never really going to go anywhere. I think this might be the spot to wrap up this episode.

Dr Rad 1:14:08
Now, I think this might be the way to wrap up. I wanted to get through Camila’s speech so I can finally put 390 BCE behind me. Put it to bed. Yeah, the one thing I will say before we wrap up is just highlighting, again, how much Livy is probably drawing from other writers in sort of his inspiration of putting this speech together. This is obviously a big set piece for him, because Camillus is his hero. He wants to show how pious Camillus is, and so this speech is a moment to really showcase that, as if his actions don’t speak loud enough. So as well as those Greek examples I mentioned which he might be borrowing for parts of the speech there, but people also think he might have been influenced a bit by Cicero in terms of the speech’s construction and that sort of thing. And one thing which I did find interesting in the commentary that I was looking at is this idea that the move to ve might have been something. Thing that was perhaps added in a bit later in the traditions around the Gallic sack. It might not have been something that existed from the beginning, even though you’d think they might go together, because obviously the fall of Veii and then the fall of Roma so close together chronologically. But it might have been something that was added in a little bit later. And one of the reasons, perhaps, that Livy goes down the path that he does is that during the late Republic, there was this period called the Social Wars, where there was fighting going on between within Italy, basically. And it was about a whole range of issues, which I won’t bother to go into in full detail here. Certainly it was a contentious time where it was people were trying to decide, obviously, who belong, who’s going to belong in this system, and who wasn’t, and who was getting rights and who wasn’t. And in this time period, part of the Roman response to this revolt by other Italians was to really dwell on the significance of the site of Rome itself, to try and emphasize that that was so important. Because, of course, as you can imagine, in a rebellion, the people who were not on their side trying to establish like a rival place, you know, and have a rival center that was going to be disconnected from Rome in their own special place. I guess, if you kind of imagine any civil war, like if you think about the north and the south and the US Civil War or whatever, you can kind of understand how all of a sudden, different places take on different meanings when you’ve got people who are suddenly divided, who were once living in relative harmony. And so it may be partly some of the traditions that were developed in that time that have somewhat influenced the speech that Livy devises for Camillus in this moment here.

Dr G 1:16:50
Very interesting, well, and that is just a really early teaser listeners for the Social Wars, which we will come to in 20 or 30 years?

Dr Rad 1:17:01
Yeah, exactly. It happened till the first century. So, yeah, don’t, don’t even think about it again. I’m just telling you. It was a conflict. It happened in Italy.

Dr G 1:17:11
So, but yes, there are, like, relative historical concerns in the Roman imagination about what it means to be Roman and to be in this space. And I think it’s quite reasonable that they would influence something like this, largely potentially created speech by Livy.

Dr Rad 1:17:29
And there was also apparently a suggestion by one of the Gracchi, I think of doing something with Carthage as well when Rome conquered that so there are influences that are probably coming through Livy’s account, because he’s writing so much later, but we can’t be sure exactly what. But yeah,

Dr G 1:17:49
oh, well, this has been a very interesting conversation.

Dr Rad 1:17:53
It is you can really see the differences in our accounts coming out in this time period. Because, yeah, all the stuff that you talked about is going to take me another several because this speech, this speech is there.

Speaker 1 1:18:07
I mean, yeah, yeah,

Dr Rad 1:18:08
Livy said you can’t move on. Dr, rad, not yet. I

Dr G 1:18:10
mean, Camillus wasn’t even in Rome, so. Dr, G, that means

Dr Rad 1:18:15
it is time for the partial pick.

Dr G 1:18:23
The partial pick, we are going to judge Rome against five criteria in which they could possibly win 10 gold Eagles if they perform very well. And our first category is military clout.

Dr Rad 1:18:38
Who This is tricky, because your account does have some military action, yeah, but mine does not. We are

Dr G 1:18:45
full of military clout over here. If diodosticulus is to be believed, it’s just one battle after another, and Camillus is a blazing glory of victory.

Dr Rad 1:18:54
Well, I mean, do we? We went with Livy’s account last time and we gave him high points in certain categories because we were believing the account. I’m happy to do the same here, if you would like Excellent.

Dr G 1:19:04
Well, Camillus smashed it out of the ballpark, didn’t he? Not only did he take,

Dr Rad 1:19:09
how long I’ve waited for you to say this word,

Dr G 1:19:12
I mean, he took down the Volscians. He stopped the Aequians from doing some stuff in the South. He stopped the Etruscans from doing something in the North. He got back the gold. It’s basically a 10 out of 10.

Dr Rad 1:19:26
Let’s do it 10 out of 10 for the possibly equally problematic account of Diodorus. Say nothing.

Dr G 1:19:36
Say nothing. Our second category

Dr Rad 1:19:39
is Diplomacy. I don’t think so really. I mean, if we go with your account, it’s just warfare. If we go with my account, Camillus is basically talking the whole time, and no one’s responding.

Dr G 1:19:52
He is, and that’s not really diplomacy, because he’s just talking to other Romans. I think has to be a zero, dr, G, well, that’s that. Okay. Hmm, Expansion, nope.

Dr Rad 1:20:02
Well, in your account, I mean, they’re retaking a colony, but I when, when was it last? Not theirs? Wait, that doesn’t make sense.

Dr G 1:20:14
When are they How long have they had this colony?

Dr Rad 1:20:16
Yeah, like, how long has this

Dr G 1:20:18
been an issue? I don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t think it’s really expanding to take something back, but it’s like, this place is like a hot potato, yeah, they’re just playing catch up on something that they thought was theirs. Yeah? Okay, so I feel like

Dr Rad 1:20:32
that we’re gonna give them nothing for it, or we’re just gonna give them, like, our point. I suppose we could give them our point. I feel like it matters, you know? I mean, I don’t think this is something that was taken by the Gauls, for example. So this is something that they’re legitimately retaking, re establishing control over. Yeah, yeah, all right, 1.1 point.

Dr G 1:20:53
Okay, Virtus.

Dr Rad 1:20:57
I don’t think so. Because even though Camillus says some impressive things in your account, there’s no like, particular moment where I’d say it’s weirdos, it’s more just impressive generalship. Yes, there’s no detail. Where’s the detail Diodorus?

Dr G 1:21:11
Yeah, then there’s no particular story where Diodorus Siculus goes into detail about a moment that Camillus has in battle. So and in your version of events, he’s really just having a bit of a chit chat that goes on for too long. So

Dr Rad 1:21:30
I’ll have you know, I’ve worked myself up into

Dr G 1:21:32
quite a sweat. I can see you fanning yourself, yeah?

Dr Rad 1:21:35
Oh my god, it’s so hot in Australia. Guys, it’s summer here when we’re recording this probably may come out to winter, but just, you know, we are sweating through it.

Dr G 1:21:43
Yeah, I’m very shiny on the screen, but yeah, hopefully I sound very calm, cool and collected on the audio.

Dr Rad 1:21:53
I actually can feel myself getting dumber as we’ve gone through this episode, because I’m getting so hot.

Dr G 1:21:58
Well, I’d hate to say it’s the Camillus rubbing off on you, but

Dr Rad 1:22:04
All right, so that’s a zero. Then for virtus as well,

Dr G 1:22:06
it’s a zero, yeah, the final category is the citizen score.

Dr Rad 1:22:10
I feel like we have something to work with here. Dr G, I feel like the military victories on your side, that’s got to be good for the citizens. And then on my side, they seem happy with Camilius’ decision, even though they were all totally prepared to just walk away and go to Veii at the beginning.

Dr G 1:22:28
Yeah, certainly in the accounts that I have read as well for this is once the decision comes through that there will be no moving to Veii, everybody just sort of is like, okay, and starts to chip in with the rebuilding process, and doesn’t cause much of a stink about it.

Dr Rad 1:22:43
Yeah, look, I mean, if you think back to the previous accounts, where we’ve had this question about they it was controversial. It’s not like all plebeians were on the side of going to Veii there definitely was division in the Roman population. So I guess they’re just tapping into that. They’re only convincing a certain amount of people, the rest of them were already kind of on their side. Yeah.

Dr G 1:23:05
So I mean, obviously it’s a good time for Roman citizens, in the sense that the Gauls have gone and it seems to be a good time, because regardless of how it has happened, they’ve either retained the gold or they’ve gotten back the gold, and they have decided to rebuild, which, I mean, is probably good for citizen morale. I would say

Dr Rad 1:23:27
they can rebuild her stronger, faster, exactly. So, yes, I agree with you. I feel like it’s going to be fairly high. You know, the matrons are honored as well. That’s pretty cool. So I don’t know. I mean but, but, but, but they have just lived through a siege, and they are allegedly living in a heap of rubble.

Dr G 1:23:47
Well, sure, but like, there’s living in a heap of rubble when there’s no enemy around, and then there’s still being under a siege, and surely the former has got to be better.

Dr Rad 1:23:57
Yeah, and look with Camillus back on the scene, people must be happy. So I feel like maybe like a six.

Dr G 1:24:04
Yeah, I was gonna say a seven. So I think we’re pretty

Dr Rad 1:24:08
I could go with seven. I could be persuaded to a seven. All right, all right. Dr, G, that means that the Romans have managed to accrue a grand total of 18 golden eagles, which was not expecting, given that I thought I was pretty much just going to be speechifying at you.

Dr G 1:24:26
Look, I enjoyed every moment. It was full of drama and Camillus iterated some points very delightfully. And, you know, there were Vestal Virgins, I can’t complain.

Dr Rad 1:24:37
Look, if we needed any convincing that Rome is awesome and that we should continue to podcast for the next 50 years so we can tell her history. I’m convinced Camillus has done the job. There is no place for us in the room.

Dr G 1:24:53
Yeah, we Yeah. Whenever there is a doubt, we will return to this speech as Camillus once said, Yes.

Dr Rad 1:25:00
Yes, there’s no place like Rome that might have to be the title of this episode.

Dr G 1:25:05
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure, as always. Thank you. Dr G,

Dr Rad 1:25:18
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. The Partial Historians is part of The Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive to find more from the memory collective head to collective mem.com. You can support us by buying us a coffee on Ko fi. But you can also support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad free content. Today, we would like to send a special shout out to Jonathan Lance who joined our Patreon one year ago this month. However, if you are trying to rebuild your home after a barbarian invasion, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 171 – The Gallic Sack of Rome – Part 6 appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

The cover of Swords and Cinema by Dr Jeremiah McCall

Who is our special guest?

Dr Jeremiah McCall (or DMac as his students call him) is a teacher at Cincinnati Country Day School in Ohio with a PhD in Ancient History. 

Along with an interest in Roman military and political systems in the Republic, he has done a lot of work on pedagogy of using video games to learn about history, publishing Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History in 2022. 

He divides his research time between historical game studies and Roman history. Dr McCall’s other publications include The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (2002); the Sword of Rome (2012), Clan Fabius: Defenders of Rome (2018) and Rivalries that Destroyed the Roman Republic (2022). 

Manly Men

We will touch on the battle scenes and depiction of the Roman military in all your favourite Roman movies and TV shows.

Things to Look Out For:

• The defeat of Spartacus – Spartacus vs. Rome: The Last Battle
• The battle of Alessia (52 BCE) in HBO’s Rome – Rome Fighting with Gauls HD
• The battle of Philippi in HBO’s Rome – HBO Rome – Battle of Philippi (Battle only)
• The opening battle sequence in Gladiator (2000) – Gladiator 2000 Opening Battle
• And a bit on Centurion (2010) and The Eagle (2011) to finish!
• The Eagle | Channing Tatum Fends Off A Midnight Sneak Attack
• The Eagle | Channing Tatum Leads Roman Centurions Into Battle
• Centurion 2010 Best movie Scene HD
• Plus some things that get set on fire!

You will need your popcorn for this special episode!

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the partial historians.

Speaker 1 0:19
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,

Dr Rad 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battle’s waged, and when citizens turn against each other, I’m Dr Rad

Speaker 1 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 Rad 0:54
Hello and welcome to a special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts. Dr rad,

Dr G 1:02
and I am Dr G,

Dr Rad 1:05
Dr G, we are joined by somebody who shares a passionate interest of mine, actually a couple, I think, probably as well as yours. We are very lucky to be joined by Dr Jeremiah McCall, or DMac, as his students call him, which I think makes him very much at home on this particular show. He is a teacher at Cincinnati Country Day School in Ohio, and he has a PhD in ancient history, along with an interest in Roman military and political systems in the Republic. He has done a lot of work on pedagogy, of using video games to learn about history, publishing Gaming the Past: Using video games to teach secondary history in 2022. He divides his research time between historical game studies and Roman history. Dr McCall’s other publications include The Cavalry of the Roman Republic in 2002, The Sword of Rome in 2012, Clan Fabius: Defenders of Rome in 2018 and Rivalries that destroyed the Roman Republic in 2022 but today we are here to talk all things, movies and the military. Welcome. D Mac, thanks.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 2:21
It’s great to be here. I’m really excited to talk about this.

Dr Rad 2:24
Oh, we are very excited. I always cannot turn down an opportunity to talk about Rome on film.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 2:32
It’s interesting the book, I gather the book did well enough, right? Like I didn’t make a fortune. Buy me a coffee, coffee, and that’s better than buying a book, but I gather it did well enough that they put it into a paperback, but it’s one that really I haven’t gotten to talk to you about a lot, and I certainly thought it was kind of a fun idea, so I’m glad to be here. So

Dr Rad 2:53
can you please maybe start by giving us a bit of an overview of the development of the Roman army, because your interest in this book is all about the military and the Roman army and how they appear on screen as well as the Greeks, but we’re just going to ignore that part for today. So maybe knowing a little bit about the Roman military would help our listeners sort of get situated.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 3:12
Sure, absolutely. I guess one of the things I should say about the book is there are lots of different ways one can approach film and history, and I was absolutely not approaching it as a trained scholar of film in history. I was approaching it as a bunch of years sitting around on a couch having a beer or something like that, and you’re watching the movie, and somebody’s like, Oh, that’s so fake. Or yeah, that’s how it really was. And, you know, writing a book for that just sort of like, okay, they’re films, and some of them are really great films. But you know, are they depicting battle? Are they depicting armies and soldiers and fighting in ways that kind of fit the evidence? So the Roman army of the Republic, if you go back, so I was, I was saying to Dr G A little earlier that I had just listened to part of your we’re too episode. So if listeners are kind of in the fourth century with you about to attack, they at that point, sort of in the late three hundreds. We think that Rome had a military that was essentially like most of the Greek city states. So it was called a phalanx. I’m not sure if your readers are familiar with it, but basically the idea is you got your citizen soldiers together, and they had big, round shields and stabby spears and maybe a helmet or something else like that, but they lined up in these sort of large formations, with the idea being that it’s kind of like a shield wall. Everybody covered themselves and the people next to them, and phalanxes don’t turn well, and they don’t go on rough ground well. And the only thing they’re really, really good at is kind of moving forward and going stabby, stabby, at anything that they see in front of them. So that seems to be. Earliest Roman military system, and like the Greeks, they divided it up so that your wealth determined whether you would fight in the Phalanx, or whether you might be a slinger or something like that. But eventually, and we don’t know why, right? I mean, the thing about the Roman Republic is our evidence is so bad for most things that we’re looking at. Amen, yeah, right, exactly. Well, you two are so courageously going through, you know, military tribunes with consular powers and all that stuff. And I’m like, oh my goodness, yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if we really knew about that? I think that’s our conclusion most episodes, yeah. Well, I mean, I think it’s important, right? I was, I was saying, before we started recording, you know, I took notes for this, and, and, and you both know, as you’re, you know, with your own PhDs in the field, it’s not about instant recall or memorizing facts, right? It’s about being able to look at the evidence and ask the questions and, and sort of go from there, you know, point of fact, I had to review to make sure that I had my Roman army talk in good shape. Anyways, going back to the Phalanx, somewhere in the late three hundreds, three elevens, often given as a date, the Romans seem to have shifted their military away from the Phalanx, and they adopted this system that persisted through most of the Republic, which was called the manipular army, Plutarch and Livy are sources for this. They don’t agree on most of the major points. They’ve got different names, they’ve got different types of units. They’ve got different numbers involved. Bless all the philologists out there that can figure out, you know, who’s got the better source, or something like that. That is beyond me, but this seems to be the basic deal. Basically, you had four legions under the command, each under the command of a council by 311 they had passed a law to do that, apparently. And each of those legions was divided up into maniples. And maniples, I think the word means handful, I believe, or something like that, is where it comes from. But basically we’re a group of soldiers, 120 normally, and then 60 and the smallest side. And so if you had 120 soldiers, I believe, you had 10 maniples of what they called the Hastati. So these were the guys with the big spears that kind of charged forward and stab. Sometimes. They had a pilum, which we’re going to talk a lot about pilam pila today, because they’re not in any of the movies, and I don’t understand why. So the Hastati were the heavy infantry who would start the battle. The principes were behind them, and they were sort of the men in their prime, and they would kind of continue on the battle. And then after them were the triarii, who were probably armed like hoplites, and their job was just, if everything hit the fan, they could sort of form a defensive group. So the idea seems to be that these maniples were arranged in, sort of think about like the five spots on a die. So you have a gap in between each line that’s being filled by a manifold behind it, and we kind of think they fought that way with gaps in their lines, but we don’t really understand how they did. But the thing that the sources seem to agree upon is somehow the back lines were able to relieve the front lines, maybe even in the middle of battle. We’re not entirely sure about that, and that’s something that shows up in the sources, too. Anyway, the manipular army was flexible. It had small units that could go around and do important things on the battlefield. And right, the Romans ended up winning lots and lots and lots and lots of battles.

Dr Rad 8:34
What they did, oh, my god, everybody,

Dr Jeremiah McCall 8:41
it’s so true. Well, it was so funny, because, like, on a certain level, right? The movies all depict the the opponents of the Romans as not being as effective. And I guess that must be true, right? I mean, on some

Speaker 1 8:52
level, on a practical level, it seems like that might be the case. So you mentioned a couple of written sources like Livy and Plutarch when we’re talking about the ways that we start to understand the Roman army is the written source material, the kind of material we’re able to use when we’re evaluating depictions of battles and Roman soldiers on screen. Or are there other sources we should be interested in, and what things do we know very little about?

Dr Jeremiah McCall 9:22
Sure, fantastic. So we’ve got the literary sources right. Livy Polybius, little bit of Plutarch when we start, when we get to the end of the Republic, Caesar, becomes invaluable with his civil war and his and his Gallic Wars. When we get into the Empire, we have tastus talks about military things, and Ammianus Marcellinus on the late end of those things. In all of that, there are no soldiers accounts. We do not have anything that’s coming from people that actually fought in battle, other than as a general, or certainly, at least didn’t fight in the battles they were describing. If you think about the Greeks as a difference, right? We have poetry fragments. We have. Have a historical account written by people who actually did fight in some of their battles. So that’s kind of one of our big things, is we have all these sources, some of them right when you get to Livy, he never participated in a battle in his life, as far as we know. So we have a lot of unexpert people talking about something that they didn’t directly experience. And then there’s all of us, thankfully. So right, not fighting with each other, with with, well, I’m not fighting with anybody with anything but, but certainly not with stab stabby spears and swords and things like that. And so, you know, one of the things that happens is trying to figure out, well, what was this actually like when the stakes were real and people, you know, people were trying to kill each other. Archeological sources almost non existent for the Republic. We would love to have a depiction of what the soldiers, different soldiers in the maniples, look like. There is an altar to demius, ahenobarbus, Bronzebeard in first century, I think early first century, that seems to show a Roman infantry soldier and a Roman cavalry person, but that’s kind of it. When we get to the Empire, we have all of those victory columns, right? And the triumphal arches are like Titus triumphal arch, and it’s Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, right? I think that have the columns. I think Trajan

Speaker 1 11:19
has a column, doesn’t? He doesn’t. Marcus. Marcus Aurelius has a column as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the spiraling sort of reliefs, yep.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 11:27
And so they show soldiers in battle, and that helps us a little bit too. So those are kind of our big things, as far as what we have for sources. Now, what don’t we know as a result of that? Well, everything.

Dr Rad 11:39
Damn, let’s just end this podcast right now.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 11:46
Much like Socrates, we are wise and that we know, we know nothing. No, that’s actually, that’s

Dr Rad 11:50
actually wild when you think about it, because the Roman army is obviously such a big part of what people think about when they think of Rome, and generally when we do obviously see Rome appear in the cinema. It is focusing around moments of conflict where there are going to be the spectacular battle scenes. So it is wild to think about how little we actually know.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 12:10
Yeah, so you got to fill in a lot of imagination. And I guess, you know, we’ll talk about that more, but I guess that’s where I kind of come down on these movies, is you’ve got to have some imagination. You can’t, you know, you’ve got to picture this somehow in your head if you’re really going to kind of bring it to life. So what? What do you do when you know nothing other than these, you know, carved in stone figures, absolutely.

Dr Rad 12:30
Well, maybe we should start talking about a real example. And listeners of the show will not be surprised to hear that. We’re going to start with my personal favorite, Spartacus, 1960 now, this is a bit of an unusual one, in the sense that it is set in the late Republic. We don’t have a ton of movies that are set in the Republic, and this obviously details the uprising of the gladiator Spartacus and his war against Rome. However, one of the weird things about this film is that there is a bit of a lack of battle scenes. You know, you might expect, given that this is about a war between a gladiator and Rome, that there’s a lot of battle scenes, but there aren’t a ton. But can you talk us through the way that that final battle scene between the slave army and Crassus Roman forces was represented because that’s perhaps one of the more spectacular sequences. Yeah, absolutely.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 13:23
And I really had fun kind of going back. I don’t think I had all the video clips when I wrote the book originally, so it was great going back. And so when you look at Spartacus, yeah, and I think I remember reading about this somewhere, I’m pretty sure they had more battle scenes that they had to cut along the way that.

Dr Rad 13:40
Yeah, it’s part of the very troubled production history of this film. There was a lot of talk about what they were going to film, when they were going to film it. The battle scenes were certainly something that they were going to add some in at the end, because they realized that they hadn’t really shown Spartacus winning and so the Romans being afraid of him didn’t entirely make sense in the way that the film came together. They’re like, Wait, why are they afraid of him? You don’t really see him winning terribly much, but it became part of the incredibly chaotic later production of this film that they didn’t end up getting a ton of them back into the movie. The one that you do see, of course, is Spartacus defeat, which is this battle that we’re talking about, which not everybody in the film was thrilled about. That. That was the big spectacular sequence, because they were trying to build up a Spartacus who was a very impressive military figure in the equal of the Romans. And they felt that by giving all this screen time to his defeat, it again, didn’t quite match up with the portrayal that they were going for.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 14:43
Do I understand correctly? I swear I came across this recently, that there’s also that, you know, sort of cold war mentality, that there was a fear that Spartacus could represent, sort of the proletariat forces, kind of triumphing over the good imperialist America. I’m sorry, Romans, no.

Speaker 1 14:59
Yeah, we can’t have that happening under no circumstances.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 15:03
Oh, I’m going to be so good and not talk about politics today.

Dr Rad 15:08
Oh, no, look, I think there definitely could have been a bit of that going on. But of course, one of the things that’s interesting about Spartacus is the fact that so many people who were working on this film were communists or ex communists. So Dalton Trumbo, obviously was one of the people fighting to show Spartacus as an impressive military figure. And Howard Fast, whose novel The movie was based on, had very deliberately set up Spartacus and the slaves as a kind of proto communist society, where it was very ideal and utopian. In his novel, that was a very clear message, if you read the book that this is based on, so they’re probably actually not wrong, isn’t it?

Dr Jeremiah McCall 15:50
It’s fascinating how it’s all a playground. I, you know, I I came into reception studies, really long way around that wasn’t my training. And then I got into video games and history. But as you both know, as teachers, as high school educators, you’re both high school educators, right? I thought, I thought I got that right. Reception studies is everything we do, right? What’s a student? But you know, you know, learning with you and studying with you, and then you have this interesting example of, well, how do they take this, this evidence? How do they take their readings and their discussion and their video games and stuff like that? So, yeah, it’s all reception studies sort of on a certain level. Okay, so last battle scene, right? Spartacus and his army are up at the top of the hill. Crassus and his army, his army has sort of paraded by as he’s sort of sitting on the side watching, and that’s probably reasonably accurate, since the generals wouldn’t necessarily be in the front as they were doing that. But basically, you’ve got this mash up. There’s a scholar in Manchester, I think Manchester in Britain, Richard Cole, who’s been doing some work on video games as historical video games as mashups and Spartacus, the battle is definitely a mash up. You’ve got, first of all, the classic, you’ve got the sculpted body armor made out of leather with all the muscles. Not ever do we have any evidence that any average soldier was wearing these. They’re probably expensive. They may not even have been that comfortable. So they’re wearing those they’ve got the Taru gaze right the letter, leather flaps going down to guard their abdomen, and that’s all mash up. The shields are mostly straight instead of curved, and so their helmets are kind of okay, but otherwise, it’s a little Greek, it’s a little Etruscan. It’s a little Roman as they’re going on. And leather armor seems to be a fascination for lots of filmmakers, and they just didn’t wear it for good reason. It doesn’t stop a spear or a sword or anything like that. Don’t you think it must be about what props they had, you know, like what they had on set, what they were able to kind of get?

Dr Rad 17:59
Oh, they like reusing things. They

Dr G 18:02
definitely like reusing things. Yeah. So they’ve

Dr Jeremiah McCall 18:05
got, they’ve got their Gladius looking swords, um, so that’s okay, um, but the spears that they have are clearly thrusting spears. Now here is nerd 101, on spears. Okay, if, if the diameter of the spear shaft is like an inch and a half or two inches, and it is straight the long way, and you have kind of like a broad shade, broad tip on it. Then it is a spear, and you’re using it to stab somebody and keep in your hands. But the Romans used the pilum, which was this kind of specialized javelin, where you throw it, and it was made of a wooden shaft and socket, and then it had kind of like a really thin spit of metal, and then a really kind of fine tip. And the idea was they would throw it before they went into battle, as far as our sources can tell us, and it did a devastating job, demoralizing enemies. And sometimes, if it went through shields, it bent very easily. And we don’t know whether they plan for it to bend or it was just was just luck on their part, but it goes through the shields and bends, and then you’ve got this six to 10 pound weight holding down your shield as well, so it makes it harder to defend yourself. And listeners will have to report into you, and you’ll have to get back to me. I don’t think there’s a single movie that’s tried to represent

Dr Rad 19:19
this. I can’t think of one. No,

Dr G 19:22
I’m keen for details. Get in touch listeners.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 19:26
I think it must be really well. See today though, they have all the special effects, but it must be really hard to represent a bunch of javelins, like going through the air and people. So usually what they end up doing is sort of just a shield smash instead. So they don’t, so they have stabby spears, they don’t have pila as they’re going in the part that kind of fascinated me as I was looking at it. There’s some promotional materials that talk about how the Roman was organized. A Roman army was organized in the in the first century, and they had shifted. The short version is they shifted from maniples to. Cohorts. The cohorts were uniform soldiers. They were all heavy infantry, equipped and armed the same, but they still seem to have that gap system where the rear lines could kind of support the front lines. Kubrick goes for this. He has 10 units, as you should have a Roman legion should have 10 cohorts, and he’s got 10 units, and there’s a gap between them, they look like the five sided dice, except for there’s actually four rows of them, which no source ever attests to, but he’s got four rows of them. And they march up, and then when they get to the bottom of the hill, the front line extends so the two cohorts are in front extend so that they become a solid line of soldiers. And then they march up the hill, and the rest sit back. And I don’t know if they’re taking tea or having a holiday or something like that, but they’re not doing the thing that you would expect them to do, which is support the front lines. So I love the fact that they tried to do something with these gaps in the mandibles, and they tried to do something with formation. And I think when it comes to sort of the grandeur of the Roman army. They did a really cool job. But this is not how it happened. This is clearly not how it happened, but that’s actually one of the areas we don’t know a lot about. We don’t know how it happened, but it doesn’t seem to be this. Suppose you were a soldier going up a hill, and you saw some people at the top of the hill, and they had these logs, and they were standing there, and they lit the logs on fire. Okay, so you’ve got the flaming logs and you’re at the bottom of the hill, and they’re at the top of the hill, and they’re still holding the flaming logs, and they seem to have two people on each side to drag them. What

Speaker 1 21:31
do you do? Well, I wouldn’t be woken up that hill. And I was

Dr Jeremiah McCall 21:36
trying to think about because on the one hand, it’s like, right, why are you? It’s like, No, I think I’ll just wait down

Speaker 1 21:42
here. Yeah. Like, I can wait it out. Those logs will eventually burn through. It will take days, but I can wait to the logs are gone, and then I’ll go up the hill Exactly.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 21:52
So then, then it’s like, well, maybe the commander made them go up. Now, I don’t know we actually, I think we have, like, maybe one reference to incendiary items being used in any of these battles. And believe it or not, I thought this was I thought this was absolutely false. I couldn’t believe it, but I was researching a Roman video game, Rome, total war once. And apparently there is a testimony, I think Appian says it at once, a flaming pig. Yes, I’m a vegetarian. I’m not a big fan of lighting pigs on fire. Yeah, me too, yeah. So anyway, so, yeah. So they’re going up that hill, and the Rolling Rock logs come down, and much as you would expect, they burn people. And some of the soldiers jump over the logs, and some of them get rolled over by the logs. Logs done damage, done. Front row not supported. Then you basically have the troops all run down the hill, getting to each other, and you have a brawl. Military History, Roman, military, well, any ancient military history for at least the past 140 years, it’s been seriously questioned whether armies, when they got into battle, kind of broke up into these groups that you see, pretty much you see it all over Spartacus, right? There is all doing duels, this little clump, that little clump, right? And so on. And the argument was made a long time ago, in the 1870s by a French artillery officer. I think that if all you did was have the two sides kind of mix it up and Brawl, then the larger force would always win, because there’d always be more people right in in the bar fight as it were, not, not that I have any experience with bar fights,

Speaker 1 23:27
but I think that’s one of these things where our inability as modern people, living in very lush lifestyles, where we’re Not conscripted into armed forces, but we study history is, how do we understand these things? And I think this is where people who have been in military settings and do military history become highly valuable, because they do see how it works and how it doesn’t work and what would immediately make sense and not make sense in these contexts.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 24:02
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s really stretching your mind into something, into an area that most of us just have no experience with, gratefully, certainly. So they’re all brawling. We’ll get into it a little more in some of the other films about how they deal with that idea of combat. But Spartacus, they’re all, they’re all duking it out. And then you have the aristeia, right? You have the courageous individual Spartacus going through, and he’s lopping off. He’s stabbing people. I forgot the part where he chops off somebody’s arm and they show and I was like, oh, that’s 1960 special effects. That’s good stuff, right there. So he cuts off somebody’s arm, and he stabs somebody, and he’s he takes them all out. And there’s a lot of focus on that, and there’s a lot of room. There’s so much room to just sort of wander around with your horse and stuff like that. It’s like, how did you get these 10s of 1000s of soldiers to come together and fight? But there’s all this room. It all stays very. Open. It’s all very much a brawl. It’s not really going to help us visualize first century battles very well at all. I love that they tried it. I think that kudos goes to anybody who tries it. I think one of the limitations that we often don’t think about with with movies is everything’s on screen, so you’ve got to have an answer to everything. How did they fight? How did they march? What did they wear? What were they wearing? Because you like, I mean, we get away with writing, right? We can write a sentence and leave 1000s of details out and nobody necessarily notices because the sentence is so self contained. You can’t just have like a big blank screen with just like a Roman standing there and nothing else you got to fill it in,

Speaker 1 25:43
awaiting historians details come back. Right, exactly. No.

Dr Rad 25:48
I mean, I think, I think that raises such a good point, because we’ve been talking a lot about gladiator movies, obviously with Gladiator two coming out recently, and one of the things that we often talk about is the fact that, obviously in modern retellings of gladiator movies, particularly like, think about the Russell Crowe ones. I should have called them the Ridley Scott ones. Sorry, sorry, Australian loyalty. Exactly. We do tend to see gladiators fighting without a helmet, particularly if they’re the star of the movie, and that’s because they’re being paid millions of dollars as an actor, for us to actually see them, and we want to see the emotion, you want to see the terror. We want to see them scowling at each other and all of that kind of stuff. But that obviously, genuinely rarely happened. If you were Gladiator, you generally had some sort of head covering on because, you know, protecting the head that seems to be a priority. I feel like it’s the same thing sometimes with these battle sequences, with the brawling in that the person who’s shooting the film wants to be able to get in there, close and see, you know, some of the main characters duking it out with each other, because they don’t necessarily really care about what else is happening around them. They’re focusing in on the main characters, you know, Crassus versus Spartacus, and that’s what we as the audience also kind of want to see. So I feel like cinematically, that’s probably more a reflection of what they want to deliver to us emotionally, and that’s perhaps why they don’t really think about the accuracy of what’s going on around these people.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 27:15
I think that that’s a really good take. I hadn’t, I hadn’t quite thought about that way, but you must be right, certainly about the helmets, but I think you must be right too about the having the space to be able to maneuver the cameras and things like that. You know what it is the ultimate effect in Spartacus gets you very much at something that. Okay, quick disclaimer, everything I say is based on 25 years old research and occasionally writing new books. So anything I say can be, I’m sure, contradicted and countered and told that I’m silly by whoever the current crop of historians is on this that being said least 20 years ago, conventional wisdom was that Homeric fighting might have been like this, where you have the heroes. I mean, obviously the Iliad depicts it as the heroes fighting and the soldiers mobbing around. But apparently there’s some scholarship that suggests that there is something like that going on that you have these sort of Battle Plan leaders who are better equipped and more focused on and a bunch of supporting soldiers. Spartacus, really kind of does that sort of that Homeric fighting, and he’s not as cool as Diomedes because he doesn’t stab a god. But, you know,

Dr Rad 28:29
yeah, I also like to think that with Spartacus, I feel like the reason why some stories tend to make it into TV and film multiple times is partly because the source material that it’s drawing from is naturally more cinematic in the way that it’s described than others. So for example, I feel like Herodotus, the way that he writes, you can literally lift dialog out of that and put it on the screen, and that’s been done in 300 and I feel like it’s the same thing with Spartacus, because of the way that Plutarch writes, there are these inherently cinematic moments, and one of them is Spartacus supposed death scene. We do have this description of him in that final battle, heroically trying to cut his way. You know, through to Crassus. You know him being protected by some of his most loyal adherents. And gradually they’re cut down one by one, until finally, Spartacus is dealt a death blow. I mean, that is screaming out for Hollywood, and that’s, I think, what we’re kind of seeing on the screen here. Now, did Plutarch know what he was talking about? Probably not.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 29:34
I know. I know you both have found this to be the case because I’ve listened enough. And you know, as far as like looking at the reconstructions that these ancient sources give and how little they’re based upon. And I, I think at the end of the day, it’s one of the things that makes somebody like me think that video game and movie adaptations and scholars like you two as well are reasonable because we’re doing everything from. Secondary sources from people who had not a clue and were at least 500 years after the fact, and not always. I mean, sometimes they were only 100 years after the fact. It doesn’t seem so strange to take, you know? I mean, I think the battle scene in Spartacus is at least as is least as likely to be authentic as Plutarch version of what’s going on there. Neither of them is really giving you much of a version of what the mechanics are. Wow.

Dr G 30:26
Okay, so turning away from Spartacus, because I know Dr Rad could stay here for a whole hour, if not longer, I want to sort of switch focus to a much more recent adaptation. HBO is Rome, which I still love after all of this time. So I think the first season aired in like 2005 which is probably showing its age at this point. But it’s a very different time period for bringing a Roman army onto the screen. It’s post dating Gladiator, which it obviously sort of kicked off in everybody’s minds. Oh, we need to think about Rome and Rome on screen. But how does HBO is Rome fair when depicting Roman soldiers?

Dr Jeremiah McCall 31:09
Yeah, it’s a really great question. Yeah, that was such a fantastic series and and they stopped.

Dr G 31:15
I was so sad. Yeah

Dr Rad 31:17
Capitalism ruins the party again.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 31:22
Okay, so when you, when you get, when you get to HBO, is wrong. I think there are some problems, I think, with what they do, but, and I know nothing about who was behind the filming or the directing, or the or anything like that, but you really start to see a vision of a Roman battle that I think becomes useful. You know, we talk sometimes about, can you learn from this movie, or what can you learn from that movie, or stuff like that? And I guess I’m always reminded, right, that, and I think this is a Plutarch quote, but it’s the you’re not a vessel to be filled with education, right? You’re, you’re a set of logs that are supposed to be sparked and, you know, and lighting a fire. And so I wouldn’t want my students to be passively learning something ever if I can avoid it, I would want to be actively engaged in it. And so I think the interesting question is, do these films allow us, if we’re interested in either because we’re professional historians, or we’re nerding out, or whatever it is that gives us joy, do they help us visualize what it might have been like, so that we can then compare it to our sources and talk with people on podcasts and things like that. So I think HBO Rome does it. I think that the battle of Alessia, I don’t think it says Alessia. I think it says Alessia. I think it just says Gaul. So this was in, I believe, 52 BC, and Caesar was up in Gaul right on his 10 year campaign. Again, if you guys ever make it to the third and second and first century, I am so ready to come on back and talk about those books we intend to I will be old. I will be significantly older then, but still excited to talk about Roman things. So the Battle of Alessia, Caesar’s there. He’s conquering Gauls. That’s a siege. It’s an interesting siege of the town of Alessia, because a Gallic army comes up, and so Caesar’s soldiers are in fortifications where they’re both fencing in the city that they’re besieging and fencing out the other army that’s coming to support them. HBO is Rome. Does nothing with that. It’s Gauls. There’s no reason for them all to be standing in this woody area. But they don’t care. They’re just going for it. So what exactly this is supposed to be, I’m not quite sure, but that’s but that’s not to detract, I think, from from the achievement. So you look at it and you really see that they’re trying to make this idea of the organized Romans versus the semi organized or disorganized goals. Interestingly, as far as we can tell, the goals weren’t that disorganized. By the first century BC, the Romans had taken a lot of techniques and a lot of equipment from the Gauls. And so as Roman historians, we always love a good, you know, barbarian joke here or there. But the reality is that it wasn’t quite that distinct. And yet, clearly the Romans put a lot of energy into maintaining a training system and a formation system and an officer system that could hold up the stresses. So they’re standing there the soldiers under Vorenus is centurion. It must be because he’s a centurion, and you can see an optimally equipped legionnaire, almost. They’ve got scale armor. They got ring chain mail, which is absolutely what was being worn at the time by the wealthiest. But by the first century, most were being supplied with that. They have their Scutum, they have their they have their shields, probably a little too early, they have these shields that are rectangular and curved, and that seems to be early empire. But it’s okay. They look good. They’ve got their helmets. They’ve got their Gallic helmet, actually, and they’re looking good. And they. Got their Gladius, and they don’t have pila. They do not have a single

Dr G 35:06
missing an opportunity. Again,

Dr Jeremiah McCall 35:08
I know, and you’re thinking to yourself as an armchair general, right? You’re like a throw of some pila could be really useful here. I would think, I reckon, I wonder if

Dr Rad 35:18
it’s a health and safety thing that you know, just hurling these gigantic javelins is just too risky. But then again, there are so many scenes where they love having the rain of arrows.

Speaker 1 35:28
I was gonna say, why don’t they sub out the rain of arrows, which we know is historically inaccurate, and put in some throwing javelins. Come on. Yeah, I

Speaker 2 35:38
know. I know. So, okay, so Okay, so they don’t have that great vision here, you know, we’ll forgive them those things again. I do wonder about equipment costs and how much they were trying to borrow and whatever. So they’re waiting there, and there’s tension, and soldiers are all gritty and dirty looking, as you would expect them to, and this is some pretty serious business. And so they clash, and it looks really good. They’re smashing shields into shields. They’re trying to knock each other down. The Romans are using their stabbing motion. The Gladius was supposed to be good for both a cut and a stab. They seem to be doing a good job with that. And the Gauls are a bit more disorganized, and they’re not having an easy time of it. So the first part is where Vorenus is mad at pulley Pullo because he’s broken ranks. So that happens first. So, so pull over at the headstrong one breaks ranks and he’s off fighting his own personal battle. And and again, this fits what we know personal battles were not being fought by Romans in the middle of battles before the battle, quite possibly, maybe with the cavalry off on the side of a battle, but they weren’t doing it in the middle of the battle, because that’s when you have to keep your formations and everything. So there’s this wonderful scene where Vorenus is, and I just love it. He’s like, formation pull though, and you just, you’re like, you can, you can feel it. You go, okay, yeah, I would assume a century and had to grunt like that. I mean, because it’s battle, it’s serious business. Pullo goes ahead, doesn’t listen to anybody. Kill some balls. And Vorenus says on me. And he gets a group of loyal soldiers to come with him, and they go out into this little group. And suddenly, as you were saying, Dr Rad, you have all this space for the camera. Suddenly, there’s space for varenus to punch Pullo, have people grab him, force him back into line as he’s turning and talking and calling him a drunken fool, and then have him walk back to the front lines without any of the calls hitting them. Okay, so that’s drama. The idea of emphasizing military discipline definitely over aggrandized. And I almost, I almost feel like we have to make a moral note here, by the way, a side note, which you are welcome to cut if you’d like. But let’s remember that there are horrific white supremacists in the world that over state Roman order and fascism and all these things, and they do it for evil purposes. So I don’t want to, I don’t want to overstate the Roman order thing, but clearly our sources say that that was part of it, that they were trained and disciplined. So the Varanus and polo episode, that makes sense. So I’m stoked I’m watching it. This is great. It’s only been two minutes, and then I see it, and I said, What the hell was that? Do you know what I’m talking about? Okay, so what the hell was that? Okay? So he blows his whistle. Cool a whistle for command. Sure. Why not? I don’t know that we have evidence for that, but they had to do this. Somehow. He blows his whistle, varenus, and then the front line, the front line, dudes in the Roman army all turn sideways and sidle their way down between the tight rows of infantry on their side. And when you look from the top, they’re sidling down and going to the back. The next person in line goes to the front. What they don’t show you it well, they show you in the in the clip on the overhead shot is each of those soldiers has their left hand with their Scutum, with their shield and their right hand, sorry, and their left hand is also holding their Gladius, because their right hand is on the straps of the soldier in front of them. What is that so? So basically, we’re asked to imagine, and I’m going to be nice to this after so we have to assume is the front guys would all be able to sidle their way back. The person behind them would be able to let go of the guy, shuffle forward, take his Gladius from his from his hand, from his shield hand, hold up his shield and and refresh while people were trying to kill them.

Speaker 1 39:40
I do think this might be a logistic way of trying to solve like, how do we do it? Like they’re standing there with all of the equipment and they’ve got whoever is their master of battles behind the scenes being like, how are we going to do this change of formation? Like, how do we make that work physically? It’s like you’ve got this giant shield, you got this sword, if you’re holding both at the same time. Maybe you’ll accidentally injure the person who you’re relieving. So we’ve got to get them out of the way. But this obviously sets up that next line to be completely vulnerable. So presumably, it’s not how it was done.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 40:12
I think you’re right, though. I mean, I think you know, props are due. This is the most serious, scholarly version of this you’ve seen in film, right? I mean, Spartacus isn’t doing anything close. They tried with their cohorts. So there are a couple of historians, I can’t remember. It’s been a while. I don’t think anybody supported the Rome version recently, but there have been a couple of scholars that suggested this is what happened, that in the midst of the fight, individual roles of soldiers would relieve each other. But, yeah, it kind of staggers the imagination that that could work. But that’s one of those gaps in our evidence. We don’t know how they relieved each other. We have no idea how that worked. It seems impossible. The best argument that I’ve heard well, I mean, we don’t even know. We don’t even know if the if the cohorts fought in those regular lines, as much, or whether they were just all sort of clumped, it’s the best answer I’ve heard is that there are actually probably a lot of gaps in fighting and a lot of pauses. Particularly if you stayed in your kind of orderly groups, you’d clash together, and people would die, and energy would be exerted, and then they’d back off. There’d be a natural pause every so often, and maybe that’s it. But I think you’re right. I think this is a serious I shouldn’t have said scholarly, because scholarly is not the standard by which history is history. It is instead interpretation of the past selectively in a way that you find meaningful. So maybe, maybe scholarly is not the word, but it is a serious attempt, I think you’re right to figure out what the heck might have this

Dr Rad 41:44
is the tricky thing about being an academic who studies history on film, because so often you’re like, that is completely inaccurate. And then people say, Okay, well, how should it have been? I have no idea, but I know that that’s not how it was, exactly,

Dr Jeremiah McCall 41:57
and that’s that. And that goes back to like, I’m not going to try and pronounce the French on it, because my French pronunciation has been made fun of in like six US states. And the setting of a film, right? All right, I’m going to try. It’s mise en scene. Oh, yeah, the mise en scene, yeah, yeah. There you go. See, I knew I could goad you into pronouncing it, because I can’t, in any event, right? The setting of the setting of the scene, everything that’s in the shot. And yeah, they’ve got everybody in the shot, so they got to figure out some way to relieve and so, yeah, that’s what they do. So, yeah, you know, I mean, fair enough at the end, this is probably the best that you’re going to see. And then they get to Philippi, and they kind of go for it even more. Still, don’t have pila. It’s a civil war. Romans are afraid of spears too. Why aren’t they doing a nice I

Dr Rad 42:43
mean, surely if you’re gonna have peeler, it’d be in a civil war when they’re wrong, you think right, because everybody’s got them,

Speaker 1 42:49
that’s when you have to surprise them by showing up without them. I mean, yeah,

Speaker 2 42:53
it’s like, it’s like a pila fight in a phone booth or a knife, but you brought a dope Philippi. The sources are pretty clear. There were two battles, not one, but, but this telescope says, cinema does the setting they’re making dry and dusty, although I don’t actually, I mean, it was, I think it was spring or summer time, and Greece can be dry and dusty in that time. I think the seriousness of the soldiers, their shields are kind of at rest, leaning against their knee, which makes a lot of sense. And, you know, kind of the seriousness on their face, and that’s something that HBO really kind of goes with, is trying to get sort of the gravity of this. And I love the fact that when they do this, I assume they must be using CGI stuff to add on to it, but they have many, many units on the field, and they’re taking these aerial shots, and you absolutely have the sense that they’re in different units coming together, and they come together and they clash again. They didn’t throw a pila at each other, but they clash with each other, and they’re stabbing and they’re thrusting, and it devolves into chaos in the front, but it doesn’t devolve into quite as much chaos. So you got a sense, maybe, that there are still formations back there, but it’s, it’s a brutal slug fest. Is a brutal stab Fest in the front rows. And I think they do a really good job with all of that. And then no whistles are blown, but they relieve the front lines and do that thing again. You’re like, okay, they’re committed to this. This is how it’s, it’s the way. And I should say it looks really cool. It looks really cool when they do it. The shot of the relief. Couldn’t ask for anything more interesting, too, except for when Brutus commits suicide. There’s no aristeia, there’s no there’s no individual leaders going through and making a show. I don’t think that our protagonists are even in there. I don’t think verenus And polo are even at that battle. I can’t remember, but Anthony’s not going in doing that. Of course, Octavian is not doing that. Was sick. He was not feeling well,

Speaker 1 44:50
yeah, excuse me, I’m not I’m not sure what anybody’s trying to say here about

Dr Jeremiah McCall 44:56
he had to rest in his tent. Apparently, we thought. Ahead. Now, of course, I’m a middle I’m a middle aged history teacher in high school, so I would not be doing any better. I mean, so I should not be throwing stones. But in any event, the No Irish days makes sense. You got the generals kind of behind commanding and sending in reserves and things like that. So I think they do a really good job on that. I don’t think they do starting speeches. I think, you know? I mean, if we’re going to nitpick, right, Antonius was certainly charismatic to his soldiers, and we don’t ever have him being, like, giving a speech or something like that. And I believe Brutus and Cassius, I think all this show, because I just went back to the video clips, I think all they’re doing is arguing or is talking about what he wants on his birthday. And isn’t it his birthday? And shall he have a cake? Which do Romans have cake? I don’t. Well, the bigger

Dr Rad 45:44
questions. Feel like, no, like, I take cake very seriously, and I feel like they don’t have cake. Like, I understand

Dr Jeremiah McCall 45:50
it, yeah, okay. I mean, right, they’ve got fish guts, but they don’t have cake,

Dr Rad 45:53
yeah? Maybe like a sweet bread of some kind or something, yeah,

Dr Jeremiah McCall 45:58
sure, there you go. But okay, we’re agreed it’s not really cake, okay. But anyways, they don’t seem to do a very good job speaking to the soldiers, either. And we actually kind of think that happened. We think that it’s impossible for the commanders to have actually reached all the people in their armies when they were giving speeches. But the speech for your local group was probably something you tried to do, because at the end of the day, battles were not lost primarily through wounds. They weren’t lost when more people got killed. They were lost when one side lost its morale to the point that it decided self defense, self preservation was a better shot for them than staying in this orderly formation. And that’s when the real devastating killing goes on. So speeches and stuff are kind of an important reminder

Dr Rad 46:41
of that. So let’s switch, perhaps, from the late Republic to the Empire, because we don’t want to miss that. Of course, Gladiator 2000 we can’t not mention that, especially because the opening scene of that movie has a particularly memorable battle scene between the Romans and Germanic tribes. How accurate do you think this scene was?

