We’ve all been waiting for YEARS for this… more power to the plebs! Yes, you heard us correctly. For once, the patricians will not get exactly what they want.

Episode 145 – Power to the Plebs

It is 409 BCE and another exciting year in the conflict of the orders (allegedly). The plebeians were enraged when elections were held for consuls instead of military tribunes with consular power.

The plebeians decided to channel the advice of the First Wives Club. Don’t get mad, get everything! Denied the chance to elect their hero from the previous year, the plebeians rallied together and secured THREE plebeian quaestorship.

The quaestorship had technically been open to plebeians since 420 BCE. However, it took a decade for the plebeians to finally take the plunge. They were assisted by several tribunes of the plebs from the Icilii family. The Icilii often appear when something important happens for plebeian rights. Don’t you just love the grand narrative of Roman history?

Hungry for more, the plebeians decided to push for elections of military tribunes with consular elections. They were determined to elect a plebeian candidate in 408 BCE.

The patricians were already aghast at the prospect of plebeian quaestors, so they were hardly going to let that happen.

Once again, we find ourselves in a stalemate, with neither the patricians or the plebeians willing to back down.

Join us for another action-packed episode!

Need to catch up on 411 and 410 BCE? Check out Episode 144 – Where in the World is Carventum?

Dr G reads the Fasti Capitolini and Diodorus Siculus 13.80.1.

Dr Rad reads Livy ab Urbe Condita 4.54-55.

Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)

Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis)

Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War(University of California Press) 

Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN 978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID 239349186.

Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 

Our music was composed by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of BBC, Pixabay and Fesliyan Studios.

Courtesy of Otter AI.

Dr Rad  00:12

Welcome to the partial historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome. Everything from political scandals to love affairs, the battles waged, and when citizens turn against each other. I’m Dr. Rad. And I’m Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Roman saw it by reading different ancient authors and comparing their accounts. Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the Hello, and welcome to another episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Rad,.

Dr G  01:04

and I am your other host, Dr. G.  Hey,

Dr Rad  01:08

Hey, Dr. G. Welcome to a history of Rome that’s being told in excruciatingly painful detail,

Dr G  01:17

Just as the Romans would have liked it, I think.

Dr Rad  01:19

Exactly. I mean, we’re just fulfilling their wishes.

Dr G  01:22

Yeah. Their fame lives on as long as we talk about them.

Dr Rad  01:26

That is correct. So Dr G, last episode we were dealing with 410 BC. Today we’re going to be dealing with 409, it all makes chronological sense.

Dr G  01:40

Yeah, it looks so far. So good. I do not quibble at all with that logic. And 410 was an interesting year because we got introduced to a new location that we hadn’t heard of before. Called Carventum. Ah, yes, we still aren’t entirely sure where it is, the mystery remains. But we do think it might be part of a important strategic location that sort of forms the edge of Roman territory and Hernitian territory. And obviously, the Volscians and the Aequians want to get their little dirty paws all over it.

Dr Rad  02:19

Like they do everything.  Indeed,

Dr G  02:22

Indeed, that’s just the way those guys

Dr Rad  02:24

Oh, I know, don’t they knew that Rome is destined to be the superpower in this corner of the world.

Dr G  02:29

Not yet. Not yet.

02:33

So what we had last time was some classic conflict of the order stuff, I think, hmm, yeah. So we had our command commander called Valerius, who ended up being quite an unpopular, man.

02:51

Wow, how so? Is it even possible for Roman to become unpopular?

Dr Rad  02:56

Well, he was so harsh, I think after the conflict that had happened between the patricians like himself and the representative of the people, the tribune of the plebs, Menenius, that he kind of alienated them just just that much. They didn’t like him at all. And they really liked Menenius. Yes, well, that’s the kind of the way it goes at the moment, isn’t it? There’s a lot of backwards and forwards with this kind of class political struggle, which is really evidence as far as we’re concerned, I think the nature of our annalistic sources, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whenever if ever he put us back into the scene, really trying to figure out what it meant to be a Roman in this very early period of history, where they don’t have a lot of good written accent evidence from the time in question. Exactly. So basically, we ended up with this situation where because Valerius had made himself so unpopular, and Menenius, the tribune of the plebs looked even better by comparison, that the patricians were incredibly nervous because they were sure that if they went with elections for military tributes with consular power, that Menenius would end up being the first plebeian to actually get elected to this office, which is technically open to anyone.

Dr G  04:26

Quelle horreur, we cannot possibly have a plebeian and charged around here. I

Dr Rad  04:33

 It simply cannot be tolerated, it will not be tolerated, and therefore we’re going to have concealer elections and concealer elections alone.  Well,

Dr G  04:41

Well, this all makes sense for what comes up in 409 BCE.

Dr Rad  04:46

It does I think it might be time to dive in

Dr G  05:06

It is 409 BC A exciting time in Romans history as is every year I have to say. And I have some excellent news for you, Dr. Rad. Oh my god. Am I about to fall off my chair? Have you rediscovered Dionysius of Halicarnassus  Oh sadly no. But the Fasti Capitolini is back, baby.

Dr Rad  05:30

Well, I’m glad you have something.

Dr G  05:33

Literally two names

Dr Rad  05:37

it’s better than a big fat nothing you bring into these episodes. Oh,

Dr G  05:42

yeah, like a historian is only as good as their material. You

Dr Rad  05:46

always do your research.

Dr G  05:48

I try but it’s hard to cobble together things for me at the moment.  Yeah, Yeah, to be honest, I think I have the easier deal, actually having something to read. Oh, Look, you bring the narrative and I give you a whole bunch of names. And I don’t know what happens to any of them. And that I think is fine. That is how we’re sharing the load right now. Well, there

Dr Rad  06:06

certainly are a whole bunch of names for the year for now. So why don’t you tell us who they are.

