WEBVTT 1 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:24.640 Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve. Well today I feel truly blessed as 2 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:32.359 our guest needs no introduction. Many of us fell in love with the Roman 3 00:00:32.399 --> 00:00:36.240 Empire reading some of his books. I recall the first time that I picked 4 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:42.320 up a copy of Rubicon and simply couldn't put it down. Well. Tom 5 00:00:42.359 --> 00:00:48.320 Holland has a new book out, this time covering that period of Roman history 6 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:55.520 that I think sometimes best captures our imagination. Talking about the Golden or Imperial 7 00:00:55.640 --> 00:01:02.880 Age of Rome, from the fall of Nero and six a d through the 8 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:07.680 end of Hadrian's reign. This is the realm that you know when we were 9 00:01:07.719 --> 00:01:11.239 school children, you'd look on the map and see Roman Empire at its greatest 10 00:01:11.319 --> 00:01:19.799 extent and marvel at what those people could do. At the same time, 11 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:27.400 you'd look and read about how Rome crafted that empire and feel nothing but terror 12 00:01:29.239 --> 00:01:36.719 and what those people could do. Tom Holland and I talk about this and 13 00:01:36.840 --> 00:01:44.200 many other topics. His new book packs Rome's Golden Age. It's out today. 14 00:01:44.959 --> 00:01:47.719 I probably don't need to tell you where to pick up a copy, 15 00:01:47.799 --> 00:01:51.079 but I have links in the show notes in case you'd like to check it 16 00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:56.120 out. I couldn't recommend the book more. I mean, I couldn't recommend 17 00:01:56.120 --> 00:02:00.640 any of his books anymore than I already do, but this one especially strong 18 00:02:00.719 --> 00:02:08.599 in my opinion. So, without further ado, here's my interview with historian 19 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:23.919 Tom Holland. All Right, as I mentioned moments ago, I'm sitting down 20 00:02:23.919 --> 00:02:28.360 here with his story in Tom Holland, who needs no introduction. I'm sure 21 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:30.400 most of you have a copy of one of his books on your shelf at 22 00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:36.120 home. I'm looking at three right now. So his new book packs looks 23 00:02:36.360 --> 00:02:39.840 at the Golden Age of Rome, the High Imperial Period, as I like 24 00:02:39.919 --> 00:02:45.080 to call it sometimes. I think a lot of us who became fascinated with 25 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:47.719 the Roman Empire at some point looked at the map that I did when I 26 00:02:47.759 --> 00:02:53.360 was a small child, Roman Empire at its height and sort of wondered, 27 00:02:53.560 --> 00:03:01.000 how did these people achieve such an unimaged, sagenable goals in the time. 28 00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:04.919 But one of the things that you talk about early in the book that I 29 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:07.599 wanted to touch on, and one of I think the most difficult conundrums I 30 00:03:07.599 --> 00:03:12.080 suppose facing somebody trying to learn about the past, or what I'm trying to 31 00:03:12.080 --> 00:03:16.240 talk to someone about the past, is letting go of our modern conceptions of 32 00:03:16.280 --> 00:03:20.960 the world. It's very difficult, I find for some individuals to do that, 33 00:03:21.039 --> 00:03:23.719 and maybe even if we go vice versa would be hard. In the 34 00:03:23.719 --> 00:03:28.840 preface, you write quote, I've sought to portray the Romans in their imperial 35 00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:32.159 heyday, not as our contemporaries, not as straw men either to be emulated 36 00:03:32.240 --> 00:03:37.319 or condemned, but as people who command our fascination. So I wanted to 37 00:03:37.319 --> 00:03:39.000 start out, I suppose with kind of a two part question, which is 38 00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:44.719 a what do you think it is that makes Romans, particularly the Romans of 39 00:03:44.759 --> 00:03:50.039 this Golden era so fascinating? And how should we understand the Romans? You 40 00:03:50.039 --> 00:03:53.120 know, what is the best way to approach of people so distant from us, 41 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:58.360 but somebody who is so often in the popular imagination. Well, I 42 00:03:58.360 --> 00:04:02.199 think the two questions can be diffused. I think we find the Romans fascinating 43 00:04:05.080 --> 00:04:10.039 both because they seem to be like us and because they are so alien. 44 00:04:10.319 --> 00:04:13.360 And so there's a sense in which the study of the Roman Empire has something 45 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:16.920 of the fascination of very good science fiction, where it's it's precisely the fusion 46 00:04:16.959 --> 00:04:21.319 of the familiar with the unfamiliar that generates all the tension and the excitement. 47 00:04:23.240 --> 00:04:27.240 I's kind of very amused to see that. This week there's been I think 48 00:04:27.240 --> 00:04:30.720 it was a tweet where a woman said that she'd asked her husband how many 49 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:33.199 times do you think about the Roman Empire? And he said, oh, 50 00:04:33.199 --> 00:04:38.319 at least five times a day or something. And now it's kind of papers 51 00:04:38.360 --> 00:04:42.040 in the in the US are running features about it and say, you're really 52 00:04:42.120 --> 00:04:45.120 true. I mean, it didn't come as a surprise to me. I 53 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:47.639 think about the Roman Empire all the time. But that the whole kind of 54 00:04:47.639 --> 00:04:55.879 the joke of it is I suppose that the Romans are a universal object or 55 00:04:55.920 --> 00:05:05.240 fascination, and I think that they fascinate in part because they seem glamorous and 56 00:05:05.519 --> 00:05:14.800 terrifying and thrilling, and we can enjoy that because they are sufficiently distant that 57 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:21.360 we don't feel implicated in what they are doing. So it obviously it is 58 00:05:24.680 --> 00:05:31.000 identification or fascination. With more recent empires generates much more ideological tension, but 59 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:36.240 the Raymans seems sufficiently different. And I remember as a child I was obsessed 60 00:05:36.279 --> 00:05:43.639 with dinosaurs, and if I'm honest, it was the pictures that showed predators 61 00:05:43.639 --> 00:05:49.000 savaging sauropods or whatever that I particularly enjoyed, and I kind of I realized 62 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:53.920 now that I moved seamlessly onto a study of the Romans. And I remember 63 00:05:53.959 --> 00:05:57.959 the very first book of Roman history that I was given. It was Peter 64 00:05:58.040 --> 00:06:01.399 Connolly's book about the Roman Army, and it had an illustration of the Battle 65 00:06:01.399 --> 00:06:05.040 of elasiuses as great Victory and the Gallic wars on the front, and it 66 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:11.000 showed various people with spears sticking out of their guts, and this seemed very 67 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:15.240 mesozoic. It's appeal, so I would not want to downplay the fact that 68 00:06:15.319 --> 00:06:18.480 it is the glamor and the frosty of the Romans. I think that is 69 