Dr Jeremiah McCall 47:05
It’s funny. I don’t Are you familiar at all with Brett Devereaux blogs and things?

Dr G 47:09
He rips this one to shreds.

Speaker 2 47:12
Yeah, yeah. And I think he does gladiator too. And I went back to read because I was like, Oh my gosh. I mean, I know him digitally, like we all know each other, right? And I said, Oh my gosh, I better go and read that. Because if he says gladiator one was horrific after I was being kind of positive on it, I want to at least be ready for that. But apparently it’s just gladiator two. And you all had a good time a few weeks ago ripping a hole into that one too. We did. So they finally have the right arm, the segmented Lorica, the Lorica segmentata, which makes them kind of look like lobsters, right with the overlapping plates. They have put those in movies in the Republic, all over the place, and they never existed in the Republic. And that is the armor. If you want to show Romans, you show them in the segmented armor. By gladiators day, by the second century, they actually were using this armor. So finally, we’ve got the right armor, and it looks really great on them. And they’ve got head scarves, which I would imagine you’d want if you were throwing a helmet on that’s kind of banging around stuff like that. I mean, it would have a lining, but, and they’ve got pila that they don’t use, and they’ve got Gladius, and their and their shields are curved. And they, I didn’t look but I bet their military sandals are I bet they look great too. You totally, I think, get the authentic visualization of what this is like. Nitpicky details, sure, but I’m not an imperial historian, so I don’t know what they are. I think this is a great visual. Then they move into battle, right? Okay, and so first thing, of course, is we have to have the fireworks. The Roman catapults launch flaming balls of something at the Germans who are yelling in the trees. It’s a trope, right? You’ve got the disorganized but courageous Germanic people and the disciplined Roman people, and they’re standing firm, because after the fires come, they still go, ah, and everybody knows that they’re really tough. And you just kind of wonder, did they do that? I really didn’t think they did. I thought the, I thought the chances of using catapults to hit people on foot was almost nil, but apparently there is a little of that. We’ve got a few places in the sources where artillery was used. But I’m still kind of skeptical. I think they wanted fire. They wanted the they wanted the wolf dog. They wanted Maximus, Wolf, dog, to leap through the flames. Oh yeah, which, sadly, doesn’t look as good as I remember it looking

Dr Rad 49:27
I just, I’m glad that, because I feel like that means that that animal was not hurt. They were more concerned about hurting the animal than doing this, that which 50 years ago would not have mattered.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 49:39
Oh, God, they formed their Testudo. We have no evidence of anybody ever forming a Testudo, right? That’s the ones with the shields on top and the shields in front, like the tortoise. We have no accounts of that ever being done, except for in a siege, when they were trying to lift people up over towers and things like that. Thing. We might have one example, but they use it against the German arrows. Now this is clever based. Likely the Germans fire their arrows. The legionaries clam up like a Testudo to block the arrows, and the Germans take that moment when they’re kind of hunkering to run in and charge two into them. Now this is clever because it means there’s no space to throw their pila Aha, and looking at us like, oh my gosh, that’s how they did that. That’s totally right. That is the most legit falsehood ever. It’s like they ran too fast. You couldn’t use it. They keep formations, but then they devolve into a brawl, because they always got to devolve into a brawl. And my original nerd specialty is the Roman cavalry. That is not what I went to school for. It just sort of worked that way. As you know, dissertation is kind dissertations kind of work that way. And the classic misunderstanding of of ancient and medieval cavalry is that they rode their horses into people, and that the impact of riding their horses into people was what took out the infantry. And about 24 about 50 years ago, John Keegan wrote a book called Face of battle that’s been kind of inspirational to many, at least my generation of military historians, where he pointed out, and I guess he knew horses. I don’t know horses that you really can’t make horses run into obstacles that they can’t jump over or get or get around. They’re gonna they’re gonna stop. And furthermore, if you did ride the horses in then you’re talking about these very expensive animals that cost training and food and everything like that, and you’re running them into a bunch of infantry, wrecking the horse, wrecking you on top the horse. And let’s not forget, these were usually nobles riding the cavalry, riding the horses, so it’s not going to happen. And that’s what I like about the gladiator cavalry charge, because it suggests that they just got in there and mixed it up. And as far as we can tell, that’s what cavalry did. They took an already occupied infantry enemy, and they added fear and disruption by coming in from some other side and roughing things up. And I really like that. And I like, I like his little speech at the beginning, right? You’re dead. And in Elysium, I like that the lines are sort of deforming of the horses. He says, Stay in line. And of course, some horses are faster than other horses, so they don’t completely stay in line. I think it’s a good cavalry charge. And then it gets back to a melee. It gets back to a brawl, like they always do. But I think with those caveats, just as I think Rome, the Rome series is the one to watch if you want to come as close as you can to visualize and what these might look like. I think you can do the same with that gladiator intro if you’re looking for the Imperial Army. By the way, you can move this earlier if you want. But Spartacus, in the midst of the Army, after having downed a soldier, grabs a six foot handled mace club and starts swinging it around. I don’t

Speaker 1 52:45
know if you remember a pivotal moment. All of the

Dr Jeremiah McCall 52:48
enslaved people had Roman equipment, and the Roman people had Roman equipment. Where did he get this six foot tall mace that he was able to like swing around?

Dr Rad 52:56
Well, we do know that the slaves did manufacture their own armor and weapons, so perhaps that he had a creative person on his team

Dr Jeremiah McCall 53:05
and that, and that’s the beauty we can we can go conspiracy theory logic, prove that they didn’t make a club like Exactly, exactly. Audience, please, don’t do that. We don’t say, prove that it’s not true. We say, here is the evidence that it might be true. Sorry. Okay. Teacher in me couldn’t

Speaker 1 53:21
help it. As we’re heading towards the battles of this imperial period. We’ve also got things like Centurion from 2010 and the eagle from 2011 so a good decade post Gladiator. And also films that the people who worked on would have been able to see HBOs Rome and be like, huh, maybe both these films center around the supposed disappearance of the ninth Legion in Britannia. They’re probably not as well known as gladiator but we’re interested in how their depictions of battle might compare to the blockbusters.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 53:59
You really kind of have to squeeze it to get it from a stone, because they’re not the both of those movies. I mean, maybe they maybe because they were going for something different, I’m not sure. But both of those movies really focus on a protagonist that is doing their own kind of special ops, right? Centurion Michael Fassbender is behind enemy lines, and he has to kind of work his way back. And the eagle, Channing Tatum is also, you know what? I have to confess, I never finished the eagle. I got about halfway through, and I was like, this is just not gripping me. Oh, and so I got scared when I was getting ready for this podcast. I was because I saw a video that said final battle in the eagle. I was like, there was a final battle. I didn’t write that in my book, but no, it’s just like 20 guys in a river stabbing each other. It’s not a final battle. We’re okay. You can still buy the book, but again, if you buy me a coffee, that will be at least as much money in my my compensation. So chronological order, no, I’m gonna do the eagle first. What? What I like about the eagle so things, this is a great example, again, of you’ve got to put something in. You can’t leave blank spots in a scene. You’ve got to have everything filled in. And so there’s this kind of great scene. Tatum has come to relieve whoever was the off the commander of this fort. Think his dad was dishonored by losing the Legion’s Eagle standards. I can’t remember, but he gets on this discipline kick with his soldiers in the fort and has them prepare defenses and get ready to be a serious obstacle to the Britons in the area probably did look like that. I didn’t check to see if whether their hammers and stuff were authentic looking. I bet they were. I bet they probably went into that detail. But they’re putting like pine pitch on to seal things up, and they’re cutting stakes and doing all this stuff. And so this is really good. And I like that. And then you notice, of course, that when they put their armor back on, when they’re done doing these things, they have leather. Oh,

Dr G 55:52
it’s a return of the leather. We’ve come full circle,

Dr Jeremiah McCall 55:56
I know, right? And it’s leather segmented armor. It’s the correct lorica look, the lorica segmentata, but it’s leather,

Dr Rad 56:03
just like that leather.

Dr G 56:04
It’s a budget thing. I’m sure

Dr Jeremiah McCall 56:06
it’s a budget thing. I’m sure you’re right. I mean, I guess it’s good that at least they weren’t like the muscled body armor that just Tatum

Dr Rad 56:14
has, that the Superman look, the Batman look. This is what I like about

Dr Jeremiah McCall 56:17
it. What they end up doing is there’s some scouts he sent out, and the scouts had been caught by the Britons, including this chief warrior dude who’s got a really crazy look in his eye, and he’s got a bare chest and some flowing robe and lots of lots of really cool beard hair swirling around, and is speaking in Gaelic. I don’t know what he’s speaking in. He’s speaking in something that would be appropriate for a Britain in the north,

Dr Rad 56:40
a Pictish, I don’t know, not Latin. That’s the most important part, right?

Dr Jeremiah McCall 56:44
Not Latin. So those scouts that he sends out are brought back in by the British war, by the British Army, or the Britain army, and they’re captives, and they’re kind of made to kneel down, and they’re a few 100 yards away from the fort. And there’s this big show of the Britain leader speaking, and we have subtitles to hear that he’s talking about all the awful things the Romans have done, which, let’s face it, is true, the Romans did horrific things to the people that they fought. It’s right. It’s the they make a desert and call it peace. Quote. So he’s doing this, and he kills one of the soldiers, and the soldiers are all terrified, and we’re really feeling the plight of the soldiers, because that’s kind of the position we’ve been given, right? We’re pro Roman in this or we’re supposed to be. And Tatum says, I put them out there. I’ve got to save them. 50 men on me, and the 50 soldiers all line up in their leather armor. That’s not going to help them at all. What I really like about that is the energy they put into how freaking scary it must have been to be a small group that was going to run out and try and do some kind of rescue operation like that. And we can’t say things like that never happened. We don’t know and do the rules necessarily apply when you’re talking about these things. That actually also brings me back to there’s a night fight before this where the Britons attacked the fortress, and Tatum grabs two swords and starts killing people with his dual wielding skills, which I mean, I learned my Dungeons and Dragons 45 years ago. I’m impressed, I, you know, but I but I doubt he learned those things. I don’t think anybody was learning how to use two swords. The reason I bring it up, though, is who knows what was happening in night fighting, when people were doing the horrific work of killing each other? I mean, who knows what was going on? Back to the back to the scene, though, the soldiers are scared. One of them vomits. One of them’s murmuring a prayer. They all look very serious. They look very intimidated. And I thought that was a really nice touch. They don’t always show the fear that must have been involved with us, and I thought that was really good. And then they come out, and they form their Testudo, even though that’s not probably how they used it, and then the Britons start jumping on top of the Testudo. So it’s like this armored tortoise. And I think that’s possible, because we have this example where the Romans using a siege to sort of lift people up six feet, five feet. So they probably could do that, but the Britons are all jumping on and again, you’re emphasizing right, disciplined, orderly Romans, disorganized Britons, which is probably a fairer take. The Britons were fighting in more loose war band formations than the Gauls, for example. And you see that idea of the line holding of the Romans with their shields in their position, holding the line. And that’s that morale idea. As long as you stay in your position, you are better defended than if you run on your own. Paradoxically, if you get so afraid for your life that you run, you immediately become more likely to be killed. And so they get around, they get around the captives, and they form a circle. And I thought that was a pretty interesting way to look at that, too. And I mean, of course, there’s no testimony for circles around captives this, this is not the sort of stuff that made it into the accounts. I liked, again, that they were trying. Trying to keep this idea of cohesion, this idea of maintaining your perimeter, so that you support each other together. That’s kind of the eagle. I think, I think it’s some nice visualizations of some ideas and not really a visualization. Oh, oh my gosh. I forgot the chariot. My understanding again, middle aged high school teacher thankfully never been in an ancient battle, never been any battle. My understanding is that the worst possible thing you can do when you are a line of soldiers with swords and you see a chariot or anything else on horses, is go run. And he commands them to run. Forget what his name is, but Channing Tatum says, run. And they all start running. And as soon as they’re running, they’re not protecting each other in the chariot with its scythe.

Dr Rad 1:00:43
Oh, they’re scythes wheels. They like that touch in Hollywood.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:00:47
Yeah, I sometimes I wonder about the physics of it, like if you put your shield down and put a foot against it, but a horse drawn chariot, that’s got to be a lot of power, right? I don’t know. I just don’t know how that all sorts out scythe wheels and blocking and stuff like that.

Dr Rad 1:01:01
I think they got it from Grease, quite frankly,

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:01:05
probably so. And then centurion is just an ambush scene. They’ve got that marching in order. Yep, absolutely. They would have narrower lines when they’re marching in order. I really liked that. So they march into this area that looks like a perfect trap. And there’s a Hills up on each side, and the general who’s at the front, which I don’t know they might be, sometimes they might be, the general at the front is like, Wow, this looks really bad. Tell the Centurion in the rear that we need to start backing up, which made me go, huh? You would have thought you could send some scouts ahead to do that, and the Romans used scouts, but we know, right, Varus in the tutenburg Forest lost legions to ambush, and so this does happen. The Britons come out from the tops of the hills, and they have fiery, rolling, flaming fireballs.

Dr Rad 1:01:54
Of course, the fiery rolls

Speaker 2 1:01:58
this time, I think, Peta, you were the one saying that you’d run away if the flaming logs were coming died. You You wait, you’d wait and then let them burn out. This time, they don’t really have a chance. They’re stuck there. They got to put up with the flaming fireballs. It’s, it’s and they’re horrible. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Here’s what I liked. The equipment was fine. I think they actually did have their metal armor that time. They didn’t have a chance to throw pila because they were disorganized. This should have been a text box in the book if I had realized right 10 different cinematic ways to avoid throwing

Dr Rad 1:02:26
spears. Exactly.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:02:29
It’s It’s amazing. What I did like, what I thought seemed authentic, was as they were waiting for the attack, and they were, they formed their kind of perimeter line and and the unit commanders, the local officers were prepping them. You know, you’re ready. You’re trained watch for and I thought that was an interesting take on that idea of morale. Again, we, our best guess is that to maintain this morale, one of the reasons that the Romans and the Greeks tended to be very effective in their infantry battles. Is they ended up Phyllis column wrote about this in 1989 I think basically the socio economic order of those societies is replicated in the military formations. So you have the aristocrats leading and then you have the reasonably well off plebs in officer positions, and then you have the farmer soldiers, and so that’s important, and the speeches are important. And absolutely the sub Commander, the centurion who had been with you and guided you and trained you, is going to be really important in a time like that. So I thought that was a cool take on morale, but not really given us much to sort of visualize. I think gladiator is still going to give us the best one for visualizing battle in the empire, and then add in that eagle sort of shield wall thing that was pretty cool.

Dr Rad 1:03:48
I actually kind of wonder if the difference in these movies is also the budget. You know, you can’t necessarily have huge battle scenes in every single movie because it’s so expensive. It’s kind of a metaphor for room itself. Sure, they like to picture these gigantic battle scenes when they’re talking about even things in the early republic. It makes it sound so grand, but if you actually were teleported there, you’d be like, Oh, it’s like 100 guys versus 100 guys. This isn’t quite the what I was imagining.

Dr G 1:04:18
I think you’re right. So I’m always interested. I don’t, I don’t know enough of it. I mean, so And sorry, Peta, because you’re an English teacher. So you will, you will get me on this. But I still like to think about authors having intention when they’re expressing things.

Dr G 1:04:33
This is a tragedy where to start.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:04:37
So I accept that there are big institutions making these, these movies. And so it’s not really, was it auteur theory or something like that? It’s not really the director doing sort of everything on their own, but it’s just at some point, you still kind of, I just, I wish I knew more about the decisions people made. This goes back to being a teacher. Why is this portrayal being given? By this person. How is that making sense? And how are they making sense in their mind? And so, oh my gosh, I wasn’t using your code name either. Sorry. Dr, G so. Dr, red, I think your idea about, I think your idea about budget limitations and stuff, there’s got to be a lot of truth to that. They’re making a movie. They’re not making a historical monograph. So, yeah, it’s got to play a

Dr Rad 1:05:22
big role. Well, even if you think about academic books, so, and we would all have experienced this, I certainly have Dr G will understand where I’m going with this. Even we have word limits, because they can only print so many pages in a book. They can only afford to have a book of a certain size, and you can’t exceed that, as it turns out, yeah.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:05:43
So I’m writing a book right now for educators to design games for their history classes, but then also to structure and support students designing those games. And so one of the things, because it’s just meant to be for any teacher who thinks cool, I want to do this. It’s not meant to be for somebody who has any game design experience. And so I was talking about abstractions, right? And games are abstractions, which I often get confused. What people mean by that. What I mean by that is a simplification that keeps the essentials. And the part that we often forget is that text is an abstraction, right? If you say such and such a person was born on such and such a day, and you make that statement, somebody might say that statements historically accurate. My understanding from watching like dramatic hospital videos on TV and stuff like that, is that actually giving birth is a lot more complicated than that. If you say such and such a person died on such and such a day, we would say that’s a historically accurate statement. But again, something’s going on, some reality that’s totally not being captured. So, yeah, they’re all, they’re all kind of, you know, like you said, word counts and, you know, efforts to liven up our prose, and all the other things we do, we’re all. We’re all taking a past that does not exist anymore and trying to selectively turn it into something that we think is meaningful.

Speaker 1 1:06:58
And I think this is something that Ridley Scott leans into as well, where he’s like, I’m not trying to make trying to make a historical film. I’m trying to make an exciting movie. Yeah,

Dr Rad 1:07:08
so let’s put sharks in the Colosseum. God damn it, I think, yeah. And

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:07:12
fair enough, right? If he made that. So I think Robert Rosenstone, I think, was sort of the leading person on film, theater, excuse me, on history, on film. And I was going back and glancing at one of his articles. I just never, I never went this way into vid individual, into film, because my video game stuff is similar, but I just, I’ve learned more and studied more and found that more compelling. But I wanted to kind of go back and look, and he makes a point in an article that there’s a number of sort of snooty, stuffy historians. They’re like, well, we need to have more historians on set. We need to have more historians dictating how these things will go and and he says, No, that’s not what we need. And I actually made the same point about video games, because there was a movement in the early 2000s that we just need more historians making video games. No, we don’t need more historians making video games or movies. They are their own legitimate art forms. They are made for purposes that are not the same purpose as a monograph, as a popular book, as whatever. And, yeah, Ridley Scott, you know, God damn it. He wanted to make the Colosseum, and he wanted to have, you know, tigers. He had to

Speaker 1 1:08:16
have tigers. He wanted it. Boy, did he get it

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:08:22
see. So it worked out for him. So

Speaker 1 1:08:25
thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us. This has been really fun and going back and looking at these films through a different lens. I will. I think the subtitle for this episode has to be, where is the peeler?

Dr Rad 1:08:40
Yeah, I was gonna say justice for pila. Pila, pila, pila,

Dr G 1:08:45
but thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it.

Dr Jeremiah McCall 1:08:48
You bet it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much.

Dr Rad 1:09:00
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 Joy De Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective head to collectivemem.com. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch. We have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on ko fi. And we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if you’re imperial coffers do not overfloweth, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five star review wherever you listen. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – Swords and Cinema with Dr Jeremiah McCall appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Despite the Romans apparently being surprised by the Gauls turning up on their doorstep, the Gauls have been in northern Italy for some time as far as we can trace archaeological evidence. Rumour has it that the Gauls came to central Italy in the search for cooler weather, but instead what they find is a city of Romans, and as the siege drags on, hygiene starts to emerge as a problem.

Maybe we can come to an arrangement?

The siege is getting tedious for both sides, so amidst the military encounters, conversations start about maybe bringing the siege to a close through mutual agreement. The details of the siege consequences include lack of food, issues with cadavers, and spread of disease. And it seems neither the Romans or the Gauls want to keep going with this situation.

“Woe to the Conquered!”

Those Gauls are pretty cheeky in the moment of coming to a monetary agreement to ensure they’ll pack up their siege and leave Roman territory. Not only do they ask for 1000 pounds of gold, but they have the nerve to add some extra items to the scales to encourage the Romans to pay even more than this sum. Perhaps even worse, are our sources really telling us a story of Rome resisting the Gauls, or could it be the case that ALL the city was taken and the Romans were legitimately and completely defeated? We explore the possibilities.

Where in the world is Camillus?

Is he in Ardea pumping out a training montage with the locals in preparation to swoop in and rescue Rome? Or is waiting in the wings but misses his cue to come on stage leaving Rome to deal with the Gauls all by themselves? Our sources have some disagreements which we’ll delve into.

Things to listen out for:

• An origin story for Jupiter Pistor (Jupiter ‘the baker’)
• The centrality or not of Camillus to the siege narrative
• Important references to “Eye of the Tiger”
• What are the Gauls interested in?
• What might colour the Romans’ perceptions of the Gauls?
• Where did the Romans find 1000 POUNDS of gold????
• The role of the Roman matrons in saving the City
• The tricky legacy of who paid the ransom to the Gauls and what happens afterwards…
• Salt’N’Pepa and Roman history together at last

Our Players

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• Q. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat)
• K. Fabius M. f. Q n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 404, 401, 395
• N. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 406
• Q. Sulpicius -f. -n. Longus (Pat)
• Q. Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 402, 398, 395, 388, 386
• P. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Cos. 393? Mil. Tr. c. p. 397

Dictator

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

• L. Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 389, 387, 383

OR

• L. Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) Cos. 393, 392; Mil. Tr. c.p. 414, 406, 403, 401, 398

Pontifices

• ?-390: M. Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 433
• Pontifex Maximus; slain by the Gauls
• C. or K. Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

Augurs or Pontifex

• 439-390: Q. ? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus or Structus Fidenas?) (Pat)
• Successor: [—- Furi]us Q. f. P. nepos Fusus Mil. Tr. c.p. 403

Other notable Romans

• Marcius Manlius Capitolinus

Gauls

• King Brennus (questionable identity in this narrative)

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.45-55;
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.113-117; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Appian, BC, 2.50; Appian, Gallic History, 1-4; Justinus, Epitome of Pompeius’ Trogus’ Philippic Histories; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Eutropius 1.20
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Roth, Ulrike. “The Gallic Ransom and the Sack of Rome: Livy 5.48.7-8.” Mnemosyne 71, no. 3 (2018): 460–84. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568525X-12342339.
• Roth, Ulrike. “Was Camillus Right? Roman History and Narratological Strategy in Livy 5.49.2″ Classical Quarterly 70, no. 1 (2020): 212–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838820000385.
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Sound Credits

Our music is by the superb Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents

Dr Rad 0:12
Welcome to the Partial Historians.

Dr G 0:16
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,

Dr Rad 0:20
Everything from political scandals to love affairs, the battles waged and when citizens turn against each other, I’m Dr Rad

Dr G 0:30
and I’m Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different ancient authors and comparing their accounts.

Dr Rad 0:41
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 1:01
And I’m Dr G, hello.

Dr Rad 1:04
This is going to be a tough one. I think Dr G, in more ways than one, because for listeners who might be listening at a different point in time, we are currently recording in the midst of an Australian summer as affected by climate change.

Dr G 1:24
It is a heat wave, a tropical heat wave.

Dr Rad 1:27
Exactly. We’re having a heat wave. That’s a Marilyn reference, in case you didn’t pick up on that one,

Dr G 1:35
I knew you would figure that one out.

Dr Rad 1:39
But not only that. Dr, G, of course, we are in a year that seemingly never ends. As far as ancient Rome is concerned,

Dr G 1:47
the hottest year on Roman history’s record 390 BCE

Dr Rad 1:52
Yeah, I knew it was going to be a big one, but it’s it’s even surprised me.

Dr G 1:57
We are many parts into this effective mini series on this year, and the last time we talked about this, there were some interesting moments. There was visitations down the Tiber, aided by cork

Dr Rad 2:13
visitations

Dr G 2:14
visitations. There were sacred geese, and boy did they honk. And there were some people thrown down off the top of what we think is the Capitolini Hill rather than the Tarpeian rock, although we can’t be entirely certain. And some Roman bodies end up amongst the Gaulish forces, it seems.

Dr Rad 2:34
Absolutely yeah. So we’re right in the midst of this Gallic siege of Rome. We’ve got this stalwart band of Romans who have remained behind to defend the Capitol and all the sacred buildings and animals, apparently, that reside upon it. And when the Gauls tried to assault them, it almost worked, not quite, and that’s where we got people being flung off rocks, etc, etc, etc, yes.

Dr G 3:07
So this siege, we think, has been going on for quite some time at this point, our sources suggest that it’s anywhere between six or seven months at this stage, and everybody’s really starting to feel the effects of it would seem. So Plutarch, who I would not consider a close source to the action at hand, nevertheless suggests that the Gauls themselves are running into some trouble engaging and maintaining this siege, partly because they lack provisions, but partly because, in an encamped situation for a long period of time, outbreaks of disease are quite common. It’s hard to keep up sanitary conditions when you’re in a place where you’ve kind of constructed everything from scratch, but it’s all kind of temporary. And they’re also encamped amongst ruins of Roman buildings. Effectively, in some parts of this siege area, there’s also a growing extent of corpses because they’re engaging in various raids. And obviously some people die in those and they haven’t seemed to have dealt with those bodies necessarily in the best way possible.

Dr Rad 3:07
Well that’s just gross.

Dr G 3:07
Some of them, they’ve been able to cremate, but seems some of them, they haven’t, so they’re also amongst the dead at the same time. So this would be pushing disease outbreaks as well. But the worst thing of all, according to Plutarch, is that the Gauls came from a cool place, and as we know, one of the theories that brought the Gauls into Italy is that they were looking for somewhere even cooler. But boy, were they wrong, because Italy is hot, and even in autumn, apparently, when this siege is still continuing, it’s still quite hot, and they are unhappy campers about the weather.

Dr Rad 4:56
I could not feel more simpatico with the Gauls than right now recording this ridiculous Australian heat. God, I hope we do something about climate change so it doesn’t get any worse. Because I was going to make fun of this whole scenario and say, this sounds like anti-Gallic propaganda in a sense, where they’re like, they can’t function when it’s hot, when it gets above 35 degrees celsius, they just completely melt, like the Wicked Witch of the West. But then I’m like, You know what? I don’t think I function particularly well, when I get too hot. Mind you though.

Dr G 5:32
Yes, now, now, it comes down to it. Yes.

Dr Rad 5:36
They have been in Italy for a bit of time at this point. But maybe it’s because this is one of their forays more into, you know, central Italy, whereas when they started crossing the Alps, which I mean at this point, the Gauls are meant to have been crossing the Alps for a couple of hundreds years, like we think it starts around sort of 600 BCE, that we start getting Gallic peoples on the move and coming into Italian territory, but I think they have tended to stay further north, which for anyone who’s been to Italy, it is a bit of a different climate to other parts of the country.

Dr G 6:17
Very much so, much cooler, maybe more delightful if you’re you prefer the wintertime, but now they’re in central Italy and doesn’t agree with them, not not in their constitution. It would seem, physically, they’re having a tough time.

Dr Rad 6:32
Yeah, no. Look, this is what Plutarch has said. Is very much what Livy says. He says, look, the siege is obviously terrible because the goals aren’t making the headway that they need. They weren’t necessarily planning on this whole situation. It was somewhat foisted upon them. If we had to leave our accounts by the Romans, terrible behaviour.

Dr G 6:52
That’s right, you can’t deny an insult like that and just walk away,

Dr Rad 6:56
Even if we say like, whether we say it was the insult which, let’s face it, most people don’t think that that was probably what happened, or whether we say the Gauls were actually on their way somewhere else, maybe to do something particular, like serve as auxiliaries, or something like that. Either way, they haven’t planned for a lengthy siege, so they don’t, as you say, have all the provisions that they need. The Romans are certainly feeling it because they’re really lacking in provisions, because they can’t really leave the capital to get anything, and they just up there, God knows what kind of exercise they’re getting. Dr G, and this is exactly when, yes, a pestilence hits. Livy also mentions where the Gauls had set up their camp, that because it was low ground between hills, and there was also, like, polluted air, I guess in his in his mind, you know, because they’ve torched so many beautiful Roman buildings that barbarians, it’s just not good. And he also mentions the the corpses, and the fact that they kind of had tried to dispose of some bodies they’ve made, like, mass burial pyres. But when it comes to people who’ve maybe died just, you know, randomly and like a little siege, they’re kind of like, it’s just one body. I don’t know if I can be bothered sitting on fire.

Dr G 8:15
Bad choice. Bad choice. At least bury it.

Dr Rad 8:17
Yeah. And so this is what drives the Gauls to seek out the Romans and to try and enter, introduce get some talks going, see what they can sort out here.

Dr G 8:33
Yes, this is an interesting moment, because it seems like the siege actually becomes a bit of a fizzer, and it’s like the Gallic sack of Rome, and here we are, and everybody’s tired, and we’re months into it, and the Gauls are like, we kind of want this to be over. And the Romans like, we’d like this to be over too. And the Gauls are like, how about you give us 1000 pounds of gold.

Dr Rad 8:53
Oh, well, it gets a little bit heated before we get to that point in my account. Dr, G, there’s a little detail in mind that I particularly like, which is that the commanders on both sides are obviously talking trying to figure things out, and I guess to drive home that they were in the stronger position in this siege situation, the Gauls start making fun of the Romans and mocking them for the fact that they’re literally starving to death in front of their eyes, which, after, say, six or seven months, I can understand. And they’re like, surely the Romans should just give in. I mean, you’re clearly going to die from starvation if we don’t kill you first. Now this is not the way that you negotiate with the Romans, as we know. Dr G, it’s not going to get them on side. It riled them up so much that they started, apparently, throwing bread down from the Capitol towards the Gallic camp being like that’ll show them. We rain down bread upon you. We’re not starving to death. We’re strong, stronger than we’ve ever been. Whoa. I think I’m feeling a little woozy from the lack of food. Phew.

Dr G 8:54
First of all, the Gauls are like, is this the hill that you’re willing to die on? And the Romans are like, yes, it is.

Dr Rad 8:54
Yes, the Capitol is the best.

Dr G 8:54
This is the the exact hill that I’m willing to die on. And not only that, it doesn’t seem in any way strategic to be like, how about you guys have some of the bread. We’re having a tough time, but you’re gonna have it tougher because you can’t handle this level of gluten.

Dr Rad 8:54
That’s right, yeah, exactly. We know how you guys are. You can’t handle the food here. You can’t handle the climate here. Get outta here.

Dr G 8:54
Yeah, good luck with this bread. The Gauls are like, I will eat it.

Dr Rad 8:54
My commentator believes that this little tidbit that Livy includes might have been something that’s trying to explain a development of the cult of Jupiter Pistor, which is the story that turns up in some other sources like Valerius Maximus, Ovid, etc, etc.

Dr G 8:54
Lovely.

Dr Rad 9:41
Well, I mean, this is the thing about the way that our stories are coming together at this point in time, as we’ve talked about, Livy’s drawing on multiple things. He’s using earlier analysts. He’s also using, probably family histories that have been passed down. They might be oral stories. They might be oral stories that became something that was written down or preserved in some other way. He’s using archeological sources like inscriptions, etc, etc. But one of the things that might be influencing him is this antiquarian tradition as well, where the Romans are obviously trying to explain all sorts of details about their culture, and that’s particularly flowering at the time that Livy’s writing probably because Rome has undergone such a troubled century in the sort of late Republic and early Empire, the Romans seem to have been inspired to figure out their origins, to find out, why do we call it that place name, and, where did that cult come from? And how do we explain this building or this monument? And sometimes they might have come up with things at some point to try and explain why something is the way it is. And obviously it’s really hard for us to trace exactly how strong their evidence is for these stories. They’re coming up with another example of that is the story that we talked about last time about the crucifixion of the dogs, which happened every year, obviously, with the whole thing with the geese and the dogs and the assaults on the Capitol, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to go back and listen again. It’s one of those things where it’s obviously a tradition that has survived. But is this really what happened? Is this really why the Romans had this cultural practice, or is this something that’s been woven into the account of the Gallic sack to try and explain a custom that people have kind of lost track perhaps, of exactly why they do what they do?

Dr G 12:56
Yeah, fair enough. There is a sense in which the Romans are definitely trying to figure out what their identity is like, and this is a landmark event in their imagination, at the very least, because we don’t have a lot of archeological evidence to back up.

Dr Rad 13:12
We certainly don’t

Dr G 13:13
This Gallic sack and so even this idea of a Gallic invasion that moves so far down into Central Italy is difficult to navigate from an evidential perspective as ancient historians, and the significance of this tale for the Romans is huge.

Dr Rad 13:32
Absolutely.

Dr G 13:33
There’s so much detail. This is why we’re in part five of this narrative, because they do focus in on every moment, and this idea that eventually, what it sort of boils down to is this embarrassing exchange where Rome gives up, essentially.

Dr Rad 13:59
Yeah.

Dr G 14:00
They do, they do pay the money to the Gauls. And even though both sides are looking a little worse for wear and neither are having a good time, there does seem to be a recognition from those who remain on the Capitol that they cannot stick this out, that if this does go on, ultimately they will be the losers from it. They’re not sure whether any of their neighbours are going to turn up with forces. What has happened with the messages from they has not necessarily resulted in something positive or tangible that they’ve been able to see. And there is still the looming figure of Camillus, who is in exile, and nobody really knows where he is, and nobody knows if he’s ever turning up. And even if he did, would he have any forces with him?

Dr Rad 14:42
Well, of course, at this point, they have sought him out. They’ve tried to go through the proper processes in my account, because for Livy, at this point in time, it’s the Camilla show. We know that, as you say, this story is such a big part of the way that the Romans imagine their history by the time people like. Livy were writing the traditions around it had been fairly well established. The narrative had been fairly well established. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t obviously these differences in exactly how the story unfolds. And certainly Livy works Camillus in in a very particular way, and he constructs the whole of his first 10 books kind of around Camillus, particularly now that we’re into this, this later period here we’re talking about, you know, books sort of five to 10, and 10 is where we unfortunately lose the detailed Livy for a little while. But yes, Camillus is a big part of that. And exactly as you say in my account, the Romans pelt the Gauls with bread, feel good about themselves and like that’ll show them. But then they turn to each other and they say, but I’m actually really, very hungry. Really, really hungry. I don’t know how much longer I can last. And you know what? I think we just used up the last of the bread to make an emphatic point, yeah.

Dr G 15:59
Do we have any grain stores on hand? No, we don’t.

Dr Rad 16:03
No, I think maybe, maybe I might have let my temper get the best of me.

Dr G 16:12
Rome – never!

Dr Rad 16:15
And meanwhile in Livy’s account, this is where we flash to what’s going on in Ardea, because that is where Camillus is in exile. Camilius-

Dr G 16:24
and now for a new chapter,

Dr Rad 16:25
Yeah. Now that Camillus has managed to have his proper appointment where he’s been properly selected as dictator, he’s getting into action. So he’s conducting a levy. He’s also selected a master of the horse, naturally, a guy called Lucius Valerius, and he’s asking him to bring his army from Veii meet Camillus in Ardea, I presume. Camillus is then starting to train the troops – Drill, baby drill! This is the time he wants to make sure that they’re going to be able to kick some Gallic ass. Yeah, gun show. Mwa Mwa.

Dr G 17:04
It’s time for a training montage.

Dr Rad 17:05
It is, yeah, it very much is. It’s a point where, if we could afford it, we would play Eye of the Tiger. He’s got them punching meat in butchers shops, in the animal warehouses. He’s got them in gray, sweatpants. They’re running up and downstairs.

Dr G 17:22
It’s all happening. Yeah, look, I don’t want to ruin Livy’s show just yet, but I’m just going to put a flag here to say that the stories that Dr Rad is about to tell you from Livy are highly contentious.

Dr Rad 17:36
Whoa, I can’t believe you’re throwing me under a bus in front of the listeners. Dr, G, they’re watching. They’e listening.

Dr G 17:45
Just putting it out there. Listen carefully. Listen well. Warning. Warning.

Dr Rad 17:50
Sorry. It’s very confusing, because we’re kind of video recording this as well as audio recording this. So I’m like, I don’t know who to address. Do I address YouTube? Do I address people who have just got me in their areas? I don’t know. Okay, so back in Rome, we’re switching back. Okay, we’ve gone from the butcher storehouse to Rome. So the army on the Capitol really is at their absolute lowest at this point in time. They are well worn down, not so much from fighting the Gauls, just just doing their regular duties that they have to do, which I presume means, you know, standing guard being centuries and presumably helping each other out to keep life turning as well as it can up there on the Capitol, because we know that some of them have family out there. It’s not just fighting men there and then obviously the level of starvation, that old chestnut, of which I’m sure it’s much worse by the bread display earlier, they are desperately wanting to hold out until Camillus shows up, because that’s the plan, as far as they’re concerned. You know, Camillus has been made dictator. They’re watching. They’re waiting. And nothing happens. There’s just nothing on the horizon. They don’t know what Camillus is up to. They unfortunately can’t hear ‘Eye of the Tiger’ from the Capitol, Ardea is just a little bit too far away, and so they’re almost getting to the point where they’re too weak to even wear armour when they’re on the lookout. They are at that level of starvation, which actually does sound pretty somber and terrible.

Dr G 17:50
That’s bad.

Dr Rad 17:50
Yeah. No surprises. So the Romans are starting to discuss, what are we going to do in terms of surrender? How do we handle this whole situation? Do we literally just surrender? You know, get us the whitest piece of fabric that we have left after being up here on the Capitol for seven months and wave it. Or do we do something like, say, ransom ourselves to the Gauls. The Gauls had said that they weren’t necessarily like looking for a lot in order to bring this whole situation to the end. Because, as we talked about, it’s not like the Gauls are having a fabulous time either. This isn’t like ‘Roman Holiday’ here. So the Senate have a meeting, naturally, process, process, yes, and they say to the military tribunes with consular power that are up there, look, just, just organise some terms. Have a meeting and somehow organising this, this can’t go on much longer, so a meeting is set up. A guy called Quinctius Sulpicius, one of our military tribunes, meets with the so called leader of the Gauls Brennus. Suspicious name, but sure, here we are, and this is where, in my account, the Romans agree to pay 1000 pounds of gold. Livy, at this moment is like, I’m wigging out, guys, this is crazy. Rome is about to become the greatest empire ever, and here they are on their knees agreeing to pay these barbarians. I mean, how hilarious and ironic, right? Guys, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Yeah.

Dr Rad 19:22
It is an interesting moment for the Romans where they’re like, okay, not only is that an outlandish sum to ask of us, but yes, we’re going to pay it. And we have Quinctius Sulpicius, as you mentioned, is the military tribune who’s sort of leading the conference with Brennus. And they agree that they’ll deliver that gold, and then the Gauls will depart, not just away from Rome, the city, but out of Roman territory. They’re just, they’re just gonna leave everything.

Dr Rad 20:08
Which sounds extensive, but isn’t really that.

Dr Rad 20:08
It means they have to get past right at the very least, I’ve got to go, at least, keep going, get out in here, it’s going to be at least a day’s walk. And this is where we start to get the stories about the interference with the scales.

Dr Rad 20:31
Yes.

Dr G 20:31
So the Gauls are like, you know what’s going to be fun if we just keep piling things on our side of the scales? And the Romans are like, what are you what are you doing? We’re weighing out a precise measure. You can’t just keep adding things to the scales.

Dr Rad 20:31
It’s 1000 pounds, not like, whatever pounds.

Dr Rad 20:31
Yeah, and the Gauls are like, we might be hungry and willing to leave, but we still got a sense of humour. And if you want us to leave, we’re just going to add this little extra piece to our side of the scale and be like, oh, well, that’s that’s not 1000 pounds of gold. The Romans are like, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Dr Rad 20:54
Yeah. And when the Romans try and point this out in my account, this is a very dramatic moment where the military tribunes say, I’m very sorry to be that guy. But I couldn’t help but notice that the mathematics of this situation, they just don’t seem to be 100% correct. I think you might be asking for more than 1000 pounds of gold, and this is where a Gallic soldier rips out his sword, throws it on the pile where they’re stacking up all their stuff to skew the weights, and says “Woe to the conquered”, which is a fancy way of saying tough titties, guys, we get to call the shots around here.

Dr G 20:59
Yeah, this idea of this phrase that variously translated as “Woe to the conquered”, “Woe to the vanquished”, and the Gauls basically standing there at this moment of a peace treaty being like some of these ones.

Dr Rad 23:52
Dr G is giving me two fingers up for those listening in audio format only.

Dr G 23:58
And this phrase passes into Latin proverb, it becomes a thing that they say to each other.

Dr Rad 24:03
It does. Well, and this, it’s no wonder the Romans go back to this supposed moment, because it’s obviously deeply shameful that not only was their city taken, not only did the Gauls steal a bunch of their stuff and set a bunch of their buildings on fire, allegedly, not only did they massacre the elderly patricians, senators, whatever you want to call them, and not only have they continued to siege for a number of months, but they haven’t been able to get themselves out of this situation, and now they’re actually having to pay to get these guys to go. I mean, I can’t really imagine much of a lower point for the Romans at this moment in time.

Dr G 24:45
This is a huge low point. I don’t think Rome has ever been so low. I put it to you because from the very beginning, they’ve been on a upwards trajectory with some little bumps in the road, admittedly. But always quite quickly back to an upwards trajectory, and this, this is a massive blow. Most of their population doesn’t seem to be in the city. It’s limited in supplies. They’re at their wits end. They don’t think they’ve got any help coming. If they know about Camillus, which is not clear from my source material that they do, then they really are having to make the best decision that they can for their own survival under terrible circumstances, and they’re just really lucky that the Gauls agree to go away for a sum of cash, because, I mean, any other enemy in central Italy at this time, and Rome has a few of them would probably not have gone, yeah, give us some cash and we’ll go.

Dr Rad 25:48
Yeah, well, and that, I think, shows the fact that the Gauls aren’t necessarily here because they want to establish, like a permanent settlement themselves in this particular location. I think that’s why they’re happy to accept this money. Apparently, in order to go away, they’re interested in having portable wealth. And this is, this is part of the narrative that we’re given about why Gauls are on the move at this time, they are looking for more land. They’re looking for more goods. And so with them being so far south at this point in time, they probably do want stuff that they can carry – cash and carry only, thank you very much. And that might explain some of the archaeology, the fact that we don’t find a huge conflagration in the in the records when we sort of dig down deep enough, there is evidence of a great fire that probably was fairly destructive, but it’s just not the right time period. And even though we might be a few years off here with the Gallic siege, obviously, people sort of speculate it happened sort of between 390 and sort of 387 386 because of the differences in dating. But it’s definitely at around this time that this supposedly happened, this encounter. So the dating is just off. It would make sense if the Gauls were more interested in stealing things, because that wouldn’t leave any trace in the archaeological records for us to see, and it explains why, in spite of the fact that the Romans think that the Gauls set most of their city on fire, there are, in fact, still buildings and inscriptions and statues that predate the Gallic sack of Rome standing hundreds of years later into Livy’s time.

Dr G 27:24
I think there’s also something to be said for the way that the authors of the sources that we’re able to access have particular ideas about the Gauls because of Rome’s engagement with Gallia in the first century BC as well. So there’s a very particular picture that has been built up about what Gallic people are like on the basis of things like Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul and so for a Roman writer like Livy and even for a Greek writer like Didorus Siculus, there is a sense in which there is a pre-established idea about what Gallic people are like. They’re a raid and plunder kind of people. They are not about firm sort of settlements, necessarily. They’re more about moving and raiding and being able to pick up and be on the go if they need to. And those kinds of ideas, I think, are partly what is feeding into this narrative as well, because the Romans don’t conceive of the Gallic people as a people that would want to stay in Italy, even though, historically, they’ve been in the northern parts of Italy for a few centuries already, and they got to have lived somewhere.

Dr Rad 28:49
Hey

Dr G 28:50
They’ve probably put down some roots.

Dr Rad 28:52
It’s well beyond where the Romans are at this point in time. Northern Italy, what’s that? Now, this is where I’d like to do a bit of a tangent, if I may. Dr, G, I mean, I know, I know, I’m making this series even longer, but I have been doing a bit of extra reading around these accounts, because it’s so complicated, picking apart the slightly different narratives that we get and the details that we get. And as we say, we’re dealing with this thing where we’ve got this very epic, detailed narrative history, and yet at the same time, we’re kind of like, did this happen though, Livy, did it? I have some questions, exactly, so I’m going to put it to you. Dr G, where the hell did this 1000 pounds of gold come from?

Dr G 29:35
Well, I would say if it came from anywhere, it’d have to be the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, because that’s on the Capitolini hill. Otherwise, not sure.

Dr Rad 29:47
Yeah, and this is exactly the problem. This is something that one of the academics I read has delved into. If you’d like to read the article, please check out our show notes. They have tried to figure out, okay, so where’s the money coming from? Because in our different accounts, we’re given slightly different details, which probably reflects the particular perspective of the person writing. So the account that we get of this whole galaxy each of course, is that most Romans have left by the time the Gauls arrive. You know they the Romans are defeated at the Alia. They know things aren’t going well for them. They’ve scattered. We know that a lot of the population has therefore left the city. The whole idea is you just have this band of fighting men and a couple of extras who are left behind, and then, of course, the older gentlemen who are all sorted so they don’t count.

Dr G 30:37
Yeah, anybody who reasonably could go has gone.

Dr Rad 30:41
Yes, exactly. And we know that because this was seen as such a monumental moment for Roman history. Obviously, this is a story that was told and retold, and, you know, we slightly reworked over time, depending, I guess, on what the Romans needed to sort of get out of it, I suppose. So, what this person has actually suggested is that what we’re witnessing here was, in fact, a total Gallic capture of Rome. So the entire city is taken. It’s not this situation where some of the buildings are set on fire, but then the girls say, You know what? We’re going to leave you just a tiny little bit of hope so that you’re going to pierce the ransom and leave some of the buildings, etc, etc.

Dr G 31:20
I like that one, leave it.

Dr Rad 31:23
I think this is a total takeover. And then we have to figure out where are the assets coming from? Because we only have this tiny group who are left behind and starving to death. Where are they coming up with 1000 pounds of gold? Now, in Livy’s account, he is very particular that they do not use temple treasure in the ransom.

Dr G 31:43
Oh, well, that’s a problem that’s my one source.

Dr Rad 31:49
Well, the reason being, of course, and this feeds into the other things I’ve been telling you, Livy is all about protocol at this point in time. You know, the Romans have got themselves into this situation, apparently, because of their lack of attention to the signs that the gods are sending them there, they got off balance with the gods. They weren’t doing things properly, not pious enough. And so now they’re in this situation. And once they’re in this situation, when the chips are down, they’re doing everything by the book. So even when they’re besieged, they’re like, We have to go through the proper procedures to appoint a dictator. Guys, can’t just wait for someone to come in on a white horse. You know how we feel about white horses, especially if there’s more than one of them, we really got to make sure we do everything properly. You know, cross every T, dot every I.