Dr G  06:12

I show we have two consuls, which is very much in keeping with that fear in 410. About anybody coming into position as military tribune with consular power. You can solve that by just having consuls. So we have Gnaeus Cornelius Cossus. We have had him in our mix before he was a military tribune with consular power in 414 BCE. And we also have Lucius Furius. Medullinus. I know ,a Furius back in the mix. One of our favourite genses right now. Now he was previously consul in 413. And he is in the middle of an upwards career trajectory. He doesn’t know it. But foreshadowing we

Dr Rad  07:01

do think

Dr G  07:05

we certainly do. Thanks a lot.

Dr Rad  07:09

It looks like yes, we

Dr G  07:11

are. And we’ve also got in addition to the consuls, we’ve got three possible tribune of the plebs. And to make things even more interesting on this front, every single name that I have attached to the role of tribune of the plebs is an Icilius. At least three named possibly different. Icilii in the tribune of the plebs mix.

Dr Rad  07:37

Okay, hilarious. But it does make sense because if we’re ramping up the conflict of the oddest narrative, this duel between the patricians and the plebeians, who better to have in office than an Icilii?

Dr G  07:53

it does present us with some problem so. So the tribune of the plebs position it’s been talked about in previous years, we’ve definitely talked about it where it seems like our sources are written sources are assuming that there’s already 10 of these characters. Yeah. We don’t have any good evidence to establish that the body of the tribune of the plebs was that large this early inroads history.

Dr Rad  08:21

How are you? He’s just had a very large dinner.

Dr G  08:25

What do you mean this 10 of him? Just one man, where are you very large coat. So we’ve got three possible Icilii as tribune of the plebs, no other group is named, but that would be a substantial faction within the tribune of the plebs, if they were a group of 10.

Dr Rad  08:43

It is. But as we’ve highlighted, this is a family that has a very strong association with the office of the tribune of the plebs, they often pop up just when things get dramatic,

Dr G  08:53

They do. And this gives you a sense that maybe something dramatic might be on the horizon this year as well. So I guess we’ll see motion. If you times your Icilius by three, do you get three amounts of drama three times, I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out together. The other group that I have names for quaestors.

Dr Rad  09:15

you might say this.

Dr G  09:18

And in lieu of the fact that I have very little actual evidence to provide you. What I’ve done is I’ve gone through the names of the quaestors to try and sort of place them in the broader scheme of like, what might be going on in Rome, with Roman families.

Dr Rad  09:34

I always love when you do this, because as you know, anything to do with Latin, including names is not my strong point.

Dr G  09:42

And Look, I don’t think it’s really mine either. But I do enjoy sort of building a picture for myself, like where do all these characters fit? Yeah, because the names often end up sounding a little bit samey because the names all have the same kind of endings. And then, after a while, you’re like I’m sure I’ve heard this name before. But is it a different guy? So for just for like the sake of like trying to keep everybody straight in my head, I enjoy sort of delving into the family side of things. Absolutely. So our first quaestor is Publius Aelius. Now I Aelius is known as a plebeian gens

Dr Rad  10:24

I’m not going to give too much away, I’m just gonna react calmly.

Dr G  10:28

Calmly, calmly. And they do have a recorded history from around about this period. So the fourth century BCE, so jumping head just a few years into the next century, and all the way through into the late imperial period. So this is a family that has real longevity in terms of their history and legacy across generations. Now, we might be getting this name now, because of the associations the family takes on in the late Republic, okay. Now, I don’t know, I like I’m just, I’m talking really slowly because I’m waiting for you to be like, I’ll jump in and tell you what’s going on.

Dr Rad  11:13

I’m not gonna jump in at any point. I’m just gonna let you talk through all of these names and shock you.

Dr G  11:19

Okay, okay. I’ll prepare myself for the shock. Okay. So we have some figures, like Quintus Aelius Tubero, and this is heading into the this late Republican period who’s the nephew of Scipio Aemilianus. And he’s infamous or famous depending on which side of politics you’re on  as an anti Gracchan figure. So somebody who’s like on the conservative side of politics, yeah, the Gracchi a very progressive and not everybody’s into that. And then there’s also a Quintus Aelius Tubero, same night name different guy. Yeah, who is a jurist and historian. And he wrote a 14 book Roman history from the foundation of Rome to the Punic Wars

Dr Rad  12:12

Suspicous.

Dr G  12:15

Well, this is really interesting, because we think that this Aelius Tubero is a common source for Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Aelius Tubero himself. Those books are no longer extant. Yeah, so anybody if you find a manuscript hiding in a monastery, you get in touch, yeah, get in touch. We’d be very excited historians everywhere would be very excited to find ideas to grow, but we think he’s utilised by both. So there’s a sense in which living and Dionysius are being influenced by an Aelius in their own writing. And so they probably have particular ideas about what Aelius’ are like in terms of their character and disposition. Okay, we move on our second quaestor is Kaeso Fabius Ambustus. Definitely a patrician, a fabulous Fabii. Yeah. And likely related to Quintus Fabius Ambustus, Vibulanus who was the consul of 412,

Dr Rad  13:19

I was gonna say this, this name feels like more familiar territory.

Dr G  13:24

Yeah, yeah. And I think the expectation is that you would assume that the quaestor was would be patrician at this point. So it is quite interesting that we do get a mix of names that seem to suggest that both patricians and plebeians were in the quaestorship this early on.

Dr Rad  13:42

I’m not gonna give in I’m gonna say

Dr G  13:46

just keep putting a little hoping that your bite. Okay, all right. Now third quaestor is Publius Papius. Now, this gens, the Papius gens is an italic gens. And you might think to yourself, yeah, but surely all genses are Italic genses us we’re talking about the Romans here. But when we’re talking about italic peoples, we’re generally talking about people beyond the Romans. Because we tend we tend to classify the Romans as their own thing, even though they’re clearly part of the broader italic community. But the Papius gens has connections to the Samnites and Oscan speakers. So this is thinking about the sort of the hilly region to the east of Rome, but also South heading towards compania in the same sort of mountainous region. This is really the Oscan speaker kind of territory, they’ee plebeian, considered to be plebeian. And then we also see the Papii family go on to hold positions of tribune of the plebs. So there’s some spoilers for you, dear listeners, coming up in a podcast near you, but the Samnites I think we We’ve mentioned them maybe just an episode or so ago, well, they

Dr Rad  15:04

are going to become a regular feature this time. Now

Dr G  15:08

that they’ve sort of entered in to being mentioned, they’re going to continue to be mentioned, they are going to grow to be quite important to the way the Romans understand themselves. And

Dr Rad  15:20

they must be crushed up to G. Let me make that clear, they must be crushed,

Dr G  15:25

we may have a series of conflicts known as the Samnite wars coming your way soon, in the next century.