00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:21.480 part of the appeal. And I think it's something kind of there's something primal 70 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:32.839 there, but equally admiring empires, admiring people who had threw people into arenas 71 00:06:32.879 --> 00:06:36.000 and torture them to death or got them had them fight to death for fun, 72 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:43.240 who owned slaves, who had sexual sexual morals that to us would seem 73 00:06:43.319 --> 00:06:50.879 unspeakably cruel. You know, there is the question of how you attempt to 74 00:06:50.959 --> 00:06:54.839 understand them is obviously, as you as you said in your instruction, very 75 00:06:54.879 --> 00:06:58.519 live issue. My own feeling is is that it's not the role of historians 76 00:06:58.959 --> 00:07:04.240 to be philosophers or theologians or moralists. So I'm trying not to be any 77 00:07:04.279 --> 00:07:08.639 of those in my handling the Romans. I'm trying to make them, to 78 00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:12.600 bring them alive, to enable readers to see the world through their eyes, 79 00:07:12.639 --> 00:07:17.279 and if not exactly to sympathize with them, at least to understand them. 80 00:07:17.319 --> 00:07:21.639 And I think the understanding part is the key. You know, obviously, 81 00:07:23.319 --> 00:07:28.279 you know during the Imperial Age, whether it's Americas and peeral Age, Great 82 00:07:28.319 --> 00:07:30.759 Britain's and peeral Age Great, you know, the Romans were viewed a little 83 00:07:30.759 --> 00:07:36.240 bit differently than they might have been after said this is the World Wars, 84 00:07:36.360 --> 00:07:43.160 when expansionist empires were viewed maybe a not so favorable light anymore. But I 85 00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:46.879 do find the Romans. I've always found the Romans particularly fascinating when you look 86 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:54.879 at maps. But then also, I suppose also from that sort of inspirational 87 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:59.680 yet simultaneously terrifying standpoint that you point out, because they are one of the 88 00:07:59.720 --> 00:08:03.560 great his slave holding societies of all time. And what's interesting is that because 89 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:07.920 they are distant, I find that it is oftentimes more easy for me to 90 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:13.480 speak about the Romans critically in that way than it is to speak about, 91 00:08:13.560 --> 00:08:18.480 say, the Antebellum American South. You know, there's there's nerves that get 92 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:22.079 touched there that don't seem to get touched when I talk about someone that far 93 00:08:22.199 --> 00:08:26.360 in the past. But as I was reading the book, one thing that 94 00:08:26.399 --> 00:08:33.320 sort of struck me as as interesting is the transition of the city of Rome 95 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:39.120 during this time period. You know, the city of Rome physically changes very 96 00:08:39.320 --> 00:08:46.279 dramatically, whether we're talking about you know, Nero, whether or not he 97 00:08:46.559 --> 00:08:50.039 intentionally burns it to the ground at sixty four eight atc. Whatever you want 98 00:08:50.039 --> 00:08:58.120 to call it is a city that starts to mirror the expansionist power of the 99 00:08:58.159 --> 00:09:05.559 Empire in such a more stark way than it does prior to this Golden Age. 100 00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:07.759 And I wonder if you could talk about that for a second, because 101 00:09:07.759 --> 00:09:13.399 I thought that the transition of Rome was really something powerful. So Augustus in 102 00:09:13.600 --> 00:09:16.480 Stony's sospiography of him, famously says that he found Roman city of brick, 103 00:09:16.480 --> 00:09:20.960 and he left it a city of marble. And the fact that Rome prior 104 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:26.440 to the Imperial period, prior to the establishment of the autocracy in Rome was 105 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:31.360 a city of brick, was a reflection of the fact precisely that it wasn't 106 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:37.759 an autocracy, that there were limits set on the right and the ability of 107 00:09:37.799 --> 00:09:43.360 the city's great men to promote their own image by building kind of a style 108 00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:46.559 of architecture that for the Romans was associated with kings. So the kind of 109 00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:54.000 palaces and temples and public monuments that you would see in Alexandria or Antioch, 110 00:09:54.080 --> 00:10:01.360 which were patronized by kings were anathema to the Romans for or deep ideological reasons. 111 00:10:01.399 --> 00:10:07.759 But with the concentration of power in the hands of Augustus, who comes 112 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:11.679 to rule as the first emperor, there's obviously enormous scope for him because there's 113 00:10:11.679 --> 00:10:16.200 no one to stop him to beautify Rome in a way that a Greek from 114 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:24.799 alexandro or Antioch would would admire. What happens the more emperors there are, 115 00:10:26.759 --> 00:10:31.039 the more buildings go up, because every emperor is in a position to beautify 116 00:10:31.159 --> 00:10:37.120 Rome. So you mentioned the fire. One of the reasons why Nero is 117 00:10:37.159 --> 00:10:41.440 so darkly suspected of having been complicit in the fire is precisely that it gets 118 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:46.919 rid of so much building stock, housing stock, public monuments or whatever that 119 00:10:48.320 --> 00:10:52.639 Nero regarded as not being up to scratch, and so he rebuilds the urban 120 00:10:52.679 --> 00:10:58.879 fabric of Rome in a much more impressive way. And the conceit is that 121 00:11:00.080 --> 00:11:05.200 he is such an enthusiast for architecture that of course he would burned dout stuff 122 00:11:05.240 --> 00:11:09.559 that he didn't like. Of course he would. Now, whether that's true 123 00:11:09.639 --> 00:11:13.600 or not, I think that the very fact that the stories are told gives 124 00:11:13.639 --> 00:11:16.519 you a sense of how it is possible for some people in Rome to find 125 00:11:16.679 --> 00:11:22.879 this desire on the part of the emperors to monumentalize everything oppressive and upsetting and 126 00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:28.080 unsettling. Because Rome is a very ancient city by this point. There are 127 00:11:28.840 --> 00:11:33.519 lots of lots of court as, lots of places that you know, people 128 00:11:33.519 --> 00:11:35.960 have lived there for centuries and centuries and centuries, and they don't want to 129 00:11:35.960 --> 00:11:39.080 see it removed, but you know, the emperors do. They want to 130 00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:41.639 get rid of it, and they have the power to do so. And 131 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:46.919 Nero's that the fire and Nero's reign, by removing so much of old Rome 132 00:11:48.440 --> 00:11:54.519 does kind of provide scope for the emperors who follow Nero to complete the task 133 00:11:54.639 --> 00:12:00.039 that Augustus had begun, so Vespasian comes back supposedly with the loot that he 134 00:12:00.080 --> 00:12:07.240 is taken from Judea. I think actually that's massively exaggerated. I think most 135 00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:11.480 of the money