Dr G 32:36
You know what? In our alternative history, it’s really fortunate that Camillus isn’t around, actually, because he would have talked them into giving over the temple treasure, and then it would have all gone downhill from,

Dr Rad 32:47
I don’t know, I don’t know if he would. He’s such a pious guy, it’s all very confusing. But anyway, in Livy’s account, it’s not the temple treasure, okay? Because that would be, obviously, it’s, I suppose, slightly offensive to the gods, you know, not perhaps exactly the picture he wants to paint at this point in time. And so it’s just state gold. I mean, I guess it’s possible that they just have some state gold with them, because, as I constantly point out, when discussing climate change, you can’t eat money, so you may as well use your money to fix the situation around. But yeah, so maybe they do, I suppose, have some state gold. They don’t have quite enough, and this is where Roman matrons apparently chip in some of their gold in order to make up the balance. This will come back to later, and it’s because of the Roman citizens pulling together, uniting, showing what Rome is all about, showing off those values that they’re able to make up the account. In other accounts, it absolutely is temple treasure that is used. However, we also have to question exactly the nature of this temple treasure, because, of course, we know that a lot of valuable objects have been taken. We had that whole story, Dr G about the Vestals fleeing in a cart meant for a family, and they’re far, far away, and they’ve buried some of the treasure as well, so they don’t have access to everything at this point in time, even Varro, who is one of these antiquarians we were talking about before, who we only have snippets of, he is one of the sources that we have that mentions that temple treasures were used, but also jewelry donated by Roman matrons.

Dr G 34:31
Look, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re scrounging for every piece of gold that can get their hands on. Really, they’re confined to the Capitoline hill, so that immediately limits their physical accessibility to storage. So it’s either temples or if they do have a physical structure that houses the public treasury at this point, which is when I’m not sure archaeologists, please weigh in and let us know. Did they have a public treasury building at this point? Was it on the Capitoline? If yes, we can all start to make sense of this. But turning to the people themselves seems the ultimate answer to this as well, because once you’ve depleted all of the publicly accessible wealth, what do you do next? If you’re still falling short, and this is a very specific figure that we’ve been given 1000 pounds of gold is a massive amount to ask, and it’s the kind of round figure that that feels questionable, like many of the round figures that we get from ancient sources, but it’s obviously designed, from a literary perspective, to give us a sense of the overwhelming nature of what the Gauls require in order to go away, to perhaps lessen Roman shame around this idea that they had to capitulate, that it was a capitulation that was substantial enough to make sense, that they they did it, and it was possible, and it allows them maybe to save some face there. But I think it’s really, it’s a really interesting question that this scholar has asked, like, what gold?

Dr Rad 36:09
Follow the money

Dr G 36:10
Like where? Yeah yeah yeah. And it’s hard to follow the money when we have so little understanding of what’s going on in that archaeological record.

Dr Rad 36:19
Well, yeah, the more they pulled these threads, the more I was like, Oh, my God, they’re totally right. Because not only have all the Romans gone, not only have they apparently removed a lot of the valuables for safe keeping, the Gauls have then plundered all the rest of the parts of the city, apart from the capital. So it’s not like the Romans can sneak out and get their little piggy bank from their house that they left behind. It’s all gone.

Dr G 36:42
Although maybe that’s exactly what they did. I mean, we had that priest who snuck down into the forum…

Dr Rad 36:48
Not snuck he just walked out. He was just like, out of my way. I’ve got a ritual to perform.

Dr G 36:52
But if he could get away with that, maybe everyone’s like, you know what? I’m just gonna do a quick, sneaky run to my house. I’ll be back.

Dr Rad 36:59
I’m now come back, bring a Gallic warrior with like a spear held above somebody’s head, as a Roman, you know, pulls aside like a fresco, and it’s like, yeah, getting into their wall safe.

Dr G 37:10
Exactly. It was like, I know where the family jewels are hidden. I’ll be back, guys. Give me five minutes.

Dr Rad 37:15
I think this is the way this scholar is sort of imagining it. So basically, to preserve Rome’s dignity, as you were talking about, we have this scenario where they have at least managed to keep the Gauls off the Capitol, and even though that it’s extremely shameful to enter into these negotiations, have to pay the Gauls to go away, at least the Gauls, in this narrative, didn’t take the Capitol. You know, it was all protected. This scholar, I think, is suggesting that’s actually not the case. Everything was taken, and this is why the Romans find themselves in this scenario. And of course, they actually probably don’t have the resources. And if everything was taken, then maybe we are actually dealing with a ransom situation. Because if we think about that particular institution of Rome, the patron-client relationship, which, whilst we can’t obviously be 100% sure exactly how it played out at this point in time, it is a constant. We know it existed at this point in time, there would have been an obligation to help out. If you could, you know, call on your clients, or, you know, you know, call on your patrons. There’s an obligation there to help each other out. And so it’s possible that what actually happened in this scholar’s imagination is that the Romans are calling on outside sources, maybe even other cities. So like Caere has come up in our narrative, we know that Rome is going to, after all this is over, have a special relationship with Caere because they, you know, they were real, a real pal, a real solid friend in Rome’s time of need. And maybe this is indicative of a role that Caere played that has not made it into the narrative in the most accurate way, perhaps that you know the reason why the Romans have this sense of obligation to them, and with so many Romans sort of spread in the surrounding area, this scholar sort of highlighted that it would have been potentially possible to call on these outside sources To deal with this ransom situation, and it would explain why Livy can’t exactly pinpoint for us, where have these state funds been hidden this entire time? What’s going on with, you know, the matrons? You know, not, not even all the patricians, are in Rome. It’s not like, we’re talking about, like all the rich guys stayed behind to fight. No, they didn’t. It’s just a select group of people, so it’s just a question of, yeah, it doesn’t seem likely that they’re going to have everything that they possibly need, particularly if they are completely under Gaelic control, and the capital was potentially actually seized. At this point in time?

Dr G 40:01
Yeah, definitely. And thinking back to earlier accounts of this same situation, we know that even though some of the women stayed that the men weren’t happy about that, they thought they were just going to be a burden.

Dr Rad 40:18
Well, women can’t fight or do anything useful!

Dr G 40:25
Not from a Roman perspective, but maybe they were making the bread. Goodness knows, if I was a matron who had finally made some bread and then my fellow men had thrown it off the Capitoline, I mean, I would be ropeable.

Dr Rad 40:43
Talk about the mental load.

Dr G 40:46
And so even in the context where I think this is a nice, also a literary echo, the idea that the matrons are giving up their jewelry, because this is referencing another moment in history a couple of centuries later.

Dr Rad 40:59
Yes, well, we’ve had this happen before, not that long ago as well, like where matrons have given up, yeah, yeah.

Dr G 41:05
And again, probably that one also maybe a literary echo.

Dr Rad 41:09
You ruin everything, Dr G.

Dr G 41:12
And this idea that in in times where Rome is really in strife, that it’s actually the women who come forward and do the thing that needs to be done in order to get things across the line. And so Rome has this sort of ongoing narrative about itself, where, when it when push comes to shove, it is the matrons who stand up, and it makes all of their narratives around women being unhelpful or not useful, not in their place, blah, blah, blah, or the misogyny incredibly infuriating, because every time the Roman men have ruined it to the point where it’s not working anymore, those women stand up and say, fine, you know what? I’ll get us out of this.

Dr Rad 41:58
I’m getting a big scenario here. Okay, so these starving Roman men have just pelted Gallic soldiers underneath with the remaining bread that they have left. And then they turn around, their anger kind of disappears, and they’re like, What are we going to do now? And there are some women just sitting there on a couch, and they’re like, Well, who needs my help now, boys?

Dr G 42:25
Exactly – every time Roman women come through.

Dr Rad 42:28
Now, there is a detail that this scholar has highlighted, which I actually probably would have missed, because there’s a bit of a gap. We’ll come to it later, but there is a bit of a gap in between this moment and when this reference comes up in a few years, when we get to another moment involving our hero of the Capitol, Marcius Manlius Capitolinius, he’s going to become a real douchebag in a few years. And when he is being a douchebag, he makes reference to the fact that the patricians are somehow hiding the Gallic gold, and they’re somehow abusing public funds. And it’s thought that this could be a reference to the fact that it is definitely the plebs that have managed to escape with all their movable wealth, which might be more than usual, because, of course, we’ve just had the conquest. They things have been going relatively well for Rome. So who knows what the plebs managed to escape with? Who knows what they’ve got in Veii. But these people who have pitched in to pay this ransom, if they are indeed from outside of the city at this moment in time, they then obviously want that money to be accounted for in the aftermath of this ransom being paid. And there’s this very brief reference that sort of indicates that Livy knows, or at least he’s repeating something, and maybe he hasn’t even picked up on, you know, the significance of what he’s sort of saying here, but that there is something else that’s gone on here that’s been kind of concealed in his original narrative.

Dr Rad 42:29
Wow. Look like I said earlier. I think Livy’s account has some question marks over it, so…

Dr Rad 43:58
Well it does, because, of course, one of the things we’re going to get into in the aftermath, and I’m sorry to give this away, but there is going to be disputes about land, as we’re going to go back to that old chestnut in a few years. And it’s possible that one of the reasons why this pops up is because the plebs contributed to saving Rome in this moment. And therefore, when we’re talking about distributing land, which, of course, is a form of wealth, a base of wealth, and particularly in this sort of society here, that there is something to do with this moment of crisis in terms of why they feel perhaps they have a stake in what’s going on going forward after this particular moment. Definitely, I think it makes sense to raise all these sorts of questions, and we’re about to get to this moment in my account, and I’m sorry again for spoilers, because I don’t want to ruin the drama here, but I sort of have to highlight it now. I have no choice, Dr G, Camillus is going to show up in my account whilst this is all happening. Okay, this is where he makes his heroic return.

Dr G 45:17
Agent of chaos – back on the scene.

Dr Rad 45:19
Yeah, absolutely. And he’s going to set everything to rights. Don’t you worry. Dr G, here he comes to save the day. But it’s possible that the Gauls are the ones that actually get screwed over here. So we have this account, obviously, where the Gauls are being tricksy, because, you know, that’s what they’re like. Where’s their code of honour? But what if it’s actually the other way around, and Camillus showing up here? Maybe Camillus is showing up to make the payment, or maybe there’s, maybe there’s a band of Romans showing up to make the payment, and then they get all tricksy.

Dr G 45:59
I’m going to hold on to to what I’ve said earlier, which is that there was at least one other scholar in my corner who says Diodorus Siculus has the most accurate account of the stuff that’s going on.

Dr Rad 46:12
Look, I have read such things, even though it seems ludicrous.

Dr G 46:16
And the thing is that Camillus is in no way involved in the Gallic siege, beginning to end. He’s not there. He’s just not there, and he turns up not only after the Gauls have left, so they’ve received their payment and keeping to their word, although winking and laughing to themselves as they go, being like, wasn’t that a bit of fun. As they exit stage left, the Volscians enter stage right. And it is only when the Volscians have turned up being like, oh, Rome, this is the best thing we’ve seen. Look at you now, and the Volscians are gearing up for what they think is going to be a very easy takedown of Rome at this point, because the Romans are just sort of lying on the Capitol line Hill being like, I’m so glad the Gauls have gone and I don’t even know what I’m going to eat, because there’s nothing up here, and I don’t know if I can crawl down far enough to find a piece of bread that I threw three days ago. And while they’re doing that, the Volscians are like and it is only then, it seems, that Camillus sort of emerges out of the countryside with a fully fledged force that he’s been gathering for quite some time, probably made up from the folk of Veii and people he’s come across in the countryside who are also Roman, who like, oh, Camilius! Ah! Well! And he has turned up, and it’s the Volscians that he engages with initially, because that’s the most immediate threat that Rome is facing.

Dr Rad 47:59
Well, look, I am just going to say that Livy’s account is far more comforting than this rubbish you are spewing, Dr G, if we go with Livy’s account, then the Romans are not so impious or lame as to use their temple treasures in order to pay the Gauls. They hold onto the Capitol. There is no complete Gallic invasion the Romans at least, can say that they’ve done their duty to the city, and then they get Camillus to show up and put everything to right and put those freaking barbarians in their place. Livy’s account is the account to go for because, let me tell you. Dr G, this is the moment where Camillus settles up. Because, of course, the gods are not going to let the Romans be pulverized into the ground because they’ve been doing the right thing. They’ve been making sure that everything is appropriate. So it’s whilst there’s argument over the weight where the Romans keep saying, No, I refuse to believe that this is 1000 pounds in gold. I think you’re being a tricksy little Gaul. And the Gauls are saying, I am so evil. I have no interest in your concerns, Roman accountant.

Dr G 49:18
And it’s like, what are you gonna do about it? How you’re going to stop me?

Dr Rad 49:21
Exactly. So the stalling is when Camillus enters the scene and no money has actually changed hands. So the shame of Rome is somewhat averted by the entrance of Camillus, because whilst they’re about to make the payment, they don’t. No, instead, Camillus shows up and says, hey guys, why don’t you make like a tree and leave the Gauls say, I don’t think so, mate, we had a deal. Now this, of course, is the moment where maybe Camillus is actually showing up with the money the Gauls are just waiting to get the money. And instead of paying them, Camillus and his band start a war. And the Gauls are like, what the hell I thought we had a deal?

Dr G 50:09
I don’t want to say that this is almost unbelievable, but there’s a lot of holes in this story.

Dr Rad 50:15
It gets better. Camillus then says, pish-tosh, your deal is null and void because you made it with some other magistrate, some lowly military tribune with consular power. Whereas I am dictator. So put that in your pipe and smoke it King Brennus. Instead of a pile of gold, I’m going to be giving you a steaming pile of war. How do you like that?

Dr G 50:46
I do like how the Romans have turned into British imperial, aka Star Wars style.

Dr Rad 50:53
Entirely intentional, I assure you. I’m just following Livy’s account to the letter.

Dr G 51:00
Look. So problem number one the timeline. Camillus is not here. He’s just not here. He’s somewhere else. He doesn’t turn up. The money definitely changes hands. As far as Diodorus Siculus is concerned, the Romans give over the 1000 pounds of gold. The Gauls start to walk away. In Diodorus’ account, Camillus isn’t even appointed dictator until he turns up and the Volscians are already at Rome’s door. And Rome is like, We really need your assistance. And he’s like, Well, I need to be able to command troops, because I don’t have permission to do that, because I’m an exile. And they’re like, oh, right, right, right, right, right. Quick meeting. Quick meeting. Quick dictator title is offered. And so it’s this idea in this intense situation where the Gauls are moving off into the distance with all of the treasure, the Volscians there being like, and the Romans are like, okay, we’ll make it legal for you to lead this army that you’ve turned up with. Camilius, please, please, please. And he’s like, sure thing now that I have the legal right to do so, I’m willing to help out. And the moment of the dictatorship is post 1000 pounds of gold. It is also post the arrival of the Volscians and he’s very late in the piece. So his contribution, essentially, to the Gallic sack of Rome is zero, because by the time that he turns up the Gallic sack has happened, and he’s just picking up the crumbs and being like, I’ll help you guys out. It’s probably time that I did something. And everyone’s like, please do you’re the only one who’s been fed in six months.

Dr Rad 52:48
Look, I don’t enjoy these moments. Dr, G, but I mean, you’re just so wrong. Camillus is quite clearly coming in like the white knight that he is. He then turns around to the soldiers that he’s been drilling Rocky 1975 style, and says, throw your packs down on the ground, get your weapons. We’re gonna win Rome’s freedom through iron, not gold. Who’s with me? And everyone loses their minds, because in Livy’s account, the Romans now have every motivation to fight. They’ve got their city not in shambles, even though they kind of keep referencing the fact that it is partly in shambles, not well maintained, their families, but most importantly, their gods, their temples clearly still standing, at least in part. The Capitol, of course, not being touched. And so the grand temple on the Capitol is indeed still standing and of course, the soil, the soil itself from which they were birthed, not really, but let’s run with it. They can just see it all before them, everything that their faith, everything that their gods, everything that their land has allowed them to live for and now they get to defend, recover, avenge.

Dr G 54:29
Wow.

Dr Rad 54:31
Camillus then readies his forces and draws up his battle lines, even though this is incredibly difficult because Rome’s landscape is extremely uneven, and there’s crap everywhere because it’s been devastated, but he always makes sure that the Romans are in the best position possible to give them every chance of winning. The Gauls have no idea what’s going on. They didn’t expect this. Surprise dictator to show up with his rocky trained Sylvester Stallone forces at his back. They’ve got their weapons and armor and typically for barbarians, attack with more rage than judgment. Oh yes, we’re back into the racist territory here. But fortune was no longer on their side. So they can be as angry as they want. Fortune’s back with the Romans, Dr G, they’ve been punished enough. They’ve had to watch their city burn in part, kind of, not really. They’ve had to watch their families leave kind of, maybe not really. It’s Rome’s moment, and so the Gauls are very quickly overcome. I mean, considering the siege has gone on for as long as it is, it’s almost too hard to believe that they are so easily overcome. But this is “Alia Part Two: Judgment Day”. Rome gets to win this time. It’s all been fixed. But then comes a second battle, which is described as a more regular engagement, which I presume means that everyone knows it’s coming this time, and they’re, you know, properly attired and ready for it, and that sort of thing…

Dr Rad 56:14
Please please. I’ve got to put on my military boots.

Dr Rad 56:18
I didn’t even put on my eye makeup. My hair’s still in rollers. It happens about eight miles out on the Gabinian Way where the Gauls had withdrawn after their first disastrous defeat by Camillus. But I mean, with Camillus on the Roman side, do they even stand a chance? No, they don’t. Dr, G, they definitely do not. And they are defeated again.

Dr G 56:40
Wow, yeah, wow.

Dr Rad 56:42
I’m as exhausted as a Roman has been on the Capitoline for seven months.

Dr G 56:49
Well, look, I look forward to our next episode together, where I will tell listeners and your good self the true history of what happens with Camillus and the Gallic siege.

Dr Rad 57:03
I don’t think you can come back from this, Dr G, Livy is quite clear that the Gauls are massacred and there’s not a single survivor.

Dr G 57:09
So there is a lot of material to work with here.

Dr Rad 57:13
If that ain’t the truth, I don’t know what is. I mean, Camillus, this is like, you know, another second founding moment. He’s secured Rome, able to head back to Rome, victorious. I mean, just, everything’s just perfect again.

Dr G 57:26
Everything’s fallen into place.

Dr Rad 57:29
Totally is. I mean, is there a limit to how many times Camillus can save Rome? I just don’t think that there is.

Dr G 57:38
Yeah, look, definitely not. I mean, he’s done it again. Go sunshine.

Dr Rad 57:41
Yep. Everyone’s turning around and saying, You know what? We’re gonna start calling you Romulus, because you are the second founder of the city, Camillus.

Dr G 57:49
Dangerous, dangerous times.

Dr Rad 57:52
All right, Dr, G, now that I am spent with all that drama

Dr G 57:56
much like the Romans themselves, after these adventures,

Dr Rad 57:59
exactly, yeah, I think it’s time for the Partial Pick. All right. Dr, G, please tell us what is the Partial Pick?

Dr G 58:11
Well, we’re going to rate those Romans according to their own criteria that we made up. They are up for a total of 50 golden eagles, 10 in each category. The first category is military clout.

Dr Rad 58:29
Well, I mean, can you really put too many eagles on the fact that the Romans have just killed all the Gauls that were besieging them for so long.

Dr G 58:41
You have to think about this in terms of the 80% of the episode where they were starving to death.

Dr Rad 58:48
I’m taking a Livian approach, where I just focus on the good stuff that makes Rome look better.

Dr G 58:53
Only interested in results, guys, results only. Yeah, look, I’m unwilling to overlook the 80% of the terrible times that they had where there was not a whiff of military cloud, there was, in fact, mostly the breeze of things going badly.

Dr Rad 59:13
Yeah, okay, look, look, I will concede that it’s probably likely that Rome didn’t have a good time at this moment. Whether it was 390 BCE or 387 or whatever, it’s probably not great.

Dr G 59:30
No, yeah, not ideal. I’m glad that they’ve made a comeback, if we’re just basing it on Camillus’ military clout, yeah, according to Livy, which – question marks

Dr Rad 59:39
Should we have two ratings this time where, like, one’s the Livy version was probably what really happened?

Dr G 59:46
Yeah, look, I think it might end up being the case that we give a really high score now because Livy’s version is so powerful, and then we might give a very different score later, when we get through Diodorus Siculus and what he has to say about the same situation.

Dr Rad 59:59
Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s look at the sunshine and lollipops version.

Dr G 1:00:03
As military clout, yeah. And if we’re thinking about what Camilo has done according to Livy, very powerful, yeah, very moving, yeah. I mean, just strategy, like, yeah, not just the surprise battle, but also the second earlier, the refounding, the Romulus thing, obviously, that’s, that’s a 10, like, it does not get better than that.

Dr Rad 1:00:24
I know. I mean, it’s like a total do over. It’s literally the sequel, but it’s, it’s better than the first movie. And that never happens.

Dr G 1:00:33
Yeah, don’t turn it into a trilogy, because then things go down, it’ll stay with the second film being the best.

Dr Rad 1:00:39
Livy’s not done with Camillus, yeah. He actually is a bit like Rocky in that he will keep coming back. Will keep coming back, even when he probably shouldn’t.

Dr G 1:00:46
As long as we get to the Michael B Jordan films later. That’s fine by me. So military clout, I’m happy to offer Livy’s account just on the basis of just how dramatic it is and how fulsome Camillus powers are. It’s definitely a 10.

Dr Rad 1:01:02
Thanks. All right, what’s our next category then?

Dr G 1:01:07
The second category is diplomacy.

Dr Rad 1:01:10
Ooh, okay, well, there is some negotiation going on.

Dr G 1:01:13
We finally have some diplomacy. We definitely people from different sides coming together.

Dr Rad 1:01:20
Yes, it’s not great, either the Gauls were very deceptive and using their power to exploit the Romans, or the Romans struck a deal and then stabbed them in the back.

Dr G 1:01:34
I mean, the good news is that we don’t have to rate the Gauls because it’s not their problem, and we only care about what the Romans are up to, really, I think.

Dr Rad 1:01:42
This is true either way. I think whichever account you look at that we’ve talked about today, I think it’s probably good for the Romans. The tricky thing is there are other accounts that we haven’t got to yet of how the ransom was actually recovered, which is not by Camilius or Roman army, possibly by the people of Caere or maybe even one of Tiberius ancestors in some sort of single combat later on, didn’t mention that.

Dr G 1:02:17
Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.

Dr Rad 1:02:19
Yeah

Dr G 1:02:20
Yeah. We won’t get to those. So as terms of how the diplomacy has gone for the Romans, in the version that we’ve looked at, which is predominantly Livy at the moment, yeah, also a little bit of Plutarch, yeah, the diplomacy has been the Romans have done their best, and even when the Gauls have goaded them and poked them and being like, whoa, to the conquered and all of that kind of stuff. And uploaded the more items – uploaded?

Dr Rad 1:02:45
Get the t shirt, get the merch.

Dr G 1:02:49
Whack another shield on the scale, and are having a cheeky time about it. The Romans have matched them yes to get out of this situation. So the Romans, For the first time maybe have been pretty proactive in their diplomacy, because they’re at their wit’s end, and they know that. They don’t – they’re in a corner. They they must do something.

Dr Rad 1:03:11
How diplomatic thought is it there that their first round of negotiations ended up with them throwing their bread supplies?

Dr G 1:03:18
Well, we can certainly give them a lower score.

Dr Rad 1:03:20
I don’t approve of the throwing of baked goods in diplomatic situations, Dr G.

Dr G 1:03:25
It’s a waste of a good pastry, that is. And I disapprove from a love of carbs perspective,

Dr Rad 1:03:31
Absolutely.

Dr G 1:03:31
So I think diplomacy may be a five.

Dr Rad 1:03:34
Okay, all right, yeah, fair enough, yeah. I’ll sit with that.

Dr G 1:03:37
Then we move on to expansion.

Dr Rad 1:03:39
Okay. Well, no matter what account you look at, no is the answer.

Dr G 1:03:44
We’ll have none of that around here. It’s not the time.

Dr Rad 1:03:46
No, even if we go with Livy’s very sunshiny version of things, they’re just getting back what they had taken from them in a very humiliating way.

Dr G 1:03:56
This is true. This is true.

Dr Rad 1:03:57
Yeah,

Dr G 1:03:58
Virtus?

Dr Rad 1:04:00
Okay, well, I think maybe Camillus. Come on. You know, you wanna…

Dr G 1:04:08
What has he done? What has he done?

Dr Rad 1:04:10
He’s been there, Dr G as the dictator. He’s trained an elite force of 80s action heroes for your benefit.

Dr G 1:04:19
Doom do-do-dooo

Dr Rad 1:04:24
Yeah. I think Camillus definitely deserve some points here if we’re sticking with our pattern.

Dr G 1:04:33
But is that virtus? I mean, that’s military prowess. Sure, that’s training up some people. That’s getting people fired up. But does that constitute an understanding of Roman manliness in this moment? I’m not sure that it does.

Dr Rad 1:04:48
I feel like it does, because of what he says to them. You know, when he turns up and the Romans are trying to be diplomatic about the fact that they’re starving to death and the Gauls are piling shields onto the weights, and the Romans are like, I don’t really have the strength to raise my index finger, but I must object to these goings on. It’s just not cricket. Camilius shows up in this moment and is like, we’re not paying you a goddamn thing. You can take your crap and get out of here. We’re gonna win it back through military powers. I kind of feel like that’s got a bit of a virtus moment to it, you know, like, maybe not like a 10, but I feel like it’s, it’s something, and then he massacres them, kills every single Gaul.

Dr G 1:05:35
Every single one.

Dr Rad 1:05:38
Yeah, I mean, practically single handedly. Now I’m embellishing, my embellished account, but

Dr G 1:05:42
What a man, what a man, what a man, what a migthy good man.

Dr Rad 1:05:46
He’s a mighty mighty good man.

Dr G 1:05:49
Camillus, er, virtus, er…

Dr Rad 1:05:51
I want to take a minute or two to give much respect to, to the man that’s made a difference in Rome’s world

Dr G 1:05:56
I do love that song, one of the classics. Okay, so what would you rate this virtus? Because I’m still a bit on the fence, so I’m interested in your perspective on this.

Dr Rad 1:06:06
I know it’s not one of those sorts of moments where, like, the gods are literally shining a beam of sunshine on his head whilst he single handedly charges into battle in like, slow motion and all that kind of stuff. But I feel like it’s got to be like, maybe a two, you know, just something, because I feel like it’s a moment. It’s a moment. I mean, you get called the second founder of Rome. I feel like it’s, it’s something.

Dr G 1:06:30
Oh, yeah, I’m not sure that that’s virtus, though. I’m pretty sure that that sort of encapsulates other things. But, yes, all right, two.

Dr Rad 1:06:37
No, but I think, you know, the the title reflects the deeds, you know, like the look, I’m just, I’m just on a high right now, and I demand those points. You can’t quote Salt’N’Peppa at me and not expect me to fight for my man.

Dr G 1:06:53
Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, happy for it to be. Thank you. I appreciate it. The final category is the citizen score.

Dr Rad 1:07:01
Okay, well, again

Dr G 1:07:03
It depends on which citizen you are really.

Dr Rad 1:07:05
Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you’re in exile, maybe it’s all right, but if we go with what was suggested by the academic I read, then they’re having to pay tax and they’re not even in the city.

Dr G 1:07:20
Yeah, not a lot of benefit there.

Dr Rad 1:07:23
No. I mean, the women are involved, Dr G, the women,

Dr G 1:07:26
Even the women!

Dr Rad 1:07:28
Yeah, that’s not a good sign. I saw gold jewelry. They don’t have any anymore. They don’t have any. I’ve given it away for a good cause, room itself. Even though I’m so weak from hunger, I need to have a statement necklace. Hold body upright, show off décolletage…

Dr G 1:07:50
Don’t make me give up the family jewels. I’ll die with this brooch.

Dr Rad 1:07:54
I need to have a shiny ring, so when I flip the gauze off, it sparkles in their eyes.

Dr G 1:08:02
So it’s not a great time to be a patrician matron, I would say.

Dr Rad 1:08:06
No, well, I mean nobody. I mean if you’re in the city, you’re starving to death and possibly taken captive

Dr G 1:08:11
Not ideal. If you’re in Veii, you’re kind of looking wistfully over yonder, being like, I don’t know if this is going to work out for us. And if you’re in Camillus training camp, you’re probably like, let’s get jacked.

Dr Rad 1:08:24
Well, I mean, let’s face it, is that a good time, not a good time in my books? Dr, G, that’s why I’ve never been fit a day in my life. So, yeah, I think if you’re in the whether you’re in the Rocky montage, or whether you’re in exile somewhere else, or whether you’re starving to death on the Capitoline, it’s not good, okay? Camillus is the only one happening in good time, right?

Dr G 1:08:43
He does count as a citizen as well, I suppose so. It sounds to me like we’re dealing with something between a zero and maybe a one.

Dr Rad 1:08:51
I think zero, yeah, it’s got to be zero. I think, yeah.

Dr Rad 1:08:54
Well done and dusted.

Dr Rad 1:08:56
All right, Dr, G, that means that, surprisingly, the Romans have, once again, managed to get a far higher score than I thought. But let’s face it, that’s mostly down to Livy. So Livy, this one’s for you. Rome gets 17 golden eagles. None of them probably deserved.

Dr G 1:09:15
Wow. The power of a good narrative, Livy, he’s really selling us a tale, isn’t he?

Dr Rad 1:09:20
Hey, what can I tell you? I mean this, this is a lesson in ancient historiography. You know, you got a right to please the people. Got to have some flair. Can’t just be fact, fact, fact. Yeah, have that space, that space, that Roman spice, that patrician spice.

Dr G 1:09:39
Well, I really look forward to getting together next time and maybe talking a little bit more about what Diodorus Siculus has to say about this whole situation, and just see maybe where the narrative lands.

Dr Rad 1:09:52
Then I’m going to put quite a limb. Dr, G and say I’m seeing a part seven in our future.

Dr G 1:10:00
Quite possible. In terms of my notes, we have made very little progress in this episode.

Dr Rad 1:10:05
Like a paragraph long.

Dr G 1:10:06
I’ve gotten through two dot points. It’s really not enough. I thought I’d get through maybe five.

Dr Rad 1:10:11
I’m sorry. It’s just, you know what? You’ve got to follow the money. Dr, G, you’ve got to follow the money.

Dr G 1:10:17
Yeah, oh yeah. Well, I’ll continue to do that in my research, and we’ll see where that leads us next time.

Dr Rad 1:10:23
See you. Dr, G.

Dr G 1:10:25
Farewell.

Dr G 1:10:32
Thanks for listening. If you’d like to support the podcast, you can find us on Patreon and Ko-Fi. We’ve also published two books on ancient Roman history. “Rex: The Seven Kings of Rome”, examines the different literary accounts of the earliest rulers recorded in Roman history. “Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire” is full of the sorts of stories the Romans wished you didn’t know about them, and is guaranteed to make the interesting conversation. Thank you to all our Patreon supporters. We are truly humbled by your patronage.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 170 – The Gallic Sack of Rome – Part 5 appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Marc’s book Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian (2025) is out now and explores at lot of the contextual details that helps us appreciate Titus’ rule as emperor from 79-81 CE.

What’s the state of Rome in 68/69 CE?

Nero’s death leads to a period of political chaos in Rome. If you’re keen to delve into the notorious Year of the Four Emperors, we recommend checking out our interview with Dr Rob Cromarty.

Once the dust settles, the military general Vespasian ends up as the top dog in Rome. From unlikely beginnings, Vespasian sets up the Flavian family for dominance over the next thirty years and his eldest son, Titus, was his right-hand man.

The Flavians and Judaea

It is impossible to truly understand the Flavians’ rise without considering the foothold that they had in Judaea. Military actions in the east were part and parcel of the Roman empire, but the particulars of Vespasian as the Roman general in Judaea when relationships broke down means that Vespasian (and thus the Flavians) are substantially enriched by the sack of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Marc takes us through some of the key details including Josephus’ role in the conflict, the riots across the region

Titus and Berenice

Apparently you can be a Roman a war, but still fall in love with a lady from the local aristocracy. The story of Titus and Berenice is one of the most interesting details of the Flavian era, and we don’t know as much about their relationship than we’d like, but there’s enough gossip to create something of a historical record! Tune in for the details of their seemingly on-again, off-again liaison.

The Busiest Reign and the Most Tragic Demise

Titus comes into full imperial power on the natural death of his father Vespasian and, oh boy, is he busy. He rules over the eruption of Vesuvius, he formally opens the Flavian Amphitheatre (aka the Colosseum), not to mention a pestilence. With all this busyness, we can only wonder how his reign would have gone if he lived for longer. But sadly it is not to be. Titus dies after a short but intense illness opening wide speculation about the cause of death. We explore some here.

Things to listen out for

• Questions about the reliability of Suetonius (shock, horror!)
• Titus, the playboy?
• The marriages of Titus and Arrecina Tertulla and Marcia Furnilla
• The role of Praetorian Prefect
• Josephus’ account of the war in Judaea
• An important farm house in Sabine country

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly 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 battle’s waged, 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 Rad 0:56
Welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr Rad.

Dr G 1:02
And I am Dr G.

Dr Rad 1:05
Dr G, we are once again privileged to be joined by Mark Hyden, who holds a degree in philosophy and has a love for the ancient Roman world, which shines through in his publications. Mark has published books on a number of ancient Roman personalities, including Romulus: Rome’s legendary fratricidal founder; Marcus Furius Camillus – and you can check out our previous interview with Mark on Camillus; Marius, one of the towering figures of the late Republic, and the second Flavian emperor, Titus, who is the subject of this interview. If you’re keen to get into the heady detail of Titus life and rule, then we recommend Mark’s latest book, “Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian”. Welcome to the show again, Mark.

Marc Hyden 1:55
Thank you so much for having me a second time at that. I’m gonna have to keep writing books just so I can hang out with both of you.

Dr Rad 2:02
That’s our plan. Always, always more books, more chats.

Dr Rad 2:06
All right. Well, let’s get into the questions shall we, Dr G, and find out more about the emperor Titus?

Dr G 2:12
Oh, yeah, I even like forgot to look at the document properly. So to get into it by the time we truly meet Titus in our historical sources, the Roman Empire has been going through a bit of a rough patch, you could say. So, to get us oriented, I’m wondering if, Mark, you can tell us a little bit about the state of the Roman Empire in 71 CE, when Titus enters Rome, besides his father, Vespasian.

Marc Hyden 2:41
Yeah, absolutely. So Titus was born in what’s known as the Pax Romana. This was the golden age of the Roman Empire. But matters, they weren’t as rosy as the name might suggest. They were regular conflicts with barbarians. There were threats from the east, there was periodic rioting, and there was, of course, deadly Imperial intrigue, which we all love to read about today, but then it wasn’t quite as riveting, but by the time Titus reaches manhood, he Rome is under the control of Emperor Nero. We remember him as kind of the pudgy, lackluster emperor who preferred the arts and athletic contests and an ample helping of sexual deviancy to Imperial administration. So this irked quite a bit of Romans, quite a few Romans, and his problems didn’t end there. Around 64 it comes 64 ad Rome catches fire, as we know, the Great Fire of Rome and much of the city, the majority of it, has turned to ashes. Now, Nero has been blamed for having something to do with this. It seems pretty clear that he didn’t have anything to do with it. However, with Rome turning to ashes, he saw an opportunity to build a grand estate for himself and redesign Rome in his image. And to do so, he siphoned money away from from the provinces like Gaul and even the Jewish homeland, to Rome so that he could realize his his architectural dreams. This is we hear about this, these sorts of things in the ancient accounts. And this overburdened and really upset the provincials. I mean, we don’t like taxes today, and they were even more angry about it back then, apparently. So not long after this goes down, the Jewish people who fell under Rome’s domain, they grew really weary of Rome’s heavy taxes, the constant mistreatment of them, and really it was egregious, some of the things the Romans did to the Jewish people. So as a result, they rose up in revolt. But, you know, we hear about different revolts in the Roman Empire, but this was no minor revolt. It demanded the Emperor’s attention and really immediate action. It also required generals of great repute and 1000s of battle hardened legionaries to be able to quell this, this burgeoning rebellion. So this is when we see Vespasian and Titus and 1000s of legionaries head to the east, and they lead the armies. And over the course of a few years, they neutralize city after city that had stood against Rome until the revolt was really secluded to primarily to Jerusalem, machaerus, Herodium and Masada, which is now very famous, but we see the success and Vespasian and Titus successes were a bit of good news for for Nero, but trouble was brewing in the West. He thought the problems were in the east, but the biggest problem was in the West, because that’s where a rebellion broke out to depose him, and ultimately he saw the writing on the wall, and with the help of his servant, decided to go ahead and kill himself. But that wasn’t the end of the troubles for the Roman Empire, because everyone wanted to be emperor, apparently. So this sparked a cascade of events and civil war in which first Galba, then Otho and then Vitellius all claimed to be emperor, and before long, Titus, you know, he’s sitting over there in the east and his son, or excuse me, Vespasian, his son, Titus, urges him to stake his claim. So Vespasian goes and challenges Titus, and ultimately is successful, and he defeats the corpulent Vitellius, which left Vespasian squarely in control of Rome. So that brings us. We’re in 70 ad at this point, and with Vespasian now sole Emperor with no real other claimants that are legitimate around he tasked his son with finishing off the Jewish revolt by sacking the highly fortified city of Jerusalem, which is where 1000s of rebels had been congregating. And really what resulted is this incredibly bloody, incredibly brutal and lamentable affair that supposedly left upwards of a million Jews dead, at least according to Josephus. But these numbers are a little suspect. But despite this terrible toll, Titus was victorious, and by 71 AD, which is your question, he can finally return to Rome and triumph.

Dr G 7:09
An impressive time. Not great for Judea, by the sounds of it, but the Romans, well, they do like a good victory, and it sounds like they threw everything they had at this one.

Dr Rad 7:19
So we obviously get a bit of a snapshot about what Titus was up to in his early life through that account that you’ve just given. But what else do we know about Titus public career prior to his father becoming emperor?

Marc Hyden 7:33
So a lot of Titus early career and life is a bit of a mystery. And this kind of goes into how the ancient writers looked at people they didn’t generally, they didn’t care much about their their early life when they recorded it, because it was unimportant. Now for us historians, we want to know what happened. But what is clear is that Titus was born into the Flavian family, which had, at this point, had only recently become a senatorial clan. So because of this wealth and being a senatorial clan, Titus received rudimentary education that you’d expect of a well to do child, you know, and thanks to Vespasian growing increasingly close to Claudius court at the time, Titus was eventually even educated in the Imperial Court, which was really a blessing as well as a curse, because he learned alongside Claudius’ biological son, Britannicus. And this causes some some serious problems. Claudius’ scheming wife at the time, Agrippina was the mother of Nero, whom Claudius adopted. Now this is getting kind of convoluted and complex, but that’s the way the imperial family was. Agrippina didn’t seem to like the flavians too much, at least their friends that were in the imperial court. This caused plenty of grief. But then there was also the issue with Nero, who was distrustful of Britannicus, who, you know, rightfully, he probably should have been emperor, but he didn’t become emperor. So Nero decides to have him poisoned by tainting his drink. It turns out, though, that Titus was lounging next to Britannicus when this went down, and in fact, Titus even drank some of the poison. But Britannicus died, and as we all can tell, Titus survived, although he had a long term ailment that actually stemmed from him imbibing some of this poison. But despite him surviving Vespasian and Titus, at this point, they realize they’ve fallen from favor, and they needed to see to their own safety, so they decided to lay low for a while, and it worked in their favor, because not long after, they had some developments in the imperial court that really benefited them. So Nero really got tired of his his meddling and very overbearing mother, and he first banished her, and then he had her murdered, and this is after numerous botched attempts, and he’s finally successful, and with with her dead, both Vespasian and Titus, their futures looked a lot a lot brighter at this point in fact. Is able to enter the cursus honorum, the path of honors. And he took his first step toward senatorial admission by serving, most likely, in a one year term. And really, this, really lower level college of magistrates. And that’s this might have happened around 60 AD, and it was the next year in which he probably held the military tribuneship, and he was at first stationed in Germany, and then the ancient writers tell us that Titus and his troops were eventually transferred from Germany to Britannia. The ancient writers don’t tell us why this happened, but some modern historians have pinpointed a very plausible and what I find to be a pretty fascinating reason, and it was the Boudicca rebellion. Now, as a lot of your listeners know, Boudicca was this Iceni royal, and she was a woman not to be trifled with, but the Romans decided to trifle with her anyway. They stole her property. They publicly abused her and even raped her daughters these this was an unconscionable crime, and after facing this Roman treachery and ignominy, she decided to work to kick the Romans out of Britannia. And within a short span of time, she raises this massive army, allegedly numbering around 230,000 people, and she led them into battle. And this happens around 60 ad and with relative ease, she overruns numerous cities, raises them to the ground, and shows that she can be pretty barbaric as well. But the Romans were bent on stopping her, and in 61 the following year, the local governor Paulinus defeated her in battle. And then afterwards, Boudicca either dies by suicide or illness, we don’t really know, but the remnants of the revolt remained active, and that’s where Titus enters this story. So in an effort to shore up the Romans defenses in Britannia and provide reinforcements, Nero decided to transfer some folks from Germany to Britannia. So this is, this is when historians think it’s very likely that Titus found himself there, and he may have actually seen some legitimate experience and action in the Buddha revolt, although we don’t really know what exactly he could have been doing. So the Boudicca revolt is subdued, and then, following Titus term as military tribune, he returns to Rome to kind of foster his nascent public career, promote his private business interests, including a legal practice. And he seeks the quaestorship, which is the this will give you senatorial admission at the time. And with his father’s help, the Senate presumably elects him, providing him a seat in the Senate. And through some guesswork, educated guesswork. Historians think that his quaestorship may have fallen around 64 AD which is when the Great Fire of Rome happened. But it was two years later that really propels Titus to what we think of when we hear him in 66 that’s when the Jewish rebellion begins, and Nero realizes that he desperately needs some help. So he looks around to find someone who’s someone who’s a competent general, but not particularly inspiring so he could never really challenge them, and someone who’s close by that happens to be Vespasian. He’s not a very exciting guy at the time and not thought of as a real threat. So he appoints Vespasian to command the war effort against the Jewish people, and Vespasian in turn, appoints Titus to lead the 15th legion. And as I alluded to earlier, together they sweep through the Jewish homeland and they reassert Roman control, but at a really terrible cost.

Dr G 13:38
Yeah, it’s a quite a trajectory, and one that, because the Flavians are not such a prominent family, we just don’t know those intricate details about those shifts through their career paths. But by the time we get into Titus having ruled, boy, does he get some praise and Suetonius in his “Life of Titus”, notably says, and I quote, “Titus, of the same surname as his father, was the delight and darling of the human race. Such surpassing ability had he, by nature, art or good fortune, to win the affections of all men.” End, quote, To what extent should we see this level of positivity as justified when it comes to Titus rule? Do you think so?

Marc Hyden 14:29
That’s a little bit of a complicated question. So first things first, Suetonius is one of the least reliable historians of the era. He is really a terrible historian. Excuse me, he represents or presents rumors as verifiable fact. Essentially, he also presents his histories thematically, instead of chronologically, which really makes it difficult for historians to unravel what truly happened. But that aside, now that I’ve really just uh denigrated the memory of Suetonius, does that statement ring true? So I guess my my answer, my roundabout answer, that is, it depends on which Titus we’re talking about. So as a Roman commander in Judea, Titus was he was successful, but he was absolutely brutal, and he made so many tactical errors and perhaps he also strategic errors. As a Roman prince, he acted as a spoiled playboy and was really happy to ruthlessly murder just about anyone rumored of conspiring against his father. So these are not something you would think of as the darling of the human race, but he reinvents himself as a Roman Emperor. After he succeeded to the throne, he acted like a forgiving and loving father. He spared conspirators lives, He lavished gifts on on the Roman people, and he guided the empire through some really challenging circumstances. So from the Roman perspective, Titus was about as good as it gets as an emperor and his brutality as a commander, from the Roman perspective, was probably lauded, since the Romans found it to be necessary. So if Suetonius, if his statement is referring only to Titus emperorship, then from the Roman perspective, his positivity is probably merited, at least to a degree. But we all need to be very honest with each other, calling Titus the darling of the human race, is is beyond excessive, and it’s quite a bit ridiculous.

Dr G 16:27
Just what we come to expect from Suetonius, though.

Dr Rad 16:34
Someone who had a bit of a wild young life and then reinvented themselves as emperor… I wonder who that reminds me of Dr G?

Dr G 16:43
I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess.

Dr Rad 16:46
So one of the things that we love most about Titus is his love life, because he doesn’t actually have the smoothest of love lives. What do we know about his relationships with women?

Marc Hyden 16:57
Well, it was a long time before the dating app. So things, things weren’t very smooth when we look at what the ancient accounts say about it. So this is, this is a bit of a longer, longer answer, since he he got around a little bit. So in the early to mid 60s ad, that’s when Titus marries his first wife, Arrecina Tertulla. So the union between them, it really revealed a lot about the Flavian family standing and how they are an up and coming group. Because Titus wife, or Vespasian’s wife, didn’t really hail from a particularly exciting family, but Arrecina Tertulla really was from a family of some more notable successes, notable recent successes. Even though their family was a bit more obscure in their origins, they had achieved equestrian status, so they were pretty wealthy because of this. That probably pleased Vespasian quite a bit, since he seemed to perennially just have all these financial problems. And some of that happened probably as a result of Agrippina stiming his career for a while, so he really couldn’t milk money out of the provinces or anything along those lines. So that must have pleased Vespasian. But this is really a legitimately important family that they married into, because Arrecina’s father was Marcus Arrecinus Clemens, and he was well to do, very influential, and he even served as a Pretorian Prefect. So he was, and this was under Emperor Caligula, so this was a very prestigious position in which he was one of the two commanders of the Imperial Guard. But it also means that he may have had something to do with Caligula’s assassination, whether he was active in or just had knowledge of it, but whatever the case, no one liked Caligula afterwards. So it turns out, he’s probably more of a hero than anything else. But the family aside, so far as modern academics can tell, the two newlyweds, they wasted little time building a family, and arachina had a child, and this was likely a girl named Julia Flavia, although there is scholarly debate over which family or which marriage this belongs to this child, because there’s confusion of even how many children he had. But we, we know that Arrecina dies sometime shortly thereafter, and the ancient accounts don’t tell us why. And really, this is really more of this kind of male dominated view that I think a lot of ancient historians had, where they don’t tell you what happened to a lot of these, these female characters in history. But considering that it happened so soon after birth, she might have died as a result of childbirth, which is a very hazardous thing in antiquity. I mean, very conservative estimates suggest that the maternal mortality rate in ancient Rome might have been around two and a half percent. And again, that’s that’s conservative, but that’s also very terrifying. So this may have caused Titus to to grieve to a degree he lost his first wife, but he remarries really quickly. Um. It’s not clear if he did it because he found love or Vespasian wanted to find another rich family to marry into because he needed cash. But whatever the case, Titus marries into another pretty influential family, and he took Marcia Furnilla’s hand in marriage. Now she was part of a noble family that traced its roots to one of Rome’s fabled kings, Ancius Marcus, so one of the the fourth fabled king of ancient Rome. And even in this era, they enjoyed the family enjoyed quite a bit of success and considerable wealth, which Vespasian probably appreciated. But this marriage is very short lived for an undisclosed reason, the two get divorced fairly quickly. And the ancient authors, they don’t tell us why, but what seems to be the case is that some of her family members were accused of conspiring against Nero. This was a big problem. They could be terrible. Things happened to the people that were involved in these alleged conspiracies, and the Flavians wanted nothing to do with it. They wanted to continue their rise to the top, be successful, enjoy fame and fortune, and they probably wouldn’t have faced any legal problems just being married to having Titus married this woman, however, it could have stopped their careers from ascending. So Titus probably just thought of his wise we’re going to get divorced. I’m going to move on, even though she was likely innocent of any wrongdoing. So that’s the last Roman woman that we know for sure that Titus has this really close relationship with, and the next relationship that really dominates the rest of Titus life, she wasn’t even a Roman. So after joining with his father in the east to quell the Jewish revolt, Titus noticed the Jewish king Agrippa’s sister. This is the powerful queen, Berenice. So whether it was her beauty or charisma, he was quickly smitten with Berenice, and they begin this long standing romantic relationship that it spanned many, many years, and she probably welcomed this development because it brought their her family and her people as a result, closer to the Romans, but it also helped quell probably some rumors that went around suggesting that she had an incestual relationship with her brother since They lived together, something that was probably very unfair, but the the rumor existed, so she may have welcomed this. So this, this romance, probably lasts throughout the war, and then Titus goes home, but he goes home without Berenice, but in 75 CE roundabouts, he invites her to come. There’s plenty of debate. Why didn’t she come with him? Why did they wait this long? But to me, it seems pretty clear, the Flavians probably looked at her as a little bit of a liability, and they wanted to make sure that they had stable control over their position in Rome before they brought this eastern queen to come. And in relatively short order, she did arrive, and she moves into the Imperial Palace, shares a bed with Titus. She expected that they would get married, and in fact, Titus might have even promised his hand in marriage to her already, but they didn’t feel like they needed to be married for her to act in like these official ways. And this really shocked the Romans, because she flexed her newfound power. Quintilian even complained about having to plead some sort of case before her, which he just thought was bizarre. He’s a Roman. This is, this is an Eastern queen. And to the Romans, this was really unacceptable. They believed that the members the Imperial Household, especially heirs to the purple, they were expected to marry upstanding Roman women, not foreign Queens. And I’m sure this, this generated a lot of racist comments about letting an Eastern Queen infiltrate the imperial palace, and it also conjured up images of another very unpopular Eastern queen, Cleopatra. So the Romans were very suspicious about Berenice, and they spoke out against her. And it seems like the flavians tried to contain these objections, but it became clear that the Romans were very unforgiving of this, and Titus and Vespasian knew that they had to send her back to the east to ensure that they remained popular. So they sent her on her way. It probably around 79 AD, and then it was all it was very shortly after that that Vespasian dies and Titus becomes emperor, and for some reason, Berenice comes back to Rome. We don’t know if she was invited or came out of her own accord. Whatever we know is it was a very short stint – Titus sent her back to the east. I guessed, I guess the Romans were still very unhappy with that relationship. But whatever the case, this seems like it was. She was his true love, and that would be the last time he ever saw her.