Dr Rad  15:32

It does make sense we have talked about the fact that they are possibly on the move a bit in this time period, that there’s a bit bit more of them coming into rooms or bet in this time period, which is I think, the kind of stuff that’s been coming up so far more complex. Yeah.

Dr G  15:50

And I think this gives us a sense that Rome and its influence is not just constrained to Latin speakers, this idea of the foundation of the city, which although we might think of it as being quite mythic, this idea of Rome as a place of asylum, it does seem to be the case that people are moving around, bringing their family history with them retaining their identity, and then also becoming integrated into a Roman social mindset and then gaining political currency within Rome. Yeah. So Rome itself has this history of cosmopolitanism that stems back really quite early into its history. Yes, it’s not. So it might help explain some of the things that happen with Roman citizenship later on. Absolutely. Our last quaestor Quintus Silius. Though the temptation to pronounce it as Silius is quite high,

Dr Rad  16:48

I was gonna say, I’m disappointed in you, you’re not the co host I thought you were.

Dr G  16:54

really missing all my opportunities. Quintus Silius, as we shall call him. Silius is a plebeian gens  Well, of course, he’s Silius.  This is how the patricians keep you down.

Dr Rad  17:12

What’s in a name? I’ll tell you what’s in it.

Dr G  17:15

It’s ridiculous. I tell you, he’s very silly. And I refuse to call him anything else. We’re not really sure about this guy. I put it to you that Livy seems to be our key source here. And

Dr Rad  17:29

I think I’ve been proving that fairly emphatically.

Dr G  17:35

I’m agreeing with your Dr Rad. That was me agreeing with you. I think I think maybe we’re misleading each other. So the trouble with this is that the Silius gens seems to only really come into prominence in the first century BCE, which is a good 300 400 years away from where we are now. And the question might be asked, What the hell is a Silius doing this early?

Dr Rad  18:11

I’ll tell you, he’s got late Republican ancestors, and I’m like, quick, put my family like way back as an ancestor somewhere,

Dr G  18:21

please. I mean, the phrase insert an ancestor does, it leads me down dark paths, but I’m not gonna mention what I’m visualising.

Dr Rad  18:30

Romans are always open for that Kind of foreplay.

Dr G  18:37

Well, that is all that I have on the names. I’ve got other things to talk about. But I think I should defer to you and what is actually going on in this year with any of these people. Can you help me now? I

Dr Rad  18:48

think I set this up really well. And I’m loving the family details here confirms a lot, I think. Excellent. All right. So here we are. We’ve got consuls being elected. Now Livy tells me that never before have the plebeians been so upset that they were not allowed to elect military tribunes, which implies that the patricians were correct to suspect that this was going to be the year when they were finally angry enough to go for a plebeian candidate over a patrician candidate. If that kind of thing were allowed. So the audience therefore, act out that they have to share their frustration in some way. And the way that they do this strategy is that for the first time, they elect plebeians to the quaestorship we been talking about the conflict of the orders for so long. Finally, finally, allegedly, and probably mistakenly we have plebeians in the quaestorship. Oh,

Dr G  20:03

wow. Okay. I mean, I was just so confused. I was like, What are these plebeians during it here? Everybody knows this is not for them.

Dr Rad  20:11

Yeah, you are correct. You are correct that there was one token patrician was elected alongside little bands. That must have been a comfortable election for him.

Dr G  20:23

Every time he goes into the room to sit down with the other quaestors, he’s like, Man, this is a travesty.

Dr Rad  20:29

Exactly, exactly. And Livy does note that it is simply crazy that these three Plebeians Silius, I will adhere to your superior Latin. Aelius and Pupius, Papius is whatever his name is.

Dr G  20:48

Papius, I’m going with

Dr Rad  20:49

it. It does sound wrong to say Pupius. A lot of fun. It was crazy that they were selected over the years from and I quote, distinguished families, which is code of course for patrician family. Yes.

Dr G  21:08

How cruel. Yeah, well, when you put in some names in here, I can see that.

Dr Rad  21:16

Now Livy, therefore had to investigate how it was that the three men finally came to be elected. And he has uncovered that it was indeed the Icilii who were behind the whole plan. They were the men who motivated the plebeians to vote in this insane fashion. Wow.

Dr G  21:39

Okay, so this might help explain. We don’t have a complete list of tribune of the plebs. But the idea that there are many Icilii swaying the situation. It’s like a political coup is

Dr Rad  21:52

going on. I know. Well, as as we know, a couple of years ago, we were talking about an Icilius, who got elected to be tribune of the plebs, and he was pushing what may have been a very ambitious agenda. But It got cut short, because there was an outbreak of illness, and therefore he couldn’t really do anything. He was stymied, Dr. G. Hmm. And now however, when everyone’s Well, bouncing around being angry with the patricians, now is the time for them to revisit their radical programme on equal rights for all.

Dr G  22:33

Look, I wish them all the best. I don’t think I don’t think the patricians are gonna enjoy this at all, or let them get away with it for very long,

Dr Rad  22:43

man not enjoying this. So the Icilius as we know, as a family, one of their character traits, hatred of patricians

Dr G  22:53

classic

Dr Rad  22:55

Passed down in mother’s milk. Now the reason the reason why there is confusion, as you say is that Livy’s Does explicitly say that there were three men from this particular gens who are elected so that’s why I guess we have the question marks and Broughton where it’s like is it Icilius, Icilius, Icilius?