that he's coming is from tax receipts that he's screwed out of 136 00:12:11.799 --> 00:12:16.159 people in the Eastern Empire. But it enables him to pose as an imperat 137 00:12:16.279 --> 00:12:20.399 or a victorious general in the old sense of the word, and to throw 138 00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:24.519 up these spectacular monuments. But the person who really finishes off the job is 139 00:12:24.559 --> 00:12:33.320 Trajan, who enables the Romans to feel that they still have what it takes 140 00:12:33.360 --> 00:12:37.120 when it comes to being marshall, that they can march out there, and 141 00:12:37.159 --> 00:12:45.039 they can cross great rivers and capture enemies strongholds and defeat head hunting barbarians and 142 00:12:45.159 --> 00:12:48.120 plunder of them of their gold and silver. And this is just like it 143 00:12:48.279 --> 00:12:52.759 was back in the heroic days of the Republic. So Rome still has what 144 00:12:52.840 --> 00:12:56.120 it's got. But at the same time, all that loot, all that 145 00:12:56.200 --> 00:13:03.200 plunder enables Trajan to come fleet the monumentalization of central Rome, and he does 146 00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:09.519 it on such a scale that when two hundred odd years later, an emperor 147 00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:13.639 who's never been to Rome before who's based in Constantinople arrives in Rome. It's 148 00:13:13.679 --> 00:13:20.360 the spectacle of Trajan's Forum that leaves him awe struck. I think there's no 149 00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:26.159 doubt that by the end of Trajan's reign, Rome is the probably the most 150 00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:33.240 spectacular monumental city scape that has ever existed. It's broader, it's larger, 151 00:13:33.440 --> 00:13:37.480 it's wealthier, and that is why the memory of it, I think, 152 00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:43.840 lives so enduringly, even when so much of it has gone. And it's 153 00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:50.039 why the kind of the muscle memory of that endures in the West for as 154 00:13:50.039 --> 00:13:52.759 long as it does, and it explains in part why Washington, DC, 155 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:56.240 for instance, looks like it does. That kind of image of the classical 156 00:13:56.279 --> 00:13:58.879 city, the capital of a great imperial power, we know what it should 157 00:13:58.879 --> 00:14:03.519 like in the West, and that is largely thanks to the Empress of this 158 00:14:03.559 --> 00:14:09.080 period and perhaps a bubble all to Trajan. Has anybody who's been to Rome, 159 00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:13.639 as I've had the pleasure of doing it, it is hard sometimes to 160 00:14:13.799 --> 00:14:18.240 go to the Forum and imagine what it must have been like. But the 161 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:22.519 images are spectacular, and yes, if you've been to Washington, DC, 162 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:26.000 you can It's not hard to look around and think about who they're emulating. 163 00:14:26.039 --> 00:14:28.840 It's pretty obvious they're not hiding. The founding fathers were not hiding the ball, 164 00:14:30.279 --> 00:14:33.919 you know when they designed well they I mean, because otherwise they wouldn't 165 00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:37.519 be a Senate or a Capitol hill. Nope. I tell the I tell 166 00:14:37.559 --> 00:14:39.840 my students over every at the start of every year, why do you think 167 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:41.879 we have a Senate? Where does that word come from? It's pretty clear 168 00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:46.159 it's not. We didn't make up. So I'm going to ask a little 169 00:14:46.159 --> 00:14:52.799 bit about the empire and its relationship to conquered people's, because of course they 170 00:14:52.799 --> 00:14:56.360 are conquered peoples. And one of the quotations that I thought was really interesting 171 00:14:56.399 --> 00:15:01.759 from the book was you're right, and I have this kind of you know, 172 00:15:01.799 --> 00:15:07.080 not quoted directly, but an implication being that everyone in the empire was 173 00:15:07.159 --> 00:15:09.960 destined to become in the long run. I think is said a kind of 174 00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:16.159 Rome. And I wonder about assimilation in the Roman Empire, and I wonder 175 00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:20.200 about it specifically right now because it's one of my own projects. I'm kind 176 00:15:20.200 --> 00:15:24.080 of digging into the Wars of the Successors right now, and I don't think 177 00:15:24.080 --> 00:15:28.840 assimilation was something that was on the table for them as they were thinking about 178 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:33.919 how to add different parts to their empires. And for those unfamiliar, I'm 179 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:41.200 talking about the successors who come after Alexander the Great in really the late third 180 00:15:41.399 --> 00:15:43.840 and into the you know, second century, and so on and so forth. 181 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:50.080 And I just wonder, I really kind of wonder when we think about 182 00:15:50.120 --> 00:15:54.639 this idea of becoming Roman, was this this is real? Was this aspirational? 183 00:15:54.759 --> 00:16:00.960 Is this something that the Romans had in mind? And to what extent 184 00:16:00.759 --> 00:16:07.200 was it realistic for people to actually go from being a conquered people to go 185 00:16:07.279 --> 00:16:15.240 to feeling as though they're real citizens of the Roman Empire. Well, right 186 00:16:15.279 --> 00:16:18.960 from the beginning, if we trust the legends, Roman is a city of 187 00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:26.240 immigrants. So Romulus, the asylum which is on the on the Capitol Hill, 188 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:30.639 was a place where people could come if they were criminals, if they 189 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:33.919 were escaped slaves or whatever. They could go there and they could be integrated 190 00:16:33.960 --> 00:16:40.200 by Romulus into this novel state. And that tradition that it was possible for 191 00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:47.799 people to people who might not have been Roman to become Roman is a part 192 00:16:47.879 --> 00:16:52.080 of the ethos of citizenship. At the same time, of course, there's 193 00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:56.080 there's chauvinism. There's hostility towards that side, as that's that's that's the way 194 00:16:56.120 --> 00:17:03.720 of human societies. But it was viewed with astonishment by Greek outsiders how ready 195 00:17:03.799 --> 00:17:07.000 the Romans were to give away their citizenship as the Greek saw it. For 196 00:17:07.119 --> 00:17:10.480 the Greeks, say, I think they had a much clearer sense of the 197 00:17:10.519 --> 00:17:15.200 division between say, being Greek and being Barbarian than the Romans did. Of 198 00:17:15.279 --> 00:17:22.279 course, you know, going into the Imperial period, when Claudius starts appointing 199 00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:27.359 Gallic leaders as senators, they are all kinds of snobbish jokes about will they 200 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:34.440 turn up and in their trousers, But Claudius can do it because basically it's 201 00:17:34.440 --> 00:17:40.079 going with the grain of Roman history. Now there's a further