Dr Rad 24:48
Ah the tragedy.

Dr G 24:51
Yes, particularly with the parallels with Cleopatra as well, the Romans are not well set up to handle women from elsewhere. Yeah, maybe having just the capacity to lead and to be in the high echelons of Roman society. So it’s perhaps not a surprise. And I do wonder about that last visit where it’s like, can we make this work? And Titus is like, I don’t think we can. And it’s not about you, it’s about everybody else. I’d love you to stay.

Dr Rad 25:19
It’s not you, it’s Rome.

Dr G 25:21
It’s Rome. Yeah, it’s always Rome. And you’ve alluded to the things that are going on in Judea already, because obviously they play a hugely significant role in the lead up to Titus coming into this position of leadership. But this conquest also has a lot of written sources attached to it as well. So I’m interested in why the conquest at this point is so significant, and how do our written sources help us build a detailed picture of what is going on in the east in this time period?

Marc Hyden 25:54
Well, I think you absolutely have to consider this is really part of not just Titus legacy is as well as Rome’s. This is very important. But when you look at the the sources that we have for this, really the only bulked out source that we have is Josephus. He his account is what has survived. You see mentions of the Jewish War in the different, different writings. You know, Cassius Dio, Suetonius. I mean, we have these passing accounts, but nothing like Josephus has. But we also need to be careful when we read Josephus, because the Flavians essentially bankrolled him. So of course, he’s going to make Titus look fantastic. He’s going to make Vespasian look great as well. And despite all of Josephus faults this, he provides so much knowledge and so much information about Titus in his corpus of writing. So I think it’s very important to bring that in, to consider that and when you if you just look at the the war very briefly, so it’s sparked through different riots and mistreatment of the Jews by the Romans, as well as the Greek speaking population, they rise up. And Josephus is even one of the generals for the rebellion. And he’s stationed in Galilee and fights against Vespasian. And there’s the this, this penultimate battle in Jotapata, where he tries to hold out for over 40 days around about and eventually falls and even predicts that Vespasian will become emperor one day, and they decide not to execute him. So that’s also a very good tale, a cautionary tale, if you ever captured in war, tell the person that captures you, he’s going to be emperor one day, and he’ll probably spare your life. So Titus is alongside Vespasian through this. And they go through all these these cities, and there’s these exciting battles that Josephus has really provide a wealth of knowledge about. So it’s Vespasian who really wins a lot of the Jewish war. And he goes to Alexandria later on to wait until he goes to Rome and leaves Titus in charge here. And this is when Titus has 60 to 80,000 men under his command, and he uses them primarily for the siege of Jerusalem, which is extended, as I mentioned. It’s very bloody. We have terrible accounts from Josephus of cannibalism, starvation, famine. You know, I mentioned that Josephus said that a million Jews died just in the siege. Again, that’s his accounting. It’s probably an exaggeration. According to Tacitus, it’s no more than 600,000, but even if it’s 100,000 which is what some modern academics suggest, that is a massive number. So even though a lot of the other writers, Cassius, Dio, Suetonius, Tacitus, they kind of sidestep a lot of the Jewish War. Josephus gives us an amazing account and shows how important this is, not just to stabilizing the Roman Empire, but turning Vespasian and Titus into what they are. They’re able to use this to propel themselves to take over, because during the year of the four emperors, Vespasian is sitting there with all these legionaries at his disposal, and he’s able to use that to come in and take over. And meanwhile, Vespasian does that, and then Titus plays clean up sacks Jerusalem, which is critically important, and he also destroys the Temple. But I think one of the things that really is is probably overlooked by many, is what Titus did in Jerusalem helps lay the groundwork for unrest in the Middle East that persists to this day.

Dr Rad 29:37
It’s such a such an interesting time to be talking about right now. So when Vespasian eventually heads back to Rome during this troublesome time, he does so after having been proclaimed Imperator by his troops and his son, Titus is, of course, at his side. Now this is a really unusual time in Rome’s history, because it’s the first time that. That an imperial dynasty has ended and a new one is now coming in, although, of course, nobody knows that that’s definitely what’s going to happen at this point. But we’re curious to know how, how is Titus training to be emperor different from and similar to that of the Julio-Claudians who preceded him?

Marc Hyden 30:18
Yeah. So unlike a lot of the other Imperial successors Titus, he wasn’t originally groomed for this purpose. He had no inkling that he would ever be in this position, and that he had no reason to believe that he ever would be. He simply wanted to be a senator, like his father, be a lawyer and somehow find wealth, fame and success. Maybe it’s in the political realm. Maybe it’s in the military. So as I mentioned, he got this aristocratic education, climbed the political ladder, fought in the legions, but as we know, he was destined for a lot more. So once Vespasian rose to power, he very unmistakably, from the beginning, marked Titus out as a successor in some similar as well as different ways than his forebears. So Vespasian worked to ensure that Titus had a resume that of someone that you would want to be emperor, and the power to be able to seize it. So he shared consulships with Vespasian. Titus and Vespasian shared consulships. They shared a triumph together through Rome after the sacking of Jerusalem, and Vespasian ensured that Titus had the notable military successes, namely the sacking of Jerusalem to really put on his resume and build out his curriculum vitae. But beyond this, Vespasian elevates Titus to almost his equal, at least on paper. So they kind of rule together, but it was very clear that Titus was a subordinate. But as a prince, he enjoyed Imperium, he enjoyed tribunician potestas. He represented Vespasian in the Senate sometimes. And then Vespasian also makes this very novel decision to make his son one of the Praetorian Guard prefects, essentially the head of a couple legions that are stationed in and around Rome who were asked to protect the Emperor. Now, no Emperor’s son had ever held this role before, but it ensured the allegiance of the sometimes fickle Praetorians. So because of all of this, there was nobody more qualified and better position to succeed Vespasian than Titus, any of the backing of the pretorians to ensure that seamless transition. So thanks to Titus work and Vespasian’s preparations, Titus became the first biological son of a Roman emperor to succeed him.

Dr G 32:37
Oh yeah, that is an interesting detail, isn’t it, the Julio-Claudians, what a mess. So one of the incredible things that sort of happens in this period of time is that we have the Lex de Imperio Vespasiani, which is considered by scholars to be a hugely significant document. It bundles together for the first time, all of the powers, all of the privileges that had gradually become associated with the concept of the Emperor under the Julio-Claudians and because it was assumed kind of knowledge up until this point. But we now have a change in family. There’s a sense in which, how can we formalize and make it legal for this kind of de facto position of power to be passed on to somebody who’s not in that family. I’m interested in to what extent you would say that this influences Titus as he shifts from being vespasians, right hand man to Emperor himself.

Marc Hyden 33:37
Yeah, that’s that’s a bit of a tough one. So the Lex de Imperio Vespasiani has long been debated by people far smarter than than me, so like you two, far smarter than me, and it only exists in fragmentary form, so some of it’s missing, but what I will say is that this was an important piece of Flavian PR because it really it legitimizes Vespasian’s rule, it makes it clear, or at least tries to make it clear to his subjects that he wasn’t just another usurper, like like Otho or Vitellius. He was legitimate. He was different than those guys. But how did this influence Titus? That’s that’s not really clear, but I will say sure it provided a framework for him to follow as emperor, but he enjoyed a lot of that same power before he became emperor. So when he was Vespasian’s companion, but he, like the rest of Rome, they now saw Rome for what it was. It was a military dictatorship. The year of the four emperors washed away any sort of veneer of Rome being a republic or being even a constitutional principate. The truth was that armies now made emperors, not the Senate, not the people and anyone could really stake their claim to the throne and could seize it without senatorial approval or without approval even in the comitia. But it was still, despite that, it was still important to maintain the pretenses of legitimate rule and Republican forms, even though the Republic had been long, long dead. So from that perspective, it was important for Titus, and considering that at large, he gave emperors unfettered power, he probably felt like it was pretty easy to operate under those confines, but he understood that he could violate any provision he wanted, because he was an autocrat and the head and he had the Army’s backing, and that was the sad reality of Rome at this time.

Dr G 35:35
What a place to be – you’ve revealed yourself for what you are, finally

Dr Rad 35:40
The veil has been lifted

Dr G 35:42
None of this principate business

Dr Rad 35:44
I know. I know So with all this build up and it seems so promising. You know, Titus, the darling of the human race, he seems to have got his resume just right, first biological son to succeed his father as emperor, and yet he only rules for such a short time, just over two years, from 79 CE, when Vespasian passed away, to 81 CE, nonetheless, that’s still some time for him to have some achievements and certainly face some obstacles. So we’d love for you to tell us a bit more about what happens when he’s actually emperor.

Marc Hyden 36:23
Yeah, so Titus may have presided over the busiest two year span in the Empire’s history, at least up until this point, Agricola was at war in Britannia. Vesuvius erupted and laid waste in numerous cities, including Pompeii and Herculaneum. Fire ravages Rome and a plague decimates its numbers. But despite this, Titus did everything within his power and also his financial means to guide the empire through adversity, even though it supposedly led him nearly to fiscal ruin because of it, but the people just they realized the world was a different place. They were facing all of these calamities, but they appreciated Titus endeavors, because he responded to each crisis with great aplomb, or at least with the best of intentions, and they understood this. But his tenure, it was not just marked by adversity. There were tranquil moments as well. He constructed his eponymus baths. Built roads and bridges and updated aqueducts, and he finished the Colosseum, which we could all go look at today, at least well enough for the inaugural games. It probably didn’t have the final floor finished at the time, at least in stone. And he opened it, and he hosts an unprecedented 100 days of games, and they bear witness to 1000s of beasts being killed, myriad executions, and an untold number of gladiators sparring with another which the people loved. And during his tenure, he also saw that his father was deified. So you know, that’s also another great thing. If you become emperor, you can make your dad a god, which makes you the son of a god or a daughter of a god, really work. It’s a great system that they had in place there. And even though a lot of his predecessors would not have done this, he showed forgiveness to people that plotted against him in ways that they they never would have dreamed of doing so. In short, this was a very action packed two years.

Dr G 38:21
I do like the idea that many emperors start off with quite a good stint early on, only for things to go tragically downhill the further they’re in power. And I wonder to what extent Titus has been saved from that fate by dying so soon into his reign, and we will just never know he dies suddenly from a fever, which a tragedy. This is shocking to everybody, and led to great speculation, even at the time, that this was not the case of poor health, necessarily, but murder most foul

Dr Rad 38:56
Mwahahahaha

Dr G 38:59
Exactly. I’m wondering, Mark, what’s your view on Titus death based on your research?

Marc Hyden 39:05
Well, first of all, to go back to what you were talking about, about emperors having a great, you know, honeymoon period, and that’s, that’s something that they talked about. Believe it was Cassius Dio said, you know, he just didn’t live. He may not have lived long enough to become the terrible Emperor he was destined to be. We just don’t know. He might have turned into Domitian. Who knows? But to answer your question about his death, it goes back to 81 AD, so a little over two years into his Imperial administration, he and some of his followers decided to go to the countryside for a break. They wanted to get out of the busy Rome, the stench and everything else that comes with it. But as they made their journey, Titus realizes something is really wrong. He develops this incredibly high fever, and then his servants, they rush him to a farmhouse in Sabine country, near near react, and along the way, Titus’ condition continues to get worse, and he understands that this is going to claim his life, and this really confused him. So he was 41 years old, which I may humbly present as a very young age.

Dr Rad 40:12
I totally agree.

Marc Hyden 40:14
He believed that he had lived a life pleasing to the gods, and he was at the height of his power. Why would the gods take his life at this moment. So on the verge of death, he he throws open the curtains on his litter and exclaims, I have made but one mistake. Now we don’t know what that one mistake was, but we do know that he dies not long after on September 13, 81 AD in the very farmhouse in which his father Vespasian had perished. So the question of what killed him, what was the cause of death, has really vexed ancient and even some modern historians and the ancient authors, they provided kind of a slew of theories to attempt to explain what killed him, and they range from impossible to improbable. But thanks to the diligence of some modern scholars, we may have the answer, but first we have to talk about what the ancient authors thought. So, given the rapid and very unexpected death of a pretty popular emperor, the Romans grew suspicious that Titus had been slain, and some claimed that Domitian was behind it. One theory suggested that Titus, or excuse me, Domitian, had Titus packed in ice when he was sick, knowing that that would kill him. So it’s not impossible that Domitian had this done, and he may have done it along with doctor’s orders as a way to reduce Titus uncontrolled fever. But other ancient authors said that Titus died through other means. Domitian poisoned them, so more Imperial intrigue. And Flavius Philostratus even says that Domitian used a sea hair to taint Titus food or drink somehow, which which killed him. But modern academics, they’ve kind of poo-pooed that idea. They don’t believe that that would really have worked. And this also kind of reveals what the ancient writers thought about Domitian. They did not like the guy, they loathed him, and he was an easy target, at least at this point. So they latched on to all these unsubstantiated rumors saying that Domitian was somehow behind Titus death. And, you know, he did have a motive, because he became emperor, it just seems very unlikely that he had anything to do with with killing his brother, at least on purpose. Then there’s a Jewish tradition, and this is one of my favorite ones, and it suggests that a gnat flew up Titus nose, lived in his brain for seven years and slowly picked at his brain as it grew to the size of a sparrow. This is a tradition that obviously is, I don’t believe that anyone thinks of it as fact, it might be part of some sort of tale. Gnats don’t operate this way. They don’t grow to the size of small birds, at least where I live. And the Romans generally didn’t do autopsies and open up Emperor’s brains to see what’s going on in there. So this didn’t that was not the cause. Could not have been.

Dr G 43:09
That’s a real shame. That’s a real shame because, I mean, come on, if that was, that was what happened. We need to know. We need to go back and find the body, do an autopsy. Was he somehow trapped by a gnat while he was in Judea that lived in his brain.

Marc Hyden 43:24
If that is possible, I’m never going outside again. But Plutarch, he went in a different direction, said that Titus died because he loved taking a bath too much. And I also think that that’s probably not the case, unless he caught some sort of contagion while bathing with with other people. But what really seems to be the case is relatively clear in the ancient record, if you look through it through a modern lens. So if we go back, it’s September in ancient Italy, and Titus acquires a high fever that strikes him down quickly. So we’ve got several things to look at here. And Saul bastomsky theorized, based on that that Titus died from malignant malaria. It was relatively common in Titus era and region at the time. It surged in late summer and early fall, and it’s marked by a high fever that kills its victims really quickly. So it seems that was probably natural causes that led to his death. And if it was malignant malaria, then sadly, Titus, he just never stood a chance.

Dr Rad 44:29
How intriguing the potential of an emperor to have died from the Ice Bucket Challenge? Who would have thought so? Perhaps, to wrap up now that Titus has departed from this earth. What is it that you think makes Titus unique from the Emperors that came before him?

Marc Hyden 44:50
Well, he was just so different from the Julio-Claudians. For starters, he was a true warrior. He led troops. He got into the nitty gritty of battle. Unlike the Julio-Claudians, with the exception of Augustus and Tiberius, they saw some some real battle. But for the rest of the pampered Julio-Claudians, Titus was very different. He was also the first, as I mentioned, Pretorian Prefect to become emperor, and the first biological son of an emperor to become emperor. Again, very different from the Julio-Claudians, and during his short stint, he proved to be a forgiving and magnanimous ruler who eschewed killing even conspirators, and so far as we can tell, he didn’t have a single scandal throughout all of his Imperial tender tenure. Again, it was only a couple of years, but still, no scandals. Most Julio-Claudians couldn’t have said the same about about their own.

Dr Rad 45:43
Oh, yeah, Caligula had scandals pretty quickly.

Marc Hyden 45:47
Yes, they would. They stacked up very quickly. You’re right. He also gave the Romans a gift that his predecessors would have killed for the Colosseum, and he gave the Romans 100 days of games and killing, just on an industrial scale, and they loved him for it. And he was also different. This is a little less interesting, but he was different because he had the shortest Imperial tenure to date, excluding the usurpers of the year, the four emperors, of any of his predecessors. And unlike many of his predecessors, when he died, he was probably at the height of his popularity, the Romans loved him. Remember, he’s he’s the darling of the human race, although, of course, that’s exaggeration. So to close out neatly, I would say the life of Titus is one of the greatest stories rarely told. So it’s the tale of Titus unlikely ascent to power, a veritable holy war in Israel, the coliseums rise, and of course, we know Pompeii’s fall and then tragic Titus own tragic and untimely death. But for whatever reason, a lot of the story has been buried beneath centuries of silence. And you know, a lot of the ancient Romans loved and even worshiped Titus. They considered him this model of virtue, essentially as an emperor to be emulated. But modern scholars, they have overlooked him for whatever reason. They’ve cast him aside, perhaps because of his short Imperial tenure, and this has left some unmistakable gaps in the record. So I decided to take on this project and write emperor Titus the right hand of Vespasian. And hopefully, hopefully it will end his long term neglect, and we won’t have to worry about the massive gaps in the record that have been there for so long.

Dr G 47:35
Yes, thank you so much for providing all of this detail, and I cannot recommend your book, highly enough, that’s “Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian”, because you do go into so much of the detail, particularly with what is going on in the early days of Titus building his military reputation, particularly when it comes to what is happening in Judea, which is an extensive campaign that really funds a lot of what The Flavians are able to achieve. So I think understanding that side of it better. How did this seemingly unassuming family rise to the top is really important, and seeing how Titus is able to carry on that legacy of Vespasian particularly interesting as well.

Marc Hyden 48:18
Yeah, and I really appreciate that the kind words. And it really is something I find to be pretty amazing. Everyone has heard of Vespasian, who’s interested in ancient Rome, and even his ascent is is very unlikely. And he brings he brings his family along, and as people will find out that are students of history, they’ll see the Flavian dynasty. It starts off very stable, but it goes off the rails pretty quickly. But they want to say that, you know, Vespasian and Titus, they had a good run.

Dr G 48:48
Yeah, two out of three ain’t bad.

Dr Rad 48:50
I was gonna say. I can’t help but wonder if Titus reputation is also somewhat improved by the fact that Domitian is the one that follows.

Marc Hyden 48:59
That certainly does help his standing. It also helps his standing, as well as Vespasian that a lot of the people at the time, the historians at the time, that wrote the history, they tended to bankroll so you tend to say nice things about your benefactor. So they they benefited greatly from some fantastic PR and that’s that’s another thing. If you’re going to be emperor, pay people to write your history. They’ll say nice things.

Dr Rad 49:25
That’s the mistake that Julia-Claudians made. Rookie errors. Rookie errors.

Dr G 49:34
Well, thank you so much Mark for joining us and sitting down to tell us all about Titus and the way he comes to power, and those precious two years he gets to be emperor, we’ve really enjoyed it.

Marc Hyden 49:44
Hey. Thanks so much for having me on and I’ll just have to burn through another book real quick so I can come back.

Dr G 49:56
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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – The Emperor Titus with Marc Hyden appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

The Bermuda Triangle? Or the Holy Trinity?

We have action in three different locations in this episode – Camillus in Ardea, the remnants of the Roman army in Veii and the Romans under siege on the Capitoline.

A recreation of the Temple of the Capitoline Triad on one of the peaks of the hill (albeit in a later period). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The siege had entered a fairly quiet stage where little was happening on either side. It was at this point that one of the Fabian clan decided that his duty to the gods was worth more than his life. Gaius Fabius Dorsuo calmy descended from the Capitol, past the stunned Gauls and went off to the Quirinal to perform an annual sacrifice that was part of Fabian tradition. His piety so impressed the Gauls that they allowed him to pass, unscathed.

The Romans in Veii had selected the centurion, Quintus Caedicius as their commander. They were growing in numbers as stragglers who fled during the attack sought refuge. Latin allies also joined the Romans.

It depends on which account you read as to what happened next. Livy claims that the forces at Veii decide that they have had enough beauty sleep and now they want Camillus recalled from exile so they can seek their vengeance. Other sources indicate that they were just trying to get word to their fellow Romans that they were, in fact, ALIVE! Either way, a sprightly young man named Publius Cominus was selected to travel to the besieged city and smuggle himself onto the Capitol to deliver his message.

The Return of Camillus

Whichever version you believe, somehow Camillus worms his way back into our narrative, and our hearts. Naturally, Camillus would not set foot outside of Ardea without all the paperwork being in order, but once his exile was officially over, he was ready to step into the role of dictator.

However, Camillus was still packing his bags when the Gauls noticed a possible route up the top of Capitoline. It meant scaling up a cliff face, so surely the Romans would never suspect it. It’s so crazy, it just might work.

A bronze sculpture of goose from the Capitoline Museum collection. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Slowly, the Gauls helped each other to make the difficult climb. They were so quiet, the Roman dogs did not hear the coming. But the sacred geese sure did! They caused such a ruckus that Marcus Manlius woke up and realised what was going on. This allowed him to arouse the other Romans and lead the charge against the attackers. It gets pretty grisly at this point. Best case scenario: the Gauls were hurled to their deaths. Worst case… you’ll have to listen to find out!

Things to Look Out For:

• Far too many songs from Dr Rad
• Sustainable travel, Roman-style
• LOTS of piety
• A kamikaze Fabian

On a serious note, please be aware that this episode does include discussion of animal cruelty.

Our Players 390 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

Q. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat)

K. Fabius M. f. Q n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 404, 401, 395

N. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 406

Q. Sulpicius -f. -n. Longus (Pat)

Q. Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 402, 398, 395, 388, 386

P. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Cos. 393? Mil. Tr. c. p. 397

Dictator

M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

L. Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 389, 387, 383

OR

L. Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) Cos. 393, 392; Mil. Tr. c.p. 414, 406, 403, 401, 398

Pontifices

?-390: M. Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 433

Pontifex Maximus; slain by the Gauls

C. or K. Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

Augurs or Pontifex

439-390: Q. ? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus or Structus Fidenas?) (Pat)

Successor: [—- Furi]us Q. f. P. nepos Fu[sus] (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 403

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.45-47; Pliny the Elder 29.14 [57] (for the story of dog crucifixion)
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.113-117; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Appian, BC, 2.50; Appian, Gallic History, 1-4; Justinus, Epitome of Pompeius’ Trogus’ Philippic Histories; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Eutropius 1.20
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Automated Transcript

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 battle’s waged, 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 Rad 0:57
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 excited. We are deep in the Gallic sack of Rome.

Dr Rad 1:14
You know, I knew this was going to be a big event. Dr G, but even I had underestimated just how much detail we have to get through today.

Dr G 1:22
There is so much. And this is episode four in this mini series, this limited series on the Partial Historians channel,

Dr Rad 1:32
just when you thought the girls couldn’t do any more to the Romans they do. So Dr, G, I feel it might be necessary to do a brief recap, because we’ve already covered multiple episodes, and I suspect this will actually not be our last on the Gallic sack of Rome. So let’s revisit where the Romans are at right now.

Dr G 1:53
It’s tough times for the Romans. They have encountered the Gauls. Taking us right back to the beginning, they’ve offended the Gauls. The Gauls have marched on Rome. The Romans have hidden in their own city, being like they’ll never fight us here, and the Gauls have found them there. And the Gauls are determinedly outside the walls of the city, and increasingly encroaching into the city space itself and pillaging the local area as well, because if there’s anything that 70,000 Gauls need, it’s food and supplies, and you can’t just sit down and have a siege if you yourselves are going hungry.

Dr Rad 2:33
No, and we’ve definitely seen some brutal deaths as the Gauls have undertaken this process of sacking Rome, most tragically, perhaps, the elderly senators. So it hasn’t been great.

Dr G 2:49
The Romans did decide at a certain point that they could only feed and look after so many Roman citizens on the Capitol, which is where they’ve retreated to the high point of the city. And in a very noble gesture, it seems that the eldest of the aristocracy have decided to give up their lives by sitting down in the lower parts of the city in their own homes and just waiting the Gauls arrival. And the Gauls do arrive, and it goes exactly as you might expect. Those old men aren’t physically tough enough to resist the Gauls, and they do get killed.

Dr Rad 3:25
I feel like the Brave Heart line kind of applies here. You may take our lives, but you’ll never take our freedom.

Dr G 3:33
They die as free men. They die as Romans. There’s weird to us. I suppose it’s a good thing, as much as we criticize the patricians constantly on this show, it might be one of our characteristics as a podcast.

Dr Rad 3:46
That’s one of our partialities. One might say,

Dr G 3:49
potentially Yes, in this moment, the aristocracy do show themselves as people who are willing to put Rome before themselves in that very last moment. So I do give them kudos and respect for that,

Dr Rad 4:06
I would, but I feel like this is the kind of story that the Romans like to tell about themselves to justify this elite nonsense.

Dr G 4:15
Never believe anything that the elite Romans tell you.

Dr Rad 4:19
Perhaps one of the big problems though, that the Romans are facing Dr G is that the hero of the day, Camillus, who has been such a character throughout the past episodes we’ve been doing, he has been exiled by the Roman people. And it seems like this, at least for Livy, is one of the reasons that the Romans are in such a pickle right now,

Dr G 4:44
the best guy’s been left out. Of course, we can’t win

Dr Rad 4:47
exactly if you missing one man, clearly, you cannot resist a Gallic invasion.

Dr G 4:53
Yes, the morality of Livy never fails to inspire

Dr Rad 4:58
but in our last. Episode, we have started to see the return of Camillus. He’s got his warrior act on. Dr G He’s making himself into a Marvel superhero, coming out of exile, starting to cause some headaches for the Gauls in the region,

Dr G 5:19
and this is a very confusing part of the story, and one that historians have wrestled with, because within the context of the various narratives that we have about this Gallic sack, Camillus plays a bit part at best, and he is in it

Dr Rad 5:40
A bit part? Camillus?

Dr G 5:43
I know, I know he’s got main character energy, but one of the variations on this narrative is that in vey the commander, there a guy called Quintus Caedicius is the one who puts forward the idea that they need Camillus to be able to get through this time of trouble, and that’s before we even suppose for a moment that they and Rome know about their split forces, which it is not clear at all in other versions of the narrative, but we do have This account of Quintus Caedicius Raising the call for Camillus to be recalled and instated as dictator, and it is something that is apparently agreed to by the Roman Senate in Camillus absence. So the suggestion seems to be in some versions of the story that Camillus is still in exile and ultimately receives word that he has been appointed dictator without his knowledge, and now must do the great things that are required by a dictator. Now, on some level, you want to believe a story like that, because it sounds incredibly characteristic of the way the Romans want to believe that their republic worked. On the other hand, what we see Camillus doing is leaving Ardea raiding a Gaulish camp that is a foraging and pillaging camp, and then disappearing from the narrative again. Well, the whole Gallic sack actually happens.

Dr Rad 7:13
Well, see, this is the chronology that Livy gives me, the sack of that Gallic camp that we dealt with last time that all happens before any talk of dictatoriness. So it seems like Camillus is more just concerned. You know, he’s a concerned on looker. He’s invested in Rome’s fate.

Dr G 7:34
He’s like, I see trouble on the horizon. I see some Gauls in my local area. I should do something about that, because that’s the Roman way,

Dr Rad 7:41
exactly yes. And so that’s kind of where we were up to, I think, in our last episode. And so I don’t know about you, Dr G, but I am. I’m ready for some Gallic sacking. Ah, ah,

Dr G 8:15
we’re up to seeing one of the great parts of this story in this episode, because at the same sort of parallel timeline that we have Caedicius, sort of seeking out the dictatorship for Camillus, we also have another figure from Veii, a guy called Cominius Pontius, who seems to wander down to the city on the premise that they need to give Rome the information that there is a whole additional Roman force. So we have this moment where the Roman forces in Veii come to the understanding that maybe, just maybe the Romans don’t know that there’s a whole bunch of Romans also in Veii, and we saw the fear that had happened in the aftermath of the Battle of the Allia, where people were just running away, sort of in any direction that they could to get away from the Gauls. And we know that some of them end up back in Rome and some of them end up in Veii but they do not seem to be aware of how many have ended up where,

Dr Rad 9:22
and that would, that would make sense, I think, in the panic of a truly horrible battle which really hasn’t gone their way, that people would just scatter and you wouldn’t know what had happened to various sides of the army.

Dr G 9:36
Yeah, definitely. So you’ve got this situation where you’re running for your life. You’re not necessarily counting who’s going in your direction and who’s going in another direction.

Dr Rad 9:44
Hey, Bill, Bill, are you heading to Rome or they? I’m kind of thinking they. That’s kind of my vibe right now. Are you thinking Rome? Oh, oh, this is awkward.

Dr G 9:54
I guess I’ll catch up with you later. Yeah. Like,

Dr Rad 9:57
we’ll, you know, like, have some exile and. You with some sages, and then I’ll catch you when I see you.

Dr G 10:03
Send me a letter. Dear Bill, I’m still in Veii.

Dr Rad 10:08
Dear Marsha, our love for each other will never die. We just have to endure this siege a little longer and this separation, my darling, please hang on. Ever Yours.

Dr G 10:26
It’s a tragic time, but they’re not letter writing either. They literally don’t know anybody’s anywhere. So it seems, at some point into this whole process, and we’re of the understanding that the siege of Rome is something like six to seven months worth of siege. At some point in this process, the Roman forces that have gathered in Veii are like, maybe we could help and maybe

Dr Rad 10:52
second, wait a second, we’re here, but nobody knows we’re here. Oh my god,

Dr G 11:02
we could be the secret backup force that breaks the siege. We could.

Dr Rad 11:08
I’m sensing an opportunity, guys,

Dr G 11:13
is it strategy or is it tactics? Nobody knows. So we have this moment they come to this realization. The Romans in Veii are like, Wait a minute. We could be we could help. And they decide to send a delegate, just one person, it would seem, maybe accompanied by a few others, but only one is named,

Dr Rad 11:32
oh, he’s definitely by himself in in my account. In fact, I particularly appreciated the detail that Livy gives me that he managed to get to Rome by floating down the Tiber on some cork.

Dr G 11:48
Wow, that is not the story I’ve got. That’s amazing look.

Dr Rad 11:52
I’m all for sustainable materials, but that just seems flimsy to me.

Dr G 11:56
I mean, the cork would float, but it would have to be a very large piece of cork to work to float a human

Dr Rad 12:01
picturing him being like, you know, if everybody had an ocean, then everybody be surfing.

Dr G 12:12
Just amazing. All right, so, listeners, picture in your mind Cominius Pontius floating on a piece of cork down the type

Dr Rad 12:21
of river look. I should also add that in Livy’s account, he is described as a sprightly young thing. So surfing would be in his wheelhouse. I have to assume,

Dr G 12:32
yeah, look, I mean river surfing, it’s a whole new wave, isn’t it? So Cominius Pontius, he decides to be the one he’s the delegate, or maybe he chooses off his own back. We’re not sure, to take the happy news that there is an additional force really in vain that could surprise. We’re all alive. We lived. And so he heads towards the Capitoline Hill. And in my account, which is maybe less exciting than Livy’s. He is starting out alone, swimming the river by night, and doesn’t seem to have a cork.

Dr Rad 13:09
He’s swimming okay. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

Dr G 13:14
Exactly he’s gonna be fine. He reaches one of the cliffs that leads up to the Capitoline, and it is a very difficult climb, but it is night time, and he manages to get himself up this cliff, and he gets to the top, and everyone’s like, what are you doing? He manages to convey the message to the Romans that have placed themselves on the Capitoline for defense, that there are troops at Fay and they are waiting and watching for an opportunity to attack the Gallic forces. The Romans on the Capitoline hill are like that is such good news. Thank you so much. But maybe you should go home. Don’t stay here. This is not a great place to be. So he climbs back down the cliff in the middle of the night and swims back up the Tiber.

Dr Rad 14:07
That is all very difficult in a time period without much street lighting. He’s doing some Cliff climbing and swimming in the Tiber.

Dr G 14:16
It’s a one night journey to swim from day night only

Dr Rad 14:21
one night only, really just there’s so many songs that can be added to the story.

Dr G 14:27
I’m glad you’re here to lend the sense of drama that is appropriate to this moment. He goes out for one night, swims down the Tiber, climbs a cliff, leaves a message, climbs back down the cliff, swims back up the Tiber, which seems to be more difficult, I would assume, because the tire is working against you now. Yeah, heads back into Veii

Dr Rad 14:48
well, see that’s where the cork thing makes sense, coming down. But what about going back?

Dr G 14:54
You get tired. You stop kicking your legs for a bit. You hold on to the cork board, and you lose all of your progress, but when you start again, you haven’t sunk.

Dr Rad 15:03
Livy gives me a few additional details in the lead up to this Dr G and look, I think this actually goes to show the awkwardness of this account, even though it’s obviously such a notable event, perhaps because it’s such an important event for the Romans, there are obviously going to be various things that people are trying to sandwich in for various reasons, and one of the things that they are trying to sandwich in is Camillus, because who doesn’t love a Camillus sandwich? Oh, no. How does Camillus end up in this story? Well, okay, so I’m going to start at this moment of the sprightly young thing that is Pontius Cominus, and explain how this works with my Camillus narrative. Because you know that Livy in particular is very invested in Camillus story. Pontius caminus is not actually going to Rome in my account to tell the Romans who are besieged by the Gauls up there that we live. There are people in Veii. You might not have known this, but you have this secret surprise extra force that’s reasonably sizable on your side. He’s actually there to tell them that, hey, there’s this collection of us at Veii, and we’ve decided that we need Camillus. That is His sole purpose to be like you guys need to summon Camillus, but we have to go about this the right way. And we knew back in Veii that the right way to handle this was to ask the Senate, because they’re the only ones who can really initiate this whole process. And Livy’s like, what men are the Romans. I mean, even in the darkest of times. They know that you have to follow the proper channels. You know there’s a line of communication here that must be followed. Doesn’t matter if you’re under siege. Doesn’t matter if there’s a gigantic Gallic army that’s just burnt down your city and murdered all the patricians. You still need to go to the appropriate people and get permission before you

Dr G 17:01
do anything, we will always follow protocol, and

Dr Rad 17:05
that is what he is there to do. So in Livy’s account, it’s not night time, as far as I can tell. He doesn’t explicitly say that, but what he does is, when he arrives, he sneaks up a very steep part of the Capitoline, which the Gauls had thought, meh, we need to guard that. There is no way any Roman could possibly get up that way, and that’s how he reaches the Capitol. It’s not under the cover of night. It’s just because it’s a part that the Gauls had been like. I think we need to guard that interesting.

Dr G 17:37
All right, so I mean the insertion of Camillus classic, I suppose, yeah.

Dr Rad 17:43
And basically he then he gets the permission the magistrates hear him, and the Senate decide that the Curia Comitia, or the Comitia curiata, would indeed end Camillus exile. And they decide at this moment that he would be appointed dictator. And so Pontius Cominus, then has to get back to ve to tell them, right, we’ve got permission. Everything’s happening in the proper way. The proper bodies have been performed. They’re voting, they’re talking, they’re debating. And then they have to send messengers off to Camillus, who is still in exile in Ardea, to tell him to go to they as his first point of call to, obviously, meet the men there. And Livy even explicitly says that he likes to think that Camillus would never have left Ardea until it had all been confirmed that the proper law, etc, had been passed to, like, end his exile. Because, you know what Camillus is like. He’s the straighty-180, keep it legit, man. You got to get the people’s permission. You can’t actually be a dictator. You know, take the auspices in the army until it’s all very official. Put a ring on it, guys, Wow.

Dr G 18:54
Just wow. I’m just going to put it out there. I don’t think this narrative is very plausible.

Dr Rad 19:02
Dr, G, I’m disappointed in your lack of imagination.

Dr G 19:07
First of all, it’s the people in Veii, the Romans in vain, that decide that they would like Camillus to be dictated. That does seem to be a consistent thread in most of the versions. Why would it matter for Camillus to then travel to Veii, because it’s still the Roman Senate in Rome that is making the decision to place him in that position. So if he needs clarification from anybody, it’s not the people in Veii who were like, we think this would be a great idea. What do you reckon Rome?

Dr Rad 19:36
No, he’s not going he’s not going to Veii. For that, he’s going to ve because those are the forces he’s going to use to help them. Yeah, okay, summon there, because basically in my account. So this is where I’m going to backtrack a little bit. So I actually have a little bit of build up to this moment. Livy explicitly tells me that at they the Romans have spent some time recovering. You know, they’ve been going to the spa. They’ve got cucumbers on their eyes. They’ve got the. Their hair wrapped up in little towels. They’ve got the bathrobes on, and because they’ve had a little bit of downtime, they’ve been getting stronger and braver. They’re feeling regenerated. They’re ready. And they also have additional people constantly joining them. So obviously, with the sack of Rome, there are various Roman people who are just wandering aimlessly throughout the countryside being like, Oh my God, I don’t have a city. I don’t have a home anymore. And they’ve managed to find their way to ve because, as we’ve talked about, they actually isn’t that far away from Rome. So they’ve been joining so they’ve got growing numbers there. Interestingly, Livy also tells me that there are volunteers from Latium who are joining the Roman forces at Veii, because they are after plunder. They smell a battle, and they’re down for it. Now my commentator who I consult, and sadly, this might be one of the last episodes I actually have this commentator to refer to, points out, I think, quite rightly, that this is most likely actually supplies from the Latin treaty, who are turning up. They’re not necessarily volunteers. It’s just the Latins who are obliged to give Romans military service, probably even though the Romans are down in their luck, and this probably seems like a suicide mission, they are there. I also have a really interesting detail before all of this happens, that the Roman soldiers, at they had actually spotted some Etruscans trying to do a bit of raiding while the Romans were down in their luck. And because they were at they and I guess, apparently nobody knew that they were there, they’re just sort of looking out, and they see the Etruscans, you know, being all predatory. And they’re like, oh my god, we’re in this situation, in this exiled city, because we tried to help you Etruscan people. And where has it got us sitting here in Veii watching you trying to take advantage of our situation? I mean, God, these people, these people. And this is where I first get the mention of the centurion Quintus Caedicius, seemingly the commander of they because he organizes an attack on these people. And it’s after this attack, when they sort of dealt with these predatory Etruscans, that he’s like, look, you know what? I think it’s Camillus that we need really, because he’s following, he’s following the example that Camillus has set for him before, like attacking at night and that sort of thing. And so he sort of realizes that this is the moment where I think that we need Camillus. We need a hero.

Dr G 22:37
Look, this is quite similar to the stuff that Diodorus Siculus tells us, but there are nuances of difference. So we don’t have Quinctius quidictius, for instance, attached to this idea of leading forces against Etruscan opportunists. That doesn’t seem to be a thing. The idea of the Etruscans taking the opportunity is definitely covered. So it seems that as the forces, the Roman forces in Veii are trying to look after the area that they’re locally attached to, in this moment, they notice that there are raiding Etruscan forces, and they do disrupt a number of Etruscan camps and steal the booty from them. So classic raiding mentality going on, being like my shoes. Finally, they have returned to me.

Dr Rad 23:27
You know what? My city may have been burnt to the ground, but thank god I’ve got my sandals.

Dr G 23:32
Goodness me, I’ve been waiting years to get these sandals back from the Etruscans. And so they end up in possession of a whole bunch of additional arms, essentially, which allows them to then feel a sense of confidence, being like, Okay, we could raise an armed force of some substance in this moment, which could help break the siege of Rome.

Dr Rad 23:55
Yes, and that’s, that’s exactly, I think, the point of that story in my account as well. It’s about confidence. Dr G, the Romans need to believe in themselves. Again. They’ve suffered quite a blow.

Dr G 24:06
Yeah, they do. And now they’re holding a sword in their hand. They’ve got their sandals back on, and they’re like, I can do it now.

Dr Rad 24:12
I’m ready. I can. I can. I also have this really interesting little story. Dr G, which involves people who used to be called the fabulous fabii, but who I have now dubbed the foolish fabii,

Dr G 24:26
probably a better classification for them, really,

Dr Rad 24:29
yes, although this is not a moment of foolishness. And again, I feel like Livy’s really trying to constantly build up throughout his narrative of the siege. This idea that look the Romans definitely screwed up in the lead up to this event, they ignored portents. They didn’t look at the signs properly. You know, things were not as they should have been. But once the siege begins, all we seem to see is Romans behaving correctly. And there’s this moment in the siege that Livy. Tells me about. So there’s a lull. Nothing’s really going on. The Gauls are kind of just hanging out watching being like, God so dull, just trying to make sure that the Romans really aren’t escaping at this point. And they’re obviously all up there, you know, Citadel, capital, whatever. But then suddenly, both the Romans and the Gauls are astounded to see a lone Roman leaving the area where the Romans have secured themselves. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s one of the fabii. Dr, G What? Yeah. Gaius Fabius Dorsuo, hmm. This is a

Dr G 25:41
narrative which I have never come across in any other source, so I’m fascinated to hear how this goes.

Dr Rad 25:46
Okay, so the family of the Fabii allegedly make an annual sacrifice on the quirinal hill. Okay, okay, I take it back. I do have a source on this. Okay, and it’s this moment that Gaius Fabius Dorsuo is like, well, Siege or no siege, sacrifices must be held, so I’m just going to leave by myself in the midst of this siege, and he’s all ready for the sacrifice. We can tell this because Livy tells me he’s in the gabinian Cincture, which basically means that he’s like, belted his toga so that His arms can be free. Because, as we’ve talked about before, the toga is an unwieldy garment not really made for doing anything but gesturing with one arm emphatically,

Dr G 26:29
yeah, Heaven forfend, you have to grab a jar off a shelf with two hands, because that would be impossible in your toga, exactly.

Dr Rad 26:34
And he’s having to carry sacred vessels, so he needs his hands.

Dr G 26:39
These are sacred vessels that have not been removed from Rome. I note,

Dr Rad 26:43
well, exactly. I mean, these are presumably something to do with his family, I guess. Anyway, so he leaves the Capitol. He just walks straight through the pickets erected by the Gauls, and they obviously start hurling threats at him. He completely ignores them. He’s in the zone. He cares not for these Gallic threats, he just goes straight to the Quirinal hill and starts carrying out the rights and then returns seemingly entirely confident that because he is doing the right thing, he would be unharmed. He would not let death scare him away from the proper worship of the gods the Gauls have their jaws on the floor. They are completely confounded, kind of impressed by the level of his religious dedication. And there is maybe a little insult here in Livy’s account about the Gauls being like an overly superstitious people. I can’t really figure out if it’s meant to be a compliment that the girls were impressed by the Roman but I think it’s probably more a bit of a backhander where he’s like, you know, the girls, overly superstitious, foolish people,

Dr G 27:54
fascinating, given that the whole story, and the premise of it is that the gods must be upheld at all times, and the Romans must do it in the face of All troubles. Yeah, that’s

Dr Rad 28:02
why I can’t I couldn’t quite figure it out like, I think it is meant to be a little bit of an insult, or at least, sort of playing on this idea that the goals were a very superstitious people, and so were likely to be impressed by religious dedication, which is perhaps why they didn’t do anything to this guy. They just let him pass and that sort of thing. Now this is obviously a very curious story, and there are other explanations for what is going on here. There is a fragment from Cassius Hermina, and I think this will intrigue you, Dr G who says that Fabius was not actually carrying out some sort of family sacrifice, but was instead actually tending to the cult of Vesta.

Dr G 28:46
Oh yes. Now this is where it ties in very nicely with a small fragment from Appian, because this is mentioned and the priest isn’t given a designation as part of the Fabii. The name Dorso is part of it, but he is called Dorsonote

Dr G 29:07
I think there are variations in the name, yeah.

Dr G 29:09
And apparently he does go down from the Capitol because the annual sacrifice that is required of his priesthood is required at the Temple of Vesta. And he goes down into the city. He’s carrying all the sacred utensils that he needs. He goes through the ranks of the Gauls, and they seem. It’s described that the Gauls are either awed by his courage in going through with this act, or they have a high level of respect for the piety that he’s demonstrating, which would suggest that the Gauls recognize what sacred dress and sacred utensils for the Romans even look like, which is myself, I think, a big assumption, and the fact that he looks venerable in his appearance, all of these things are enough for them to be like. Well, this. Is curious. Let’s just watch and see what happens. And so he goes and he does the sacrifice in the Temple of Vesta and returns back up the hill. So be it. And that seems to be the end of the story. Why this story is told to us is less clear,

Dr Rad 30:19
I think in Livy’s account is definitely meant to be showing the piety of the Romans, given the fact that the Gallic sack of Rome seems to be a result of their lack of attention to things like omens importance and and that sort of thing. So I feel like that’s what Livy is trying to build up here. And it is a bit of a weird story, because we don’t necessarily have that much evidence to suggest that the fabii as a gens did have a very strong connection with the Quirinal there is some sort of connection, maybe, in the way that the family set out for the battle of chimera, where most of them are apparently slaughtered. But there’s no archeological evidence to show that any of the fabii ever lived in this location. We don’t really have any other mention of this sacrifice, as far as I’m aware. So it is a bit of an interesting one.

Dr G 31:19
It is, and the quirinal is not where the Temple of Vesta is, either. So these are two different versions of a story, and it’s hard to know what might be going on here. I do suspect that, given there are variations on their story, that there’s something to it, that at some point, perhaps there was some sort of agreement made with the Gauls that it was important for this religious right to take place, and they’d only be sending one man down the hill, and would it be permitted, and some agreement had been reached which allowed it to take place. But aside from that, this doesn’t seem to be the big ticket item that leads to the next thing that happens in this siege.

Dr Rad 32:03
No, I feel like it’s just part of the redemption story of Rome. But basically, once the chips are down, all of a sudden, the Romans remember how they should be conducting themselves and start, you know, polishing their shoes, making their beds.

Dr G 32:19
I suspect that might present a kind of literary foil to what we’ve seen with camilius, journey of accidentally promising things that he couldn’t keep to the gods whoops. And in this case, if there is a Fabian connection, the idea that they have acknowledged that there was wrongdoing on their part when they were in Clusium. And this is an attempt to write things and square things with the gods in this instance.