Dr G  23:15

that’s what I’ve got one of them is potentially Lucius, question mark, Icilius. And the others are just question mark, Icilius.

Dr Rad  23:22

No one who is rich should Look into a mirror and say, Icilius, Icilius, Icilius three times because it could get dangerous in there.

Dr G  23:30

You will summon the quest for equal rights

Dr Rad  23:34

and a more equitable world. So the Icilii I, I presume all of them, apparently made a lot of big promises about what would happen if plebeians could be elected. And the plebeians being stupid, just ate all of this up, as they always do, according to Livy. Now, I questioned this account, because if the plebeians did just lap up whatever promises were sent their way by Tribunes of the plebs, and you know weren’t at all critical of it and all that kind of stuff, then surely we would have actually had this happen in quite some time ago because they would have elected people a to be quaestors, but be to be military tribunes with consular power, that would just make sense. So I think Livy’s Being a douchebag Dr. G.

Dr G  24:28

Well, I’m glad that that came from you this time. Because I yeah, this. This is tricky. I mean, why the quaestorship instead of the military tribune with consular power. Like I can see that ultimately, you would want people in all of the positions, those positions to be all available to people regardless of their family background if they can accrue the support for their election, which would include definitely rich plebeians. families who can spend the money to Canvas and put together a kind of election sort of promotion of themselves. But the quaestorship is at this stage very much we think attached to the Treasury. Yeah. And the idea that the politicians would let this out of their sort of hands, I think is a little bit questionable. Like are you going to let the plebeians get their hands on the money?

Dr Rad  25:30

Well, this is where I think you see Livy’s or in time period, perhaps coming in and I think you’ll see what I mean in a moment, certain, the way that the Icilii had persuaded the plebeians, I think to elect one is that they basically said, Look, there’s three of us serving as tribunes. And we’re not going to lift a god damn finger, unless you people finally vote plebeian into office now, I’m just going to highlight once more, that doesn’t sound like a bunch of crazy promises. To me. It sounds like a hostage situation.

Dr G  26:04

Sounds a bit like a threat.

Dr Rad  26:08

Yeah, that’s how they really, I think, got the plebeians over the line and got the plebeians to elect someone from their own class. I hate using that word to describe the bands. But

Dr G  26:21

I think this reflects a big deal of our issue with this whole period of Rome’s history, which is we don’t understand how the society is structured, necessarily, except that we know that some families are more prominent than other families. But the idea that there is a sort of a class unity doesn’t seem to be borne out by our evidence, like Livy and Dionysius have been trying to promote this idea of the class struggle, because clearly the way that class works in the late Republic, it’s pretty intense. Yeah. But the way that things are working here, we get the suggestion in most of our written sources that there is this struggle happening, which is failing to manifest as proper struggle, because the plebeians and I’m using my flesh rabbits, that plebeians fail consistently, to vote for their class. Exactly. So I think this leaves us with a situation where maybe class isn’t the best way to read any of this. And what Livy and Dionysus are doing is trying to shoehorn these things into a narrative. And I think then the further trouble if we’re looking even like more 1000s of years ahead, is that then we get a scholarship from the modern period that tries to read all of this within a Marxist lens as well, because Marxism is very much about class struggle. Sure. So that’s a whole nother layer of sort of class confusion, if you like, because people seem to be interested in their families getting ahead. Absolutely. It’s about it’s about their gens. And what we might be seeing is the real struggle that some genses, gentes in the Latin but I always say genses, because I like it. Some genses is having one accruing the sort of leverage that they need in terms of popular support in order to get elected in the first place.

Dr Rad  28:30

Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s been a while since we’ve talked about this, I think but there certainly has been times when we’ve been talking about consul, I think particularly so it really has been a while but I remember there being some names that we mentioned, for Consular positions. And there was definitely some question marks about whether they were actually patrician family names. Hmm, yes, yeah. And we talked about that. So go back and listen to it because I’m not gonna do it now. If obedience, I feeling pretty chuffed. They feel like they’ve really accomplished a lot, even though they haven’t elected everybody in to the premier position in the state at this point in time. No military Tribune with consular power has been pulled in officially, they still feel like they’ve won Dr. G. They’ve won the larger battle here.

Dr G  29:26

They’re chipping away at the seats of power. They’ll get there just your weight yet

Dr Rad  29:31

and leave you kind of scuffs at this at this point in time because he says, pathetic. Were they really considering what a classic could do? They have a pretty limited office. Clearly, these fools were thinking that the quest to ship was some sort of stepping stone to having plebeians as consuls and getting their own triumphs.

Dr G  29:56

Oh, Livy’s Yeah, we’re gonna have a cursus honoroum emerge, It’s just not that bad.

Dr Rad  30:01

I know I will do this is where I feel like maybe some of the light Republican vibes are kind of coming through in that, oh, maybe he generally does know more than we do. And he’s just not told us very clearly exactly what a quest entails at this point in time. Like, I do understand that there are connections with money. But I do also understand that given the way that Livy’s talked about it, it does seem to be kind of a bureaucrat. Yeah,

Dr G  30:28

yeah. And I guess my question is, as well, and I don’t have a good answer to this right now. But the quaestorship, generally, if we’re thinking about it in terms of like, funds, and managing sort of the Fiscus, and things like that, which it becomes known as, maybe that’s not exactly what it’s doing at this point in time. But even so, they are somebody who is likely attached, either in a military capacity going around with legions, or maybe attached to the consulship. And why is there four of them right now, when we only have two consuls? So there’s, what do we not know there’s a bunch of missing information here. As far as I’m concerned. I was like, Do we have some praetors that they’re attached to, but when they’re not being mentioned? What is it exactly that Christ was doing right now? I’ll tell you, we really need four of them.

Dr Rad  31:26

They’re saving patricians from a lot of red tape. I think we’ve established that family clearly. Yes,

Dr G  31:32

the paperwork side of things. Yeah. And how much paperwork could there be? The Romans, they love paperwork.