dimension, which 202 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:45.559 you mentioned, slavery. Now, one of the differences between say Antebellum slavery 203 00:17:45.599 --> 00:17:51.079 in the United States and Rome is that there isn't really a color. It's 204 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:56.839 not about race. Most people in the Roman world who become slaves, who 205 00:17:56.880 --> 00:18:03.640 are taken to Italy to work as slave are from the Mediterranean, and that 206 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:07.480 means that it's very easy for them to look like Romans, very easy for 207 00:18:07.480 --> 00:18:15.680 them to blend in and the Again, one of the strange things about the 208 00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:18.920 Roman attitudes to slavery, which Greeks comment on, is how ready the Romans 209 00:18:18.920 --> 00:18:22.799 are to liberate their slaves, to free them. If you're a worker in 210 00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:26.319 the fields or in the minds, you're unlikely to be freed. You're going 211 00:18:26.359 --> 00:18:30.319 to be worked to death. But if you're a domestic slave, the likelihood 212 00:18:30.359 --> 00:18:37.839 is is that you will be freed, and your children can get citizenship, 213 00:18:37.160 --> 00:18:44.559 and grandchildren perhaps can become magistrates, and they become richer and more prosperous, 214 00:18:44.960 --> 00:18:51.000 and in time people who had been brought to Italy as slaves might end up 215 00:18:51.039 --> 00:18:55.680 in the Senate. Who knows. And again this is very, very unusual. 216 00:18:55.880 --> 00:19:06.920 And there's a sense in which I think for the slaves who are lucky 217 00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:12.039 in where they serve their terms of servitude, it's like working your passage to 218 00:19:12.079 --> 00:19:18.640 get a green card. It's an entree into Roman society. And the fact 219 00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:22.440 that people are being brought to Italy in such numbers from such different corners of 220 00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:27.920 the world and the only identity really on offer is a Roman one explains again, 221 00:19:29.039 --> 00:19:33.960 I think, how out of this great kind of this great churning of 222 00:19:33.400 --> 00:19:38.400 enslavement and liberation. You do get a kind of again, a kind of 223 00:19:38.480 --> 00:19:42.240 Roman identity. Now, what is happening in the period covered by this book 224 00:19:42.279 --> 00:19:45.799 is a further thing, which is the Greek empires that you were talking about, 225 00:19:45.799 --> 00:19:48.519 how long have you know, by this period have been conquered for about 226 00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:52.960 a century and a half, two centuries, two hundred and fifty years. 227 00:19:55.119 --> 00:19:57.640 Greeks are starting to be integrated into the fabric of the empire. Greek speakers, 228 00:19:57.720 --> 00:20:03.559 native Greek speakers are to the Senate. And what you see, particularly 229 00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:06.440 with the last emperor that I cover in detail, Hadrian, who was a 230 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:11.359 great lover of Hellenic culture, was known as a boy as the graculous, 231 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:17.400 as the little Greek, sponsored a kind of Hellenic equivalent of the European Union, 232 00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:22.960 a union of all the various rival Greek cities. And he's very enthusiastic 233 00:20:23.599 --> 00:20:30.839 for the notion that there is no contradiction between being culturally Greek and being a 234 00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:33.400 Roman, because Hadrian himself from the other side in bodies that. And of 235 00:20:33.440 --> 00:20:38.039 course this in a sense is the future for Rome in the very very very 236 00:20:38.119 --> 00:20:45.240 long run. When Constantinople is captured by the Turks, the people who defend 237 00:20:45.319 --> 00:20:51.359 Constantinople in fourteen fifty three are Greek speakers, but they still see themselves as 238 00:20:51.480 --> 00:20:56.440 Roman as Romeoi. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. Slavery in the Roman 239 00:20:56.480 --> 00:21:00.400 world, And again this is one of those situations where we have to be 240 00:21:00.599 --> 00:21:07.400 mindful of the changes that happen over time, because it's very different from American 241 00:21:07.519 --> 00:21:11.680 shadow slavery, you know, in some sense, depending upon whether if you 242 00:21:11.720 --> 00:21:15.039 are a domestic slave, it's it's closer in many ways, I think, 243 00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:18.279 to almost indentured servitude in the New World, where it's it's not it's not 244 00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:22.720 a forever thing, and there's no there's no mark or badge of inferiority, 245 00:21:23.519 --> 00:21:29.559 as the American courts use the term that gets stamped on you over time as 246 00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:33.359 a result. But I want to ask about a different Roman value. So 247 00:21:33.400 --> 00:21:37.359 there's there's assimilation. But then loyalty, as you point out in the book, 248 00:21:37.480 --> 00:21:42.880 is is very is a critical part of being a Roman. And you 249 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:49.920 talk about having swearing as a soldier, this the sacramentum, this this oath 250 00:21:49.960 --> 00:21:53.359 of loyalty. But you swear it, and this is the interesting part. 251 00:21:53.640 --> 00:21:57.279 You swear it to the Empire, to the Jerome and the emperor. And 252 00:21:57.359 --> 00:22:07.480 those are different things because those two individuals might have adverse interests at some point. 253 00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:10.839 And this all comes to a head in the year of the Four Emperors. 254 00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:15.640 And and I think that's interesting about the Roman Empire too, is how 255 00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:19.359 it goes through different dynasties. You know, this hollomaze, you know, 256 00:22:19.519 --> 00:22:26.559 rule Egypt undisputably until the until Cleopatra's demise, the accummated rule, you know, 257 00:22:26.680 --> 00:22:32.519 the Golden Age of Persia until Alexander the Great shows up in an unbroken 258 00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:37.400 line. The Julio Claudians die off relatively quickly in Roman terms. Well, 259 00:22:37.480 --> 00:22:41.119 I mean part they kill each other off, I saying they kill you. 260 00:22:41.240 --> 00:22:47.200 I mean, you know, that's kind of click clear, and Nero busy 261 00:22:47.880 --> 00:22:53.519 removing anyone who might be their rivals. I think you're right in identifying the 262 00:22:53.559 --> 00:23:00.559 death of Nero, who is the last living descendant of Augustus to die, 263 00:23:00.680 --> 00:23:03.920 meaning that there is no one left with the divine blood of Augustus in his 264 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:07.960 veins. So the significance of Augustus as the man who had saved Rome, 265 00:23:08.680 --> 00:23:15.480 who had established the monarchy, who had risen up into the heavens on the 266 00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:21.240 readiness of the Roman people to accept the monarchy, I think is overwhelming, 267 00:23:21.680 --> 00:23:26.160 and that means that when Nero dies, the question that has to be asked 268 00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:30.799 is, well, who can legitimately claim now to rule the Roman world? 