Dr Rad 32:46
Well, yes, lest we forget, that one of the earliest analysts of Rome was from this family, yes.

Dr G 32:53
And so this could be a redemptive arc as well, but for the Gauls and what is happening with this siege, it is really the situation with Pontius Cominius That seems to spur on the next act, because at least in the account of Diodorus, for all of the fact that he goes out under the cover of darkness to make contact with the Capitoline, the Gauls do see him. Interesting.

Dr Rad 33:24
See in Livy’s account, they see the footprints that he left behind, which is weird, because allegedly, they weren’t watching this part of the cliff because they thought nobody could possibly climb it. And yet they notice his footprints.

Dr G 33:37
I do like the we’re not looking. We’re not looking. Is that a shoe? What?

Dr Rad 33:44
Nobody’s been walking up this side of the cliff. We’ve all agreed it would be insane. Quick Get me my Sherlock Holmes outfit and my magnifying glass

Dr G 33:51
exactly like, what is this? I’ve seen something suspicious in a spot I was never looking

Dr Rad 33:59
Yeah, they even actually tested out themselves. They’re like, Oh my god, maybe there is a pathway up here that we haven’t noticed. We better try it out ourselves. And, oh my god, it does seem possible.

Dr G 34:13
And this is, I think, leading into what I think is the best part of this whole story, yeah, is that the Gauls do then send a force up the Capitoline, up this notoriously difficult cliff that maybe they were watching or maybe they weren’t watching. It’s no longer clear.

Dr Rad 34:30
I think it’s probably like kind of near the most difficult part. I don’t think they’re necessarily going up exactly the same path that our sprightly youth took, but yeah, they certainly are looking at the Capitoline and being like, oh my god, I think there’s a pathway that we hadn’t detected.

Dr G 34:47
But they do take this opportunity to sort of mirror what Cominius Pontius has done, which is, under the cover of darkness, send up some men to find a pathway, a secret way up the cliff, and be like, yes, well. Well, if one man can get up to the top without being spotted, dude who gets to the top, what if we send our men?

Dr Rad 35:05
Yes, and I’m actually given a precise location. It’s the cliff near the shrine of commentus. Now this is a reference to someone, I think, more commonly known as commenta, the mother of Evander. Evander is a character we have mentioned from time to time, because he’s kind of a bit of a alternative character to Romulus, I guess, an important character to the mythical foundations of Rome.

Dr G 35:33
Yeah, Evander comes through very strongly in Livy’s writing as an alternative sort of founding figure, and perhaps this idea that it’s near this place of carmenta will reveal some meaning over time as we get further into this story.

Dr Rad 35:51
Well, yes, I mean, I presume that there apparently Evander landed at Rome on advice given by his mother, Carmentis, Carmenta. And I presume that the shrine, obviously there is there for there to honor her part in the whole story, and him being able to establish himself on the Palatine. So I wonder if maybe it is something about, something to do with, you know, like the foundations, the establishment of Rome, and, you know, like sort of connecting to those ideas, that Rome is going to survive and going to be re established, perhaps, but I might be reading too much into it.

Dr G 36:27
I think it’s useful to think of this as a foreshadowing, because definitely some of these ideas are going to return into our narrative as we get further into this story. But the Gauls do this great moment of like, well, we’ll climb up this cliff. We’ll get to the top in the middle of the night. Nobody will know, but unfortunately, and most unfortunately, they do escape the detection of the guards. Apparently, they have landed upon a relatively unfortified section of the top of the Capitol line where the guards, for whatever reason, are either not paying attention or haven’t been looking there very closely, even though somebody of their own team just climbed up there the other day.

Dr Rad 37:09
Well, look, I presume it’s because, given the way that Livy’s sort of painting this, we’re well into the siege by this point. And we have talked about these moments where there’s been a real lull, nothing much is going on, therefore Fabii, I are just wandering around the place, seemingly ignoring all the signs saying, Stop Danger, danger. So maybe it’s just because, as would happen, I think with a siege, the really tense adrenaline kind of moments have passed, and maybe they’re just, you know, getting used to life on rations, yeah,

Dr G 37:41
and it’s hard to pay attention all of the time for sure, particularly when nothing has happened for a while, and it seems that maybe nothing has happened for a while, but lo and behold, the sacred geese of Hera aren’t having any of that. They’re paying attention, and they might be the only ones on the Capitoline paying attention. The sacred geese are what raises the alarm, and it’s the honking in the nighttime that really wakes everybody up and alerts them that the Gauls have climbed up the cliff face of the Capitoline Hill. And I love this moment. I think it’s such a beautiful way of thinking about the way the gods can interfere with people’s lives. And I do like that the geese get to have a starring role in this

Dr Rad 38:32
Well, see, I’m very intrigued by all of this, so I’m not a religious expert, as you know, when it comes to ancient Rome, so I hadn’t really ever thought about this story before, in terms of questioning exactly how the animals play a part. So this is actually part of one of my least favorite stories about Rome, because in my account, in Livy’s account, it’s the dogs that are supposed to wake everybody up if there are goals approaching. So presumably it’s part of their contingent, even though they’re so desperately short on food, they have dogs up there on the on the Capitoline, and the dogs don’t wake up. They sleep through and it’s the geese, as you say, that are sacred to Juno who, who wake everybody up. And the Romans, even though they were so desperately short on food, had not eaten animals like the geese because they were sacred. So again, their piety is kind of part of the story here. Unfortunately, the fact that the dogs didn’t wake up and they were supposed to means that the Romans are going to crucify a dog every year. It’s kind of like a remembrance and a punishment of this failure, which is absolutely my least favorite thing ever to have heard about the Romans. It’s just that is horrifying. I understand how important this moment is to them. I understand it could have led to the total collapse of their civilization, but crucifixion is just the most horrific way to kill. Kill any living creature. And the idea of putting a dog that knows absolutely nothing about what is going on into that position, like, I just can’t like the fact that when animals can’t understand what is going on around them, you know, they don’t understand war, they don’t understand these, these sorts of things, crucifying them. You know, when they have absolutely no choice in it? It just, yeah, it’s the same kind of thing. I don’t understand about our world these days. I don’t understand how people can be horrible to animals, particularly animals like dogs, who just want to love and serve human beings like they just have no malice towards anything. It just, I hate this story so, so much.

Dr G 40:43
Yeah, I agree with you, and this is part of the account that doesn’t come through in the source material that I’ve looked at. And so I have, I don’t know, upwards of 15 sources for this Gallic sack, and not once has the story of the dog being mentioned. And I find that interesting as well, because I’m hearing it for the first time from Livy’s account, and it’s it is horrifying, and I think we need to take on board that this is also just one of many horrifying acts of sacrifice that the Romans engage in. And because animal sacrifice is clearly very much part of their culture, and this is a particularly cruel way to engage

Dr Rad 41:28
in it true. I think it’s the thing of, I don’t like the idea of animal sacrifice, you know, I’m very much about just treating other living things with the dignity and respect that we would expect for ourselves. I don’t believe there is a difference between humans and humans and animals, because humans are animals, but I think when it comes to animal sacrifice in Rome, it’s my understanding. Correct me, if I’m wrong here, dr, G, that when you are sacrificing an animal, you actually don’t want it to be panicked at the moment of death. It is meant to be a relatively calm procedure. So whilst it isn’t my favorite thing, at least, I can kind of understand that the animal hopefully didn’t really feel much fear. You know, I think it’s actually probably certainly a kinder way to be killed than what millions of animals around the world endure at the hands of factory farming, where they’re literally lined up like on a conveyor belt, and have to watch other animals be killed and smell the blood and smell the fear and the urine and the feces that probably goes along with that whole process. Like what we do to animals is definitely, I think, far worse because of the scale and the fact that we actually should know better by now, but at the same time, and so I guess that’s why I can kind of overlook the animal sacrifice part of ancient Rome, but this particular thing I can’t really overlook, and look, Livy, doesn’t give me the full story right at this moment. It’s actually putting together other sources that I’ve read that I understand the ongoing impact of this moment for dogs and geese. The other side of this story is that the geese are on it every year, so you do have that side of the story. But the interesting thing I did come across about the geese, and this is where they say my lack of religious knowledge sort of came into play, because I wouldn’t really have actually questioned this. But apparently, geese are not really known to be sacred to Juno. They’re not really depicted, generally on monuments connected to her. And so it’s interesting that it is geese that are mentioned at this moment. And one of the sources that I read suggested that actually maybe there were birds on the Capitol, because we know that there was an auguraculum where birds would be watched for divine signs by just how they ate their food. You know, like, do they eat a lot? Do they eat greedily? Do they not eat a lot? And you would ascertain what the gods wanted from watching that. And we apparently don’t really know exactly which birds might have been used. Of this, we know that later on, hens were used, but maybe not always hens. So maybe the geese were there because they were a part of that,

Dr G 44:11
quite possibly. And yeah, you’re quite right. I mean, if we’re thinking about Juno’s Greek counterpart, Hera, often associated iconographically with the peacock, and we seem to have a real lack of peacocks in this story.

Dr Rad 44:26
It’s a different bird altogether. Yeah, you wouldn’t

Dr G 44:29
make the mistake, I don’t think. But anyway, the sacred geese very handy in this moment one because, as we all know, geese are great guard animals, and they raise the alarm. And it’s at this moment that we get to have a new hero enter into our story, because once the geese are off and running, being like, Alert, alert, something’s going wrong, flapping the wings, honking around Marcus Manlius or Maelius, he has variations on his name. He seems to be the first and the only named figure that rushes to the defense of the Capitoline hill in this moment. He’s definitely the one who encourages others to take up their swords in this moment. And what he does is horrifying as well. He starts cutting off Gaulish hands. So as the hands of the Gauls reach over the top edge of the cliff to finally achieve the ascent that they’ve been working on all night, he starts cutting off hands. Oh, my

Dr Rad 45:34
God, I don’t have that detail at all in my story, even though he is the one who wakes everybody else up, gathers all the weapons and is like, come on, slapping people awake. Get your act together. We’ve got some stuff to do. When he spots a Gaul who had almost made his way to the Romans, he uses his shield to sort of push him and beat him back. And when this Gallic person then slips and falls, it creates this domino effect where all the goals are kind of knocked down, like, and the goals are like, Oh my God. And the goals are obviously taken by surprise that they have been spotted, even though, surely they also heard the geese, but apparently not. And so they kind of drop all their weapons, and they are just hanging on to rocks. Now this would be the moment where you’d think, okay, he could come in and slice off some hands. But all I am told is that he kills them all. So just as they’re sort of dangling on the cliff face there, he kills them all, which is horrifying, but oh my god, the hand thing. Yikes.

Dr G 46:34
Yeah. Apparently Diodorus tells us that he goes for the hands first and then pushes them back. And so some of them start tumbling off the cliff. And he keeps going with that, and he encourages others to keep going with that, because it seems to be working. He’s like, go for the hands and then push him off.

Dr Rad 46:50
I mean, look, logically, that makes sense. If they’re scaling a cliff face in order to reach the Romans, it would absolutely make sense to be like stomping, stabbing, cutting their hands, yes.

Dr G 47:01
And once you fall off a cliff face, like the Capitoline Hill is high enough that if you fall off the top of it down a cliff face, it’s going to end badly for you. You’re either going to be very severely injured with not much longer to go, or the fall will kill you. So this places the Romans in a position where they’re feeling a little bit superior. They’re like, we’ve knocked back this attack. And this is sort of opens the door for some negotiations to take place.

Dr Rad 47:33
Okay, interesting. Before you get into the negotiations, I just have to add my favorite inconsequential detail about this whole story. So as you say, Manlius is attacking all these Gauls. The rest of the Romans join in. They’re using their javelins, they’re using stones, and all the Gauls are hurled to their death. And once all the Gauls have been killed, who’ve been trying to scale this cliff, the Romans are like, ooh, bit of adrenaline pumping through them, but it’s all kind of dying down now that they can see that there are no more attackers. And the Romans turn to each other, and they’re like, finally, we can get some decent sleep, and let’s go back to bed. Amazing. I’m also told by Livy that at dawn, the Romans are woken up, you know, like the trumpet sounds, the soldiers are all called to assemble before the tribunes because it’s time, Dr G to reward the good and the bad performances of the night. Manlius, of course, is the hero singled out for his bravery, and he is given gifts, not just from the tribunes, but all the soldiers had, somehow in the space of a night where they slaughtered some goals and got a decent amount of sleep, managed to get together, and they’ve each brought half a pound of spelt and a gill of wine to his house, which was handily enough on the Citadel, which is obviously meant to be a huge sacrifice, because the Romans don’t have a ton of provisions at this moment in time, so he would presumably appreciate this more than anything else, but the bad performance is, Dr G, uh oh, what to do with not just the dogs but the men who were supposed to be on watch? I mean, guys, guys. Guys. How did you let this happen? This is kind of your one job.

Dr G 49:25
You telling me you delegated to the geese.

Dr Rad 49:30
So a tribune named Quintus Sulpicius said, I’m going to punish you all in the military fashion. Now I’m not really given any more details than that, but I presume that might mean something like decimation.

Dr G 49:45
I didn’t know they had decimation at this point in time, but it doesn’t sound pleasant look.

Dr Rad 49:49
I’m not sure exactly what that means. Is it? I mean, maybe it just means death, like in the military fashion,

Dr G 49:54
it might be a whipping of some kind. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re being scouged with. Odds, for instance, that might be a military punishment at this point, because we don’t have a formalized military that’s true. It does make it hard to know what the military punishment would be, because this is not something that has tended to come up so far. It might be too early for decimation, but it also

Dr Rad 50:17
might not look decimation was just my guess as I was reading this because I was like, What does in the military fashion mean? I mean, look, I think we can safely say not pleasant, not something you want to happen to you.

Dr G 50:28
Yeah, obviously, yeah, if you think about the military, what’s something that you don’t want to happen to you as a military person? Many things.

Dr Rad 50:36
Yeah, exactly. But all the soldiers protest and say, no, no, no, that is, pardon the pun, but overkill. You don’t need to go that far. And they basically decide that they’re going to throw one guy under the bus completely. Wow, yeah, they’re like, it’s all his fault. All his fault. Don’t worry, listeners, Livy assures me that he completely deserves it. It definitely was entirely this guy’s fault, and so he is held off the top of a rock in punishment. Wow.

Dr G 51:09
Throw him down on top of the dead Gauls. That’s where he deserves to be. Look.

Dr Rad 51:15
I presume that is what Livy means. But I must admit, there have been some accounts that I have read that also seem to suggest that maybe Livy is referring to being hurled off the Tarpeian rock, which does happen to people as punishment in ancient Rome. But Dr, G, you know the geography of Rome, and you, I don’t think will believe this.

Dr G 51:38
I find that unlikely. I mean, yes, we do have the Tarpeian rock. Is a classic rock to throw people off, but the Romans are in a siege situation, and they’re confined to the Capitoline hill. So the idea that they would be able to get through the Gaulish forces all the way across to where the Tarpeian rock is and throw this guy off the specific rock that they like to throw people off, rather than the rock that they have that they’re on top of right now, which they’ve been defending for their lives. Seems unlikely at best.

Dr Rad 52:08
Well, I guess it would be very symbolic to hurl a Roman who you regard as having really broken his trust with the people to like, throw him down on top of the dead.

Dr G 52:19
Gauls, yeah. Serves him right. Yeah, you’re as good as the enemy to us, yeah. Well, yeah. Well, after the fall of the rock, yes.

Dr Rad 52:29
So this whole section of the account wraps up for me with Livy noting, as one might expect, that the guards for the Romans and the Gauls are now on much higher alert after these nighttime shenanigans.

Dr G 52:41
Well, well, well, maybe we do need to pay attention.

Dr Rad 52:44
Yeah, and the Gauls have definitely picked up on the fact that there is, I think, some communication going on between they and Rome. They’ve picked up on that. They saw the cork, and they were like, hang on a second. There’s only one reason for a piece of cork to be floating in the Tiber. And the Romans, of course, have almost just lost everything, so they’re like, We need to, like, pick up our game, guys. We need to get the show on the road.

Dr G 53:10
Yeah, look, I swear. Look, I’ve seen some cork, and I’m pretty sure it’s from Veii. What, man, but we’re besieging Rome. I know. Isn’t that virtus?

Dr Rad 53:23
In your account, it may be this that opens the negotiations, but in my account, we’re all about to be in for famine and pestilence. Oh, goody, yes, yes, no one shall be spared.

Dr G 53:41
Chapter Two, a siege is not a siege until you have famine and pestilence

Dr Rad 53:45
indeed, and that Dr G is where I would like to lay my hat. Ooh, the suspense. I haven’t been podcasting for 13 years without learning a trick or two about suspense.

Dr G 54:00
Well, I guess that means it is time for the partial pick.

Dr Rad 54:10
It is indeed, Dr G, can you please explain to our listeners what the partial pick is all about?

Dr G 54:15
Well, Rome has their chance to win 50 gold eagles, 10 Eagles each across five categories. I would say that the Romans made up these categories, but they didn’t. We did. We thought about them when we made them up, and maybe that will help.

Dr Rad 54:31
So what is our first category? Dr, G,

Dr G 54:33
our first category is military clout.

Dr Rad 54:38
This is very tough because there has actually been a little bit of military success on the Roman side, in some ways, it just depends how you look at it. They have apparently dealt with some marauding Etruscans in the region of they and been victorious there, largely because they follow the Camillus blueprint and then. They have also managed to beat off an attempt by the goals to break the siege.

Dr G 55:06
That’s true, cutting off a few hands, pushing people back with shields. Yeah, yeah. I mean that in a siege, that’s kind of as good as it gets, apart from busting out of the siege itself is resisting the attack on your location. So I guess maybe a five,

Dr Rad 55:25
wow, a five. That is uncharacteristically generous.

Dr G 55:29
Well, I’m thinking like, how hard is it to have a military clout moment when you’re in Siege conditions? And I’d say it’s probably pretty difficult, because one you’ve either got to summon up the courage to do an attack yourself. So leaving your defenses and going down and engaging directly, that would be more military clout, I would say, but to sort of take on the sort of the pillaging roaming camps of the Etruscans when you’ve got a split force, and also to defend yourself successfully, although, I mean, you did have to rely on the geese. Yeah?

Dr Rad 56:06
Yeah. I was gonna say, I feel like I can’t believe I’m saying this, me of all people, but I feel like five is too generous.

Dr G 56:12
I feel like the geese deserve 10, yeah, but maybe the Romans deserve less than five, now that I’m thinking about it, yeah.

Dr Rad 56:19
I kind of feel like maybe a three or four, because, like, it’s something, but they are still kind of slowly starving to death on the capital,

Dr G 56:29
okay. Well, if we’re measuring it by that, it’s a three,

Dr Rad 56:34
all right, so three, it is, all right.

Dr G 56:36
The second category is diplomacy,

Dr Rad 56:39
hmm, well, I think we agreed that diplomacy has to be something in between Roman foreign powers, because whilst there is definitely some secret messaging going on between the Romans and their fellow Romans, I don’t think that counts.

Dr G 56:55
No, that is not diplomacy. That’s a zero, yeah. Zero, okay.

Dr Rad 57:00
Expansion, I feel like this is going to be a continual zero for some time. That’s a no. Wirtus, huh? Well, I think Manlius definitely would meet some of the criteria for that with his actions in bravely waking everybody up and thrusting swords into their hands and then single handedly cutting off the hands, of course, until the Romans are awake enough to join him and help him.

Dr G 57:32
Yes, that is that is definitely a classic military style weird to us. I would love to give Cominius Pontius some points for virtus, but I’m not sure that sneaking around in the middle of the night and not being seen and having a cork board as a bit of a floaty counts as weird to us.

Dr Rad 57:49
Okay, well, what about in my account? Gaius Fabius Dorsuo, hmm. I mean, it’s more piety, I suppose, than virtus.

Dr G 57:57
But yeah, I don’t think it counts because it sits in the wrong category.

Dr Rad 58:02
He does have to walk through, apparently, an entire Gallic army to get to the criminal.

Dr G 58:08
Yeah, it’s awkward, but what you got to do, I suppose, is it weirdos. I don’t think so. Okay, fair enough. So that leaves us with Manlius as our standout character.

Dr Rad 58:17
And then it seems very appropriate that his name is Manlius when we’re talking about when we’re talking about weirdos.

Dr G 58:18
But he’s only capable of demonstrating that in the face of the geese. So it’s not like he spotted the Gauls coming up the

Dr Rad 58:32
cliff. Well, once he woke up, he spotted them.

Dr G 58:36
I see it all now. Thanks, Juno. I don’t know, maybe a four, what?

Dr Rad 58:44
No, I’m sorry you were gonna give the Romans a five for military clout when all they’d really done is fend off an attack whilst they were under a very serious siege. And they also happened to spot some Etruscans like raiding when they were at Veii and under no real threat. Absolutely not. It has to be a five,

Dr G 59:07
okay, all right, fine. I will accept five. Thank you. Our final rating is for the citizen score. Well, there aren’t

Dr Rad 59:19
really any citizens left it. They’re all in Veii or somewhere in the countryside.

Dr G 59:25
Yeah, it’s not looking great or dead. So I guess it’s a it’s a zero.

Dr Rad 59:31
I think it has to be a zero for now, hopefully things will start to turn around for the Romans soon.

Dr G 59:36
Yeah, we haven’t seen anything to suggest that the citizens are having a good time in any way. I mean,

Dr Rad 59:41
look, the only consideration I will throw in here is that, I guess with Camillus technically being appointed dictator in this episode, I can’t believe that hasn’t come up in the partial pic, maybe there’s some hope, because there are some Romans at Veii. They’re probably having a good time. They’re at the spa rejuvenating.

Dr G 59:59
That’s right, yeah, yeah. I can’t forget those guys. Yeah. It’s not clear to me that anybody’s having a good time as a citizen. So and it’s hard to when it’s a siege, yeah, and your city is basically, yeah, you’re either there on rations or you’re out in the countryside hoping that somebody will take you in without killing you. You’re very vulnerable.

Dr Rad 1:00:20
Yeah, yeah. This is true, yeah. I mean, like the people at a might be okay, but they’re still not at Rome.

Dr G 1:00:27
This is true, and though, but though maybe they don’t want to be foreshadowing, foreshadowing, foreshadowing, all

Dr Rad 1:00:32
right, so it’s probably zero, then, yeah, okay, well, Dr G, that means that I have only had to use my two hands to count again, because the Romans have finished with eight out of 50 golden eagles.

Dr G 1:00:46
Wow, congratulations, Rome scraping in at the bottom of the barrel. Not a surprise, given they’re in a siege.

Dr Rad 1:00:53
I was gonna say that guy wasn’t really expecting high scores throughout 390 BCE and I have not been disappointed.

Dr G 1:01:00
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure to discuss Ancient Rome with you. Dr Rad, as always,

Dr Rad 1:01:06
thank you. Dr G and I would like to finish up because we have talked a lot about animals during this episode, just reminding people, please be kind to your pets. They are part of your family. And also, if you feel like it, maybe donate to help some pet rescues. They’re really under increasing pressure these days, particularly in Australia. Right now, as we’re recording, it is kitten season, and they’re being absolutely inundated. A lot of these people have full time jobs and help out with these sorts of rescue operations in their spare time, whilst they’re juggling families and all the other responsibilities that we all have. And of course, there are also lots of working animals in the world that don’t have great conditions to live in and maybe go a little bit more plant based in your diet, because Factory Farming isn’t great either. The Romans may not have been fantastic when it came to animal welfare, but I’m not always sure that our society is much better.

Dr G 1:02:02
Yeah, I would definitely advocate for including more plants in your diet where possible. That is, I’d say number one, the easiest way to support animals. And yeah, I think we both donate to Cat shelters and things like that.

Dr Rad 1:02:16
So I definitely do quite a number of them. But yeah, I do sense the desperation for a lot of rescuers, and I really feel for them. So speaking about the crucifixion of dogs, just got me in mind that, yeah, if we all pitch together, hopefully we can stop these kind of places, to be honest, being necessary, because they’re really only necessary when human beings are irresponsible, all right. Dr, G until next time, I’ll catch you soon.

Dr Rad 1:02:51
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. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collective mem.com you can support us by buying us a coffee on Ko Fi. But you can also support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad free content. Today, we would like to send a special shout out to Kent Johnson for not only supporting us on Kofi, but Patreon as well. However, if you aren’t feeling particularly patrician these days, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 169 – The Gallic Sack of Rome – Part 4 appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

We Who Are About to Die…

The Romans who have remained in the city take up their defensive positions on the Capitol. The old patricians did not join them. Instead, their retired to their houses. Wearing their old robes of state, they settled down in the middle of their houses on ivory chairs to await the end.

Livy reports that some of his accounts indicate that the pontifex maximus (chief priest) led the ex-magistrates in a vow, in which they were devoting themselves to death for the sake of the city and its citizens.

The Gauls found their blood had cooled; after all, they had not had to fight the Romans to seize control of the city. They had just wandered in. They could see that the Capitol had been fortified, so they kept an eye on that area. However, it was time to go SHOPPING! All these abandoned streets and houses – it was theirs for the taking.

After some pillaging and plundering, the Gauls touched base again in the Forum. The plebeian houses in the area were locked up – they weren’t taking any chances whilst they were out of town. But the houses of the elite were mysteriously open.

As the Gauls entered the patrician dwellings, a shocking sight met their eyes. The old ex-magistrates, sitting as still as statues, dressed in their robes of state, just waiting for them. Not quite believing their eyes, one of the Gauls reached out to touch the beard of one of the patricians. How rude! The patrician clocked him in the head with an ivory mace. The Gauls were not going to show restraint now. The patricians were slain, the houses of the Roman citizens looted, and finally, the city was set on fire.

‘Destruction’ by Thomas Cole (1836), Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Up in Flames?

But not the whole city – these Gauls weren’t FOOLS! They wanted to keep a bargaining chip in their back pockets. Maybe these pesky Romans on the citadel might surrender to save their homes?

The Romans in question were in their own kind of hell as they sat on the Capitol and had to watch the destruction. Fortune had turned her back on them.

Did this mean that the Romans were going to give up? It most certainly did NOT! When the Gauls finally assaulted the Capital, the Romans were ready for them. They managed to hold the line. If the Gauls wanted to seize all of Rome, they were going to have to settle in for a siege.

The Exiled Camillus

As the Gauls made themselves comfortable and set about plundering the countryside, over in Ardea, the exiled Camillus heard of the attack on Rome. What could he do? Could he possibly whip up an inspirational speech and persuade the Ardeates to fight the Gallic invaders? You betcha!

Things to Look Out For:

• Dazzling rhetoric
• Far too much bloodshed
• Silent, manly tears from the Romans on the Capitol
• Ye olde time Roman racism
• The Gauls putting on a SHOW of destruction for the Romans

Our Players 393 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

Q. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat)

K. Fabius M. f. Q n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 404, 401, 395

N. Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 406

Q. Sulpicius -f. -n. Longus (Pat)

Q. Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 402, 398, 395, 388, 386

P. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Cos. 393? Mil. Tr. c. p. 397

Dictator

M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

L. Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 389, 387, 383

OR

L. Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) Cos. 393, 392; Mil. Tr. c.p. 414, 406, 403, 401, 398

Pontifices

?-390: M. Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 433

C. or K. Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

Augurs or Pontifex

439-390: Q. ? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus or Structus Fidenas?) (Pat)

Successor: [—- Furi]us Q. f. P. nepos Fu[sus] (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 403

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.41-45.
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.113-117; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Appian, BC, 2.50; Appian, Gallic History, 1-4; Justinus, Epitome of Pompeius’ Trogus’ Philippic Histories; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Eutropius 1.20
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Sound Credits

Our music is by the superb Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

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 battle’s waged, 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 0:56
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am Dr G,

Dr Rad 1:02
and I am Dr ad, and we

Dr G 1:05
are deep, deep inside the Gallic sack of Rome. And so far, it hasn’t happened yet. But Just you wait, I think it’s gonna happen in this episode.

Dr Rad 1:15
Well, that just sounds dirty. Dr G, not even a minute in, and already disgusting.

Dr G 1:21
The Romans, they do it to me every time.

Dr Rad 1:26
Well, Dr G 390, as we know, is an epic year, so epic that we may not even be able to cover it in three episodes, which is kind of what we were anticipating. But I see a fourth in our future.

Dr G 1:37
Yeah, it’s quite potential. Now that I’ve sat down and re looked at my notes. I suspect today is not the day that we finish the sack. It’s going to go on a bit like a siege goes on for much longer than anybody wants it to.

Dr Rad 1:49
Exactly now we’ve got up to the point Dr G, where the Gauls are at the walls of Rome. Things are very dire. We’ve had Vestals in distress, fleeing before the horde of Gallic attackers,

Dr G 2:07
running away with all the sacred items that they can put their hands on, and hitching a ride to a nearby

Dr Rad 2:14
city. Yes, which we presume is Caere

Dr G 2:17
yeah, which is so far away that’s not nearby at all. You don’t want to walk all the way. That’s 50 or so kilometers, 30 miles. Luckily, they get picked up in a cart, yeah.

Dr Rad 2:28
And they kick out a wife and child so that they can get a ride with this guy, Albinius.

Dr G 2:35
And I think in terms of orientation, of where we’re up to in this story, I think it’s important to note that the Romans are losing most assuredly, this is not going well. They’ve already lost a major battle at the union of the Tiber River and the Allia, and they have retreated. Some of their soldiers have fled to ve that will become important, and some have fled back to Rome, also important. And now the Gaulish forces had time to sort of do their roundup of the sorts of things they like to do post battle, which is go around and cut everybody’s heads off and then make their way to Rome itself.

Dr Rad 3:09
Yes, so Rome itself, we have a force that have been left to defend the Citadel. Dr G because, God forbid, the Citadel should be captured.

Dr G 3:20
And importantly, the Citadel is on the Capitoline hill, so it is on the highest viewing point of the city. It has the best defense. And everybody’s like retreat to the highest place of the defenses. Retreat.

Dr Rad 3:35
And this is a particularly sacred part of the city as well. The Romans would indeed rather die than let this be taken so it is obviously very, very grim at this moment in time. Dr G, everyone has fled, except for this band of defenders. We’ve got sacred objects being stored in other cities because they can’t be left in Rome. They’re just not safe anymore. There’s also one other group who have been left behind in the city by choice, Dr, G, and that is a bunch of really old men.

Dr G 4:09
Ah, yes, those who are fabled not to be able to travel well, and have decided to take upon themselves the ultimate sacrifice, which is to defend Rome in whatever way that they can up until their last dying breath.

Dr Rad 4:24
It’s a very interesting episode. This the massacre of the senators, is what we’re going to entitle it. Sorry, everybody, yeah, it’s such a cheery episode. So we’ve got these guys who are older gents. They are mostly ex magistrates. They are prepared to take a stand. Dr, G, but it seems like there might be a bit more to this story than meets the eye, something something sacred, if you will, which I think will be right up your alley. But I’m just going to tell the story as Livy tells it first, and then we can get into the analysis of it.

Dr G 5:02
All right, I’m interested in your version because I have a version as well, and we’ll see where they cross over, and if they’re in

Dr Rad 5:08
any way similar, is yours Valerius Maximus?

Dr G 5:11
No, I’ve gone with, although I could have pulled from Valerius Maximus, I’ve actually gone with a little bit of detail from Plutarch.

Dr Rad 5:19
Okay, all right, so in Livy’s version, we’ve got these ex magistrates, older gentlemen. They decide that they’re going to dress up in their robes of state and triumphal robes, because they know that they are going to be meeting their deaths when the goals arrive. Indeed.

Dr G 5:39
Okay, so they’re going to go out with the accouterments of their their roles. This is a very noble thing for the elderly patricians to do. I have to say, we don’t tend to give the patricians a lot of credit on this podcast, because they tend to make terrible decisions, but this moment of personal sacrifice and acceptance of that sacrifice is incredibly noble of them, and I have to give them props for that. Yes.

Dr Rad 6:10
Now they position themselves on ivory chairs in the middle of their houses, ready to meet the enemy. Livy tells me that some historians, yes, I am quoting him there. Some historians say that the Pontifex Maximus, a guy called Marcus Folius, led the senators in a recitation of a solemn vow in which they devoted themselves to death on behalf of Rome and the Quirites, basically the Roman citizens. So this is where the sacred stuff comes into it. Dr, G, I’ll return to this later. The Gauls were not actually quite as raring for a fight at this point in time, after a night had passed and things had died down a little, I guess their adrenaline wasn’t pumping quite as hard as it had been previously. They hadn’t really faced a tough battle against the Romans as they were expecting previously, at the battle that you referred to the Ahala As we know, the Romans did not acquit themselves very well, and now, even more puzzling, it looks like there’s not going to be much resistance put up by the city itself. It’s pretty much deserted. They just wander in through the open Colline gate. They toddle along until they get to the forum. They’re kind of having a look at the temples, checking things out as they go. And when they spot the Citadel, they think, Okay, it looks like this might be a place where people are readied for battle. The Gauls decide that they’re going to station a small number of guards to keep a look at on the Citadel make sure that they’re not going to be attacked whilst they’re scouring the streets because they’re wary of that place. But most of them are now free to roam the city streets and go in search of booty. They meet nobody in the streets, and so some of them start getting into little groups and going into just the closest houses. Some of them are going into houses that are the furthest away, because they think, well, if these are far away, it’s probably going to be the most stuff in here that’s left behind. I’ll get there first. I’ll get all the really good stuff. But then they kind of get a little bit scared because they’re so far away from anyone else. And they kind of run back to the forum and go, it’s so spooky. There’s nobody here.

Dr G 8:42
Like nobody this place is creepy.

Dr Rad 8:46
Don’t leave me alone, you guys. I don’t even like going to the bathroom without a friend. So the houses near the forum are a popular place to look for booty because they’re all close to each other. The plebeian houses are all locked up. Gotta lock your doors when the goals are in town. Dr G, security first.

Dr G 9:05
Also you’re plebeian. It’s like, I can’t afford to lose any of this lock it up.

Dr Rad 9:09
I have no insurance. But the elite houses were open. The goals are, again, a little freaked out to find that these patrician houses aren’t locked up, and when they enter, what a sight they see these guys, dressed to the nines, just silently sitting there in the middle of their houses on ivory chairs. The Gauls were naturally awed by the sight of these God like creatures the patricians, it’s a trap. Well, not really. I don’t think these older gentlemen, no matter how spooky they look, are gonna be able to put an end. Oh no,

Dr G 9:56
they’ve taken a vow to death. It’s good.

Dr Rad 10:00
Yeah, so the goals slowly, I think, approach the older ex magistrates as they sit there, and they’re kind of gazing at them, almost like they’re looking at a sculpture or a piece of artwork, because they’re just sitting there unmoving. And this is where we get a story. And there are a couple of different versions about exactly how this plays out and indeed, who is the ex magistracies in question? But in Livy’s version, one of the Gallic warriors decides he’s actually going to touch the beard of Marcus Papirius. So sort of give it a stroke just see what’s going on there. Apparently, at this time all Romans had long beards. Didn’t know that.

Dr G 10:44
Yeah, wait a minute. So a couple of things. One, they seem so statue like that. You’re like, you know what? I wonder what would happen if I just gave a touch to the fuzz?

Dr Rad 10:56
Exactly. Papirius then hits him in the head with an ivory mace, which is seen as a provocative act on behalf of the Gauls, Papirius is therefore the first Roman in Livy’s account in the city in the sack by the Gauls to be killed. And the Gauls now longer have no interest in holding back. They are just looting through all the houses. They’re setting them on fire. They’re going crazy. And this is where we get the massacre of any patrician left in the city that’s not in the Citadel.

Dr G 11:32
Oh no, yeah. Okay, wow.

Dr Rad 11:36
Now, do you want to tell me your version of things before we get into what exactly is going on here.

Dr G 11:41
It is quite similar. So I suspect that Plutarch has read his Livy so he doesn’t mention anything about a religious connotation to it. There’s no involvement of a Pontifex Maximus, which is real shame, because I do love that kind of stuff. And hopefully this means that the Gauls have been cursed through their murdering of the old patricians, but I suppose we’ll have to wait to find out. But there is this sense that the city has been abandoned, and the Gauls take a few days to come to grips with that idea. So they’re sort of looking at it, and they’re like, doesn’t look like there’s many people here. Should we go in? And they do spend some time thinking about that. And eventually Brennus leads them into the forum, and they see men sitting in the forum, actually in this account, and they don’t move those patricians do not get up. They don’t make any gesture towards acknowledging that the ghouls are there. They continue to sit quietly. They’re leaning on their staffs, very appropriate old man, and they gaze into each other’s faces. So it’s almost like they’re in a circle of meditation with each other. How intriguing. And the ghouls are amazed and perplexed by this. And we do have this moment of one of them going up to a guy aptly named Papirius Marcus, as opposed to Marcus Papirius.

Dr Rad 13:10
Oh, I see what he did there,

Dr G 13:12
gently grasping his chin, stroking his long beard. So you know, keep in mind, patricians with long beards, they seem to be a thing right now, Papirius grabs his staff and smote the guy in the head. This pretty offensive to the Gaul, he draws his sword and kills the guy. So that’s the end of Papirius. And after that, the goals are like, we need to deal with this. They’re clearly all kind of dangerous. They look old, but someone just got hit with the stuff, so that’s not okay. And they then proceed to murder all the rest of them. They sack and plunder the houses of the city. They do that for days. Rome is quite substantial at this point in time, according to the historical record, as people understand it, maybe not so much archeologically, but they go through and apparently it takes them a few days at least of plundering to realize that they’ve got everything, and the only thing that remains is that holdout of the Capitolini hill and the Citadel upon it intriguing.

Dr Rad 14:15
Okay, well, let me unpack this episode a little bit, because this is obviously a moment of extreme weird or stuck to G Oh yes, the partial pick is going to have a field day at the end of the episode. Igor is already stretching his wings. He is he’s getting ready. It is possible that part of the details of this story has once again, come down to us through family tradition. Now it depends, obviously a little bit on who is named as the guy who strikes the Gaul in the head with his mace or his staff or whatever he’s holding, but in my account, it would presumably be someone from the gens Papirius, because that’s the person who is highlighted as being. Being the one that strikes the first blow.

Dr G 15:02
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. And Livy’s Usually on top of his family histories in this sort of way. Does he make any gesture in that direction that he’s using family histories in this point?

Dr Rad 15:13
He doesn’t. But we know that he does use those sorts of sources, and we know that by the time Livy and Dionysius are writing, that they are using earlier analysts who might have had those stories passed on to them. We don’t know if Livy is consulting anybody directly in this particular story. He doesn’t mention it. But the thing that I thought you might find interesting is this hint of this idea of devotion, of giving up their lives in a sacred way. So this is something that is apparently discussed in Cicero, where he talks about this idea that someone could, in fact, devote themselves, and it had to be somebody who had held Imperium, or was holding Imperium, and if you were in a particular moment of crisis, someone who had held Imperium could kind of claim it again and do so by clasping their chin. And therefore, the reason that whoever it was hit the goal in the head is not just because, well, this guy is the enemy, and he’s going to kill me as soon as he has the chance, but because by stroking the beard, he might have interfered with what was a ritual gesture.

Dr G 16:31
Oh, very interesting indeed. Oh, I like it a lot.

Dr Rad 16:36
I thought you might have now, the reason that it’s not maybe easy to exactly trace all of this is that the later retellings don’t necessarily make all of this clear, but certainly, Livy has taken it to be more about wirtus than a religious act by This interpretation, if that’s what indeed is going on here.

Dr G 17:03
Well, look something like this calls into question a whole bunch of things to do with how does Imperium really work? Is it as simple as touching your chin and you

Dr Rad 17:15
return the hairs of my Chinny, chin, chin, dr, G, they’re a bit more numerous these days with perimenopause.

Dr G 17:21
Well, exactly. I mean, there’s so much Imperium to be taken as well. So I think to myself, if this is a ritual gesture, it might be related to how somebody comes into Imperium and how someone comes into that position of power. This might be related to it. So if there are gestural elements to the transference from one position to another, where one includes Imperium, perhaps we be on to something, and this is something that we really don’t have a lot of great sense about, or at least, I’ve never come across anything like this in my research. And so I’d be really interested to find out, because we know that there’s lots of gestural elements to Roman culture. There’s a whole bunch that are related to oratory, for instance, and we see some great interpretations of how gesture could be used in the public space in HBO as Rome as well, with the news teller, which I think is probably getting as close as anybody has come on screen to demonstrating how some of that might have looked in a public space, but the idea that there is a performative element to these things, and that there were understood deliberate physical movements and performances that you could do, I wonder how that would play out when we think about Imperium in a different way. I don’t know that you can necessarily just claim Imperium back. That seems like a recipe for chaos. Imagine all of those magistrates in the Senate.

Dr Rad 18:53
I think it has to be in a moment of particular crisis that you could have this ritual gesture and sort of be reclaiming your Imperium, Reclaiming my time, Reclaiming my time, fair enough, more power to you. But yes, this is something this, maybe this is something I could dig a little bit further into. But certainly, there are some questions about exactly who the person is. Valerius Maximus does include this story as well as of course, he would be totally attracted to this episode of weirdos as well, and he talks about ateleus, rather than Papirius being the person at the center of it. So I think this is probably why people have thought, hmm, have families got involved and tried to argue that it was in fact, their relative that struck the first blow against the Gauls.

Dr G 19:43
It is my ancestor who started the path to victory.

Dr Rad 19:47
It is my ancestor. No, it is my ancestor.

Dr G 19:51
I touched my chin at you. Haha, Imperium.

Dr Rad 19:54
In Livy’s account, there may have been division amongst the Gauls about what exists. Exactly to do once they had started attacking Rome, Livy mentions the possibility that maybe not all the Gauls wanted to trash the entire city, or perhaps there was a bit of a tactic going on here amongst the leaders of the Gauls, where they just wanted to freak the Romans out a little bit by just burning some of their buildings, thinking that the Romans who were left on the Citadel might surrender themselves if they saw that their homes were in danger, and then keep some of them standing so that there was a reason for them to come back out. Because, of course, if you destroy everything, the Gauls realize, Well, why would the Romans surrender like they’ve already lost everything they may as well hold out as long as they possibly could. So in Livy’s version, the fire at this point is not as terrible as it could have been in a city that’s just been seized by a gang of barbarians. Oh, wow.

Dr G 20:58
Interesting controversy reigns. So I do have a sense from some of our sources. And my sources are a little bit all over the shop. My best account comes from Diodorus. I flagged that in a previous episode. He’s considered the most reliable. I’m going to hold on to that moment for the rest of my life. But we do have a sense in which the Gauls set up their camp outside Rome to start the siege. All very clear cut. Diodorus claims that the Gauls have a force of about 70,000 for this, which is massive, and we then proceed with the burning of buildings. So a whole bunch of the houses get burnt. That’s obviously prudent from the Gauls perspective, because it clears their sight lines, but it also ensures that there’s nowhere for enemies to hide. In their opinion, they can concentrate solely on the main focus of their siege, which is the capitolini’s hill and the Citadel on it, which is where they know most of the Romans have been congregating. So once they clear out the city proper, it makes sense to level it to the ground. While this is happening, though, there is stuff going on elsewhere which is going to become important. So the Romans are in the middle of their siege preparations, all of their important goods, all of their food stuffs have been taken up to the Capitoline. They’re not aware of what’s going on outside. They can only see as far as the Gaulish army and beyond that, the Etruscans have started to raid into Roman territory, and this appears to be a bit of an issue. And what happens, at least from the accounts that I’ve been able to put together, is that the Roman forces that have bundled themselves up in Veii go out to meet those Etruscans and take them on.

Dr Rad 22:51
Okay, sorry. Can I pause right here? This is so far ahead in my account that I don’t think we’ll even get to this today. So I don’t know whether we maybe pause and come back to this part of your account. Or not, up to you, let’s pause.

Dr G 23:05
Yeah, yeah. I’m this is where my account goes next. It’s like, kind of like, we’re in Siege territory, and now the Etruscans are taking their opportunity with

Dr Rad 23:14
absolutely does happen, but it’s so far in the future for me that I don’t I couldn’t even imagine we’re going to get there.

Dr G 23:20
That’s incredible. What does Livy have to tell me?

Dr Rad 23:25
It’s mostly a lot of like histrionics, but, you know, I’ve got it to go through. So do you want me to tell you a little bit more? And you can just see, yeah, see where we go. We might get up to the Etruscans, but I’m not sure.

Dr G 23:35
Do tell me more. I’m keen to know what might be missing from my accounts, or what Livy might have invented.

Dr Rad 23:42
It’s mostly very emotional and speculative, but you know, all right, so I’m going to go back to the fire not having been as quite as terrible as it could have

Dr G 23:51
been. Okay, Rome’s on fire, but it’s not that bad.

Dr Rad 23:55
Okay. Now the Romans are watching on from the Citadel. Dr G, they see the Gauls wreaking havoc in various areas of the city, and it’s just so distressing for them. Dr, G, I know we do make fun of the Romans, and it’s hard sometimes not to laugh a little bit at how over the top sometimes Livy’s description is, but you can kind of appreciate, I suppose, they’re holed up. They can’t do anything about it. They’re just in total sensory overload. You know? They’re watching their beloved city be destroyed. They feel like there’s nothing that they can do about it. They’re hearing the sound, smelling the smells. It feels to them like fortune herself is putting on a show, a drama, for them to watch, forcing them to watch Rome fall apart.

Dr G 24:42
No, okay. Romans, very dramatic.

Dr Rad 24:46
It is. The Romans Now could see they have nothing left but themselves to fight for all their possessions are gone. The city has completely been taken by the enemy, and they had to enjoy. Endure this knowledge for the day, another night, another day. To be honest, the timeline is very unclear in Livy’s account, but I gather it’s several days of nightmarish events. But in spite of all of this, Dr G the Romans are still determined to fight. They’re gonna hold that Citadel and the Capitol they’ve lost everything, but that, in a way, makes it easier for them to stop dwelling on themselves and the pain that they were in personally, and just focus on the fight ahead. Wow.

Dr G 25:36
Okay, so they’re galvanized by what they’ve witnessed. They’re horrified and then galvanized

Dr Rad 25:42
they are. Now this might be a good point to mention that archeologically, there is very little trace of the Gallic sack in Rome.

Dr G 25:50
Yes. Well, there might be a few reasons for that. One, it didn’t happen.

Dr Rad 25:55
Two, wow, you just went straight there, didn’t you? After that dramatic account, you just completely

Dr G 26:00
undercut it. I think it’s important to register the details that maybe this did not happen. Second of all, that we’re talking about a Rome that is not monumental in the way that we think about it today. We don’t have a lot of stone structures. Yet. We don’t think we’ve got a few, but we don’t have heaps. So if you burn wood and your house is made of wood, how long do you do you think that’s going to last in the archeological record? Like there has to be some sort of layered process for that. If you’ve got a lot of ash and you’ve got a whole ash deposit layer, that’s kind of incredible. But if the Gauls are just sort of burning strategically, and it’s not a bad as fire around the city, as might be anticipated, then we’re talking about spot fires, essentially. That’s going to be very hard. You got to put down a whore as an archeologist to look at all the layers, and you picked a spot where maybe a house didn’t get burnt in 390 BCE, doesn’t look like there was a siege, does there?

Dr Rad 27:00
This is true, but there are some buildings that predate this time period that survive. So clearly, not everything was completely trashed, if we believe that there was indeed a Gallic sack of Rome at this time period. So the archeology is

Dr G 27:20
confusing, oh yes. And we’ve also got a sense that there are some walls. So there are speculation about when the servian walls were built. Was it under? Was it during the period of the kings, or was it later? It would be really handy if there was a wall right now, because the Romans are in a siege.

Dr Rad 27:40
So I guess the goals have given have given up on the idea that they’re not going to totally trash the city, in my account, and they are gradually working their way through building by building until all that’s left is the Citadel. And at this point, the girls turn around, and according to Livy, make a desperate resolution to attack the Citadel. But to be honest, that seems like a completely sane move to me, because they’ve pretty much looted the rest of the joint. What else are they going to do?