Dr Rad  31:39

So now we get to my favourite part of the story. The patricians are furious. I mean, it’s bad enough that the plebeians were theoretically allowed to be elected. But now they actually have to share the office of quaestor in reality? disgusting

Dr G  32:00

horrifying. Yeah,

Dr Rad  32:02

so now the patricians are feeling like it would actually be immoral for them to even have children, because their children would have to witness the horror, the horror of seeing dirty little plebeians taking their rightful place in the world. I mean, how can a parent actually subject their child to seeing oh my god, like the office of quaestor being occupied by a plebeian, you know, my God

Dr G  32:35

I would rather bear witness to this like this is gonna take everything

Dr Rad  32:43

that you do they get to take everything they get to take a position before you know it like, what are patricians gonna have left? I mean, all they will have left are the sacrifices, Dr. G the sacrifices?!

Dr G  32:55

Guys, guys, I’m gonna have to sell my Ferrari there’s no point trying to impress the young patrician ladies anymore.

Dr Rad  33:02

I know I’m not gonna live in a big batch it I think I get very upset. But all they’re gonna have is their roles as the salii and the flamens on behalf of the people, which as you would know better than most people. priesthood positions, they

Dr G  33:28

are very important because you must keep your relationship with the gods sound. But it’s going to be a problem for the patricians if they do not reproduce.

Dr Rad  33:38

Well, I mean, I guess it’s a bit like how some people feel about having children in a climate emergency such as we live in right now. That’s how the patricians literally see it as being the end of the world whereas we actually are contemplating the end of the world.

Dr G  33:58

Yeah, it is tragic. Any action you can take the listeners to help preserve our beautiful home. We trust that you will take it Yeah.

Dr Rad  34:06

Well, the patricians are prepared to take action, Dr G.

Dr G  34:10

Let us take the patrician example as our model of excellence.

Dr Rad  34:14

Yep. So anyway, so both the plebeians and patricians are therefore in a state of complete emotional overload, the pavilions are on a super high, because they are just so frickin thrilled that they’re plebeians in office. And they do they do indeed see this as we finally pop that cherry, take that step. This is just gonna be a sign of greater things to come that they are, yeah,

Dr G  34:38

I can just imagine the plebeian quaestors being like, Guys, I’ve seen money for the first time. It’s incredible.

Dr Rad  34:45

Yeah, flying high. The patrician see this as complete and utter Doom, the beginning of the end. There’s no other way of saying it. It

Dr G  34:55

is the end of times. It’s been great while we’ve been here, but it’s all Ever now 100 years is all we had? Yeah.

Dr Rad  35:03

So this leads to another classic conflicts, which is very similar to the one we had the year before. Where the patricians are therefore, absolutely 100% determined that there are going to be consular elections held  Fair enough. You gotta you gotta keep the main power in the patrician hands. This is dire times. Exactly. I mean, it’s the only way that they’re going to be able to continue to have sex and have children clearly. The Achillea on the other hand, are absolutely determined that it’s going to be military tribute and whose conceal the power, because they do think that this is going to be the time that Kobe and is going to get elected into that office.

Dr G  35:42

We’re so close guys, we’ve got them into the quaestorship. We’re all over the tribune of the plebs. Next up the top job.

Dr Rad  35:50

Exactly. Yeah. However, as luck would have it, Dr G, the Aequians and the Volscians enter our story.

Dr G  36:02

So okay, the Aequians and the Volsci.

Dr Rad  36:05

All right. Yes. Yes.

Dr G  36:06

Can I pause us here just to give us a sense of like, where we are in the geography of

Dr Rad  36:12

things. Absolutely. Tell me San Diego, where are we?

Dr G  36:15

I will put up my little hat. Yeah, yeah. So the Aequians thought to be the, to the east of Rome. So this is classic near where this Carventum location is we’re not really quite sure. The Volscians are to the south east. And the Hernicians are kind of wedged into the in between those two. Yeah. And that’s Rome’s ally. So that’s great. Yeah the Herncians are one of these Oscan speaking peoples and so while the Volscians Yeah, the Aequians though, maybe a slightly different language group. We then have the Latin peoples in general, which includes the Romans, yeah. And they’re kind of demarcated by the Tiber River, which cuts sort of East West, and the Arnio tributary, which is a bit of a north south tributary River. Now the Etruscans are the neighbours to the north, anything above the Tiber. We’ve also got the Faliscans who have come up a little bit so far there to the north and northeast, and thought to be connected to the Etruscans. We’ve also got likewise a little bit further out the sabae finds also to the northeast, but beyond the fullest skins. And everything sort of South East beyond the fall skins is also considered to be Oscan speaking. So Rome is kind of surrounded by a whole bunch of different people who could cause them problems. And the Aequians Oh, Volscians are definitely the closest in the east and the south east that are causing problems at the moment.

Dr Rad  37:53

Definitely. Yeah. So they cause problems specifically in this year by attacking the territory of the Latins and the Hernicians How dare they? I know. So Rome’s allies, clearly, therefore, the council’s had to raise an army and the Senate gives the order, go and conduct the levy. Now, I think you probably know where I’m going with this story. You’d be

Dr G  38:19

surprised that I might not.

Dr Rad  38:22

Well, the tribune of the plebs fight the levee, because, of course, that’s their, that’s their way of resisting and trying to, you know, get what they want, which is elections for military champions with consular power. So they are giving it everything they have, and they are thrilled, actually, that external conflict has arisen, and therefore, once again, that petitions need something from them, and they can withhold it until they get what they want. I think they would very much understand the tactic of like using sex as a weapon. It’s well,

Dr G  38:59

you got to use what you got. And when you’re the tribune of the plebs resistance is key resisting that levy is a powerful move. Yeah.

Dr Rad  39:08

So Livy’s very specific that all three of the Icilii tribunes getting involved here. The plebeians see them as the most noble family that they have on their side. He’s like, I mean, they may as well almost be patrician which is like saying a lot as far as the plebeians are concerned, because they’re just that elite.

Dr G  39:30

Wow, that’s almost offensive. How dare they?