269 00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:36.319 And the attempt to answer that question sees four emperors in very rapid succession in 270 00:23:36.319 --> 00:23:40.240 the fateful year eighty sixty nine, the year of four emperors succeed each other. 271 00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:45.079 And it points to what you were saying with the sacrament and the say 272 00:23:45.799 --> 00:23:51.400 the foundations of the emperor's power, but also of the stability of the emperor 273 00:23:51.559 --> 00:24:03.799 itself, despite the show of magistracies and civilian life and so on. Ultimately, 274 00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:08.519 it is a military autocracy. Without professional armies, it would be nothing. 275 00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:12.680 And we are so habituated I think to the idea of their being a 276 00:24:12.799 --> 00:24:18.960 Roman army that perhaps we are a little anesetized to how strange this was, 277 00:24:18.359 --> 00:24:22.240 nothing like it had existed before. I mean, it hadn't really existed before 278 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:29.240 the time of Augustus. It's Augustus who, as the last man left standing 279 00:24:29.279 --> 00:24:33.599 after the terrible cycles of civil wars that had destroyed the republic, he lays 280 00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:38.480 claim to the command of all the legions. In his role as a magistrate 281 00:24:38.519 --> 00:24:44.480 of the Roman people, and that's why the soldiers swear the oath to him 282 00:24:44.519 --> 00:24:49.000 as the ultimate commander in chief. The commanders in station of the of the 283 00:24:51.880 --> 00:24:56.559 of the legions are his legati, his legates, his delegates. That's their 284 00:24:56.680 --> 00:25:02.240 role. So all these are supposedly are loyal to the one man. Of 285 00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:04.000 course, what happens in the ear of the four emperors is that you get 286 00:25:04.079 --> 00:25:10.240 different people in different corners of the empire who have armies that they can get 287 00:25:10.279 --> 00:25:17.519 behind them, and the result is for a year incessant bloodshed. So you 288 00:25:17.599 --> 00:25:19.680 have the armies in Spain backing one guy, you have the armies on the 289 00:25:19.759 --> 00:25:23.160 Rhine backing another guy, you have the armies in the East backing another guy. 290 00:25:23.720 --> 00:25:30.920 And this is such a catastrophic situation for not just Rome, but for 291 00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:34.720 the entire sweep of the world that she rules, that briefly in that year 292 00:25:36.680 --> 00:25:41.000 people are thinking, well, have the gods abandoned Rome? Is the empire 293 00:25:41.039 --> 00:25:45.960 going to fall to pieces? Anarchy going to claim the universe? The fact 294 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:52.039 that it doesn't, I think shows that actually the challenges facing the Roman order, 295 00:25:52.279 --> 00:25:56.359 even with the extinction of the bloodline of Augustus, are not so great 296 00:25:56.599 --> 00:26:00.720 that all the convulsions of eighty sixty nine, in the long run, serve 297 00:26:00.799 --> 00:26:07.039 only as surface froth. The foundations of Roman power are sufficiently deep that within 298 00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:11.640 a few decades the memories of that terrible year are already starting to fade. 299 00:26:14.799 --> 00:26:19.039 And the winner of the year of the for him hers Vespasian. I'm always 300 00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:26.240 curious about him in that Did he did the best man win that brief period 301 00:26:26.279 --> 00:26:33.640 of civil war? Or did Vespasian just get lucky and everybody else knocked each 302 00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:38.240 other off and then he had the opportunity to take on maybe arguably the weakest 303 00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:45.200 of his opponents. I think both. I think he clearly was lucky. 304 00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:49.000 He was lucky principally in the Judean's rebelled in the final years of Nero's reign, 305 00:26:49.519 --> 00:26:53.519 and he was sent out to suppress the rebellion, which meant that he 306 00:26:53.599 --> 00:26:56.519 had a whole host of battle heart and legions at his back, just as 307 00:26:56.839 --> 00:27:00.799 the ear of the four emperors kicked off, which was obvious, very youthful, 308 00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:03.839 very useful thing to have. But I think he was also by miles 309 00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:08.880 the ablest. He was, I think a very impressive man. He was 310 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:14.519 the only one of the three of the four emperors in that year who could 311 00:27:14.599 --> 00:27:18.680 properly be reckoned an imperator in both senses of the words, so imperator in 312 00:27:18.680 --> 00:27:22.519 the sense that it gives us the English word emperor, but also imperator in 313 00:27:22.519 --> 00:27:26.559 the original Latin sense of a victorious general, a general who's been triumphant on 314 00:27:26.599 --> 00:27:30.119 the battlefield. Vespasian was both, and he was able to come back to 315 00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:38.559 cast himself as a figure of military rectitude and probity, a kind of throwback. 316 00:27:40.039 --> 00:27:42.519 He himself was from peasants stock, from the hills north of Rome, 317 00:27:42.759 --> 00:27:48.079 so he had no kind of aristocratic pedigree whatsoever. But the very fact that 318 00:27:48.119 --> 00:27:52.799 he was able to cast himself as of peasant's stock enabled him to play a 319 00:27:52.880 --> 00:28:00.759 kind of a figure of republican virtue as well as a very impressive military leader. 320 00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:07.880 And that's what enabled him to rule for ten years, to set rown 321 00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:11.480 back on its foundations, to heal the wounds of peace, and to establish 322 00:28:11.519 --> 00:28:15.519 a dynasty that would last for another twenty years after his death. So I 323 00:28:15.559 --> 00:28:19.960 think he was a very very formidable man. And I think again, of 324 00:28:21.119 --> 00:28:25.839 all of the four men who compete in that year, the most appealing as 325 00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:29.599 well. So it was said of him, that he had an expression like 326 00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:33.599 a man straining for a shit. And anyone who's ever looked at a portrait 327 00:28:33.599 --> 00:28:37.839 bust of Vespasian, we'll see that this was a very very accurate comment. 