Dr G 28:08
It is the next logical step in a siege. But maybe the Gaulish people aren’t siege warfare types, generally speaking, they might be run in, hack people to pieces, chop off their heads later.

Dr Rad 28:20
Types, possibly so. At daybreak, the Gauls give a signal. They all gather together in the forum, and they decide to begin their attack. But the Romans are ready for them, and I guess because of the state of mind that they have adopted, they’re not acting in a foolhardy manner. They’re not overly passionate everything about their moves very calm and deliberate, which means that they really are ready to take on these Gallic attackers. So all possible entrance points to the citadels, the Romans had made sure were reinforced with guards, and when they saw that the Gauls were finally on their way, they made sure that their very best soldiers were in position, they let the Gauls advance, and their idea was that the higher up the Gauls came, the easier it would be for the Romans to push them back, because they held the high ground. So they’re thinking very strategically here.

Dr G 29:18
Yes, it makes sense. It gets steeper. And if you can push somebody over and then they do that thing with their arms, where they’re like, whoa, and it can have a cascading domino effect upon the other people behind them. It’s fantastic as a defense strategy.

Dr Rad 29:32
Now finally, our two forces meet in the midst of a declivity Dr G, which I learned is a part in the approach, where it’s lower than all the areas around it. So a perfect moment for the Romans to encounter the Gauls, and it really allows them to throw themselves in. And they managed to drive the Gauls back so definitively that the Gauls decided, whew, we cannot attempt that again. That is. Crazy that it’s just suicide, even though we so clearly vastly outnumber this tiny group of people who only have a limited amount of provisions. We can’t possibly attempt that again. And so this is where they decide that they’re just going to blockade the Romans who are on the Citadel. They hadn’t planned for this. They hadn’t foreseen this in their future, and they had actually burnt all the corn in Rome when they had set fire to the various areas in the city, or perhaps the corn in the field had just been taken to they so the Gauls decided instead that they needed to split their army. They’re going to use part of their army to go around and loot all the people that live around Rome so that they can get the supplies that they need to feed the entire group and the rest are going to stay and besiege the Romans on the citadels, and they’re going to have the supplies brought to them by the pillagers.

Dr G 30:54
Okay, so the Gauls have made some mistakes, some tactical errors. They weren’t prepared for a siege, as it turns out, the truth has finally revealed, and now they’re like we have to ravage the surrounding countryside to feed ourselves, to sustain us while we conduct a siege.

Dr Rad 31:11
And this would make sense if we go back to a theory which I mentioned before, which is that the whole backstory we have for the reasons why the Romans and the Gauls are at war is totally made up, and that it is somewhat accidental that the Gauls end up encountering the Romans, and that they were, in fact, headed somewhere else, hired as mercenaries to serve somebody else, and that this whole thing is just a chance encounter.

Dr G 31:39
Well, be that as it may. I think the most valid reason is the one where they were looking for somewhere that would be cooler to live. But they’ve ended up in Rome in July, and that’s not a great time. It’s pretty hot now. They’re unhappy, and they’re involved in a siege. So I don’t know if the Gauls are having the best year so far.

Dr Rad 32:00
Fortune is starting to, I think, look out for our little Romans again. Dr G because the departing Gauls fortune makes sure that they head towards Ardea. Why is Ardea a fortunate place for them to have gone? Why Camillus had gone there in his exile, and he was completely devastated when he heard about the attack on Rome. He was even more upset about the sack of Rome than he was by his own personal misfortune, which had driven him into this exile. But he also is confused. Dr G he doesn’t understand how he had led such valiant warriors from Rome against city of A and the falerii, and they had just triumphed completely trounce them, and then all of a sudden, the goals just walk in and take it doesn’t make sense even to Camillus.

Dr G 33:00
Now this is really interesting, because Livy is going in a direction which my narrative definitely goes in, but doesn’t enter into until way later on. So interesting. The idea that Camillus is even part of this narrative is completely questionable. When I start looking at the source material and I try to line it up in some sort of chronology that would make any kind of sense, and this is way too early for Camillus to be turning up in this narrative, in some respects, based on how his story is told in other sources, including Appian Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Diodorus Siculus. So but to recap a little bit about where Camillus is. He is in aedea because he’s been exiled from Rome, and he’s chosen exile because he doesn’t want to pay the bills and nobody’s going to support him. He’s fallen out of favor. And he does say, in that moment, he was praying the prayer of Achilles that the time might come when the Romans would long for Camillus. So he’s had that moment where he’s kind of set Rome up for this misfortune, maybe inadvertently, but he wants to be wanted, and he wants Rome to be desperate enough to want him back. Now, however, we start to see a turnaround in the books, and there’s a few different places in the narrative where this second prayer from Camillus could come in, but this would be one of the potential times where he says, I could not have prayed to the gods that the Romans might sometime long for me, if I had cherished any such feeling as that towards them. Now I pray the nobler prayer that I may render my country, a service equal to the calamity that has befallen

Dr Rad 34:44
her. That’s good stuff.

Dr G 34:47
Yes, juicy Camillus.

Dr Rad 34:50
Look, I am not surprised at all that your Greek sources would be bringing Achilles into this whole mess. Well. Debbie, you’re right. You are right. This is something that definitely academics have highlighted, that Camillus is obviously a major figure in this story of the sack of Rome, even though he’s not actually there for the sack, apparently. And certainly, other scholars have noted the lack of agreement in our sources in the order in which things happen so completely, Livy has got a different order to all of these other sources that you’ve mentioned. And it highlights, I suppose, different things about Camillus role in this whole story. To get back to my version of things, which is obviously the correct version, yeah. Camillus hears at this moment, whilst he’s wondering what on earth happened to Rome. Have the Romans lost their groove? Do I need to help them get it back? He hears that the Gauls are on their way heading out to Ardea. Naturally, the people in Ardea are in a total state of panic and have no idea what to do. Luckily for them, Camillus, the hero with the mostest, is around, and he’s struck, and I quote, with an inspiration, nothing less than divine. Oh, the gods look out for him. And he inserts themselves into their state of panic.

Dr G 36:24
Wow. Camillus.

Dr Rad 36:26
Livy tells me that Camillus doesn’t really like these sorts of meetings. Not a crowd man, not a crowd pleaser. But this is a different scenario. Get ready for an inspirational speech. Dr, G,

Dr G 36:40
I will strap myself in. Come on. Camillus, do your worst.

Dr Rad 36:44
He addresses the ardeans. He says he’s aware that he is in exile, and he wants to repay their kindness for allowing him to come and live amongst them. Did they know he has a bit of a handy little knack for war. The Ardeans owe the Romans because of the relationship they have had in the past. We’ve talked about their relationship with Rome. Previously, the Romans have lavished benefits upon them, and the Ardeans know that Camillus doesn’t need to list them all. Now, ADEA could now also not only repay the Romans for their past kindnesses, because they’ve sorted out disagreements with other cities in the past, but they could win themselves glory if they decided to take on the goals and win the goals were naturally bold, brave and big, very scary. Camillus acknowledges this, but they also need to remember that they are scatterbrained, changeable, racist comment, racist comment, racist comment.

Dr G 37:53
They can’t think when they overheat.

Dr Rad 38:00
The tend to malfunction in the snow

Dr G 38:03
exactly a strong wind knocks them right over.

Dr Rad 38:07
And I again, I’m going to quote my translation of Livy so in Camillus, words to every conflict, they bring more terror than strength. And you can see this in what they have just done to Rome. They may have just been able to waltz in and completely devastate the city, but that’s because there weren’t really any Romans around. As soon as they came up against a teeny, tiny little group of Romans. The Romans had managed to keep them in their place, and Camillus knew that the Gauls, by this stage, were getting bored by the siege. They don’t have a long attention span. Racist comment, racist comment, they’re not able to stay in one place. Racist comment, racist comment, they’re constantly wandering off into the countryside to stuff themselves with food and wine. Racist comment, racist comment, and at night, they don’t even bother to erect any protections around themselves. There are no ramparts, there are no pickets, there are no sentries. They just sleep beside a stream like animals, so much victory has gone completely to their heads that they’re not even taking proper precautions. Racist comment, racist comment, racist comment.

Dr G 39:20
Ah, well, this is in keeping with some of the comments that come through from other sources as well. Apparently, the Gauls get soft from eating all the delicious Roman food and drink, and they lose their fitness and become quite incapable of running all hardship. And when any exertion is required, they become exhausted by perspiration and shortness of breath, according to Appian. And we also have this idea coming through in Plutarch as well about Camillus capabilities in persuading the Ardeans to get involved. He doesn’t necessarily put it into a speechifying moment, but he does. Say that when they notice that the Gauls are on the horizons of Ardea, that he is able to persuade the young Ardean men in particular to pluck up their courage and support Rome’s desperate cause.

Dr Rad 40:14
Yes, this is exactly the moment that I am building to, because the end of Camillus speech, he says, Look, if you guys want to save yourselves and also win that glory for stopping the relentless advance of the Gauls, which might just be an accident, we don’t know. They need to get their arms together. They need to follow Camillus. And again, I’m going to quote my translation, not to a battle, but a massacre. Camillus says to them, If I do not deliver them up to you, fast asleep, to be butchered like cattle. Well, you can exile me from Ardea, just like I was exiled from Rome. He loves making these really bold pronouncements. Why is it always have to come down to this.

Dr G 40:59
I’ll just leave this place as well. That’s fine. Failure is exile. I understand.

Dr Rad 41:07
I’ll land on my feet. I always do. Now, the people who like Camillus at this point, as well as the people who are opposed to him are just blown away by him at this moment. Doesn’t matter which side you were on, everyone’s now on Camillus side. And again, I can’t help but quote my translation. There was no such warrior in those days anywhere. He is incomparable. Dr G so when the Ardennes left the council, they wait for a signal to leave, and when it came in the early evening, they go out to meet Camillus at the gates, and it’s not far out of the city when they stumble across the camp of the Gauls. And it was exactly like Camillus had told them, no guards, no security. And so they’re feeling very cheerful about that. Now I’m going to pause at this moment and highlight that most historians think that all of this is completely fictional.

Dr G 42:04
Yes, yes, I hate to say it. I’m sitting with those scholars. One this order of events seems mad, but also I don’t know. I mean, what’s going on guys? What is even happening in our day? What is happening in central Italy. What we do get is a sense that if we’re following this line, and this is definitely a line that Plutarch and Livy agree on, is that by cutting off this Gaulish force, which is out foraging essentially as far south as Ardea, which is indicative of some information that we haven’t covered yet, which is the length of the siege of Rome to be foraging this far south of Rome. This means that the Gauls have stripped bare everything between Ardea and Rome already, and one of the estimates in the literary sources is that this is a siege that takes about seven months and it starts in yay, starts in July and doesn’t wrap up until February of the next year. Wow. So it’s the height of the harvest, essentially when the siege begins. So the things are pretty bright for the picking. So for if we, if we’re playing with that kind of timeline, and it’s all very hypothetical, and obviously it’s the sort of thing that scholarship has lots of questions about. But let’s, let’s say for a moment that the siege did start in July for them to wind up all the way down in Ardea, which is a goodly way from Rome, like they’re nearby. If you’re driving a car today, it doesn’t take too long, but if you’re walking and you’re stripping the fields as you go, and then taking the stuff back to the people who are holding the siege, because you’re going to have to do that pretty regularly. It’s going to take a bit of time to get this far. We’re probably months into the siege already, and then Camillus, apparently, with the help of the ardean force, sacks this Gallic camp, which is a pillaging and foraging camp, and if they have booty, so be it. But they’re mostly there to pick up food stuffs and to make things easier for the siege back at Rome. So this is a bit of a blow to the siege, if this is the kind of narrative sequence that we’re looking at,

Dr Rad 44:16
for sure, and certainly, I think one of the things that modern scholars are pointing out is that all of this just seems to be set up to heighten the tensions of the story and obviously make it a real like, Ooh, what is Camillus going to do? When is he going to return? What’s going to happen? And this in Livy’s account, I think gives Camillus a role in striking a blow for revenge against the Gauls by events playing out in this manner. I’m going to have to go to a spoiler here at this point, dr, G, and that is something that I don’t think I’ve mentioned so far, which is that we do have a mention of these events in Polybius, who is using a very early source. Fabius Pictor, quite a respected analyst, one of our earliest Roman historians. In fact, I think he is the earliest Roman historian, and one

Dr G 45:08
of the ones that we kind of wish we had as well. We don’t. We don’t have a lot of Fabius pictor only through other sources.

Dr Rad 45:14
Now, he doesn’t mention Camillus at all when he’s talking about these events, and he makes mention in his account that the Romans, when the Gauls show up at their gates, pay them to go away.

Dr G 45:29
We’ll get to that. Don’t you worry. And I would also put Further to that, that in Diodorus Siculus account, Camillus does not turn up until very late in the piece as well, and he’s considered relatively accurate, I suppose, for for for some so I think that’s quite interesting as well, that Camillus does take a very different role in Diodorus Siculus account, and it’s a much lesser role than the One that Livy wants to give. I would say

Dr Rad 46:02
yes, but hey, at least Livy’s account has given him a chance to put hideous stereotypes of barbarians into Camillus mouth.

Dr G 46:11
Look, I love a good story. I don’t appreciate the racism.

Dr Rad 46:15
So Camillus and his forces from Ardea having stumbled across this camp, as you noted, Dr G, completely slaughter everyone in it. Now this is helped by the fact that the camp was complete mess and total chaos, because, you know, barbarians, stereotype, stereotype, the aedeans and Camillus just basically kill men in their sleep, anyone who is sleeping a little bit further away, they are in obviously a state of total confusion. If they do hear what’s going on, they kind of try and run away in a really panicked state. And some of them end up just running smack back into the attacking forces because they don’t know what’s going on. Some of them manage to get away, get away. And apparently a lot of them end up in antium and they’re kind of just wandering around until the locals come out and finish them off.

Dr G 47:09
That’s terrible. I

Dr Rad 47:11
know it’s a bit of a sad story, all right. Dr, G, so I feel like this is maybe a good moment for us to wrap up. We’ve got our moment of revenge upon the attacking Gauls, although it feels oddly unsatisfying after all the stereotypes that Camillus has played on thanks, Camillus once again. But that means that it’s time for the partial pick. All right.

Dr Rad 47:40
Dr, G, can you please tell us what is the partial pick all about?

Dr G 47:43
Oh, the partial pick. We are going to judge the Romans as they would have wished to be judged by their own standards. And there’s going to be 50 Golden Eagles up for grabs, 10 across, five categories each. The first of all being military clout.

Dr Rad 48:01
Well, some I guess it’s a bit of an odd one, isn’t it? Because we’ve got camilius Getting this revenge at the last minute, but he’s assisted by the aedeans. I don’t know how much that counts. And then we’ve got the Romans on the Citadel managing to hold off the Gauls, but the Gauls are sacking the city. I don’t know how I rate this.

Dr G 48:22
Yeah, it’s a challenging one. The Romans push some people down a hill, and Camillus cuts some throats while people are sleeping. Yeah, I would say that none of these are great examples of military clout, necessarily. The siege defense is the siege defense, and it’s probably great for the Romans that they’ve managed to push the Gauls back there, but attacking a camp of people who have been described and set up to be killed essentially as being not very military minded, doesn’t seem like an example of Roman military clout.

Dr Rad 48:58
So well, it’s not cidans. Yes,

Dr G 49:02
there’s one Roman in there. We give, I suppose we could give them one point for one Roman doing something.

Dr Rad 49:09
Yeah, okay, let’s give them one point. All right.

Dr G 49:12
Our second category is diplomacy. Ah, I don’t think so. I’m not feeling a lot of diplomacy, no.

Dr Rad 49:20
I mean, unless we count Camillus talking the aediles into helping out the Romans. Is that diplomacy? I feel like it’s not. That’s persuasion. Yeah, yeah, all right. Third category, expansion, most decidedly not. They’re about to lose everything they’ve

Dr G 49:39
ever had. Boo zero for expansion, yeah, our fourth category is virtus.

Dr Rad 49:46
Okay, now we have something to work with. We’ve got a bunch of ex magistracies who maybe have committed a religious act, or maybe they are just extremely virtuous men, but either way. Okay, they’re going down with the ship, Dr G, and I think it is meant to be kind of protecting Rome. You know, they’re giving their lives for Rome, and maybe trying to, I wonder if this is almost trying to win back the favor of the gods. Because remember, in the build up to this whole account, we’ve constantly been seeing the Romans get on the wrong side of the gods, and this is meant to be a sign that they’re heading towards disaster. The disaster is here, but the last moment Romans finally acting in a way that the gods can be like, I see

Dr G 50:30
you, yeah. And you could read what is happening with those men sitting in really prominent places, either in their houses or in the forum, as being within the sacred bounds of the city. So them, yes, their blood being spilt by an enemy does constitute some kind of sacrifice in a kind of ritual, God fearing kind of way. This is not just any kind of death. This is blood of Romans spilt within the sacred bounds of the city

Dr Rad 51:00
and the Romans don’t, well, they like to think that they don’t go in for human sacrifice, in spite of later things like gladiators and whatnot, but let’s not go down that path now, certainly for the Romans, a human sacrifice is the highest kind of sacrifice.

Dr G 51:17
Yes, and I dare say that if you’d asked them about Gladiators, it’s too early for that. But if, even if you did ask them in a time where it was relevant, they would say, well, they’re not Romans.

Dr Rad 51:28
This is true. But what about the vessels that get buried alive? Dr, G, what about

Dr G 51:31
them? Oh, that’s a real sacrifice. Yeah.

Dr Rad 51:35
Anyway, okay, so how much we’re gonna give them for their the massacre of the senators?

Dr G 51:41
Look, I don’t want to give them full marks, because I feel like the patricians will be rewarding them outsized for the thing, like they the reason why they’re there is because they’re physically not able to handle the travel of fleeing.

Dr Rad 51:54
So we’ll see that’s not actually something that Livy mentions. Now, obviously he’s building it up to be a really stoic moment in his story, and he wants the Romans to come out like a hero, but that is not really what they seem to be doing here.

Dr G 52:10
Hmm, okay, well, leaving that aside, yeah, we’ve got the eldest former magistracies of Rome remaining behind as a kind of divine gesture. I think that’s pretty good in terms of where to us.

Dr Rad 52:26
Yeah, I think it’s more in Livy’s account, the way it’s set up. I mean, there is probably a practical element to it in terms of, you know, where they get a run because they’re older, but it does seem more like these are old men who have long and storied careers behind them, and they’re just prepared to die. They’re like, this is my moment, and that’s why they decide to stay.

Dr G 52:48
And also like, this is my home. I am Roman. This is Rome. I stay in Rome. Yes, exactly, yes. And all of that makes sense. So I think we’re looking at maybe a seven.

Dr Rad 52:59
Okay, yep, seven is good, all

Dr G 53:02
right, and our final category is the citizen score. Is it a good time to be a Roman?

Dr Rad 53:09
What Romans? I mean,

Dr G 53:12
it’s not a great time to be a Roman. I don’t think the people on the Capitoline Hill are having a great time, but they’re alive.

Dr Rad 53:19
They are alive, but they are living on rations, and they’re having to watch their beloved city get torched and looted by people that they don’t understand and seemingly came out of nowhere. All right, sounds like a solid zero, yeah. I mean, there are still some people alive at they obviously, and maybe they’re doing a little bit better, but they’re there because they can’t go back to Rome.

Dr G 53:44
Oh yes, do not forget about they. Oh, I’ve got a lot to say about they.

Dr Rad 53:48
All right. Well, Dr, G, if that’s why we’re calling it, it means that the Romans get eight out of 50 Golden Eagles for this episode. But I have to say that’s kind of still more than I was expecting during the sack of Rome, and this is obviously for only part of the year of 390 or thereabouts.

Dr G 54:10
Look, they’ve definitely earned less. And I mean, kudos to them. The patricians are getting them over the line this time.

Dr Rad 54:19
Oh gosh, what a sad sentence to have to finish on.

Dr G 54:22
Well, I look forward to continuing. I suspect we will be talking about the Gallic sack of Rome in our next episode.

Dr Rad 54:30
Oh, I think we will. In fact, I’m actually starting to think, is this going to

Dr G 54:34
be five episodes? Yes, I’m now, yes, now that you threw a curve ball at me and you were like, we’re not up to the Etruscans. Yet in this episode, I was like, Oh no,

Dr Rad 54:45
I know how the Romans feel. By

Dr G 54:48
the end of it, we’ll be like, I’m so glad the Siege has broken.

Dr Rad 54:52
All right. Dr, G, well, I shall look forward to being holed up on the citadel with you for a few more episodes. Woohoo.

Dr Rad 55:09
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. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive, to find more from the Memory Collective head to collective mem.com. 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 and ad free content. Today, we would like to send a special shout out to Margaret, Evan and JJ Scout, some of our newest Patreon members. You can also support us by buying us a coffee on ko fi. However, if the girls have recently ransacked your village, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 168 – The Gallic Sack of Rome – Part 3 appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Who is Marc Hyden?

Marc Hyden is the Director of State Government Affairs at a Washington DC-based think tank, as well as being a weekly columnist for the Newnan Times-Herald, Albany Herald, and Rome News-Tribune. Marc graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in philosophy. 

Marc has authored many, many books on Ancient Rome. His most recent work is Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian (McFarland, 2025), and we will be talking with him about that in a future episode. He has also authored Gaius Marius: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Saviour (Pen & Sword, 2017), Romulus: The Legend of Rome’s Founding Father (Pen & Sword, 2020), but our focus today is going to be on Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder (Pen & Sword, 2023).

Things to Listen Out For:

• Camillus’ controversies
• Camillus’ rise to fame
• The many virtues of Camillus
• The legacy of this Roman hero

We are sure you will love hearing Marc talk about Camillus, the man who served as a role model for later Roman luminaries like Julius Caesar and Augustus.

If you would like to hear more, we have a stack of episodes in our back catalogue that feature Camillus.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

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 battles waged 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 Rad 0:55
Hello and welcome to a special episode of the partial historians, I am one of your hosts. Dr rad, and I am, Dr G, now. Dr G, we have been basically hosting the Camillus show for a good many episodes now. And so it is with great pleasure that we welcome on our next guest, Marc Hyden. Marc Hyden is the Director of State Government Affairs at a Washington DC based think tank, as well as being a weekly columnist for The Newnan Times, Herald, Albany Herald and Rome News-Tribune. Marc graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in philosophy. Marc shares a love for ancient Rome, and has published numerous books on the subject. His most recent work is Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian, which came out with MacFarland in 2025 and we will be talking with him about that in a future episode. He has also authored Gaius Marius: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Savior with Pen and Sword in 2017, Romulus, The Legend of Rome’s Founding Father with Pen and Sword in 2020 but our focus today is going to be on Marcus Furius Camillus, the life of Rome’s second founder, which came out with Pen and Sword in 2023 and so I’m sure everyone is cheering right now because they want to hear much, much more about Camillus than we have ever told them. Welcome Marc!

Marc Hyden 2:28
Hey, thanks so much for having me, and I’m glad I can find some other people that I can nerd out with about Camillus.

Dr Rad 2:34
You are indeed in the right location, all right. Well, let’s kick it off with some general questions. We know that family is very important in ancient Rome. Can you please tell us a bit about Camillus’ family and background?

Marc Hyden 2:51
Sure, and you know, I started writing the book about Camillus at the beginning of the pandemic, and I was trying. I thought I would write this book chronologically, which is what I did. I decided to try to figure out start off with, well, essentially, who was his father and his grandfather? That’s kind of how these things work. And unfortunately, his whole family, more than a generation or so before him, there’s not really much known. We do know that he hailed from a patrician family, the gens Furii, and judging by some of the members names and some epigraphic evidence, they were probably of Latin stock, and they had roots in the cities of Tusculum and Medulia, not too far from Rome. However, they wouldn’t have been originally Roman from the Romans eyes. They were they were Latin. They were a little bit different, but eventually they were incorporated into the early republic. And actually they might have been incorporated even in under the monarchy. But initially, the Furii they they weren’t really that influential, at least compared to some of the other clans. I mean, we think about the great clans like the Fabii, who seemed to like have a stranglehold on early and even later part portions of the Republic. But in spite of this, the fury, they clearly did enjoy some sway in old Rome, beginning about a generation before Camillus was born. And we know this. We can see from the Fasti Capitolini and from some other evidence, I believe that the first person in his family to gain prominence with Sextus Furius. So he was a consul at some point in 488, BC, most likely, although Varronian dating is off, you know, that might have been off by at least three years or so, but he became one of Rome’s two consuls. And he was probably a direct ancestor of Camillus, or at least somehow related to him. But after he came to power then, then other people start in his family started to ascend to the pinnacle of elected Roman politics, and by the mid fifth century BC, Camillus was born into this increasingly ascendant family. And that brings me back to trying to figure out who the heck was his father and his grandfather. Father, because Livy doesn’t mention this. Plutarch doesn’t mention this. No one mentions this. So I started looking at the inscriptions from the Fasti Capitolini, and within it, it, you know, it has his name, Marcus Furius Camillus. And then there’s these weird abbreviations in there. What those abbreviations are? They tell you the shorthand of what his grandfather and his father’s name was so we know that his grandfather was Spurius, and his father was Lucius. So with that, we can deduce that his grandfather is probably Spurius, Spurius Medullinus Fusus, who happened to be consul in 464, BC. And his father was Lucius Furius Medullinus, and he served as a consular Tribune a few times after Camillus birth,

Dr G 5:45
you’re setting us up really nicely, because Spurius Furius is one of our favorite Romans of the early republic in all of his iterations, because there were a few Spurius Furii. But to know that Camillus might be related into that line as well. Well, well, it warms the heart. It makes so much sense to us as fans, thinking about when Camillus starts to rise to prominence. Can you tell us a little bit about how his early career starts to take off?

Marc Hyden 6:15
Yeah, much like his family, there’s not a whole lot known about Camillus in his early life, we know kind of the first big thing we hear about him is that at a young age, probably around 15 or 16 years old, he served in the cavalry during the Battle of Mount Algidus, which pitted the Romans against the Aequians and the Volscians. These these generational enemies that your listeners are very familiar with. And during this, this pivotal battle, the teenager, unlike what I would have been like at that age, he rode out beyond the Roman infantry’s line, and he engaged the Republic’s foes, and he had a bolt, an arrow, some sort of projectile, fired at him and it lodged in his leg. And despite it being stuck in there, and he’s probably suffering from blood loss, he urges his his steed forward and fights. He the enemy with distinction. And you know, all of his his colleagues saw this. They thought it was they thought it was excellent. They ended up winning the battle. And you know, he might have contributed to that as well, but he earned a name for his bravado, and he got plaudits back in Rome. But unfortunately, after he goes back to Rome and he has he gets to go enjoy a triumph with the dictator who won the battle of Mount Algidus. Nothing, there’s like a dark age for Camillus. The next 27 or so years, we don’t know a thing about him. We can glean some stuff. You know, he probably we he would have gotten married, and we know that he had kids, at least two boys, and he may have had many, many girls as well. And he probably worked on the family business, managing some farms and that sort of thing. But eventually he decided to follow his family’s footsteps and enter the political world. And this is, this is a kind of a mystery to me, and I’m sure it is to you, because the first office that we know of they decided to run for was the censorship. So the censorship was, was relatively new by this age. It had only been around for about a generation, but throughout much of Rome’s history afterward, the censorship was something that was a crowning achievement after a long, long career, a very successful career, not something you’re going to give some upstart freshmen. Somehow he, at least, according to the ancient accounts, he he succeeds. He’s one of Rome’s two censors, and he serves probably around 403 to 402 BC. And during that period, he did some for modernize, some some weird things. He worked to raise taxes by ensuring that orphans couldn’t get out of paying them, which sounds really, really terrible, but really he was probably, probably had to do with inheritance for very rich orphans whose parents had passed away, not poverty stricken ones. And he also worked to ensure that bachelors either paid a fine or married widows, because with all the plagues and all the wars, there were a lot of single women out there that were probably struggling to make ends meet, and he encouraged them to get married. And then afterward, after having what that was viewed as a very successful censorship, he decided to serve the state in some other ways, and he eyed the consular tribuneship. This is a very weird quirk of Roman politics, because we’ve already talked about the consuls. There’s two consuls that supposedly headed up the government in normal times, but then periodically in this era, there were no consuls. So the ancient writers suggest that since the plebeians at the time could not hold the consulship. They’d obstruct the government and force them to appoint people other than consul so they would do consular Tribune ships or tribunes and plebeians could hold that as well as patricians, and that was supposedly the genesis of it. But there’s been some modern debate. One academic suggests that consular tri. Tribunes weren’t even an official position. They were actually war band leaders that the ancient writers misinterpreted. Meanwhile, others disagree, and they believe that they were actually a real position that was elected by the Roman populace. But the reason that they opted for tribunes rather than consuls is that you could have four, six, maybe even eight consular tribunes that serve at the same time. So you could fight a lot of wars, you could manage a lot of problems, a lot more than you could with only two consoles. And at this time, Rome was surrounded by enemies, or at least potential enemies. They had so many problems, so they were they were willing to kind of bend the rules and have consular tribunes lead them. So Camillus, after that long digression, Camillus decides he wants to run for this. And he wins a term in 401, and in 398, and immediately he’s put to the test. He He wages kind of a scorched earth campaign, first against the capitanis and then the filiscans, who are both allies, frenemies, something like that, with with Rome’s really serious foe, Veii and his he was successful. I mean, there was no major, major turning points in those but he waged a scorched earth campaign that really left them in pain, and this gave him the chance to propel within Roman society and eventually become a Roman hero.

Dr Rad 11:23
Yes, let’s talk more about his reputation as a Roman hero. There are a few moments that have started to emerge in our episodes that seem to put Camillus in the limelight. So can you tell us a bit about these times in his life which seemed to cement his reputation as a Roman hero, yeah,

Marc Hyden 11:41
I’d love to so around the time that he wraps up his his second consular tribuneship, Rome has been mired in this long siege of the eye. They just this is this settlement that really was kind of the counter to Rome. They were Etruscan. It was built on this big, craggy mount, and it was very well fortified, and they had been fighting each other, supposedly since the days of Romulus. They these guys just did not like each other. But over the years, Rome slowly had started to outperform Veii and really everything tended to center generally around the city of Fidenae because of the control of a lot of different routes, communication lines and that sort of thing. Rome, at this point, they were really ready to smite their foe and just be done with it for years to come. But it wasn’t going well. They kept having embarrassing mishaps happening on the front and after about 10 years of the siege, and we’ll talk about later on, about how the siege probably didn’t actually last 10 years. But according to the ancient accounts, it lasted 10 years. It wasn’t going well. Rome decided we’ve got to just name a dictator, the dictators of today’s era. I mean, it’s, it’s a scary, very bad thing. No one wants a dictator. Back then, it wasn’t considered a bad thing. It was. It was a term of no more than six months, and they appointed someone in times of emergency so they could control the city state’s resources and focus it all on the main issue, which was vi so they appointed Camillus to do that, and he performed ably. And instead of using the same tactics that had not been working there, he decided to undermine the city. So he had these mines cleaved underneath. And while that was going on, they scaled the walls, opened the gates, and VI fell. And in fact, supposedly, you can still find some of the mines or drainage pipes that Camillus and his troops might have used today in the vicinity, which is pretty exciting for a big nerd like me. So he has the success there. It’s a very big success, but it causes him serious grief later in his life, not too much later, but we’ll get to that in a little bit his next moment that really cements him as a Roman hero comes in 394, BC. So at this point, Camillus is once again serving as a consular Tribune. And as you’ve talked about on on your podcast before, he was charged with eliminating Falerii as a threat. So he battled them. He hems them into into the city, and he begins to lay siege. And as your listeners know, Faliscan schoolmaster, you know, he’s got all these these noble children under his tutelage. He teaches them reading, writing, arithmetic and whatnot, and also lets them exercise. So every day he takes them out of the city walls, and each day gets a little bit closer to the Roman sentinels, until he’s able to finally hand these children over to Camillus. And he tells them, hey, you know, this is a great opportunity. You can take these children, use them as hostages, pawns of war, and bring the city to their knees. And the schoolmaster probably thought that he was going to get recompense. And rewarded for, for this, this terrible act. Well, instead of it working out, it really ticks off Camillus, like he’s a man of integrity, at least we’re told that he is. So he has the man stripped of his clothing, has him flogged, and, you know, in it just weird Roman form, gives all these children canes to just beat this poor man senseless as they march back to Falerii, where everyone’s watching in kind of disbelief, and they’re like, gosh, you know, this Camillus guy could have used these children against us, but he chose not to. He’s a man of honor. Rome must be a city state of honor. We’re going to be at peace. So it ends bloodlessly, and they become friends, supposedly, and that is one of the that it’s the second and a very large episode in which it really cements his his legacy. Now the last major episode comes later, and we’re talking about Rome sacking the most one of the most embarrassing and humiliating moments in the record, although there’s a canonical view, and then there’s the view of what really happened, and we can get to the reality a little bit later. But according to legend around 390 BC, this is veronian dating again in Livy, a band of Gauls known as the Senones, and were led by Brennus, King Brennus, and they defeated the Romans at the river Alia, sacked Rome, with the exception of the capitolin Hill, and then laid siege to it. They’re unable to capture it, because barbarians, of course, don’t know how to do things. So they can just, they can just make people’s lives miserable. And eventually they say, hey, we’ll leave. Give us 1000 pounds of gold. No big deal. The Romans, eventually they agree, we’ll give you 1000 pounds. They start carting it down, and the Gauls are weighing it to make sure they have enough, but they’ve actually rigged the scales so that they can get more than 1000 pounds. And the Romans, they get wise to this, and they figure it out. And when they complain. There’s the famous moment where Brennus walks up to the weighing plate and throws his sword on it. And when the Romans asked, What does this mean? He, you know, exclaims, Vae victis, or Woe to the vanquished. So while all this is going on, Camillus is living in exile. And we can we’ll talk a little later about why he’s in exile and he is appointed dictator in absentia. At first they asked him to take, take control the troops that were around Rome’s vicinity. He refuses to do it, but they they appoint him. He refuses to do it because it would be inappropriate at first, because he didn’t have the statutory power. So once they appointed him formally dictator, he takes the troops, eventually marches back into Rome, and he sees this exchange with gold, and he’s he’s furious, and he explains to Brennus, in uncertain, no uncertain terms, that he’s dictator, he’s Supreme Leader. This is not a real agreement, because he would never agree to it. And then they start to battle. He pushes them out of Rome, and then the next day, at the near the eighth milestone, they had wage a big battle. And at that point, Camillus destroys the barbarian threat and collects a lot of the gold, or at least the canonical account suggests that. So the last major episode that really lifts Camillus into being this demigod, really for Romans, is the reversal of the Senones at Rome.

Speaker 1 18:27
It’s such a big moment as well, very dramatically told in Livy and some of our other ancient sources. And I do really enjoy this idea that Camillus is furious at Brennus, because that ties in very nicely with the gens as well. So Camillus has these moments of glory. They’re pretty significant, significant enough that Romans continue to talk about them centuries later. But you’ve already hinted at the idea that there are some things that don’t go so well for Camillus. And you noted that he’s actually in exile in the lead up to this sack by the Gauls. Can you speak to some of the more controversial things that are going on with Camillus?

Marc Hyden 19:14
Yeah, and it seems, it seems bizarre that this exempla of Roman virtue is somehow embroiled in any controversy. But there’s, like, there’s several moments, so there’s quite there’s a bit of a laundry list. So bear with me. But after sacking Veii Camillus is awarded a triumph. And you know, he’s He’s excited. This is a celebratory parade through Rome that everybody wants it. Children probably dream of getting this. And he gets it, and he wants it to be pretty fancy. So, you know, he gets dressed up, most likely, as paints his face red and makes him look like Jupiter, and even secures four white horses to pull his his triumphal carriage to modernize. That’s who cares. That’s a big shrug to the road. Romans. This was symbolism the four white horses. No one had ever done this before in Rome, supposedly, and to them, this was symbolism that was more appropriate for for the gods, as opposed to a man. So he, he goes through, you know, down the via sacrum snakes the Rome, and he probably sees all these lawn lookers recoiling at his impious display. So that causes a lot of grief for what now is seems like a very minor infraction, especially when you consider what later emperors like Nero are up to my goodness, this is, this is a nothing burger. But this wasn’t the only controversy. There’s several stemming from Veii’s fall Camillus, while he was the sacking was underway or getting ready to he pledged that he would donate a 10th of the spoils to Apollo, the god Apollo. Unfortunately, he didn’t really define what the spoils were or how the tithe would get collected. And what really made collecting this tithe so difficult is that immediately after the sack, the Senate, along with Camille, has decided, you know, we’re just going to let the people go and take whatever spoils they want. We’re nice guys like that. Just take whatever you want from this poor city that we have just ravaged. So you have all these people living in poverty, that their lives might be slightly better because they got a gold bowl or a gold cup or something silver that they were able to take from Veii well, they start witnessing these portents that perhaps the gods are pretty angry that this tithe has not been paid. So, you know, priests, the Senate, Camillus, they start talking, they they realize they really shouldn’t have reneged on on their on camillius Promise. It was solemn, it was inviolable, and they needed to deliver it. So they kind of mulled over ways of trying to do this, and they settled on telling the people that they had to voluntarily donate 10% of whatever they took from the city. Well, this ticked a lot of people off. I mean, they recently had a windfall. Some of them may have already spent it, you know, buying land, buying tools or whatever, and now they had to somehow find a way to donate a 10th of it. Supposedly, everyone did it. So good for Camillus, you know, his pledge was ultimately fulfilled. But you can imagine how angry the populace was. You know this, this guy had come in and his four white horses acting like a god, and now he told me that I gotta give back 10% of of what I’ve got recently.

Marc Hyden 22:30
So rude. How do you give back 10% of a gold bowl? You had to chip part

Marc Hyden 22:31
You had to chip part of it off, I guess, I’m not quite sure. So this, this really embittered quite a few people against him, but more, as I hinted, there’s, there’s more issues related to the sack, the sacking after doing so, a plebeian Tribune named Sicinius advocated for splitting Rome in half. Said half the Senate can go to Veii, half the plebeian populace can go there. You know, it’s a great place to live, despite what the Romans had just done to it. It’s defensible. They have good land, that sort of thing, and plus, it’s going to enrich everybody, because everyone’s going to get land, and we’re all going to be very happy doing this. Well, the plebeians probably loved this. The Senate, the patricians, they hated it, including Camillus, and the reason was, you’re splitting Rome in half, that’s going to weaken them, the two cities, even though they were supposed to continue operating under the same city state, they probably would have fought each other. And also, the very religious Romans probably thought that this was a slap in the face to the gods who had cultivated Rome that space for them. So Camillus fights against his proposal, and he and the patricians are victorious. But again, a lot of the people were probably pretty upset. They thought that they were going to get farmland to settle and these sorts of things. So then finally, the last issue related to the sacking comes from a different plebeian tribium, and this is Apuleius. He filed bogus charges against Camillus, suggesting that he had embezzled spoils from the the sacked city. Now the ancient writers are pretty much in unison saying that this is false. Camillus didn’t do anything wrong. The the justification for this was supposedly that Camillus had some bronze doors on his house, and supposedly that came from Veii he was allowed to collect spoils. He probably was even allowed to collect the commander’s share of spoils. So that’s not an indictment. This was Trump. These were trumped up charges. But the problem for Camillus is that he knew he was gonna lose in court. He was not gonna be able to win this his powerful friends wouldn’t be able to help them, or at least refuse to help him. So instead of suffering the ignominy of a kangaroo court condemning him, he decides to go live in exile, voluntarily in the city of Ardea, which explains why he was absent when. The Gauls sacked Rome, but when he comes back and saves the Romans from the Gauls, the people, once again mold the idea of relocating wholesale to Veii Camillus, again, was very opposed to this, and he derailed the measure, but it probably irked a lot of Romans, and then the last piece that really that tainted Camillus legacy to a much more minor degree, had to do with Marcus Manlius Capitolinus. He was a patrician who charted his own path to power. He, for some reason, felt like he couldn’t rely on the patricians to propel him toward his dreams. And he saw the plebeian body is much larger, and he knew that they suffered under the yoke of debt. So he advocated for essentially total debt forgiveness. He said the patricians actually had enough money to pay for all their debt, pay all the debt off, and they were hiding the money. And he knew where it was, but he wasn’t going to tell him where it was at just yet, at least. So Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, decides to go a step further, like he wants power, and he tries to use debt forgiveness to do that, something that really doesn’t go far, but it seems that he starts to warm to the idea of a revolt, maybe taking over the Capitoline Hill. And he’s also open to becoming the king, which is something at that time of Rome, yeah, they didn’t like kings too much, not at all. So eventually the Romans captured him, they tried him. Camillus was involved in in this situation, and eventually they they executed him in pretty gruesome fashion. And of course, this really angered a lot of the debt stricken plebs. So Camillus many great things to talk about, but he was not without controversy.

Dr Rad 26:48
Ah, it sounds like his patrician loyalties are what often gets him into trouble. So we know that the Romans love using an exemplar in both ways, both people that are to be admired, and also people that are to be reviled. Tell us what are the distinctive qualities that we can see in someone like Camillus?

Marc Hyden 27:08
Well, Camillus, despite these faults, despite controversy, he emerges, at least in the canonical accounts and much of the literature, unscathed. Really, he’s able to find redemption. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of his infractions were a lot. They were pretty minor compared to the later, mad emperors and all that sort of thing. So I would say, first of all, if we’re talking about the distinctive qualities that that they saw in in Camillus, first of all, he was a Roman patriot. No one could say that he wasn’t. The Romans turned on him, and they sent at least according to the canonical account, and they sent him essentially into exile. These are his friends, his compatriots, the people that he had defended. They turned on him. But then when the senonas Sack Rome, they beg him to come back, and he’s willing to do so he comes back and he saves them, and apparently he doesn’t hold any grudges, uh, afterwards. So this is, this is kind of a selfless patriotism that we see from from Camillus. He also obeyed the law to the letter. And this is something that, you know, these fastidious Romans appreciate it, so before coming to Rome’s defense, after the sacking from the Gauls, he required that the government appoint him dictator, otherwise he would only be a private citizen without any power to lead armies. Now it was pretty difficult for this besieged band of Romans to appoint him dictator. But they managed to do it, and it pleased him, and it left him feeling as though that he was obeying the law and he wasn’t violating the Constitution, the unwritten constitution, in any way, shape or form. So he obeyed, obeyed the law, and he was generally fastidious at it. He also understood inequity to a degree, and often tried to avoid its controversy. So at the beginning of the podcast, we talked about how the consulship was reserved only for patricians at this point. Now, some rich plebeians, they certainly wanted to participate in this, and they would soon be able to. But this created a lot of controversy, and despite having this incredibly long curriculum vitae, Camillus refuses to ever be consul. He’s consular Tribune, but he won’t be Consul, supposedly, because of the controversy that surrounds it, and he also respected the gods. The Romans were a very religious people. I mean, some of their religious activities and everything are just really bizarre to modernize, but it was their thing. You know, it can’t be too judgmental. But he respected the gods, and even though he forgot or somehow didn’t immediately fulfill his promised tithe to Apollo, he generally worked to keep his his other oaths and remember the the pantheon of deities and then the last. Last the last distinctive quality, I think, that I would mention, is that he was a man of integrity. In the Faliscan the Falerii episode, he refused to use children as pawns in war, and he even worked to ease strife between the plebs and patricians after the plebeian tribunes, this is later in his life, suspended government for around five years and obstructed just about everything. Camillus worked to secure a compromise that gave the plebs more power. Then, after he did that, they could finally hold the consulship and some some pretty serious priesthoods. And this ended some of the inequity, but certainly, certainly not all of it.

Dr Rad 30:40
Politician with integrity,

Dr G 30:42
such a rare combination. Well, would we ever see such a man in our lifetimes? So I think this leads us really nicely into thinking about legacy, because Camillus gets a lot of attention in our ancient source material, and a lot of these written sources in particular are coming from a much later period of time, often the first century BCE, whereas Camillus is living his life and career in the fifth and the fourth centuries. So there’s quite a long period of time between the activities he’s involved in and when we get this flourishing of material about him. So I’m interested in what is Camillus legacy for the Romans?

Marc Hyden 31:23
To the Romans, Camillus was, without a doubt, he was an exempla of Roman virtue, which is a little bit different than you know what the virtues that you and I probably hold, but for Roman virtue, he was an exempla, and he was a role model for all subsequent leaders. Now you talked about a lot of the writings come hundreds of years after he died, and that is a problem with a lot of this, that era and the monarchical era. And I think he probably was able to shine in that era, when you had increasing numbers of corrupt and base politicians and people that were involved in power grabs and tried to violate the constitution. They had someone that they could say in row in our history, that is who you should be like. Now, of course, we know what happened to the Roman Republic and then what happened to the Empire. They kind of forgot their way, but they had someone to point to when they needed to try to correct themselves and the remote the Romans, they looked at him more than just this exemplar. He was the man who who finally vanquished Veii, he saved Rome from the Gauls. He rebuilt it after they had razed it to the ground, and he worked to ensure that the city of Rome, despite numerous, to at least two attempts to abandon or partially abandon, it would continue to be the seat of the republic and the empire for for hundreds of years to come. I mean, he’s known as the second founder of Rome. He held so many consulships, dictatorships, triumphs, and even was a censorship I mean, this is a man, a bit of a renaissance man that did just about everything and did almost everything right, at least according to very good PR,

Dr G 33:09
sounds dangerous. Sounds like it might almost be too good to be true.

Dr Rad 33:14
Ah, speaking of that, Dr, G, let’s talk about the historiography around Camillus. So one of the more intriguing theories we have stumbled across when we’ve been covering this time period is that Camillus was not, in fact, a historical figure at all, or at least his life and career might actually be some sort of amalgamation, perhaps, of numerous men from his family clan, and we’re curious to hear what your thoughts are on this mark.

Marc Hyden 33:46
So I take the position that I believe Camillus absolutely was a historical character who played an outsized role in the early republic, and he probably even played a role in the sacking of Veii say this, he’s incredibly well attested in the literary record, although it does come later, he’s well attested in the Fasti Capitolini and even famed historian, I think he was famed historian, TJ Cornell casted no doubt whatsoever that he was a historical character that did some some fantastic things for the Romans. However, outside of those two things, that he was a historical character, held some public offices of some kind, and did something at Veii after that, we really don’t know. That’s when things start getting a little fuzzy. So I think we can look at some of the issues around it. You know, I talked about the siege of the eye lasting 10 years. Well, we don’t believe most historians don’t believe it actually did that was a literary creation that they tried to borrow from, the Trojan War that supposedly lasted 10 years and the mysticism around it. But we still think. I mean, Veii was a real place, and it was sacked, and there’s no reason to believe that Camillus didn’t have something to do with that. Now, plenty of people have talked about Camillus life being embellished, exaggerated and combined with his family members, and I think that absolutely probably is the case. I don’t have any reason to doubt that it would be just incredibly hard, probably, especially in this era, to accomplish so many different things, even into old age. You know, we’ve talked about the Gallic sack of Rome, but there is supposedly another war that he led against against a different band of Gauls, and he would have been in his late 70s. My goodness, in ancient Rome, that’s a ripe old age, and you’re supposed to be leading armies. I’m not so sure. So I think that there was a family, the Marcus Furius Camilla’s, his family, his descendants and relatives, that were really accomplished. And somehow it got attached into this, this one person, you know, it might have been a son that engaged the Gauls at a later time. And there’s some theories about how this might have happened. You know, the histories were very bad back then. So people, there were family histories, there were eulogies to go off of. So families might have been embellishing their own story and building up this hero, but yes, I think Camillus was real. Did he do everything that the ancients said? Almost certainly not.

Speaker 1 36:28
Oh, Camillus a man of many faces and perhaps many men at the same time. To round off this conversation, one of the things that gets bandied about about Camillus, is this idea that he is actually the second founder of Rome. And I kind of love the phrasing of this. It’s almost, it’s a very Roman idea to think about somebody in this way. And I’m interested in, to what extent do you agree with this idea that he’s the second founder?