Dr Rad  39:33

Yeah. Now again, this is my second favourite part strategy. Two of the Icilian tribune of the plebs take on the job of essentially tailing the consul around room. Cue the Pink Panther music. They get their sunglasses on. They’ve got their trench coats on, they’ve got their slouch hats.

Dr G  39:57

I love it. So because the contents will be going around presumably with some lictors and then trailing a little bit further behind.

Dr Rad  40:05

I guess that makes it makes it easier and you know, it’s easier to hide in a crowd. It is. Now the third Icilii, I, you might be wondering, what is he up to? Why is he not in a trench coat? Well, his job is to stir up the plebeians. So making sure that he’s, I suppose, keeping their emotions high over these sorts of issues, you know, pushing them to demand what is theirs, and to act in a way that’s going to support what they’re trying to enact here.

Dr G  40:38

Yeah, sounds good. Sounds good. Yeah. Good to have somebody whipping up that crowd.

Dr Rad  40:42

Exactly. Yeah. So he’s, he’s like crowd control while the others are trying to

Dr G  40:46

blend in. Is he wearing a trench coat just to keep, like up with the brothers. You know,

Dr Rad  40:52

I know. I feel like he must have been in this cabinet just in case. Maybe they maybe they switch out. Alright, so the consuls are therefore prevented from raising the levy. And the tribunes are unable to get what they want, which is the election of the military Tribune, because nobody is going to give because that’s just how the conflict of the orders works

Dr G  41:16

beginning to sound like a terrible stalemate while the enemy inches ever closer.

Dr Rad  41:21

Oh, tell me about it. It was looking like the plebeians were going to get what they wanted. But then dramatic news bulletin on the six o’clock news,

Dr G  41:36

breaking news, breaking news we have incoming from Rome. We’ve got somebody on the street, throwing to our local reporter now. The Aequians

Dr Rad  41:45

have attacked the Roman garrison left behind at the citadel of Carventum When the men there had left to raid even though it was proven before that that was a dumb idea, because that’s how they got Carventum in the first place. Oh, no. That’s few men who have been left behind on guard have been killed, I repeat have been killed. And it has been recaptured by the Aequians. That’s right. Carventum has been lost. I repeat, Carventum has fallen. Carventum has fallen. We don’t know where it is. But it’s

Dr G  42:16

disappeared back behind. It’s in its cloud of invisibility.

Dr Rad  42:20

Yeah. Now, some more Roman soldiers had died in this battle. Because of course, when they saw the Aequians taking it back, they’d be like, Hold it right there. Drop it, we drop that citadel. But unfortunately, there weren’t enough of them. I guess they were pretty scattered. If they were, you know, at raiding, and they were maybe coming back in bits and pieces and that sort of thing. So they were killed trying to recapture the Citadel or keep a hold of it. There were others out in the field, who apparently were randomly killed and that sort of thing. This narrative is a little bit confusing, I suppose. But I think the bottom line is that the Romans had perhaps left this mostly unattended, and they were killed, because they were trying to get back in. It doesn’t really make sense, I suppose.

Dr G  43:08

Yeah, it sounds like they maybe weren’t on high military alert. So they were just doing the sorts of things that you do when you’re a military that has to hold somewhere. But you don’t have like a standing order to be in defence where you’re like, well, we need to go out foraging and we need to do some field work. We’ve got to eat and, you know, you end up doing other jobs. And people like, oh, well, we could fix this place up if we just had a nicer log of wood. And we could prop it over here. Like let’s do some renovations.

Dr Rad  43:37

You know? Yeah. And if you’re in for the long haul, yeah, actually, yeah. And so people

Dr G  43:41

get distracted, and maybe they’re they got caught unawares, and they weren’t at all ready. And if you’re not in the Citadel, when the Citadel gets attacked, that’s a huge problem, because that’s a massive defensive structure. And to get back into it, when it’s being attacked already from the exterior, your chances of surviving aren’t great.

Dr Rad  44:04

Yeah, absolutely. So the champions of the playoffs with this news backed bleeded stop opposing the levy. You’ve got to we’re in a really bad situation right now. But they stand strong Dr G, they valiantly refuse and they say, You know what? We could like give two hoots about the danger that the state is in and we don’t care if everybody hates us. This is our job. And we’re not budging. This is exactly what you always do. And we always give in because it’s so dangerous out there. But not this time.

Dr G  44:42

Oh, this is a brazen position. How is this gonna work out?

Dr Rad  44:46

Well, I’ll tell you how it works out. It freakin works. They win. Yeah.

Dr G  44:51

That was unexpected. And

Dr Rad  44:54

quick, I know, but I couldn’t really string out any fear that they win, because there’s no other option here I guess. So it’s to say added that the next year there’s going to be military treatments with consular power being elected on condition. This is very important read the fine print. Okay, scroll down. Check it. No one is allowed to run for military tribune with consular power for 408, who had been tribune of the particular year. And no tribune of the plebs could be reelected the next year. So the patricians are like right, we want your one none of you Icilii, I are allowed to serve as tribune of the plebs in 408. And none of you are allowed to stand for this office. That’s the compromise.

Dr G  45:45

That’s a pretty big concession, I think from the patricians in it, which gives a sense of just how strong the support for the Icilii has been across the sort of years so far.

Dr Rad  46:00

Absolutely. The Senate 100% aiming to get this family out of play politically, they want them gone. And they want the people to hate them. They are 100% convinced that this family have the consulship in their sights, you know, they want to be like the first for the and family to hold the consulship like some kind of ridiculous reward for being giant pains in the ass.

Dr G  46:30

Well, that would make them very similar to the patricians would not

Dr Rad  46:34

write like anything. They should see the similarity. Yeah, because we’re in this together. These are all kinds of people. Yeah. So as a result, this means that the levy can finally proceed, because everybody is happy with this. Yeah, the Icilii are like, check! Well, you will take that, and they are getting getting ready for war. Everyone is on board. Now, there’s a little bit of doubt about exactly how the campaign plays out. Livy is unsure if both of the consuls are sent to Carventum, or whether one is sent out and one remains in Rome to run elections. Live. He notes that he has different accounts in his sources. Does he go into further detail? No, he does not.