328 00:28:37.880 --> 00:28:41.359 And the great thing about Vespasian is that when he was told this, he 329 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:44.200 laughed. He was a man who could take a joke by and large, 330 00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:48.440 and that's always, I think, an appealing quality in an emperor. Yeah, 331 00:28:48.440 --> 00:28:52.279 I guess I've always I've always admired Vespasian because anybody who can come out 332 00:28:52.400 --> 00:28:59.119 of that civil war period and establish that level of stability again must be by 333 00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:03.799 definition in people do get lucky, but no one gets that lucky. I'm 334 00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:07.920 also interested about his two sons, Titus and Demission, because you know, 335 00:29:07.119 --> 00:29:15.799 tightest rules but not very long and dies of the plague. And I sometimes 336 00:29:15.839 --> 00:29:21.160 compare the two of them to almost like you know, in American politics, 337 00:29:21.279 --> 00:29:26.640 JFK and LBJ Lynden Plaine Johnson, because LBJ gets this, gets this good 338 00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.880 comparison, he has to follow JFK. Who doesn't. Who doesn't he was 339 00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:33.119 in president very long because he dies and he has this wonderful oh, he's 340 00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:37.599 this wonderful leader, who oh, if only he would have lived, you 341 00:29:37.640 --> 00:29:42.160 know. And to an extent, Demission looks in the sources sometimes terrible by 342 00:29:42.200 --> 00:29:47.000 comparison to Titus. But I wonder he is absolutely terrible. Yeah, Is 343 00:29:47.039 --> 00:29:52.079 that true? Or was he did so? Demission? I think he's laboring 344 00:29:52.119 --> 00:29:55.720 under a number of disadvantages, and the most the greatest of them is the 345 00:29:55.759 --> 00:29:59.119 fact that he is not, as Vespasian had been, and as tight as 346 00:29:59.119 --> 00:30:03.640 had been an imperator in the sense of a victorious general. Because Vespasian had 347 00:30:03.640 --> 00:30:07.880 suppressed the Judean revolt pretty much, and Titus finishes it off by capturing Jerusalem 348 00:30:07.960 --> 00:30:14.640 and of course notoriously destroying the Temple, and this gives them a kind of 349 00:30:15.119 --> 00:30:18.200 a military glamor that no one had really had ruling Rome since the time of 350 00:30:18.200 --> 00:30:27.039 Tiberius. Now, Vespasian and Titus both massively exaggerate their achievements in Judea. 351 00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:30.000 They cast it not as a suppression of a revolt, but as a great 352 00:30:30.039 --> 00:30:34.799 conquest which licensed them to celebrate a triumph. They imply that Judea was a 353 00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:41.799 land teeming with wealth, and that this is what enables them to build, 354 00:30:41.400 --> 00:30:48.559 most famously, the Coliseum. I don't think that's true, there wasn't that 355 00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:49.599 much wealth in Judea. I think most of it, as I said, 356 00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:53.599 was extorted from the Greeks. But it gives both of them a glamor. 357 00:30:53.720 --> 00:30:57.960 And because Titus is younger than Vespasian, he can kind of play the JFK 358 00:30:59.119 --> 00:31:03.839 as you say, the Demission can't really do that, and he comes to 359 00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:08.839 power I think resentful of that. He clearly was not an appealing character. 360 00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.839 He was. He seems to have been widely disliked on a personal level, 361 00:31:14.960 --> 00:31:18.519 and I think that that feeds into the sources. There's another reason, however, 362 00:31:18.599 --> 00:31:27.000 why the memory of Demission is a black one that is more flattering, 363 00:31:27.039 --> 00:31:33.160 I think, to his actual achievements, and that is that he was a 364 00:31:33.160 --> 00:31:37.079 committed reformer who was unafraid to break a few eggs to make to make an 365 00:31:37.079 --> 00:31:42.000 omelet. So the Demission very much feels that he's an emperor coming to power 366 00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:51.039 in crisis, and he is, I think understandably convinced that the Romans have 367 00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:56.480 lost the favor of the gods. They've lost it because the era of the 368 00:31:56.519 --> 00:32:00.960 Four Emperors showed how close the Empire was to coming to utter disaster. Because 369 00:32:00.960 --> 00:32:06.880 in the reign of Titus, a succession of disasters had overwhelmed Rome. Its 370 00:32:06.920 --> 00:32:10.839 most significant building, the Temple to Jupiter on the capitol, had burned down 371 00:32:12.759 --> 00:32:15.519 for the second time in a period of ten years. A plague had hit 372 00:32:15.559 --> 00:32:19.039 the city, which, as you said, seems to have carried off Titus, 373 00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:25.039 and most famously and notoriously of all the Vesuvius had erupted an entombed Pompeii 374 00:32:25.119 --> 00:32:31.200 and Herculaneum. And I think that Demission feels that all of these are signs 375 00:32:31.279 --> 00:32:37.839 that something is badly wrong in Rome, and that it's his duty as Caesar 376 00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:43.480 to re establish the bond, the religio as the Romans called it, between 377 00:32:43.519 --> 00:32:45.640 the Roman people and the gods. And he does this in all kinds of 378 00:32:45.640 --> 00:32:53.680 ways. He acts as a moral arbiter. He he sticks his nose into 379 00:32:53.680 --> 00:33:01.720 all kinds of aspects of personal morality that generates all kinds of resentment. He's 380 00:33:01.880 --> 00:33:08.119 also very, very committed to strengthening the currency. So although he is bald, 381 00:33:08.200 --> 00:33:12.000 he always shows himself on his coins with a full head of hair. 382 00:33:12.519 --> 00:33:15.319 And this isn't just I think, out of personal vanity, although I'm sure 383 00:33:15.359 --> 00:33:17.920 that's a bit of it, but because he's using this to illustrate the strength 384 00:33:17.960 --> 00:33:24.119 of the currency that he has restored, and he builds up the military forces 385 00:33:24.119 --> 00:33:30.920 on the frontiers, and all of this is a legacy that he passes on 386 00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:35.640 to the emperors who follow him. When when the mission dies, for the 387 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:38.599 reasons I've spelled out, he's unpopular and so his statues are trashed, his 388 00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:45.960 memory is blackened. But when we come to Trajan, this man who rebuilds 389 00:33:46.039 --> 00:33:51.480 Rome on the monumental scale, as we would talk discussing, it would have 390 00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:53.920 been impossible for Trajan to do what he did without the legacy that he had 391 00:33:53.920 --> 00:34:00.480 been bequeathed by Demission, the strong currency and the concentration of military parallel and 392 00:34:00.519 --> 00:34:05.720 the Danube that enables him to Conquerdacia, this gold and silver rich land up 393 00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:10.800 in what's now Romania. So I think that Demission is an unsympathetic figure, 394 00:34:12.280 --> 00:34:19.000 button but an impressive figure. And I think it's worth pointing out that reformers 395 00:34:19.320 --> 00:34:24.039 are rarely loved by those who are presently in power, as those who are 396 00:34:24.119 --> 00:34:30.159 presently in power have to sometimes put the bill for said reforms. But you 397 00:34:30.199 --> 00:34:35.119 know, and I've always, I guess I've always I've always admired a more 398 00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:37.599 demission a little bit more than the sources have been willing to give him credit 399 00:34:37.639 --> 00:34:40.480 for. We have to keep in mind who's writing here. You know, 400 00:34:40.599 --> 00:34:45.320 some of his reforms certainly benefited the empire in the long run, even though 401 00:34:45.360 --> 00:34:50.079 they may have been resented by the aristocracy. Who is of course? Were 402 00:34:50.079 --> 00:34:53.559 you were you sympathetic to my portrayal of the I was, I was sympathetic. 