Marc Hyden 36:57
Well, it’s romantic. Let’s, let’s, let’s not doubt this one too. I’m joking. Of course, this is a tough one, so especially with only limited knowledge, I can tell you what the archeological evidence shows, what my research has showed, and we can just put the cards on the table. So the Romans, they mostly believe that he was the second founder of Rome. And modern scholarship, of course, who cast doubt on that? Now he supposedly received the sobriquet from defeating the Senones, defeating a measure to abandon Rome for Veii and then overseeing Rome’s reconstruction. So that’s why they named him. Supposedly named him Rome’s second founder. He was another Romulus. So Romulus is the first founder. He literally founds Rome. Camillus saves it and rebuilds it. And then, of course, Marius becomes the third founder of Rome, or was at least styled that way. But there’s a lot of problems here with regard to Camillus, which, of course, is someone who thinks he’s a pretty cool guy. Breaks my heart, because Camillus might not have actually had anything to do with the Senones, the sacking in the first place, which really just kind of throws Roman history out the window. And the theory behind this, it resonates. The claim is that his exile is actually a work of fiction, because it was just so embarrassing that the Romans were sacked by a bunch of bumbling barbarians that they needed to exculpate their hero, this guy that had already sacked their chief enemy, so they sent him into exile, so that he wouldn’t have been part of this sacking and this embarrassment, at least that’s the theory. He might have been there when it happened, and then went and left the city like many other people did. But there’s actually some ancient evidence that the Romans didn’t kick the the Gauls out. They actually paid them. There are a few references to the Romans getting the the money back later, sometimes much later, which is really embarrassing for the Romans that they had to pay these people to leave, so Camillus probably not in exile, probably didn’t come save them. The last real indictment on the being called the second founder is that the archeological evidence doesn’t show that the sacking was really that bad. It was a very mild sacking, as far as they go.

Dr Rad 39:18
Well, more like a pillow tussle.

Marc Hyden 39:20
The Gauls were busy. They were doing other stuff. They were probably in the pay of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysus. So they were probably going south, tackling some of Syracuse’s enemies, and then if there was anyone in their way, they would just go ahead and sack them and steal all their stuff and then move on. So like they didn’t want to hang around. They probably had other things to do. But and also, the archeological evidence shows that the sacking was pretty mild, so there might not have been any reason for the Romans to talk about abandoning Rome in the first place. And if there was, it’s very possible that the that Camillus is counseled against it, but everything else. Is really doubtful. And there is one other theory that, in fact, Camillus was later grafted onto the story to replace a city Caere, which had come to the Romans aid during the sacking. Well, eventually their friendship fell apart, and they didn’t want to sing the praises of the city that they no longer liked. So they created this myth around Camillus, saving them and not the city that they don’t like anymore. That’s not they’re not cool. And even when you look at more ancient sources, Aristotle has a very curious line. So he was a little interested in what was happening in Rome, even though Rome was not important on a global scale at the time, and he said that a certain Lucius saved Rome, not a certain Camillus, which some people have theorized it was, I think it was Lucius Albinus who had selflessly tried to help the Vestal virgins. But it could have been anybody else, because being called Lucius was kind of like being called John. Now, it could be anyone. But it’s very telling that he didn’t say Camillus, and for that, it breaks my heart a little bit.

Speaker 1 41:07
Oh, Camillus, not even getting his first name, right. Aristotle, come on.

Dr Rad 41:13
Oh, well, what a fascinating look at Camillus’ life. We know we covered over so many episodes, it’s really great to be able to pull it all together into one biographic study. So thank you so much for joining us today, Marc.

Marc Hyden 41:25
Hey, thank you so much for having me and and let me nerd out on Camillus.

Dr Rad 41:28
I’m sure our listeners would love to pick up a copy of your biography of Camillus. It is highly readable, I can definitely say that. And we really look forward to having you back on to talk about the emperor Titus soon.

Marc Hyden 41:40
You know, not a second or third or fourth founder, but he’s a pretty interesting guy. I was

Dr G 41:45
going to say he’s very cool. I’m excited to talk about him.

Dr Rad 42:00
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 Joy De Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of The Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective head to collectivemem.com you too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and add free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch. We have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on ko fi. And we’d like to say big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if your Imperial coffers do not overfloweth, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five star review wherever you listen. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – Camillus with Marc Hyden appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

The Battle at the Alia

There seems to be a few issues at this moment including the Roman failure to build a proper camp and – even worse – failure to take the auspices. Is this some foreshadowing from our friend Livy?

Stay tuned for a discussion of the slim layout of the Roman forces. Brennus, the putative leader of the Gauls, seems concerned that there may be some secret tactic or force that he hasn’t been able to account for. There’s also the problem of which bank of the river the battle takes place on which may influence where Roman forces end up.

Will the Romans take the day or will they flail in the face of the Gallic strength? Are there some tactics involved that scholars can discern from the literary accounts that aren’t immediately obvious?

The Roman Retreat

When the day goes against Rome, the retreat seems to be chaotic. Some of the Romans retreat to Rome, which makes sense, and some retreat to Veii. This creates a host of uncertainty for the Romans who survive particularly those who head back to Rome and don’t find their comrades there. The assumption of Roman losses is significant.

The Gauls meanwhile continue to suspect that there is a surprise attack from the Romans coming, but after some time they decide it’s worth marching on Rome just to see what they can see.

Things to Listen Out for:

• Gauls getting ‘organised’ after Alia
• General Akbar and the Gauls coming together
• The role of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill
• The Gauls confused about Rome – the city?
• How does the levy of the Roman army work in this moment?
• The Vestal Virgins on the move!
• What happens to the eldest noble Romans now the Gauls are at the gates?
• Lucius Albinus – ’the noble Plebeian’?

Our Players 390 BCE

MILITARY TRIBUNES WITH CONSULAR POWER

• Quintus Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) – Interreges in 391
• Kaeso Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Previously Military Tribune with Consular Power in 404, 401; interreges in 391
• Numerius Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Previously military tribune in 406.
• Quintus Sulpicius – f. – n. Longus (Pat)
• Quintus Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat). Previously military tribune in 402, 398, 395.
• Publius Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Previously consul in 393 and Military tribune in 397

DICTATOR

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat). Previously military tribune 401, 398, 394.

MASTER OF THE HORSE

• Lucius Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) – Previously military tribune in 394 OR
• Lucius Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) – Consul in 393, 392; military tribune in 414, 406, 403 , 401, and 398.

PONTIFICES

• Marcus Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat)
• Gaius OR Kaeso Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

AUGUR / PONTIFEX

• Quintus? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus OR Structus Fidenas) (served from 439-390)
• Succeeded by [- – – – Furi]us Q. f. P. n. Fusus – Military tribune 403. (CIL 6.37161; ILS 9338.2)

OTHER NOTABLES

• Quintus Caedicius (commanding Roman forces at Veii)
• Brennus(?) – King of the Senones Gauls
• Cominius Pontius – A Roman with the forces in Veii
• Marcus Manlius (or Marcus Mallius) (on the Capitoline during the siege)

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.34-39.
• Dr G reads Aulus Gellius 17.2.14; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Diodorus Siculus, 14.110.1; 15.20.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Eutropius, 1.20; Fasti Capitolini; Festus 500L; Florus 1.7-8; Orosius 2.19.1-16; Pliny the Elder Natural Histories 33.16; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 22.4-32; Plutarch De fortuna Romanorum 12, 324e-f.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Bruun, Patrick. “Evocatio Deorum: Some Notes on the Romanization of Etruria.” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 6 (1972): 109–20. https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67073.
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Digital Prosopography of the Roman Republic – https://romanrepublic.ac.uk/
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Eder, W. (. (2006). Triumph, Triumphal procession. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1221100 
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Graf, F. (. O., & Ley, A. (. (2006). Iuno. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e603690
• Kraus, C. S. 2020. ‘Urban Disasters and Other Romes: The Case of Veii’ in Closs, V. M., Keitel, E. eds. Urban Disasters and the Roman Imagination (De Gruyter), 17-31.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Prescendi, F. (. (2006). Mater Matuta. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e726220
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Smith, Christopher, Jacopo Tabolli, and Orlando Cerasuolo. “Furius Camillus and Veii.” In Veii, 217–24. New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7560/317259-030.
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.
• Versnel, H. S. (. (2006). Evocatio. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e407670

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly 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 battle’s waged, 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 Rad 0:56
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr Rad

Dr G 1:04
And I am, Dr G, very excited to be here for more of the war with Gaul.

Dr Rad 1:12
Absolutely, we are smack bang in the middle of 390 BCE listeners. So if you want a full list of magistrates for 390 BCE, you definitely need to listen to part one, because we are not going through that again. It was way too long a list.

Dr G 1:27
And also, most of them won’t matter. It’s fine, that’s true.

Dr Rad 1:31
They’ll come up in very incidental ways. So in our previous episode, Dr G, we were really setting things up again for what is about to transpire. We know we’re heading into a dark period for Rome, but in our previous episode, we were really just looking at why our sources say the Gauls suddenly seem so interested in a place so far south from where they apparently were.

Dr G 1:54
What could prompt such people to march so quickly down the whole of Italy? Well, obviously, it’s because they were insulted by the Romans.

Dr Rad 2:03
That’s right, the foolish Fabians, this trio of brothers from a patrician clan, apparently, were the cause, the major cause, perhaps, of this problem, and we left them in charge As military tribunes with consular power, leading the Roman forces against the Gauls, who have marched super speedily down the length of Italy to face them. And we were at the point where battle was about to take place near the river Alia.

Dr G 2:36
Hmmm the intersection of the Tiber with a tributary the Alia, which is just north of Rome and east of Bay, so pretty close to Rome proper, enough for people to be quite worried. Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Gauls have 70,000 troops with them, and that the Romans are only able to muster up about 24,000 in response.

Dr Rad 3:04
Yes, I believe the highest number cited by our sources for the Roman side is about 40,000 so they’re definitely massively outnumbered

Dr G 3:13
woefully outnumbered by the Gauls.

Dr Rad 3:17
I think that’s one thing we probably can say for certain, whilst numbers given in ancient sources are notoriously unreliable, particularly in this early period of history, it seems safe to say that the Romans were outnumbered no matter what they were facing at this point in time, yes.

Dr G 3:36
At this point in time, it seems that they were, yes.

Dr Rad 3:39
So Dr G, we’ve already seen that the foolish Fabians who the Romans stupidly elected to be their military tribunes with consular power in this year didn’t do a fantastic job with the levy, and their foolishness continues.

Dr G 3:58
Oh no. What have they done now?

Dr Rad 4:01
So they don’t properly establish their camp when they encounter the Gallic forces. So they hadn’t really decided on where they were going to set up camp. They don’t really set up a fortified area which the Rubens could use if they need to retreat during the battle. And you will appreciate this in particular, they do not even take the auspices or consider the sacrificial omens. They just start organizing the army like that’s the most important thing.

Dr G 4:34
Who are these Fabians? Have they never gone to war before? I know the camp is the first thing you have to establish

Dr Rad 4:42
well, and it’s so important for the Romans to be square with the gods at these sorts of moments.

Dr G 4:48
It is. I feel like Livy is clutching for a rationale for why things are going so badly for the Romans this year.

Dr Rad 4:56
Arrogance. It just keeps coming, doesn’t it?

Dr G 4:59
Like who doesn’t take the auspices?

Dr Rad 5:00
Exactly. Now the Romans being vastly outnumbered, they’re not able to organize a front line of forces that can match the Gauls. The Gauls much wider. Okay, so we can see this outnumbering sort of taking place. But this didn’t stop the Fabians from trying. They basically are trying desperately to match the Gauls in the organization. And by doing this, they actually end up compromising the military strength of the Romans, because their center was apparently very weak, because it was, I guess, so kind of spread out, or the way that the forces were organized was just kind of so spread out.

Dr G 5:47
Okay, all right. So the other thing to do is, like, your tactics need to change when you have less troops. Like, what are you gonna do? Guys, don’t try to go toe to toe with the Celts, right now.

Dr Rad 5:58
Yes, like, they would have been better off perhaps organizing themselves in a different way, even though it would have made their forces look obviously smaller. I think is the implication here. They’re just not sort of thinking straight on their right. They organize their reserves now Brennus, our Gallic chieftain, apparently, although we think that name might be made up by Livy, based on a later Brennus who ends up invading Greece couple of centuries from now.

Dr G 6:27
What’s a what’s a Brennus or two between friends?

Dr Rad 6:30
It’s a likely name. It’s a likely name. He is surprised to see that the Romans have not fielded a larger force to face him, and he’s kind of worried that there’s some secret weapon or plan afoot. This can’t be all the Romans are sending to fight someone as awesome as I

Dr G 6:52
I mean, I’ve heard about the Romans. People tell me they’re good. Is this all they got? This is gonna be a pushover.

Dr Rad 6:59
Well, and this is where I feel like, once again, we’re potentially seeing the legacy of this pestilence that struck a few years before.

Dr G 7:07
Not only is the force small, but everybody’s scrawny.

Dr Rad 7:11
Well, as you say, like hard times, right? Maybe the Romans couldn’t really field a huge army at this point in time.

Dr G 7:18
Oh, yeah. But you know what they say, hard times create hard men.

Dr Rad 7:23
The Romans would love to believe so. Brennus is trying to figure out what it is that the Romans might have up their sleeve. You know, he’s thinking, if I were to attack at this point, do they have some secret reserve forces that are going to come around and ambush me.

Dr G 7:43
Hidden cavalry unit. Everybody knows they’ve got one of those.

Dr Rad 7:46
Yeah, exactly. So he’s trying to puzzle it out, because he’s a good leader. Dr, G, he is trying to think strategically.

Dr G 7:56
Ah, are we getting into that trope where Rome can only be defeated by great men,

Dr Rad 8:01
I think we might be so what he decides is that he’s going to hit their reserves first, just in case they were going to be some sort of surprise attack, where they were going to kind of like encircle around his flank and ambush him from the rear, or something along those lines. He’s like, You know what? Strategically, I think I’m going to hit the right wing first, where there reserves, the stations, knock them out, and then I should be able to rely on the fact that I clearly have superior numbers to win the day. And Livy notes this as thus, not only luck, but generalship, we’re on the side of the barbarians. Yeah. So I the Romans love to do this, don’t they, where they can’t see themselves as losing just because they were worse. It’s also because, I guess it’s one of those things where they’re like, We were obviously at a really low point. Guys, we were not behaving as we should. The gods were not on our side. These guys, like the shame is so extreme that these guys, these barbarians, were better than us,

Dr G 9:04
The very definition of not taking personal responsibility.

Dr Rad 9:09
They love to do this kind of thing. Now, the Romans Do not behave like themselves at all during this battle.

Dr G 9:16
This is why they lose.

Dr Rad 9:17
It is they immediately let fear get to them, and so psychologically, they were beaten almost immediately. And so complete was their forgetfulness that when they decide that they’re going to run in a panic away from the Gauls, a lot of them run to Veii.

Dr G 9:42
That’s the wrong way unless, of course, you’re really keen to get back to your seven iugera that you were recently allotted and you’re like, you know what? I need to go to my safe place.

Dr Rad 9:53
Livy explicitly says that it would have been far more direct for them to go back to Rome.

Dr G 10:00
I. Ah. Now I think I might interrupt you here, because I think everything about this battle hinges on which side of the river we think the Roman forces are on.

Dr Rad 10:10
This is true.

Dr G 10:11
And there are different accounts. There are different accounts of this. And I believe correct me, if I’m wrong, Livy thinks they’re on the side that would make it easier to get back to Rome.

Dr Rad 10:21
This is true.

Dr G 10:21
So that would be the right hand side of the river, whereas Diodorus says that they crossed the Tiber ahead of the battle itself. And he places them closer to the they side of things, which is a really interesting technicality in terms of like, how do we understand the mechanics of this battle unfolding, and how would it have implicated the outcome? Obviously, we know from all of our sources, the record stands that the Gauls win this battle.

Dr Rad 10:56
What? Dr G don’t give away the ending!

Dr G 10:59
I know. I’m sorry, listeners, I’m ruining it for us all again. But the way in which it unfolds would have to be very different, depending on which side of the river people are meeting on.

Dr Rad 11:13
This is true, but Livy could not paint a more shameful picture, because we get actually very little battling. It seems like the Romans are just instantly so afraid, and they’re thrown into chaos almost instantly, it seems, and they start to run away from the goals, even before they can actually properly see them, Livy says.

Dr G 11:39
Wow, okay, I was gonna say, Well, maybe if they had seen the Gauls, and be like, You know what? Those weapons are weird, and I need to get out of here.

Dr Rad 11:48
No, I think it’s like the Gauls do start attacking a particular part of the Roman army. And for some of the others, they’re just so afraid by what they can hear, what they can sense, that they instantly just want to run away, and most of the Roman dead are killed, I can hardly say it. Dr, G, with their backs turned to the enemy,

Dr G 12:11
Oh no, the absence of virtus.

Dr Rad 12:14
Yeah. And the fact that their forces are thrown into such chaos means that more people die than need to because they’re blocking their own retreat. It’s like a fire safety plan gone horribly wrong. They just don’t know how to queue get out in an orderly fashion. So there’s all sorts of chaos going on the left wing. Have run to the bank of the Tiber, and this is where, depending on which side of the river you think they’re on, it probably affects the outcome a little bit here. But the main point is that they’ve run to the river, they actually throw down their weapons. And they’re presumably trying to cross the river to get to safety.

Dr G 12:56
It’s impossible to swim while you’re also trying to sort out a whole javelin-spear situation.

Dr Rad 13:01
The shame of it to throw aside your weapons so they’re trying to swim across apparently, according to Livy, and some of them are drowned because they either can’t swim or they are just wearing, you know, so much heavy armour whatever, they’re weighed down by it. So it’s pretty shocking. Now this is where I am going to highlight some of the scholarship that I’ve read about. What exactly is going on here. It has been theorized that, whilst this looks incredibly bad for Rome, that they conduct themselves in this manner, perhaps there was strategy at play.

Dr G 13:44
Wait, I have some things to say about that.

Dr Rad 13:50
Did the Romans know that the Gauls were active in the area? Because they’ve heard from other people, as you, as you said last episode, the Gauls are so numerous they have to support themselves by constant pillaging. So the Romans have indeed heard that the Gauls are active. They know they’re headed in their direction. Perhaps the Romans are unprepared for this, because, again, as you said, tough times, and we’ve also had the plague in 392 so they’re not at their strongest in terms of military men that can fight. So do they send out this particular force to meet with the Gauls, not with the intent of actually winning, but just in holding them at bay and slowing the Gallic advance down, so that the people back in Rome perhaps have time to organize defenses, or something along those lines, to try and prepare themselves for a Gallic onslaught, and perhaps the Romans were actually planning to retreat from this battle.

Dr G 14:57
Well, I would love, love to agree that losing a battle and losing troops and allowing men to die, trying to swim across a river, is all part of a clear strategy. I think the best thing that you could say for something like this is that maybe they were trying to buy some time, maybe. But it doesn’t go very well. And would that be the kind of thing that you would let on to anybody who was drafted into this force? Probably not, because then they’re not really going to fight. So Diodorus Siculus gives us a description of this battle as well. And he says that of the 24,000 Roman troops, they create a line from the river as far as the nearby hill. And that’s kind of the organization. He doesn’t talk about the left or the right or anything like that, but that they’re trying to create a force that allows them to cut off or meet the Gauls at any point, whether it’s at the river edge, right up into the more forested section, they station the weakest at the top of the hill. Obviously, the idea is everybody retreats there when they need to, and that’s where you create the defensive spot. He doesn’t talk about the camp. Nothing to be said about the disorganization. Doesn’t mention anything about the auspices or what might be going on with the gods in that relationship, the Celts also have a long line, and their choice troops are stationed on the hill. So we’ve got the worst of the Romans against the best of the Gauls, and that’s the kind of match up that is put to us by Diodorus. So the elite Celts really go hard at the weakest Romans, and the Romans are easily driven off the hill, so they immediately lose their fall back defensive position, instantly, as soon as the battle trumpets are bled and everybody runs in, and maybe there’s something to be said for the way that the Gaulish approach their attack, because it seems that the ferocity of the fighting or the nature of losing that strategic position almost immediately, once the battle begins, really turns the morale for the Romans upside down. They don’t handle this well. Everyone along the river edge starts to try to flee. There’s hardly anywhere to go. You either go into the river to get away from the Celts, or you run into the Celts going in the other direction. This allows the Celts to just really mow down Romans in every direction. The people who flee to the river attempt to swim. We’re not sure how many people in the ancient Roman world were swimmers. I mean, they have a river that runs right past their city, but everybody likes a bridge.

Dr Rad 17:55
They do like a bridge.

Dr G 17:57
Do you, do you swim it? Maybe. Does everybody know how to swim? Probably not. They’re taken out pretty easily. People take off their armor to make it easier to swim. This makes them easier targets to be killed, sure. So another tragedy in the making. They showered with javelins as they’re trying to cross the river, lots of missiles, people being injured, people dying, bodies in the water. We hear that the bulk of the force goes to Vay. If we’re thinking about this in terms of, could this be a Roman strategy? Doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like a Roman loss, but if it is indeed part of a broader like, what do we do if things go pear shaped in this battle? Heading to Veii is another way of protecting Rome?

Dr Rad 18:49
Well, that’s what I was going to say. See, this is the crazy thing about the Battle of the Alia. So this day goes down in Roman history, obviously, as one of the worst that they’ve ever had, and it’s clearly not because, I would say, of the numbers of people who die in this battle, I’m actually not even sure that that many Romans do, in fact die in this encounter. It’s the shame of it. It’s the way that the battle goes down. That is the terrible thing. We actually know the date of this because it was preserved, because it was so

Dr G 19:24
it was so impactful

Dr Rad 19:26
yeah, the 18th of July.

Dr G 19:28
The 18th of July

Dr Rad 19:30
yeah

Dr G 19:30
the height of summer

Dr Rad 19:32
Yeah. And, you know, it’s really freaky time of recording. We’re not actually that far away from the 18th of July

Dr G 19:37
Oh we should have held off.

Dr Rad 19:39
I did think about that, actually, but this is exactly it. If we were to say that this force was sent to encounter the Gauls only to potentially to slow down their advance, then perhaps it’s not a chaotic, spontaneous retreat today, where they just, like, don’t know where they’re going, and they run completely the wrong direction.

Dr G 19:58
Run away.

Dr Rad 19:58
Yeah, anyway.

Dr G 19:58
Oh, this is Veii. This is not where I meant to end up.

Dr Rad 20:02
This is where I wanted to end up going. Oh, my God, I went into shock. Perhaps this was the intent, because Veii is actually a fairly well fortified city. Clearly, that’s why it took the Romans so long to conquer it, yeah. And so they are kind of splitting their forces, because this is maybe another way of dealing with the situation. And, sorry, no, not and, but this is not at all how it is painted in Livy’s account. What ends up happening is, whilst we do have a significant chunk of the forces who managed to get away and head to ve the other part of the Roman forces, who run away to Rome, don’t know that they have survived. They don’t know that they’ve gone to veiy. They think they’re all dead. So they think this is a day of great slaughter, and they think a huge amount of the Roman forces have been cut down. So this is part of the whole narrative that Livy is building. It’s really starting to sound like a soap opera that there are all these guys who have gone to ve seemingly in confusion, but everyone else thinks they’re dead. So the Romans that managed to get away, which are mostly, I think, from that right wing, the sort of reserves they flee to Rome, and when they get back to Rome, they tell everyone, oh, my God, it’s cataclysmic. Most of our forces have been cut down. Everyone who’s not here right now is dead.

Dr G 21:33
Wow. Okay, now the other detail that Diodorus offers into this, which might add some some depth to some of what you’re saying as well. I think it’s additive, rather than sort of calling things into question. In this case, is that he suggests that the when the military tribunes are calling for the levy, they’re actually drawing upon all men of military age. It’s considered to be a special case situation, because they understand that the Gauls are coming.

Dr Rad 22:05
Rumor is that is not at all the case anyway.

Dr G 22:09
Rumor is flighty, but bad news is carried swiftly, and they’ve got a sense that there’s a really quite big force of Gaulish folk coming for them.

Dr Rad 22:22
They are not wrong.

Dr G 22:23
And the idea that they exercise a special power to increase the breadth of who can be levied might mean that we’re in a situation where we’ve got very young, very inexperienced young men out on the battlefield. It might be their first time. Chances are they don’t know what they’ve really seen. They haven’t been able to take in the military intelligence aspect of it. And I think when you’re running for your life, the last thing that you’re doing is looking around to see where Joe Bloggs ended up as your favorite companion. You may be like, you know, if I see him, he’s alive. If I don’t see him, he’s dead. That seems to me to be a very reasonable traumatic response to getting back to Rome and finding that he’s not there.

Dr Rad 23:12
Absolutely well in my account, nonetheless, this is where we’re at, where we’ve got some survivors who’ve managed to make it back to Rome. They’ve told everyone, we’ve lost. So many people have been killed, so many good men. It’s a disaster. They’re in such panic that they don’t even stop to close the city gates of Rome behind them. They just keep running until they get to the Citadel. That’s their safe place.

Dr G 23:41
City walls? Pah! I need more than that.

Dr Rad 23:44
Oh, the mistakes just keep mounting. Dr, G, it’s crazy. Now, of course, as you can imagine, the Gauls who are left back at the Battle of the Alia at this scene are kind of standing there, absolutely dumbstruck. They cannot believe that they have managed to triumph so completely and so quickly against the Romans. They’re stupefied. They’re kind of actually just standing there like statues. They’re thinking, there must be more to this. Surely there’s going to be some sort of surprise ambush coming at us at any moment now, but eventually they start to do what you would expect, despoil the bodies of those that they did manage to kill, and also just gather up the weapons and the armor that the Romans seemingly cast aside as they made a stampede to get the hell out of there. And this is something that we know, that you know, sort of Celts-Gallic people are famous for doing. But again, it’s not like the Romans don’t do it too. This is a standard part of warfare, but certainly they’re after resources, so they’re not going to leave anything behind. And as they’re doing that, they’re kind of keep looking over their shoulder, going, what was that? What was that is that the Romans but nothing happens, and they start to get used to the idea that maybe nothing going to happen. And so eventually they start to march in the direction of Rome to finish this business once and for all. And they manage to reach the area just outside of Rome before sunset. So romantic.

Dr G 25:25
There it is. We found it Rome, our Eldorado.

Dr Rad 25:31
Now they are again somewhat stupefied by the fact that when they reach Rome, the gates are wide open.

Dr G 25:41
Well, well, well.

Dr Rad 25:45
And not only that, there are no guardsmen or anything to be seen. No one seems to be watching out for the city, seeing what’s going on. And again, they’re like, This is too easy. This has to be a trap of some kind, right?

Dr G 26:05
Now, Diodorus gives us some different details about this actually. He says that the Gauls approach Rome with with some relative caution, but they’ve also got things that they need to do, and it takes them a little bit of time to do those things before they can get really properly set up. So before they can leave the Battle of Alia, they’ve got to behead everybody.

Dr Rad 26:29
Yes, the beheading, they do become famous for this, don’t they?

Dr G 26:33
Yeah, it’s just, it’s part of what they do. It’s a post battle insurance. People without heads…

Dr Rad 26:39
Insurance?

Dr G 26:40
People without heads don’t get back up.

Dr Rad 26:41
Oh, okay, I wasn’t picturing like that. Yep, that makes sense.

Dr G 26:47
You know, yeah, you’ve got to make sure that they’re dead. How do you make sure that they’re dead? You cut off their head. So they do that. That takes them about a day. And ultimately, Diodorus positions this as being through the whole process that the Gauls take when it comes to a post battle situation, it takes them about three days to turn up to Rome. This is plenty of time for the Romans who are going to flee, to flee. We get a famous story about the priestesses of Vesta, which you’re looking at me like. I should come back to that.

Dr Rad 27:19
I would come back to that.

Dr G 27:20
And that’s fine. I’ll hold that thought. I’ve planted the seed. And we also have this sense that the Gauls sit outside Rome for a couple of days looking at the open gates, being like, “it’s a trap”. And then once they’ve seen for a couple of days that nothing happens, they’re like, well, I guess it’s time to pillage the city. And they go in and they start wreaking havoc in the city itself, burning things down, stealing booty. And it’s at that time that they realize that the Romans who have stayed have retreated to the Capitoline Hill.

Dr Rad 27:59
Yes.

Dr G 28:00
That’s when they figure it out. They’re like, Oh, they’re up there.

Dr Rad 28:03
Yeah. And this is where the Romans plans might have gone astray. If we are to believe that the Romans had a grand plan behind all of this mess, perhaps they were trying to do something like split the attention of the Gallic forces, like some of them would pursue those who go to Veii, some of them would pursue those who go to Rome. I mean, this is really giving them the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, given what the Romans are saying about themselves at this point in time, it’s possible. But nonetheless, the full Gallic force appears to be here in front of Rome. And I do agree with you that it would make a bit more sense if this account, if there was a bit of time passing with this account, you know, and certainly when the Gauls arrive, Brennus makes sure that his forces give the city a full once over, you know, ride right around it, checking it out, reporting back what’s going on. They do, I think, probably sit and stare at it a while, but the reports are coming back constantly that we can’t see anyone. We can’t see any armed men around the walls, and they just become more and more puzzled by this situation.

Dr G 29:11
Are you sure this is Rome? Because there isn’t anybody here.

Dr Rad 29:15
Did we take a wrong turn? Were we meant to turn left, like half a mile ago?

Dr G 29:18
Is this Veii? Because I heard that didn’t have any people in it.

Dr Rad 29:22
Exactly. And in a way, if the Romans didn’t plan this, they’ve done a very good job, because the Gauls could not be more freaked out by this situation. It just seems so incredibly odd. So they decide not to enter Rome, you know, en masse at this point in time, it would be smarter for them to establish their own camp just outside of Rome itself, and they keep patrolling it, just keep an eye on it, and that sort of thing, just trying to figure out what on earth is going on. Because they’re pretty sure there are some Romans inside. However, there are many. More of the escaped army in Veii at this point in time. So certainly not all of the Roman forces are in the city. Now, the Romans inside, they’re pretty depressed, Dr. G.

Dr G 30:12
I’m not surprised.

Dr Rad 30:14
I think it’s safe to say that this is probably actually their lowest moment.

Dr G 30:20
It is pretty bad time to be a Roman. This is an unusual situation to be sure, to find yourself with the enemy at the gate, and being like hmmm hmmm.

Dr Rad 30:31
Did I look the gate? No, oh no, damn it. I knew I forgot something. Now they’re sitting around feeling pretty sorry for themselves, obviously thinking that most of their forces have been killed because they apparently don’t know about the people at they but soon the Romans have no more time for tears, because it is very apparent that the Gauls for arrive. Because even though the Gauls do not enter the sitter immediately, when they’re patrolling, they make sure that they let out eerie cries and sounds, and the Romans can hear the freaky sounds coming through. And this is obviously a moment where Livy is noting that these barbaric forces make different kinds of noises to the ones that Romans would to freak people out in this situation, which is very scary.

Dr G 31:20
The Romans make civilized war noises. But the Gauls…

Dr Rad 31:25
Yeah, when the Romans are patrolling a city and trying to freak people out, they go, whereas the Gauls, I guess, are getting out more of like ArrrOooooh, which, if you were curled up in the Citadel because you ran back there in a panic would probably be pretty freaky. So the Romans have an awful time of it. Now, Livy’s placing this as the Romans had an awful night. I’m gonna say that this is a night time after the Gauls have been there maybe for a few days when the goals are making these sounds. You know, the timeline is very unclear, but they are certainly having a terrible time of it once they realize the Gauls are circling around them, because they are, of course, expecting an attack at any moment. Why would the Gauls have followed them all the way back to the city if they weren’t planning something evil, Dr. G?

Dr G 32:20
Well, I hate to break it to the Romans, but how do they think a siege starts?

Dr Rad 32:25
Well, they’re not expecting a siege. They haven’t looked the gates. But anyway, they don’t know what’s going on. First they think, are they going to attack us during the day? That would make sense. But then when night hits, they’re like, oh, maybe they’re planning to really scare us with a night attack, it’ll be even more terrifying. So I’m imagining the Romans are on no sleep, no food, picturing all their dead friends on the battlefield, basically at a mental breakdown point by the time dawn hits on whatever day this is supposed to be.

Dr G 33:00
The timeline is a bit fuzzy.

Dr Rad 33:02
It’s a little bit fuzzy, but it’s at this moment when the Romans are at complete mental breakdown that the Gauls finally enter the city.

Dr G 33:13
Aha!

Dr Rad 33:13
Yeah. They were just building up to that. Yeah. As soon as the Gauls are inside, the Romans are magically transformed back into the valiant people, but they are 99.9% of the time. Dr G, it’s just at the Battle of the Alia that it all fell apart. They had to face some tough facts pretty quickly. There’s no way they’re going to be able to fight this gigantic Gallic force, especially considering that they were outnumbered at the Alia but now they have even less. They have a tiny army, so they have to make a decision. And what they decide upon is this, that men of military age and any able bodied senators who are left should all go and take refuge in like the Citadel on the Capitoline Hill. Wait, yeah on the Capitol yeah on the Capitol line Hill, with their wives and their children, along with whatever weapons and food that they can scrounge together. And there they will hold up. They’re going to quote, defend the gods the men and the name of Rome sounds very noble. Well, I think that this is where they suddenly start thinking about, Oh, maybe a siege is going to take place here.

Dr G 34:39
Could it be a siege? Yes, it could. Could.

Dr Rad 34:42
I think they’re trying to preserve what they see, as you know, the heart of Rome. They also this is where some of your tidbits starts to come into play, although not entirely, want to make sure that the flamen and the priestesses of Vesta. They should secure the sacred objects for the sake of the state. Now, they’re not going to secure them all in the Citadel or anything like that. Rather, they’re going to take them away so that they’re far away from where any fighting is going to be taking place, because God knows, a fire might take place at some point in this course of events. And if they can make sure that the cults can survive, then Rome survives, Dr G.

Dr G 35:28
Exactly. So getting the Vestals out of the Temple of Vesta is supremely important because of the objects that the Vestals look after. These sacred objects include the palladium, this little statuette of Pallas Athena that was reportedly bought by Aeneas all the way from the battle of Troy.

Dr Rad 35:49
Fancy.

Dr G 35:50
Very fancy, and the signs of imperium. Six miscellaneous objects do not know what they look like that are very important and are usually kept in the penus, this storage room inside the Temple of Vesta,

Dr Rad 36:09
They are very cheeky Dr G. very,

Dr G 36:11
Very. A penus inside the temple.

Dr Rad 36:14
I know. The Temple of Vesta of all places!

Dr G 36:17
I know. And so they take these six miscellaneous sacred objects, which the Romans believe as long as they possess, means that they will continue to rule. So very important to have them removed from the city at this point because the city is so endangered, and to be taken to a secret off site location.

Dr Rad 36:41
Okay, so we’ve got the cult of Vesta hopefully enduring, and therefore the Romans enduring the Citadel and the Capitol. That’s like the perimeter. If that part can survive, if that sacred part of the city can survive, then there’s some hope. Obviously, they do need younger, able-bodied men to defend this place, because they’re going to be best able to do that. But also, I think there’s an element of they’re the future as well. You know, they’re the future of Rome. And of course, you do need some people who have public wisdom, hence, some senators. But what are you going to do with a really old magistracies, Dr G?

Dr G 37:23
Well, probably eat them, I’d say, as the siege goes on, being like, look, he’s as tough as leather. But, you know, times are tough.

Dr Rad 37:31
Well, the Romans aren’t quite so cut throated. They do decide that it has you know, facts have to be faced. These are the men that are going to have to accept their fate. There’s not room for everybody left in Rome to take refuge on the Citadel and the Capitol. They have to focus on the necessary people. And so some of the really old ex magistracies, they are going to have to die.

Dr G 38:00
Oh yeah, I don’t see why this can’t lead to them being eaten.

Dr Rad 38:03
Well, no no more in the sense that they can’t be put in this area of safety, they can’t be protected. They’re just going to have to take their chances in the city. Because, after all, they’ve lived their life, they’ve reached an old age. How long do they really have to live anyway? The Romans can’t waste precious resources and space on people like this. And they’re like, yep, we accept that. You know, for the good of Rome, we accept that.

Dr G 38:30
That is not okay Rome. That is a terrible decision.

Dr Rad 38:33
Hey, you were saying they should eat them.

Dr G 38:34
Well, I mean, if you’re gonna do it, do it properly. Don’t just lead them to fend for themselves in the lower parts of the city where the Gauls are.

Dr Rad 38:42
Well, that is what’s going to happen. Now we also have a lot of common people who are called plebs in my account, who also need to accept the fact that they also are not going to be allowed to be in this citadel capital area.

Dr G 38:57
Oh no, no, no. This is going badly. Rome. You’re making some terrible decisions right now. Are you telling me that the only people who get to end up on the Capitol line Hill are patricians?

Dr Rad 39:06
I didn’t say that, but I think the implication is that they probably mostly are.

Dr G 39:11
Wow,

Dr Rad 39:12
Yeah. Now

Dr G 39:13
Rome can fall Gauls sack it. You have my permission. Get in there.

Dr Rad 39:17
Hey the plebs are cool with this to a certain extent, because the ex magistracies, all these men of glory and honor, people who’ve held triumphs, people who have held the consulship, even though I don’t know how that’s possible, because it hasn’t been around very much recently.

Dr G 39:34
Well, they would have had to, it was so long ago.

Dr Rad 39:38
They come out and they make a big public declaration that they are prepared to die with the masses, especially as they were old men. They’re not going to suck up all the resources. They’re going to be brave to the end. This is meant to be, obviously inspirational. Yeah, and they actually these older men, they try and, you know, give a little bit of a pep talk to the younger men that are going to actually be doing the defending of the Citadel and the capitol as they head towards this area and prepare themselves for what they are anticipating is going to be a siege, basically saying, you know, come on, guys, you can do this. You’re strong. The fortune of this city is in your hands. You can do it. We’ve survived worse than this. I think it’s slightly selective memory going on in Livy’s here, because he definitely says that Rome will be fine, because, after all, we’ve survived and have been victorious in every war for 367 years. It is very clear that that is not the case.

Dr G 40:47
Okay, but that’s that’s not how a win record works. You have to win every time for it to continue.

Dr Rad 40:53
Yes, but I guess you know, this is not the moment to be honest. This is the moment to try and sugarcoat things, and we have this very tragic parting scene where those that are going to be defending the capital and the Citadel have to say goodbye to everybody else, and it’s made worse by women.

Dr G 41:12
Of course it is. Yeah, classic Rome. Ruined by women.

Dr Rad 41:16
The women are running around in an absolute state, asking their husbands and sons, what on earth have you agreed to? What is going on? How is this going to affect us all legitimate questions, I feel, but it’s painted as a bit of hysteria. I think, stop asking questions now. Interestingly, Livy does note at this moment that women are allowed to go with their relatives at this point. So mostly we seem to have women going with their sons, because it’s younger men who are going to the Citadel. The sons hadn’t explicitly said, Hey, Mum, why don’t you come with me? And I’ll make sure that you live through this. But they haven’t explicitly said that they’re not allowed to come because what the Romans are doing some pretty gruesome math at this point in time where they know it would obviously be better if no women go towards the Citadel and the Capitol. Because, of course, obviously they’re completely and utterly useless human beings, Dr G, and they’re just going to be taking up space and consuming valuable resources. But they know it would have been too cruel to actually say that to them and forbid them from going. So women do go, and the Romans are mad at it, but they’re also noting that, look, we could have been a lot harsher here, but we’re just we’re “Stand Up Guys”, so we didn’t forbid women from going with their family members and trying to survive.

Dr G 42:47
The flavor of distaste that I hold in my mouth right now for the Romans, it is disgusting.

Dr Rad 42:56
Look. It might make you feel a little bit better to know that Livy’s Probably being influenced in the way that he’s building up this picture by Greek writers who have written, you know, similar scenes during warfare, specifically, probably Thucydides, when he’s writing about these sorts of scenes where it’s common, I suppose, to have these tragic farewells emotional women, it’s come up before.

Dr G 43:23
I’m not sure that I like it, though.

Dr Rad 43:26
So we now have obviously, a bunch of people who know that they’re not going to be included on the Capitol Hill because there’s not enough space, not enough food. And so they start scrambling. They spread out. Some of them make for the Janiculum. Others are just running through the countryside. They’re heading to nearby towns. There is zero plan. There is no one in charge of this. They’re just trying to go with their gut, like, what’s the best situation right now? And these are mostly the plebeians, definitely, because it seems like Rome is a goner, so it’s time to up sticks and get out of there before the Gauls realize that the Romans actually have apparently just left the gates open by accident.

Dr G 44:12
Well, I put it to you that even if the gates were closed at this point in time, there’s not enough people around to really make a difference. It would only take one real solid push from a Gaul to be like, wait a minute, guys, it’s unlocked.

Dr Rad 44:29
Now this is where we get a moment that I know you will enjoy. We hear what’s happening with the flamen and the Vestals who are trying to get out of Rome with some of the sacred objects.

Dr G 44:41
Oh, yes. What does Livy have to say about this?

Dr Rad 44:43
Well, I mean, these people, they are so honorable, they’re not even thinking about what they would take in an emergency. I mean, this is where it would be fun to sit around and be like if you were an ancient Roman in 390 what would you take to escape the Gauls?

Dr G 44:58
I’d take the Palladium.

Dr Rad 45:00
They’re not even thinking about their personal stuff. They’re just trying to think, what sacred objects should we take with us? Because, of course, they can’t take all of them, because they’re going to have to carry and walk with whatever they have, apparently. Now, the interesting detail that Livy includes here is that it is the flamen of Quirinus who is with the Vestals at this moment in time.

Dr G 45:22
The flamen of Quirinus, so related somewhat to the ascension of Romulus.

Dr Rad 45:28
Well, this is the thing, right? So this is where I actually would love to have your POV, if I may. So there are obviously three major flamens In Roman religion, the Flamen of Quirinus is one of them. And then we have the Flamen Dialis, and then we have

Dr G 45:50
the Flamen Martialis.

Dr Rad 45:52
That’s the one. I always forget that one. Now, apparently it is quite unusual for the Vestals to be associated with the Flamen of Quirinus.

Dr G 46:04
Yes, but that’s only because perhaps it’s unusual for us to think about the Vestals in connection with the Flamen of Quirinus. So we have the most information from our ancient sources on the Flamen Dialis And then the flamen Martialis and the least on the flamen Quirinus. So we’re kind of caught in a crossroads of like, is it unusual that the Vestals are in league with this guy right now, or is it just unusual for us and what we know about how the priesthoods were all interconnected, so the flamens sit sort of adjacent alongside the pontificates, but outside of the pontifice as well, to a certain degree, and the Vestals sit under the pontificies. So we often expect that the Vestals will be hanging out with a greater or a lesser pontificate. But that’s not the way that things work. At a sacred perspective, in the Roman mindset, if your gods are interconnected, and they all are on some level, there’s going to be relationships that you have across the spectrum through all of these priesthoods at different times of the year, different points and moments of ritual practice, and we just don’t know. We don’t have much evidence.

Dr Rad 47:25
Mmm interesting. Okay, well, nonetheless, it’s this little band that are together now, not only are they going to be carrying-

Dr G 47:32
A highly unlikely bunch of characters, all quite quirky and on the run from the Gauls.

Dr Rad 47:39
What will they get up to next? So they obviously have to carry some stuff with them, but they also decide that they’re going to protect some objects by burying them. So first they place them in jars, presumably to make them easier to find, and also to keep them clean, and they decide that they’re going to bury these jars in bury them in a shrine next to the flarman’s house, and I quote, where is now forbidden to spit.

Dr G 48:09
We’ll have none of that around here.

Dr Rad 48:11
No, and this is where they start heading out. They’re also heading in the direction of the Janiculum. It seems like they ultimately have the goal of reaching the city of – is it Caere?

Dr G 48:23
Oh, well, that’s quite far away, but it is in that direction.

Dr Rad 48:27
Yes. Is it Caere, though, is that how you pronounce it? C, A, E, R, E, yes. Okay. Caere.

Dr G 48:33
Well, that’s how I pronounce it. I can’t guarantee it’s how it should be.

Dr Rad 48:36
They’re heading in the direction of Caere, which is quite far away. I don’t know how on earth they’re expecting to walk that way

Dr G 48:43
About 50 kilometers away

Dr Rad 48:44
And this is where they encounter a young plebeian boy, take it away. Dr G.

Dr G 48:49
A young plebeian boy.

Dr Rad 48:51
Correct, that correction. This is where they encounter a noble plebeian.

Dr G 48:55
A noble plebeian, oh, with the very definition of an oxymoron. So they’re leaving Rome. They’re wandering through the countryside with the sacred items that they’ve decided need to be carried with them. They encounter a guy called Lucius Albinus, one of the common people he’s described as and he assists them in their flight. So he’s got a cart, pushes his wife and children out of the cart, and says, my ladies, my priestesses of Rome, please hop in my cart. Humble though it is, his wife’s on the ground, “Oi! Lucius!”

Dr Rad 49:41
So why are you supposing I walk 30 miles to Caere?

Dr G 49:45
Yeah, we’re not even halfway. And so, kicks the wife and children out of the cart, takes up the Vestal Virgins, and by doing so, ensures that they’re able to get far enough away from Rome to preserve the sacred items now heaven forfend that we find out whatever happens to his wife and children that he leaves unceremoniously on the side of the road in favor of the Vestals.

Dr Rad 50:12
I think it’s very clear that they do not matter.

Dr G 50:14
They don’t make it. Maybe that’s what happens. But through this gesture, we see the continuity of the Roman state is preserved on a sacral level.

Dr G 50:25
Absolutely

Dr G 50:25
So a very important tale.

Dr Rad 50:26
And what is really – what is really interesting about this story so often, when we tell these sorts of stories, we’re like, well, this character is clearly a lay tradition that’s been added in because some family probably wants their ancestor to get a name drop or something like that. But apparently he actually appears quite early in the tradition of this story. And some of the historians I have read actually think that Albinus is, in fact, a historical figure.

Dr G 50:58
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a plebeian has made it into an historical record, but this is a story that does get retold. So there is a version of this story in Flores who’s much, much later, and the idea that this could also have ended up in priestly records, yes, is the sort of thing that makes scholars more likely to think, “Oh, well, if it keeps cropping up in these other historians, then chances are there might be a sacral record of it.”

Dr Rad 51:30
Yeah, well, Dr G, I think we might have gotten to a moment where it’s perhaps time to wrap up, because we’ve got the Romans who are remaining in the city, getting ready to defend the Citadel. They finally got their game face on, and they are ready to face the Romans. We’ve got plebeians and a few other people scrambling through the countryside finding refuge, apparently, in very far away places. Because, yeah, Caere is an Etruscan city, which is 30 miles away.

Dr G 52:05
I was going to say, it’s like 50 kilometers away from Rome. Like, if you’re going to run away from Rome, like, do it properly? Run away.

Dr Rad 52:13
Look, I guess that’s the thinking, right? The Vestals are like, I really have to go. If they catch me, it’s all over. We’ve got the Gauls finally realizing that it is not a trap, it is just stupidity. And they’re tentatively coming into Rome and checking out what is going on. And we also have a bunch of people who are indeed still left in the city because they’ve either decided not to go, it’s just not practical. But we also have a body of older ex magistracies, etc, who are scattered throughout the city, and where they have taken up residence is, well, in their residence, they’re in their houses, and they are waiting to die because they’re pretty sure that the Gauls are going to obviously check out all the houses. Eventually they will come across them. They’re kind of expecting that they will die and whatever sort of melee breaks out. And so with Rome, once again, I’m really sorry, listeners, I really thought we were going to get to the actual sack of Rome, but it seems that, once again, we’re just on the precipice of the sack of Rome that is about to ensue. And it is indeed time, Dr G, for the Partial Pick.

Dr Rad 53:27
Oh, boy. Dr, G, the Partial Pick. Let’s tell us what in theory it’s about, and then see how the Romans do.

Dr G 53:35
In theory, the Partial Pick is a chance for the Romans to be scored against some criteria that they might have cared about if they were still with us. And it is worth a total of 50 gold Eagles, and there are five categories, so they get marked out of 10 for each category. I’m not anticipating great things from this Partial Pick, but.