Dr G  47:18

Livy’s So tantalising.

Dr Rad  47:21

Yeah, levy can only be certain that the Romans did not win back the Citadel at Carventum, but instead had to hang out there in a very long siege, which went No. Oh, okay.

Dr G  47:34

So yeah, they they got the army out there. And it was a bit of a stalemate in the end. Yeah.

Dr Rad  47:40

Okay. Instead, the Romans decided that they’re going to recapture Verrugo, which is a Volscian, in the Volscian. area, again, just to irritate their enemy.

Dr G  47:53

Yeah, if if we can’t have convinced them back then read definitely taking Verrugo. Yeah.

Dr Rad  47:59

And this is a huge blow apparently to the Volscians in the Aequians. Because when they take Verrugo, they get a lot of bootay. Oh,

Dr G  48:08

interesting. Okay, so that’s where the Volscians had taken it all out of Carventum. And sounds like maybe they just stored it in Verrugo. Okay, well, okay, so it’s not as clever as it previously seemed that there was no booty to be had with the original taking of Carventum. So Verrugo is the is the place that came up for us in 423. And the moment that Sempronius Atratinus lost a battle against the Volscians, and when the day was saved by the plebeian decurion, Sextus, Tempanius. Who could forget

Dr Rad  48:47

Yeah, I did but.

Dr G  48:51

But this has changed hands a number of times now because it was recon reconquered by the Volscii in 422. And now the Romans have just taken it back again. 409. So this particular location seems to be quite sought after now that people have started attacking it. And it’s just sort of going either way, depending on what’s going on.

Dr Rad  49:16

I think this is my hot tip. If you do time travel, dear listeners back to this time period, because clearly, why wouldn’t you it’s a delightful time to be alive. Do not choose Verrugo as your place of residence. I suspect it’s probably pretty unpleasant. Well,

Dr G  49:31

and also like it doesn’t sound like a great place like Verrugo rolls off the tongue badly, I think. I mean, it doesn’t feel like it doesn’t conjure great things for me. Yeah.

Dr Rad  49:42

And that’s going to be people’s main concern and this constant warfare. How it rolls off the tongue

Dr G  49:48

Exactly. Like it doesn’t sound like a holiday town.

Dr Rad  49:51

Yeah, like when you were screaming, oh, my God. Take it again and my children have just been massacred in the streets. You’re gonna be concerned that it doesn’t roll off the tongue easily.

Dr G  50:01

Wow. You know, everybody has their preferences. That’s all I can say.

Dr Rad  50:07

All right, well, at least it’s not Crustumerium.

Dr G  50:10

Crustumerium also a classic. I love the

Dr Rad  50:13

disease of a town to live. And so that’s all I have for this year, Dr. G. But I think you’ll agree. What a year.

Dr G  50:22

is actually ended up being a far more significant year than I suspected it was going to be with this transition of the plebeians into the quaestorship, which was not expected at all. Now, before we get into the partial pick, I just want to give you a sense of the broader world politics right now. via a detour into Diodorus Siculus.

Dr Rad  50:48

Ooh, the man who sometimes gets the names of the consuls, correct?

Dr G  50:53

Yeah. So Carthage is having a bit of a situation with Sicily. And yes, we have talks about this. Yeah. So this has been going on for a few years now. Yeah. And ultimately, the Carthaginians want to take over Sicily. That’s their dream. They want to run that whole island. Really strategic, it’s going to be

Dr Rad  51:16

a mafia who doesn’t want this?

Dr G  51:18

I know, it’s a very popular spot and great in summer, so very much would recommend. Yeah, but they’ve elected a general Hannibal, not the Hannibal. And he has razed to the ground, a couple of cities in Sicily. So he’s had some success, and we like this takeover one by one, we’re going to raise the cities and just move across this island. But then he’s getting on in age as well. It’s Hannibal character. And he’s like, Look, I think, you know, I’ve had a couple of good city raisings. But I feel like I’m getting to the end of my days. And he appoints another general called human icon to take over the campaign against Sicily. So, whatever is happening into the south, this is all sort of, like, background sort of contextualization for the kinds of conflicts that we’re gonna see and maybe a couple of 100 years. I know right? That’s all I got.

Dr Rad  52:24

Yeah, I appreciate that. The context of the wider world because sometimes I feel like I can never get out of this boot okay, that means Dr. G, that it is time for the Partial Pick. All right, thank you very much Igor for sharing your dulcet tones. Dr. G, tell us what the partial pick is all about. All

Dr G  52:53

right, we are going to evaluate Rome against some of its own standards. So there’s going to be 10 Roman Golden Eagles up for grabs across five categories. So ultimately, it’s going to be a mark out of 50 Roman golden eagles. Okay, so our first category is military clout.

Dr Rad  53:16

Hmm, well, it’s gonna be a bit of a downer as until

Dr G  53:21

they it was a stalemate. I believe.

Dr Rad  53:25

That’s true. They didn’t exactly get defeated. They just gave up. They certainly didn’t

Dr G  53:31

really win. Verrugo They took Verrugo. That’s true.

Dr Rad  53:37

And they did get booty and the Volscians Aequians. were unhappy about it. So that’s something that maybe I don’t know, like a fine. Yeah. Because it’s like when one lose one. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, it was not like they were really trying that hard to cover. And to me, it was a surprise attack. Clearly. They were clearly unprepared. Yeah, exactly. Okay, that’s a five. All right.

Dr G  53:59

Diplomacy. Do you negotiate? Really with your army? I think you do.

Dr Rad  54:06

Do you use threats to get what you want? Sometimes? Yeah. Yeah, I think that says, oh, food.

Dr G  54:14

Yeah, expansion. Now,

Dr Rad  54:18

I guess for rigour. Yeah,

Dr G  54:19

but if you lose Carventum, and you gain Verrugo,

Dr Rad  54:24

you end up at a zero.