403 00:34:53.960 --> 00:34:57.719 I thought that it was a little bit more balanced than a lot of 404 00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:02.440 the portrayals that I've read in the past. I'm very glad I appreciated it. 405 00:35:02.519 --> 00:35:07.039 I mean, and the person who will get to next is Trajan, 406 00:35:07.119 --> 00:35:09.840 and it's it's easy to love him. It's it's much more different. I 407 00:35:09.880 --> 00:35:15.599 didn't like Hadrian, I didn't like Trajan at all, but I mean, 408 00:35:16.440 --> 00:35:21.880 it's easy to admire by him. He's must from the very beginning. You 409 00:35:21.920 --> 00:35:24.639 know, he's called the great before you or the best before he's practically even 410 00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:28.639 done anything. I mean, it's it's interesting, And that's kind of the 411 00:35:28.719 --> 00:35:31.119 question that I wanted to ask about Trajan is you know, he's in so 412 00:35:31.159 --> 00:35:37.559 many histories laid out as the best Roman emperor, and I often wonder about 413 00:35:37.599 --> 00:35:44.039 that, is he really is he the best Roman emperor. There's a lot 414 00:35:44.199 --> 00:35:46.960 to choose from here, and yeah, it's the highest extent, But does 415 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:52.159 that make him the best I don't know. Well, I mean he impresses 416 00:35:52.519 --> 00:35:55.599 very very stern critics, and I guess the sternest critic would be the great 417 00:35:55.599 --> 00:36:02.159 historian Tacitus, whose portraits of of the various caesars are pretty merciless. But 418 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:08.960 Tastus seems to admire Trajan because he of Trajan seemed to offer reassurance to Tacitus 419 00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:15.440 that actually the Romans hadn't lost it. Tast Us was paranoid that Rome's greatness 420 00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:21.800 was breeding softness in the Roman people that would make it impossible for them to 421 00:36:22.159 --> 00:36:25.079 have the kind of the record of conquests and military achievement that had been the 422 00:36:25.159 --> 00:36:30.639 Romans back when they were a hardier, lesser people. But the conquest of 423 00:36:30.719 --> 00:36:34.119 Dacia seemed to tast Us say, well, this isn't actually true. The 424 00:36:34.239 --> 00:36:37.039 Romans are still the Romans, hurrah. And the fact, of course that 425 00:36:37.239 --> 00:36:40.679 he Trajan can then use all this loot to beautify Romans. We were discussing, 426 00:36:40.920 --> 00:36:44.079 this is also great. So it looks like you can have your cake 427 00:36:44.119 --> 00:36:47.159 and eat it. You can be incredibly rich and have loads of baths and 428 00:36:47.280 --> 00:36:52.840 all kinds of stuff while simultaneously going out and conquering Dacians, so brilliant. 429 00:36:52.880 --> 00:36:55.840 Everything's wonderful, what we know. What's not to like the problem is that 430 00:36:57.599 --> 00:37:04.440 Trajan goes too far and he does what everyone in twenty one century American knows 431 00:37:04.440 --> 00:37:08.800 you should never do in invades Iraq, and the invasion of Iraq for Trajan, 432 00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:14.280 as for George W. Bush, doesn't end well, and in fact 433 00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:17.599 Trajan has a stroke. There's a massive insurgency going on. Trajan dies, 434 00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:22.360 and it's left to his successor Hadrian to clear up the mess, which Adrian 435 00:37:22.440 --> 00:37:27.159 does with great skill. He basically withdraws from Mesopotamia. But he never blames 436 00:37:27.239 --> 00:37:31.000 Trajan because he knows that Trajan is admired and loved, and he knows also 437 00:37:31.039 --> 00:37:37.639 that his own legitimacy as emperor kind of depends on Trajan being admired and loved. 438 00:37:37.079 --> 00:37:45.840 So no one ever blames Trajan for the fact that he basically screwed up 439 00:37:46.079 --> 00:37:51.360 by pushing too far. The blames, such as it is, falls on 440 00:37:51.480 --> 00:37:57.360 Hadrian, which is very unfair. But I think that the disaster in Iraq 441 00:37:57.519 --> 00:38:04.719 means that that Trajan cannot possibly be reckoned an unmitigated success. I think the 442 00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:07.239 Romans were deluding themselves. They liked what they saw in him. He was 443 00:38:07.280 --> 00:38:13.519 their model of what an emperor should be. But they're enshrining of him as 444 00:38:13.559 --> 00:38:17.000 the optimist prince chips. The best of emperors depended on them closing their eyes 445 00:38:17.119 --> 00:38:22.960 to the disaster that claimed the end of his reign. And does that sort 446 00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:27.360 of get into the question of I mean, does Trajan answer the question of 447 00:38:27.480 --> 00:38:31.039 can the Roman Empire expand forever? And the answers null at the end of 448 00:38:31.039 --> 00:38:35.360 the day. Yeah, I think he does. Yeah, yeah, because 449 00:38:35.719 --> 00:38:40.519 I mean the Romans never acknowledge this. They never acknowledge this. They have 450 00:38:42.199 --> 00:38:45.480 you know, the Romans didn't really have a word for frontier. There are 451 00:38:45.480 --> 00:38:50.440 simply lands that they choose not to conquer. And this is very much what 452 00:38:51.599 --> 00:38:54.679 the perspective that Hadrian brings. So he you know, there are wolves built 453 00:38:54.679 --> 00:39:01.079 along the kind of the desert reaches of Africa bordering this great wooden palisade is 454 00:39:01.119 --> 00:39:05.679 built beyond the limits of the Rind to keep the Germans out, and most 455 00:39:05.719 --> 00:39:10.119 famously of all, a wall is built out of stone in the northern reaches 456 00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:17.639 of the province of Britannia, and that wall is conventionally thought of as a 457 00:39:17.679 --> 00:39:23.800 defensive structure. So the most famous recent evocation of it is in Game of 458 00:39:23.880 --> 00:39:29.639 Thrones. George R. Martin visited Hatred's Wall as a you know, on 459 00:39:29.679 --> 00:39:35.960 a trip to Britain and imagined transfigured it into this great wall of ice with 460 00:39:36.519 --> 00:39:42.159 you know, white walkers and whatever lurking beyond it. That's not the purpose 461 00:39:42.199 --> 00:39:47.079 at all. Hatred's Wall exists as a statement of contempt and for those who 462 00:39:47.079 --> 00:39:52.400 lie beyond it and of Roman power. That's why there are no ramparts on 463 00:39:52.440 --> 00:39:55.800 it. It's not there to keep picks and Scots out. It's akin to 464 00:39:57.639 --> 00:40:06.360 massive gates barring entry, say to a billionaires, a state keeping the riff 465 00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:10.519 raff, the poor that tramps the down and outs they are not worthy of 466 00:40:10.599 --> 00:40:15.320 passing. You know. It's like a massive gated It's like the gates of 467 00:40:15.320 --> 00:40:20.559 a gated community. And what Hadrian is saying by building Hadrian's Wall is this 468 00:40:20.639 --> 00:40:25.360 is the outermost limits of what Rome thinks is worth conquering. Everywhere beyond it 469 00:40:25.360 --> 00:40:30.599 doesn't deserve to be ruled by Rome. Everything south of it, this is 470 00:40:30.639 --> 00:40:35.159 the garden of the world. This is where peace and order exists, and 471 00:40:35.280 --> 00:40:37.679 it is ours and nobody else can have it a part of it. And 472 00:40:37.719 --> 00:40:44.159 that's what those that's what those fortifications are about. Yeah, And Hadrian has 473 00:40:44.159 --> 00:40:50.320 always strike me as as right, quite frankly, that they're they're just okay, 474 00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:55.679 simply isn't if you kind of look at the map of Rome under Hadrian 475 00:40:55.760 --> 00:41:02.360 and you think, well, how much further conquer? What want Scotland? 