The Partial Historians

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. 

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? 

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

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.

What is Rome to do when they gaze out from the top of the Capitol and all they can see are the neighbours they don’t like or the neighbours that don’t like them? When the people of Nepete and Sutrium come down from the north to ask Rome for help, Rome jumps at the opportunity to be useful. After all, who doesn’t enjoy upsetting the Etruscans?

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…

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!

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.

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.

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

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.

Dr Emma Southon is no stranger to this show, but just in case you have somehow missed her many previous appearances, here’s what you need to know!

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.   

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. 

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

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.

It is 386 BCE (maybe?) in Ancient Rome and once more Livy is providing our underlying narrative for events. The timeline is pretty confusing in this decade. 

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.

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.

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. 

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

L Sicinius

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

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.

In this special episode we’re joined by Josh Cannon who holds a PhD in near eastern languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago. Prior to this, Josh was a member of the US Marine Corps and served in two tours of Iraq as an Arabic cryptologic linguist. We sat down with Josh to chat about his book Fatal Second Helen: A Modern Veteran’s Iliad which brings together his lived experience of military service with the ideas that emerge from Homer’s epic poem.

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

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)

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

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.

It’s 387 BCE and Rome is working on getting back of her feet. What’s even happening in Rome? It can be hard to tell because of the nature of the extant sources and just how much seems to be missing. The Gallic Sack casts a long shadow over Rome, it was just a couple of years ago but the consequences of the situation linger. Livy notes that Rome is continuing its rebuilding program.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

We feel extremely fortunate to sit down and talk to Jess Venner and her debut book, The Lost Voices of Pompeii. This book takes you through the final twenty-four hours in the lives of several of the residents of the city, from slaves to politicians to businesswomen.

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.

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!

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

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 [email protected] 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.

Welcome back to Rome’s rebuilding era! It’s a year of reasserting dominance, crafting fancy hewn stones for building works, and getting the citizen body back in order.

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.

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.

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

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!

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?

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

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.

We are thrilled to welcome Assistant Professor Jeremy Swist back to the show to discuss all things emperor Julian! Julian’s rule as Roman emperor was short, but it also created quite a stir because Julian was keen to turn Rome away from Christianity and to bring back the paganism. How did he do it? Why did he do it? And what’s the legacy that he left behind? We consider the details.

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.

“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.”

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.

Our music is by the superb Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents

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We return to 389 BCE to see just how Rome recovered from the Gallic Sack.

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.

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?

Linguistic map of Central Italy with the major locations marked for convenience. For the source of this map, see Wikimedia Commons.

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Additional sound effects:
– Pixabay
– Sample Focus
– BBC Sound Effects

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.