Dr Rad 53:58
Biased?

Dr G 53:59
Well, just based on what

Dr Rad 54:01
You are, a partial historian.

Dr G 54:02
I am, a noble partial historian, a plebeian noble. So our first category is military clout.

Dr Rad 54:13
Clearly none to be had here.

Dr G 54:16
Cloutless.

Dr Rad 54:17
Yeah. I mean, look, we can maybe say that if we give them a lot of benefit out and go against what they themselves tell us happened, that maybe there was some strategy, and it didn’t quite go as they were planning.

Dr G 54:32
Oh yes, yeah, it was a strategy. It’s all going exactly as I planned.

Dr Rad 54:37
With people just running in every direction with whatever they can carry, with men kicking their wives and children to the curb so that they can take the vessels, because the vessels have no mode of transportation because nobody cares.

Dr G 54:53
Yeah? Intense. That’s a zero, yeah? Diplomacy.

Dr Rad 54:58
Well, no, I mean, it’s a state. Open warfare, wherever you look. Dr, G, yes, nobody’s tried talking. No, not anymore. The time for words is over, because clearly when the Gauls and the Romans talk, I mean, these guys have gone from basically not even knowing who each other really are to absolutely hating each other’s guts with the intensity of 1000 sons in a very short period of time.

Dr G 55:21
I think this is a great setup for enemies to lovers. I wait to see it. All right. Expansion?

Dr Rad 55:28
Well, yeah, no. I mean, as I say, they’re clearly on the brink of losing Rome itself at this point.

Dr G 55:33
Virtus?

Dr Rad 55:34
Ooh, okay. Now, is it possible that we say Albinus giving the virgins a lift.

Dr G 55:43
Is that an act of virtus? To push your wife and children out of your cart?

Dr Rad 55:51
For the sake of the eternal flame? Virgin women, close your eyes, give me a hand Vestal.

Dr G 56:01
I don’t think that’s virtus. I think what we might be able to say is virtus is the very old ex magistracies who have decided to remain in the city-

Dr Rad 56:11
Ah yes

Dr G 56:12
with their wise words and sort of moral uplift of those who surround them, being like, you know, what a noble death is, a death that is a Roman death, where you sit it out and you wait for the enemy to come and you do your best,

Dr Rad 56:26
yeah,

Dr G 56:26
and if you don’t make it, you don’t make it.

Dr Rad 56:28
yeah. And look, to be honest, I have to mention here something that will come up when we actually deal with what happens to them next episode. But they actually do do something special with their death, it seems. So it’s going to be quite the moment. That’s why I didn’t want to rush ahead into it. I didn’t want to, didn’t I wanted to give them their final moments of glory, their moment to shine. Exactly. I didn’t want to rush through it, because we’ve seen where rushing gets you

Dr G 56:55
all the way to curry, and

Dr Rad 56:57
they apparently accidentally, you know, whoops, yeah,

Dr G 57:00
I just misread the sign.

Dr G 57:03
So do we give you anything for that? Maybe a two, two. Well, it’s not like they’ve seen any goals yet. Like they know that the

Dr Rad 57:11
intention, we’re going to reward the intention, and then we’ll award the actual act.

Dr G 57:15
Well, they’ve said they’re going to do like, yeah. They’ve stated some wise virtus kind of thing.

Dr Rad 57:20
Yeah, and they’ve said to the plebeians, don’t worry, plebs, we’re gonna die too.

Dr G 57:25
I’m right here next to you.

Dr Rad 57:27
Exactly. It makes it all better, because I’m awesome. You get to die next to someone who’s awesome.

Dr G 57:32
Yeah, that’s a real benefit.

Dr Rad 57:33
I feel like, look, I feel like we maybe have to give them a three. Like, they’ll probably get more points next time, to be honest. But yeah, I feel like maybe a three.

Dr G 57:42
Okay, okay. And finally, is the citizen score?

Dr Rad 57:45
Oh, that’s got to be crashing through the ground into minus points at the moment.

Dr G 57:51
I – Yes, terrible time. First of all, you’re called up in a military levy, which is all ages. Essentially, if you can hold a sword, you could fight. Bad news, bad news. If you’re a woman in Rome, you’ve basically been told you don’t belong on the Capitol. We don’t want to say it explicitly, but please don’t agree to stay.

Dr Rad 58:08
Look. But they did allow them to stay. They just didn’t want to say to their faces.

Dr G 58:12
And I’m proud every single Roman women who were like, I know they want me to leave. And you know what, I’m not going to do it, to stick around and make a bad smell of myself, and they’re gonna have to know that I’m here. Good for you, lady.

Dr Rad 58:28
I think the unwritten thing as well is that it would have been pretty awful for the men who are left. Well, I mean, you would hope it would be awful for the men who are left to have to see their female relatives left behind in that situation. I mean, at best, a quick death. At worst, we don’t want to talk about it. If we’re thinking about an enemy attacking the city, they could have been taken as slaves, so they could have been brutalized, and perhaps in a sexual way, like it could have been really bad. So presumably, for morale, the men actually don’t want their female relatives to not be on the Capitol. But they’re just pointing out, as the Romans tend to do, because they are relentlessly pragmatic, that if we’re just thinking about the food and space, there is no place for women here.

Dr G 59:19
What are you doing?

Dr Rad 59:20
Yeah.

Dr G 59:22
I’m eating all your grain. Thanks for having me, but we’ve only got such a small amount. So to be a citizen at the moment is pretty bad. You’re either running away from the city or you’re staying in the city knowing that the Gauls are right outside doing their howly noises. So not a pleasant time.

Dr Rad 59:41
It’s close to midnight

Dr G 59:44
Exactly, and nobody wants to be around to see what happens. So I think a zero for the citizen score.

Dr Rad 59:50
Yep, which means that the Romans, amazingly, have managed to get some points on the board. They’ve got three golden eagles this time, Dr G. I have to admit, I wasn’t actually anticipating that when I read this account, I was like, this is just going to be zero.

Dr G 1:00:05
Across the board, they did better than we thought.

Dr Rad 1:00:07
But you know what? This is the thing. This is why we have the categories, right? Because even when things are going poorly for the Romans, this is the moment where you bound to have some sort of story to uplift in the histories. And that story is probably going to involve some sort of behavior on behalf of, I don’t know, the citizens or the patricians or something like that, which actually gives them some golden eagles. Just when you think they’re going to have absolutely zero.

Dr G 1:00:32
They do something. They pull it out of the bag.

Dr Rad 1:00:35
Yeah, it’s actually the incredibly average moments when things are kind of sailing smoothly and nothing’s really happening that they’re probably going to get absolutely nothing.

Dr G 1:00:43
Yep, and it’s like you didn’t even try this year Rome, exactly. Wow. All right, so I would say that I’m very much looking forward to our next conversation.

Dr Rad 1:00:54
We really will be talking about the sack of Rome. Look, you say that, but

Dr G 1:00:58
I have a lot of things that happened before the sack of Rome.

Dr Rad 1:01:02
Okay, well, I’m on the precipice of the attack itself.

Dr G 1:01:06
Okay, well, we’ll see. I look forward to it,

Dr Rad 1:01:09
yeah, yeah. I feel like we’ve, we’ve left things on a very Gaulish Roman encounter where somehow this has become an aggressive goodbye.

Dr G 1:01:22
Yeah? 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 night’s review really makes our day. We are 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”.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 167 – The Gallic Sack of Rome – Part 2 appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

The title may have given a little away, but the Gauls are in Italy. North Italy specifically, but they are going to be travelling south and pretty soon they arrive on the doorstep of Clusium.

Clusium, Rome’s new bestie?

The Etruscan people of the city of Clusium seek support from the Romans. Unusual, yes, good for storytelling, also yes. Clusium is deep in Etruscan territory and yet it seems the Romans are willing to send a delegation to see what the Gaulish fuss is all about. The delegation is made up solely of Fabians, who are apparently meant to be neutral, but that aspect of the situation falls away pretty quickly when one of them kills a leader of the Gauls…

The Battle of the Alia

Rome (and particularly the Fabians) have really upset the Gauls! So much so that the Gauls make a bee-line for Rome moving swiftly through Etruscan territory to arrive at the point where the Tiber meets the Alia, just north of Rome itself. The speed of the Gallic movement catches the Romans off-guard and that’s just the beginning of their woes.

Things to listen out for:

• Who is King Brennus?
• “All things belong to the brave”
• Quintus Fabius gets right out of line
• The Gauls send envoys to Rome
• Diodorus Siculus – more accurate than Livy?
• Did Dionysius of Syracuse hire the Gauls as mercenaries?
• The search for somewhere cool?

Our Players 390 BCE

MILITARY TRIBUNES WITH CONSULAR POWER

• Quintus Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) – Interreges in 391
• Kaeso Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Previously Military Tribune with Consular Power in 404, 401; interreges in 391
• Numerius Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Previously military tribune in 406.
• Quintus Sulpicius – f. – n. Longus (Pat)
• Quintus Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat). Previously military tribune in 402, 398, 395.
• Publius Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Previously consul in 393 and Military tribune in 397

DICTATOR

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat). Previously military tribune 401, 398, 394.

MASTER OF THE HORSE

• Lucius Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) – Previously military tribune in 394 OR
• Lucius Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) – Consul in 393, 392; military tribune in 414, 406, 403 , 401, and 398.

PONTIFICES

• Marcus Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat)
• Gaius OR Kaeso Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

AUGUR / PONTIFEX

• Quintus? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus OR Structus Fidenas) (served from 439-390)
• Succeeded by [- – – – Furi]us Q. f. P. n. Fusus – Military tribune 403. (CIL 6.37161; ILS 9338.2)

OTHER NOTABLES

• Quintus Caedicius (commanding Roman forces at Veii)
• Brennus(?) – King of the Senones Gauls
• Cominius Pontius – A Roman with the forces in Veii
• Marcus Manlius (or Marcus Mallius) (on the Capitoline during the siege)

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.34-39.
• Dr G reads Aulus Gellius 17.2.14; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Diodorus Siculus, 14.110.1; 15.20.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Eutropius, 1.20; Fasti Capitolini; Festus 500L; Florus 1.7-8; Orosius 2.19.1-16; Pliny the Elder Natural Histories 33.16; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 22.4-32; Plutarch De fortuna Romanorum 12, 324e-f.
• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.
• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).
• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)
• Bruun, Patrick. “Evocatio Deorum: Some Notes on the Romanization of Etruria.” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 6 (1972): 109–20. https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67073.
• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 
• Digital Prosopography of the Roman Republic – https://romanrepublic.ac.uk/
• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.
• Eder, W. (. (2006). Triumph, Triumphal procession. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1221100 
• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550
• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Graf, F. (. O., & Ley, A. (. (2006). Iuno. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e603690
• Kraus, C. S. 2020. ‘Urban Disasters and Other Romes: The Case of Veii’ in Closs, V. M., Keitel, E. eds. Urban Disasters and the Roman Imagination (De Gruyter), 17-31.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Prescendi, F. (. (2006). Mater Matuta. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e726220
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Smith, Christopher, Jacopo Tabolli, and Orlando Cerasuolo. “Furius Camillus and Veii.” In Veii, 217–24. New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7560/317259-030.
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.
• Versnel, H. S. (. (2006). Evocatio. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e407670

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly 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 battles waged 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 0:54
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am Dr G.

Dr Rad 1:01
And I am Dr Rad.

Dr G 1:03
And together we are going to sally forth into the year that was 390 BCE.

Dr Rad 1:11
Oh, this is going to be such a big one, Dr G, I’ve already said it I predict multiple episodes in our future.

Dr G 1:16
I mean, I hope so, because I feel like I haven’t finished doing all of the reading for this episode, and if we’re doing it in just one, I don’t think I’ve gotta – there’s too much to pack in. It’s not gonna happen.

Dr Rad 1:28
Could not agree more. Dr, G, could not agree more. Now, just to do a quick recap of where we were from, 391 BCE, because I feel like these years are very tied together: 391 and 390. In 391, we talked about the fact that the Gauls are really making their presence felt in the northeast of Italy, specifically. And this is really something that’s been happening kind of behind the scenes, I guess, for our podcast, for centuries, by this point in time, because the Celts, of course, or the Gauls, whatever you want to call them, we’re talking about a really huge culture that has been spreading out all throughout all sorts of areas of Europe. And whilst there are, of course, local differences, because we’re talking about mostly tribal sort of people, the thing that seems to unite them is certain, certain aspects of their cultures, like language, maybe some art styles, maybe things like burial practices. Unfortunately, most of the written evidence we have for these cultures comes from people who are outsiders, like the Greeks and the Romans. But essentially, for centuries, they have been spreading and spreading and spreading. They’ve been coming into contact with the Celts. They’ve been coming into contact with the Etruscans. But around this time, in the early fourth century BCE, things seem to have taken a turn. Now this may be because, as I said, whilst we tend to refer to them as this sort of homogeneous group like the Celts. We are talking about different groups that are on the move for different reasons. And we know from Livy’s account, even though it might not be perfectly accurate, that there are different groups who are migrating at different times. And one of the last groups, he says that cross over the Alps and into Northern Italy is the Senones. Yes, and this group apparently landed on the doorstep of an Etruscan place called Clusium last time we spoke.

Dr G 3:34
Yes, dramatic. And apparently the Romans are friends with the people of Clusium, which is a surprise to us all as Roman historians, because Clusium is deep inside Etruscan territory. In a way, that means that it’s quite far from places like Veii, which is that southernmost Etruscan city that the Roman Rome has now just taken a few years before. And the people to the north of they directly to the north, far more south than Clusium have been like, we don’t want a bar of these Romans. So the idea that somehow Rome has springboarded over a whole bunch of people who don’t care about them to be friends with the population of Clusium defies historical belief.

Dr Rad 4:18
Well, I feel like that’s just what they’re telling the Celts, you know, they don’t want to, they don’t want to have a lack of unity, I suppose, in the face of the Celts, because, after all, they’re not friendly enough to send an army at this point in time when the Clusi, when the people of Clusium, come to the Roman senate for help, they say, ‘No, we are not going to send an army.’ And after all, we talked about this last episode, why would people this far north come all the way down to Rome to ask for help? Is it because the Celts really are just like on a rampage, and they feel like the Romans being untouched are the best people to ask? This might be where that conflict with Volsinii comes into it because the Romans have been in that region relatively recently, and maybe that’s what puts them in the mind of the people from Clusium. But to be honest, most modern historians think that this is crap.

Dr G 4:18
I was going to say even the question about the Volsinii, I feel it’s a bit problematic right now.

Dr Rad 4:18
100%

Dr G 4:18
That’s fine. That’s fine. Let’s not let historical potentials and probabilities get in the way of a great story that the Romans are pretty sure they want to tell us about this.

Dr Rad 4:36
Exactly, exactly. Instead, we’d rather listen to their side of things, which is that the people of Clusium come to them for help when the Gauls arrive and start attacking them, and they’re like, Help. Help. There are these strange, long haired people with odd weapons that look something like a sword, who are attacking us. We just don’t know what to do. Will you help us? And they say we’re not going to send an army, because we’re not that close. Boundaries. However, we will send ambassadors who will say to the Gauls, Talk to the hand. Just back off. Back off.

Dr G 6:04
Yeah, you don’t want to get involved with this. You don’t know what you’re going to be dealing with. Watch out.

Dr Rad 6:10
Oh, you’re telling us you want a piece of this action?

Dr G 6:14
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a Fabian, and that might not mean anything to you, but it should. It really should.

Dr Rad 6:21
We’re fabulous in a terrifying way, yeah. So we’ve got this situation, and on top of that, there have been some signs Dr G that the Romans really should have been paying attention to, especially before they send a somewhat aggressive embassy off to Clusium. There have been multiple problems in the last couple of years, like the plague. That could be a sign that the gods are angry with you. We’ve had the censor of dying in office, maybe being replaced incorrectly. We’ve had voices divine, voices ignored, ignored, moving out in the middle of the night and talking to plebeians and then ignored. It’s not been great. And then on top of that, the one man that could have saved everyone from this Celtic attack has been exiled for no very good reason.

Dr G 7:13
Are we talking about Camillus?

Dr Rad 7:15
Oh, am I talking about Camillus? Who else could I possibly want to even talk about Dr G, he is just that much of a freaking hero at this point in time.

Dr G 7:27
The things that the Romans value, they really have me questioning everything

Dr Rad 7:31
I know, I know, so Rome, whether it recognizes it or not, is in a tight spot at this moment in time. Now, before we get into the magistrates, I did leave us on a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of 391 I didn’t give you the full exchange between these ambassadors, the three fabulous Fabians and the Senones, who are attacking Clusium, so I thought that might be a good lead in to the magistrates for 391 and I think you’ll see why when I get to the end of this exchange. Are you ready?

Dr G 8:04
I am ready.

Dr Rad 8:18
Excellent. So part of the issue with this whole situation is that the fabulous Fabians, this is where they transition into the foolish Fabian stocky, because they’re meant to be approaching the Gauls in a peaceful, diplomatic manner that all this trouble just gets swept under the rug.

Dr G 8:48
Easy, does it? Boys? Easy, back off. Back off. You know you go your way with Gauls.

Dr Rad 8:56
Unfortunately, Livy describes them as more like Gauls than Romans, which means that they are dialing the aggression up to 11.

Dr G 9:06
Wow.

Dr Rad 9:07
Yeah. Livy, yeah. So basically, when they extend their initial offer, which is, look, these guys are our friends. We’re the Romans. Pretty awesome. Just, uh, you know, move on your way, please. The Gauls say, look, we’ve never heard of you guys before. Either you might not know us, but we don’t know you. However, we acknowledge that you must be someone impressive if the people of Clusium are turning to you for help, because we’re obviously ferocious warriors.

Dr G 9:45
As you can see by our manner of dress, ie naked.

Dr Rad 9:49
Exactly. We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag, Dr G. Now the Gauls say we’re not going to turn away from this offer of peace. Peace that you Romans have put forth on behalf of this Etruscan city. We understand the idea of seeking the diplomatic route and not just jumping straight to warfare. We appreciate that you guys didn’t just come here with an army. So here’s the proposition that we have for you, the people of Clusium must give us some of their land. After all, the reason that the Gauls are here is that they need it.

Dr G 10:33
Yes, we are land poor. We require some of your finest grass, thank you.

Dr Rad 10:38
See this is where it contradicts, like the other stories that we’ve heard right about why the Senones have turned up here. You know, there are all these reasons that were given for, you know, Celtic migration in this time period, but realistically, it probably does come down to the fact that a they do tend to have been a bit of a migratory people. They’ve spread over a very large part of Europe already. It just seems to be their way. But yeah, they’re probably looking for resources of varying kinds.

Dr G 11:06
They’ve done this before. This is not their first time around the traps. They’re like, Clusium? It’s just the last on a long list of people who have fallen before us.

Dr Rad 11:15
That’s if it even happened, because, after all, there’s nothing in the archeological record to support this. Now they point out that, apparently, the people of Clusium had more land than they could possibly farm at this point in time, anyway. So they’re like, it would hardly be, you know, it’s not much of a wrench. Just give us some land.

Dr G 11:38
Yeah, you’re just sitting on it. Wasteful.

Dr Rad 11:39
Yeah? Exactly. So the Gauls want to hear the response of the people of Clusium in front of the Romans, because I guess the whole idea is that the Romans are meant to be kind of like referees-

Dr G 11:52
the neutral party

Dr Rad 11:53
-yeah, something, yeah, exactly. And if their offer is rejected, then it’s on like Donkey Kong, there’s going to be a fight right then and there, because this is, it’s basically like them being bought off. You know, they’re like, if you can just give us the land, then it’s peace. But if you don’t,

Dr G 12:17
Or if you, if you don’t give us the land, I’ll break your legs. If you give us the land, it’s gonna be fine.

Dr Rad 12:24
And then they say to the Romans, on top of that, we would like you to stay and watch, not just because you seem to be some sort of mutual referee in this scenario, but also because we would like you to see if war is the result just all this awesomeness. Touch this skin, baby. Touch all this skin. It’s going to be quite the show.

Dr G 12:47
You haven’t done war until you’ve done Gaulish war.

Dr Rad 12:51
Yeah, they’re basically saying you don’t understand we are the best, like Celtic warriors. Nobody can beat us. We’d like you to stay and watch the show.

Dr G 13:02
You’re surprised that we’re here, and what I can tell you is we got here by winning.

Dr Rad 13:07
Yeah. You haven’t heard of us? Well, baby, our name will be on your lips after this demonstration. The Romans, of course, completely unimpressed.

Dr G 13:18
Well, this is yeah, given what we know about the Romans.

Dr Rad 13:22
Yeah, and this seems to have hit them the wrong way, as you can imagine, with the Romans, they’re like, I’m sorry. Just who the hell do you guys think you are marching in, demanding land from the people who live there, and threatening war if they refuse. That is just rude. What the hell are you guys even doing in Etruria anyway? So things are starting to get a bit-

Dr G 13:51
-okay. It’s getting heated. Okay. It’s going to turn into a pub fight very soon.

Dr Rad 13:55
Yeah. And this is a very this is where we get the very famous response from the Gaulish people. They say, I’ll tell you where our right comes from, right here. And this is where it’d be great if this podcast was actually a video, because I could pull out a sword. They point to the tip of their sword, and they’re less like, this is how we come to be in Etruria. This is our freaking passport, mate. And they say, All things belong to the brave.

Dr G 14:22
Ooh, I like that. The Romans are going to steal that one for sure.

Dr Rad 14:27
Absolutely they are. So tempers are running high for everyone at this point in time, the Etruscans, the Romans, the Gauls, they are all at fever pitch. So naturally, they all race for weapons, because when you’re angry, it’s best to take action immediately.

Dr G 14:48
Yes, yes, yeah, don’t think about it too much. Respond with violence.

Dr Rad 14:51
Definitely not. So a fight ensues. Now this might have been expected, if not for the fact that the Fabians join in the fight on the side of the people of Clusium.

Dr G 15:06
Okay, well, this is perhaps not surprising that they would make that choice, given that they’d been called in by Clusium in the first place, but that does void their position of apparent neutrality.

Dr Rad 15:21
Yes, this is apparently breaking a very big rule. In fact, my translation and Livy calls it the law of nations, which makes it seem incredibly formal for the early fourth century BCE.

Dr G 15:35
Guys, I don’t think we’ve got nations yet, and we’re not going to have them until the 19th century.

Dr Rad 15:40
Nonetheless, what they have done here is seen as breaking a very sacred trust. They are meant to be there as neutral observers, in a way you know, they’re meant to be there as diplomats. They’re not meant to be getting involved in any war. There’s been no formal declaration.

Dr G 16:01
The fight is between the Gaulish people and the people of Clusium. And it’s like, it just so happens that the Romans are there today, but they’re not involved, and for the Romans in particular. But it sounds like Livy’s maybe extrapolating this out to all peoples of this era. Is that there is a sacred element to warfare, and the process of going to war, and the Romans have not done all of the appropriate steps to suggest that they would be the people picking up swords.

Dr Rad 16:30
Absolutely. I mean, how many times have we been through the way that the Romans declare war, right?

Dr G 16:36
Like it’s laborious, and they’ve done none of the steps they’ve taken, no fetiales with them. This is a terrible idea, foolish Fabians.

Dr Rad 16:45
Exactly. So this is just another instance of arrogance on behalf of the Romans. So before we were talking about the arrogance of, say, the military tribunes with consular power, ignoring the plebeian who came to them with the divine warning, now we’re seeing the arrogance of the Fabians joining in. This is exactly the kind of stuff that is seen as inviting doom in to the city. Because not only do the Fabians join in, because that might not have been a big deal if they’d like hung in the back and just shouted moral support, but they do it in a very obvious way. Apparently, they make sure that they’re standing right in the front. So that’s very obvious. And then one of the brothers in particular, Quintus Fabius, charges right out, gets into a fight with one of the Gallic leaders and kills him.

Dr Rad 17:31
Oh, awkward.

Dr Rad 17:33
Yeah. Not only does he kill him, he then stops and decides he’s going to despoil the body right then and then, right in front of everybody, right in front of everybody.

Dr G 17:54
While I’m eating my salad!

Dr Rad 17:57
In public? You’re gonna take the weapons in public?

Dr G 18:00
What?

Dr Rad 18:01
Now, I guess it’s because it makes it incredibly obvious, like, in the heat of battle, somebody gets killed. Yeah, you don’t have time to stop and clock who it is. However, the fact that he then stops and is like, I’m going to despoil the body right here, right now.

Dr G 18:19
Cover me. I need to despoil someone. Oh.

Dr Rad 18:22
Word very quickly spreads throughout the Celtic forces that it was a Roman who was responsible for this very prominent Gallic chieftain being killed. So the Gauls decide that they’re going to retreat. But this is not over. They now have the Romans on their list, some of the younger Gauls are saying, let’s just head to Rome straight away. Let’s settle this right here, right now. It actually makes me feel like there are kind of like young patricians amongst the Gauls, as well as in Rome itself, because we then have the older Gauls saying, no, no, let’s do this officially. Let’s send some envoys. Let’s make it clear to Rome why we are upset. Let’s use our words make sure that there is like a formal process happening here. The Romans need to give us these three Fabian brothers, because they have violated this law of nations, which, again, I find hilarious that the Celts are now talking in these terms. But sure, they’ve done something wrong, and they want these guys handed over to them, presumably to, oh, I don’t know, torture and kill them.

Dr G 19:41
Just ask the hard questions, you know. All right, well, this is really interesting. So it sounds to me very much like Livy has vastly more detail on this initial incident that happens between the Gauls and the Romans, because these ideas are coming up a little bit in other sources, but definitely not to this level of detail. Like Clusium is mentioned quite a lot, and we know that it is in northern Central Italy, on the west side of the Apennines, which makes sense, because the Gaulish people, from what we understand, have come over the Alps and are now occupying the whole area between the Alps and the Apennines. So that whole Po Valley region is part of where they’ve set up, and now they’re moving south. It would seem, these three ambassadors sent to Clusium, recorded in just about every source and identified as Fabians very frequently. Also Quintus Fabius is definitely also identified as the one who kills the Gaulish leader, which causes so much upset, and that comes up in Appian. And then we have the emergence of a questionable figure who is called King Brennus?

Dr Rad 21:03
Yes, this is the supposed leader of the Senones. Many questions raised about the name. It seems to be perhaps a retrojection.

Dr G 21:13
It does. We do have a Brennus that is in the historical record from a sort of a century, 150 years in the future, and we think that this is a retrojected name, nevertheless, they’ve got a leader, so that’s good.

Dr Rad 21:25
And you know what? It’s pronounceable. Dr, G, I’ll take it Brennus, I can say it.

Dr G 21:30
Brennus.

Dr Rad 21:30
Yeah.

Dr G 21:31
Ah Brennus, what are you up to now, Brennus? Well, and this issue with Rome having done completely the wrong thing in this situation where they were supposed to be acting neutrally allows the Gauls to take the upper hand from a sort of sacred perspective and a legal perspective. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not against intimidatory tactics, sure. So they send their biggest, strongest, most imposing Gauls as their delegation of ambassadors to Rome just to sort of be like. This is what we all look like. This is what it would be like if you were on the battlefield with us. We only eat grain and terrible beer, and we’re fighting fit and ready for anything. Are you sure, Rome, that you still want to uphold this insult against us?

Dr Rad 22:25
Yeah, well, that’s exactly where Livy takes this. When the Gauls voice their unhappiness whilst the Senate put their head in their hands and go, Oh my god, the Fabians, they do not condone what those guys did by any means, but I guess they are aware of what would happen to them if they handed them over to the Gauls for punishment. They’re so elite, the Romans cannot possibly agree to this request, but the Senate, also in Livy don’t want to be blamed if by sheltering these privileged, upper class little twats. They don’t want to be blamed if a war results, because they have taken the side of people who clearly done the wrong thing. And so in Livy’s account, they actually seek the opinion of the people.

Dr G 23:23
Interesting. So in terms of we’re getting into the territory now where, in my source material, and I’m so excited for this, the note in the Loeb edition of Diodorus for this year, because we’re heading straight into this 391-390 crossover, is that Diodorus Siculus seems to be the most robust and accurate of the sources that we have for this time period.

Dr Rad 23:49
Unbelievable. How did it come to this?

Dr G 23:51
So while I appreciate what Livy might be saying, I’m going to hold on to the nuanced hope that Diodorus Siculus is going to come through for me with these details, because he does say that the Senate gets together about this issue, they understand the severity of it, and they do agree to hand over the Fabians, because there’s really no other path out from this. There’s been a grave offense against the gods, as much as anything else, the right thing to do is to hand these guys over. It’s not going to be pleasant. The Fabians aren’t going to be happy, but it needs to be done. And then the father of the three brothers who were the ambassadors stands up and says, I am not going to let you send all three of my sons off to the Gauls. He gets in front of the people and persuades the people to overturn the senatorial decision, which Diodorus tells us is the first moment in Rome’s history where the people go against a senatorial suggestion because – what we understand about how the Senate operates is that they don’t provide a legal avenue for anything. What they do is they provide advice. It’s just that you always follow their advice.

Dr Rad 23:51
Kind of like advice while staring down the barrel of a gun.

Dr G 23:51
Yeah, I’m going to suggest to you that you really want to do this thing right now, and you look at the shotgun, point it at your face, and you’re like, it’s a great plan, and I’m on board. I love it. I love everything about it. Yeah, I think what you’ve done here is really unique and special. This is not one of those moments. It seems to be something that divides the people as well, and creates a division moment for them, where they potentially go against the Senate for the very first time. And I find this a fascinating moment for the Romans to be having in their internal politics, because they’ve been fraying around the edges for a little while. Despite their success with Veii, they’ve been on struggle street in terms of the pestilence and what appears to be their economic issues that are just ongoing. It’s just not a great time. And now we’ve got this internal wavering between, how do the mechanisms of tradition of governance operate? And now things are going to get worse for Rome,

Dr Rad 26:22
Absolutely, because this is where I lead into the magistrates for 390 regardless of what we think exactly happened. And I love your account that, to me, kind of actually makes more sense. And we have seen instances like this before, where a man has gone before the people, and, you know, begged them to spare his children based on the achievements of his family, the contributions they have made, etc, etc. This is not the first time that that kind of thing would have happened in Rome. That kind of stuff mattered. So that kind of makes sense to me. I give you points, Diodorus Siculus. But regardless of what happened or how the Fabians were saved, what really tips things over and how we lead into the magistrates for 390 is that not only are the Fabians spared the fate of being handed over to King Brennus, but they somehow end up as military tribunes with consular power in 390 BCE, this is where I would love to talk about who the magistrates are, Dr, G.

Dr G 27:25
Well, I’m glad you’ve brought it up. So we’ve got this idea that in some of our other sources, Appian in particular, mentions this idea is that not only does Rome acknowledge the wrongdoing of the fabii, but instead of handing them over to the Gauls, they refuse to do that and then go on to elevate those three Fabians into the position of military tribunate With consular power for the next year, so that in the next instance of violence, it is legitimized and anything is now possible, they’re going to arm those guys to the hilt to go back to Clusium, or wherever the Gauls happen to be, and rightfully run them through with swords rather than, whoops, I was supposed to be an ambassador. Oh, my bad. I’m wearing the wrong hat right now. Let me just change that.

Dr Rad 28:19
I was, I was just trying to stretch my arm with a spear in it, and the spear just kind of fell, yeah, and launched itself through your groin. Sorry about that.

Dr G 28:29
Yeah. I mean, it was an accident. Let me just put on my military tribune with consular power hat for a moment. Oh!

Dr Rad 28:38
Unbelievable. And understandably, of course, the Gauls see this as, hello wound, meet salt.

Dr G 28:46
Yeah, the Gauls are not happy about that. Fair enough. I wouldn’t be either. But I think this means we are now officially up to 390 BCE.

Dr Rad 28:54
We are officially in 390 BCE now.

Dr G 29:28
Well, we do have a range of magistrates to get through. So let me take you on a journey. You can guess the first three military tribunes with consular power. It’s Quintus Fabius Ambustus, Kaeso Fabius Ambustus and Numerius Fabius Ambustus, the foolish Fabian, and one of them still with like a sore hand from all the stabbing like Ow. We may also have Quintus Sulpicius Longus. Quintus Servilius Fidenas, who we have previously seen as a military tribune, and Publius Cornelius Maluginensus. So all of these names should be familiar, except for Longus, who I don’t think has appeared before. They’re all patrician, keeping in that grand old idea of sure military tribunes with consular power is open to the plebs, but nobody ever puts themselves forward. I don’t understand!

Dr Rad 30:28
Well. I love, actually, the fact that Livy says about the election of the Fabians that wealth and power mattered even more to the people, and that’s why they got elected.

Dr G 30:39
Oh…

Dr Rad 30:39
Livy, what? What are you talking about? What have the conflict of the orders even been about? It’s like all these moments where he talks about how the plebeians get swoony whenever they’re confronted with the very bluest of blood.

Dr G 30:54
I just go weak at the knees. Yeah, I’m all gorgonzola dolce. Yeah. Look, it’s tough. We also have surprise, surprise, a dictator.

Dr Rad 31:06
I don’t know if we should say his name. I feel like it ruins it.

Dr G 31:12
We’ll leave that for you to guess everybody. No, it’s Marcus Furius Camillus.

Dr Rad 31:17
Ah, he’s back, back, back, back, back again.

Dr G 31:21
It’s his big ticket year. His master of the horse is Lucius Valerius – we think – Poplicola. Now, he was previously a military tribune in 394. We have seen this guy, he’s got a little bit of experience. Obviously, he likes horses, or -because we’re not sure – it could be Lucius Valerius Potitus, also a man of great experience, was consul in 393, 392, and military tribute in 414, 406, 403, 401, and 398.

Dr Rad 31:54
Experienced people out of the way,

Dr G 31:56
Yeah, we don’t know which one. It’s definitely a Valerius.

Dr Rad 31:59
Well, and this would kind of make sense, because we’ve talked about the fact that it’s possible that the Fabians are showing up in here because of an earlier source babies picked up, and therefore, maybe we’ve got some families sometimes being inserted into the history of this period, maybe when they actually didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s hard to know or exaggerating their role, perhaps, although I don’t know why you’d want your ancestors to be these three douchebags. But also, with the Valerii, there is also an earlier source from this clan as well that Livy sometimes is relying on. So again, it would kind of make sense to see Valerii here as well. Not that I’m saying that they’re making it up, but again, to highlight their family’s role in this, to make sure that it’s remembered, perhaps it makes sense.

Dr G 32:51
That’s right. I mean, if you can’t be Camillus, attach yourself to him

Dr Rad 32:56
Very tightly. Ride those coattails, baby.

Dr G 33:00
Literally, we also have some pontifices named which I think is it’s always a good time for me when we get in – we’ve got some named religious folk.

Dr Rad 33:10
I thought you’d be excited.

Dr G 33:12
I am, but I’m not so sure if I’m excited about the names. A potential Marcus Folius Flaccinator. Oh, the Flaccinator!

Dr Rad 33:22
A priest who’s a Flaccinator? I haven’t heard of such a thing.

Dr G 33:27
He’s just flacking around here and there. Anyway. His name comes up quite a few times in different sources. So it seems to be real. We also have another person, Gaius or Kaeso, Fabius Dorsuo, which does not sound like a Roman name to me –

Dr Rad 33:43
very strange

Dr G 33:44
But let us not ask too many questions about that.

Dr Rad 33:46
And a patrician?

Dr G 33:47
There are various spellings on that as well. Yeah, and a patrician, yeah? Well, he is a Fabian, so I suppose he has that going for him.

Dr Rad 33:54
I know. But it’s such a weird cognomen.

Dr G 33:56
It is. What is going on? Not entirely sure. We also have a reference to an augur or a pontifex, not entirely sure. Quintus or Servilius, Priscus or Structus Fidenas. This is how little we know his name. His name is, Servilius. All the other names seem to be up for question, Servilius, son of Publius, who is succeeded by somebody who we know even less of their name, it might be Furius Fusus, but what’s their praenomen? No idea. And we have some other notables as well who aren’t in magisterial positions, but we should probably just keep an eye out for a guy called Quintus Caedicius, Brennus, obviously, of the Gauls, Cominius Pontius and Marcus Manlius, also known as Marcus Mallius.

Dr Rad 34:59
Macho, macho man.

Dr G 35:01
Oh yeah, the things he’s gonna do just to wait. I love it. These are the folk that I have on deck for this banner year of 390 BCE, also known in popular culture as the Sack of Rome by the Gauls.

Dr Rad 35:20
Ooh, there we go. Well, Livy is definitely leaning into the drama of this moment. You know, I said before, when we were talking in a previous episode that he kind of skimmed over what seems to be a fairly major moment for Rome, and that is Camillus supposed trial and his exile and all of that kind of stuff. But that’s because he wants to get to this moment. Dr, G, I mean, wants to. I’m sure it was shameful, but he, he certainly wants it to balance out his narrative.

Dr G 35:48
I just don’t know why you wouldn’t draw emphasis to all of the things that goes wrong for Camillus, because surely that will put everything on a slightly different balance in the end, in terms of his narrative.

Dr Rad 36:00
Don’t worry.

Dr G 36:01
But, but I don’t know where he’s going with his narrative, because I haven’t read him. So?

Dr Rad 36:10
Camillus will get his moment in the sun again, don’t you worry. So Livy is definitely building up a sense of impending doom as we get closer and closer to the Sack of Rome by the Gauls. And the way that he tells the story of 390 it’s very much a big narrative. That’s the sense that we get. So Rome is now facing this enemy that they know almost nothing about, which is a very unusual situation for them, because they are generally fighting people that they can throw stones at

Dr G 36:41
Yeah, the guy next door, that guy, I know how he swings. I’ve seen it a million times, and I want my sandals back.

Dr Rad 36:48
How many times have we traded sandals? It’s getting crazy. Now, unfortunately, this whole magistrate list that we’ve just gone through highlights a very odd choice for Rome at this moment, but they’re facing an unknown enemy with strange weapons, and yet they don’t choose a dictator straight away, even Livy thinks this is cray-cray.

Dr G 37:16
Guys, you got an enemy on the doorstep, and what are you doing about it? Military tribunes with consular power will do.

Dr Rad 37:23
Yeah. Let’s have about six or seven or eight guys in charge. That seems legit.

Dr G 37:29
Could it be that they’re not expecting the Gauls to do what the Gauls do?

Dr Rad 37:34
Look it’s possible. And this is where I might highlight something that is actually going to make your ‘Meanwhile in Sicily’ segment very worthwhile for everybody. So we have had this whole backstory about the foolish Fabians, the people of Clusium, etc, etc. Some modern historians, however, have suggested that it is actually an accident of history that the Gauls, perhaps the Senones, end up on Rome’s doorstep, that in fact, they had been hired to act as mercenaries by the tyrant Dionysus. Wait, is it Dionysius?

Dr G 38:19
Dionysius of Syracuse.

Dr Rad 38:19
Dionysius of Syracuse, and they’ve been hired by this guy to be mercenaries whilst he’s trying to, I don’t know, fight people of Krypton down in Southern Italy.

Dr G 38:30
We’re gonna have a pincer movement, essentially. What’s going to happen is, you’ll move from the north, while I come up from the south. And what we’ll do is we’ll wedge them, and then we’ll steal all the Roman pizza and go home.

Dr Rad 38:44
Yeah. So maybe they were actually on the move, and the reason that they were heading, you know, so far south, is because they have a job to do, and the sacking of Rome is just something that they happen to do on the way that there’s actually no beef in particular, not first really paid, not really and that might explain why the Romans don’t automatically pick a dictator at this moment in time, because whilst they might be aware that there are more aggressive Gauls than usual on the Rome causing some problems. They might not have been anticipating an attack. You see it all heads up, Dr G.

Dr G 39:26
Well, and I think from a practical level, if I’m putting my ‘What if I pretend I was a military historian’ hat on, I’m definitely not. So this could go badly. Military historians, please contact me and comment on this episode. But where Clusium is, we’re talking a good sort of, I think, about 100 kilometers north of Rome. So definitely, in terms of what is going on geographically for the Gauls to move as far south as they do to come to. Rome’s doorstep, which, spoilers everybody, that’s what’s going to happen. They have to have gone through substantial amounts of Etruscan territory, plus other Italic peoples who are in contact and live in those areas as well, and to basically have had the agreement that they can move through those lands freely and take what they need. Because we are told, Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Gaulish force, equates to, by the time gets to Rome, it’s about 70,000 strong.

Dr Rad 40:34
Yes.

Dr G 40:35
We are not talking about a small band of nude Gaulish warriors. We’re talking about 70,000 people armed coming through substantial tracts of Italian land to get to Rome. And to do that, they would have had to strip the land bare, just from a logistics perspective, to keep themselves alive. You know, how do you eat? How do you fuel? What are you going to do? How do you take all of your stuff with you? People are either letting you through and letting you strip part of their fields, being like, I don’t want to encounter those guys. Please, just take what you need and go.

Dr Rad 41:12
And for God’s sake, put some clothes on.

Dr G 41:14
Please. Also this tunic, I made it just for you. And the idea that nobody would be resisting them, I think is part of the bigger question that I have about the narrative at this point. Because if they’re not encountering any resistance, what does that tell us about how things are going for the Etrurians [i.e. Etruscans], by and large, across the board, because it seems like we’ve talked about Rome having this sort of shocking time of it’s not a prosperous time. That also seems to be true for the Etruscans. What we do know from archeological records is that trade goods have really dried up, so people aren’t buying and selling in the same quantities that they were 50-70 years ago. So is Etruscan territory just ripe for the picking, and you can just take an army through there, and nobody’s gonna stand in your way. I don’t know.

Dr Rad 42:05
Well, and to build into that larger picture, whilst I am by no means an expert on what is happening for the Celts at this point in time, I believe that there has, it’s mooted that there have been some problems for some of the Celtic groups that we’re talking about, and that some of them have become sort of more militaristic. And this, obviously, is probably also driving some of the reasons for migration at this point in time. And it is thought, I think, that the Senones, if it is indeed this group, that the Romans are encountering, are one of those groups that has become like a slightly more aggressive breed of Celts, and they have actually come from what is now modern day Champagne, I believe.

Dr G 42:53
Hmmm, one of the great theories that is put forward in one of the ancient sources is that the Gauls move south because they are too hot. They just need to cool off somehow. Let’s, let’s go south. And I hate to break it to them, but it’s going to be a long way south before they hit somewhere cool.

Dr Rad 43:10
I was gonna say, yeah.

Dr G 43:11
It would have been cooler if they went back over the Alps.

Dr Rad 43:14
Yeah, Italy is not the place.

Dr G 43:16
No.

Dr Rad 43:16
Particularly Southern Italy.

Dr G 43:18
Yeah. So I feel like they took a wrong turn, maybe got a bit lost, and they’re like, I’m trying to find somewhere cool.

Dr Rad 43:24
Yeah, but this is not the narrative that Livy is building up here. I mean, it’s kind of funny in a way, that the Romans are taking this path where it’s like, it’s all our fault, when actually it might have been kind of a weird accident of history, but that’s not the way they’re playing it. What Livy tells me is that now that we have these military tribunes with consular power, half of which are made up of foolish Fabians, things do not get any better. In 390 BCE, they are no wiser now that they are magistrates.

Dr G 44:01
Damn.

Dr Rad 44:02
Yeah.

Dr G 44:02
I thought, I thought wisdom came with the position.

Dr Rad 44:05
Automatically, politicians become smarter as soon as they are given an official title. Instead, these guys are preparing for war, but they’re conducting the levy of troops like they’re about to just go trotting out across the field and fight the Volscians, just like they always do. They don’t seem to be preparing for anything extraordinary, in spite of the fact that they have been explicitly told to their faces that the Senones are awesome.

Dr G 44:37
Well, this is what happens when you don’t listen, when people tell you the truth and you just don’t hear it.

Dr Rad 44:43
Yeah, now on top of that, the Gauls are, of course, as we’ve said, even more riled up than they would normally be, because they have found out that the Fabians, instead of being punished in any way, have in fact, been rewarded, it would seem, by being given. In an official state position and leading the Roman people so they could not be any angrier at this moment in time.

Dr G 45:07
It’s, it’s an insult of a high magnitude. Not only did you not handle these guys ever, but you’ve rewarded them. And now, now what?

Dr Rad 45:16
Yeah, and this is where we get a little racist aside from Livy, where he says that the Gauls were naturally prone to uncontrollable anger slash rage.

Dr G 45:26
Wow.

Dr Rad 45:28
Now this is something that comes up in a number of Graeco-Roman accounts, the idea that these barbaric people, I’m using my flesh rabbits here, Dr G, are prone to extreme emotions, one of which is anger.

Dr G 45:43
Yes, wow. And we can tell this because obviously they don’t have moderatio. They don’t know how to, you know, balance things out, yeah?

Dr Rad 45:52
Because clearly the Romans are so good at that.

Dr G 45:54
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

Dr Rad 45:57
Yeah. So their rage is fueling them at this point in time, and they are on a quick march, which is super speeded after all the anger, because they are absolutely spoiling for a fight with the Romans. They just breeze through all the cities in between where their main camp, obviously was, and Rome itself. They do, of course, cause consternation as they go, but the Gauls make it very clear to everybody as they’re rushing past, can’t stop, can’t speak, Sorry, can’t chat. We’re dealing with Romans. They’re the people we’ve really got a problem with here. Yes, I would like that bread. Yes, I am going to steal your sheep. But don’t you worry, not you. I have a problem with I’m not angry with you, but I angry with you. I’m angry with Romans.

Dr G 46:38
I’m having some emotions, and I’m directing them accordingly. Out of my way. Don’t make me hurt you.

Dr Rad 46:44
Yeah. Now the Romans, of course, had had plenty of signs that trouble was coming, but what really-

Dr G 46:46
All the people fleeing from the north being like the Gauls are coming!

Dr Rad 46:57
What’s really freaking the Romans out, though, at this moment in time is the speed of the calls. They’re like, this is like some sort of ancient blitzkrieg. Has someone given them crystal meth? How are they moving so fast?

Dr G 47:12
Well, I suppose, maybe they don’t have a lot to carry.

Dr Rad 47:16
Now, the Romans have tried to get their own army together as quickly as possible, but they actually don’t get very far outside of Rome before they encounter the Gallic forces. So they meet at this now very famous place, Dr G where the Tiber and the Alia rivers converge about 11 miles outside of the city. This is where the encounter that is going to remain imprinted on Roman brains for centuries is going to take place. So we’re meeting at what will become known as the Battle of the Alia, the Gauls are already there and waiting, Dr G, they’ve set themselves up. Well, they’re making lots of noise because they are barbarians, wink, wink. They can’t help themselves. What are the foolish Fabians going to do next? I think we might have to leave it on a cliffhanger and find out next episode.

Dr G 48:18
Nooooo! To position Alia. So if we think of a being really quite close to Rome, just a little bit to the north.

Dr Rad 48:28
Yep

Dr G 48:29
Alia is north of Rome, but east of they right, so a little bit further over, because the Tiber sort of wraps around, and the Alia is a tributary that feeds into it. So I think we’re in for a fascinating time. I’m looking forward to our next episode together, but before then, it must be time for the Partial Pick.

Dr G 48:54
It definitely it’s time for the Partial Pick. I just wasn’t sure if there was going to be a ‘Meanwhile in Sicily’.

Dr G 49:01
Oh, well, I feel like I’m going to save my ‘Meanwhile in Sicily,’ perhaps for the last episode.

Dr Rad 49:02
That sounds fair.

Dr G 49:03
Yeah.

Dr Rad 49:03
All right, then it is indeed time, Dr G, for the Partial Pick. So, Dr G, what is the Partial Pick all about?

Dr G 49:18
The partial pick is about judging Rome as they deserve to be judged.

Dr Rad 49:24
I feel like we’ve been pretty judgy this episode already.

Dr G 49:28
Just you wait the judgment begins for real. Now, they are capable of winning 50 golden eagles. Is they amazing in every single category, there are five categories. They get 10 each if they do amazingly well. So our first category is military clout.