476 00:41:02.679 --> 00:41:07.840 And I mean, what's what's the point of this? You know's what's in 477 00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:12.079 the deep dark forests of what is today modern day Germany, in Poland and 478 00:41:12.159 --> 00:41:19.239 beyond not mountains of gold. You know, it's it strikes me as you 479 00:41:19.280 --> 00:41:23.000 know, you're right that he is the Hadrian is the most intellectual emperor since 480 00:41:23.079 --> 00:41:28.159 Tiberius. And I don't know, does that make him more reasonable? You 481 00:41:28.199 --> 00:41:31.679 know? How does that? How should we understand him? I think I 482 00:41:31.719 --> 00:41:37.159 think it, I think it it. I think by temperament. You know, 483 00:41:37.199 --> 00:41:40.599 this was noted by by people who wrote about him, that he seemed 484 00:41:40.639 --> 00:41:45.840 to be a compound of paradoxes, that he was capable of being many things 485 00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:52.920 simultaneously. And I suppose the aspect of his appearance that famously illustrates this is 486 00:41:52.960 --> 00:41:55.800 his beard, because he's the first emperor to be portrayed regularly with a beard, 487 00:41:57.480 --> 00:42:02.320 and a beard is a marker of a legionary, and so it establishes 488 00:42:02.440 --> 00:42:07.920 trade. Hadrian, as you know, one of the lads, a vere 489 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:13.840 militarists, a military man, a man whom the legionaries can identify with, 490 00:42:14.239 --> 00:42:17.320 and Hadrian is massively popular with them. You know when he when he goes 491 00:42:17.360 --> 00:42:22.960 on his great tours of the of the legionary basis he would never expect the 492 00:42:23.039 --> 00:42:27.960 legionaries to do things that he himself what isn't going to do? So he 493 00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:31.719 goes around bear headed, he accompanies them on their marches, he eats their 494 00:42:31.800 --> 00:42:36.559 rations. He's he's much loved by the legionaries. But at the same time, 495 00:42:36.719 --> 00:42:40.719 a beard is is the marker of a philosopher. We already talked about 496 00:42:40.719 --> 00:42:46.360 how Hadrian is a great sponsor of Greek culture, and he in that sense, 497 00:42:47.599 --> 00:42:57.840 he's simultaneously, you know, a working class military man and he is 498 00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:07.239 kind of a foreign style intellectual. You know, it's he drives a truck 499 00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:09.440 and he reads the New York Times. I mean, it's kind of you 500 00:43:09.480 --> 00:43:19.320 know, it's that it's that equivalent. It's spanning Trump's bass and you know, 501 00:43:19.440 --> 00:43:23.119 liberals in Harvard. He's able to present himself simultaneously as both and that's 502 00:43:23.159 --> 00:43:31.519 obviously a tremendous political talent. And I think that he's he's the most remarkable 503 00:43:31.519 --> 00:43:39.199 of emperors since I think Augustus, because he's not afraid of the paradoxes and 504 00:43:39.239 --> 00:43:44.400 the tensions and the complexities within the Empire as it has grown up, but 505 00:43:44.599 --> 00:43:49.639 sees them as things that are worth cultivating. And in a sense, the 506 00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:53.400 you know, the most dramatic illustration of that is his sponsorship as a god 507 00:43:53.559 --> 00:44:00.360 of his dead lover, a boy called Antinous, who is Greek eyes in 508 00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:07.679 mysterious circumstances in the Nile and is raised to the heavens by Hadrian and becomes 509 00:44:07.679 --> 00:44:12.119 a genuine object of cult worship across much of the Eastern Empire. I think 510 00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:16.320 because people in the eastern half of the Empire can look at Antinous and think, 511 00:44:16.360 --> 00:44:21.400 well, he was loved by an emperor. He's closer to us than 512 00:44:22.199 --> 00:44:23.519 than twenty one else, you know, I mean much more than say, 513 00:44:23.599 --> 00:44:28.199 you know, Augustus or someone like that. And in that sense that you 514 00:44:28.239 --> 00:44:30.440 know, it's even a bit of a rival to Christ. And it's telling 515 00:44:30.519 --> 00:44:36.079 that of all the of all the pagan gods that the Church fathers had it 516 00:44:36.079 --> 00:44:40.519 in for, Antinous seems to have been the one they really hated. Yeah, 517 00:44:40.639 --> 00:44:45.639 go figure, go figure. I'm always going to wrap up here in 518 00:44:45.679 --> 00:44:50.000 just a second. But I'm always interested because Hadrian takes this tour of the 519 00:44:50.039 --> 00:44:52.480 Empire, and I'm always struck by the fact that he seems to be the 520 00:44:52.480 --> 00:44:57.639 only one who does it. I don't what is that. I mean, 521 00:44:57.760 --> 00:45:00.119 maybe you've kind of already handed. Augustus had done it. Augustus had done 522 00:45:00.119 --> 00:45:05.360 it, so it was no sutonious notes that. I think it's he. 523 00:45:05.920 --> 00:45:08.079 Of all the provinces in the Empire, I think the only one that Augustus 524 00:45:08.119 --> 00:45:14.039 hadn't visited was Sardinia. Maybe Africa as well, But you know, so 525 00:45:14.159 --> 00:45:16.840 Augustus had had constantly been on the road. But you're right, from that 526 00:45:16.880 --> 00:45:24.639 point onwards, Hadrian is exceptional, and maybe more exceptional. Maybe he's who 527 00:45:24.719 --> 00:45:28.440 do you think is a better emperor? Hadrian or Trajan? I kind of 528 00:45:28.480 --> 00:45:30.760 have a sense which way you're going, Oh, Hadrian. Hadrian is I 529 00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:35.880 think, by miles the better emperor. I think. I think most emperors 530 00:45:35.880 --> 00:45:39.199 are not consequential. I think that what happens would have happened without them at 531 00:45:39.239 --> 00:45:44.719 all. I think Hadrian is a consequential emperor because of the role that he 532 00:45:44.760 --> 00:45:52.519 plays in finessing the integration of the Hellenic into the Roman, creating the great 533 00:45:52.559 --> 00:45:54.679 or Roman. If you like, I'm very good. Well, we've heard 534 00:45:54.679 --> 00:45:58.480 this has been a great conversation. Is there anything that There's a lot more 535 00:45:58.480 --> 00:46:00.639 in the book, obviously, but it's clocks in it. I believe one 536 00:46:00.679 --> 00:46:04.480 page shy of four hundred pages, so it's it's we've got a lot more 537 00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:08.519 to go, but every page ap banger every I'll have to say, we 538 00:46:08.559 --> 00:46:12.559 didn't talk about it at all. But I will say, for the edification 539 00:46:12.599 --> 00:46:17.599 of those listening, I've never read a more gripping description of the eruption of 540 00:46:17.639 --> 00:46:22.320 Mount Vesuvius. I simply can't thank you too much for a few pages. 541 00:46:22.400 --> 00:46:25.679 Thank you. I thought I thought it was phenomenal and oftentimes clossed over, 542 00:46:25.840 --> 00:46:30.039 but but thank you so much for coming on the shank. You're going to 543 00:46:30.159 --> 00:46:35.920 want so much for having And I know the book's going to do well as 544 00:46:35.960 --> 00:46:40.760 all the other books have, and I can't, I can't recommend it enough. 545 00:46:40.800 --> 00:46:45.679 So thank you so much, Thanks so much for having me by way.