Dr G  54:25

Is that a zero?

Dr Rad  54:26

I don’t know. I feel like do we start at 10? And it goes down to a five it’s hard to say

Dr G  54:31

or is it win some you lose some? Oh, do we need to know exactly how much territory was taken versus how much territory was lost?

Dr Rad  54:38

God, how are we ever gonna figure that out? We didn’t even know where Carventum is. It’s a tough one. Yeah, like I think it’s a fairly small scale at this point in time, so I don’t know I feel like

Dr G  54:47

I think we can give them a one for getting Verrugo But I don’t think we can give them heaps because they did lose Carventum, so they must have lost something as well. Yeah,

Dr Rad  54:57

I mean, very good. It was a spite capture.

Dr G  55:02

I caught Verrugo. It doesn’t sound good. Okay, so why All right, our fourth category is virtus.

Dr Rad  55:13

No good

Dr G  55:15

old fashioned Roman masculinity. I mean, Look,are the Icilii demonstrating it?

Dr Rad  55:21

I was gonna say, I mean kind of.

Dr G  55:24

no lighting and trench coats. But

Dr Rad  55:28

to be honest, if I could give points for that, I would,

Dr G  55:31

you might need to update the categories as we get further on.

Dr Rad  55:35

I said it, I said, a monkey. Look, I feel like the Icilii are actually kind of demonstrating virtus. But it’s not the kind of where to see patricians would particularly admire. But it is actually taking action. It is standing strong, but it’s not involved in obviously, like any sort of armed conflict, per se.

Dr G  55:58

Yeah, it kind of sits in a slightly different category, like and I think the trouble for us at this point is that if we had say, a big like sort of set speech from Livy, for one of these characters, we’d get to see how they position the arguments. And we might be able to make a case for we’re to us with those kinds of arguments that the two that were provided, but

Dr Rad  56:20

we really, we just did miss opportunity, isn’t it? Yeah,

Dr G  56:23

I Look, I don’t know why Livy doesn’t go down that track a little bit more often. I’ll tell

Dr Rad  56:27

you why. Because it took us forever. When

Dr G  56:31

we’re, as part of Dionysius, his charm, he was always keen to show off his rhetorical skill. And that gave us a lot of leverage for thinking about where to us. But when we don’t have those speeches, it does mean that we have to base it solely on the action that is recorded and passed on to us. And sometimes that’s a little bit more ambiguous. And it’s not necessarily clearly we’re tours. Yeah,

Dr Rad  56:55

that’s just in a long speech was made for which I have no evidence.

Dr G  57:00

I could do the old Thucydides on it. And it’s like, I’m just gonna put the words into their mouth that I thought they should say,

Dr Rad  57:08

exactly. I mean, what do you expect? I? I live in an ancient time guys, this new recorder? Yeah, I wasn’t doing my best. And I don’t know anybody who was alright, so just back off. Just listening to my story, doing the best that I can, and it’s going to be plenty accurate as you can get. Yeah,

Dr G  57:27

this is this is amazing journalism, given the circumstances. Our last category is the citizens score. Well, I

Dr Rad  57:36

think this is a category for us today. I mean, that plebeians are absolutely thrilled,

Dr G  57:43

they finally quaestors. Look at him go.

Dr Rad  57:46

I know, I mean, there’s not much else that could be better apart from being a military Tribune or a consul. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You

Dr G  57:55

know, one step closer is one step closer, and there’s lots of them in the quaestorship. There’s a really strong sense of the iqi. Looking after the little guy by delaying the levy. Now, there is a point – through threats and being incredibly stubborn. But there is also a point where delaying the levee can lead to the risk of the citizens if the enemy gets too close to Rome. So it’s a fine line.

Dr Rad  58:22

It is, but I think that it’s it doesn’t seem like it’s that.

Dr G  58:35

No, it seems fun. We don’t know where these places are. So they can’t be close to Rome.

Dr Rad  58:41

It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel like the people would have been more freaked out if they actually thought they were in danger. Because if we’ve learned nothing from Livy’s account, the Romans actually panic quite easily when they hear bad military news..

Dr G  59:00

And there is a tendency for the plebeians to capitulate on their demands as soon as they think there’s a risk to their lives, which is fair enough.

Dr Rad  59:10

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what I mean. Like the minute we ever hear of like a military disaster being reported back in the city, they lose their freakin minds. They’re running around all over the place. The person who’s left in charge, it’s like, holy crap, how am I gonna get this crowd under control? So the fact that they’re not doing that

Dr G  59:28

as part human part chicken

Dr Rad  59:32

that’s how that plebeians portrayed I think, and maybe

Dr G  59:36

there’s just chickens running around everywhere in the city. Yeah,

Dr Rad  59:39

so Look, I feel like I’m gonna give this an EIGHT Yeah, all right.

Dr G  59:45

I’m not gonna quibble with that. I think the citizens need some bucking up so happy to have had a good run this year. Let’s face it.

Dr Rad  59:55

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don’t really see much that is bad about this. Yeah, I’m I’m happy for them. And you know what? I’d also like to say Dr. G, once again, because I’m a broken record on these sorts of matters. But I took pictures as the events of 409 may, in fact, actually be, it is heartening to read about stories where people are willing to, you know, put it all on the line and their protest movement. And to see how when you actually put your mind to it, and you have unity, you can accomplish your goals, no matter how impossible it may seem, I

Dr G  1:00:35

sense that you’re making a bigger claim about the world today through the power of what we can learn from history, and I applaud you, there is a huge people power and strengthen community and community action. That is how you make change.

Dr Rad  1:00:50

Absolutely. I mean, they have done studies on this, which obviously don’t directly apply to a room, but looking at all sorts of people power moments, like civil rights movements, and people petitioning for political rights and that sort of thing. And it’s shown that you actually only need a very small percentage of a population to be on board with something. But you just need like, you just need to get to like a certain level, a certain small level for people to be on board, to be supporting it to be campaigning it to stand unified to actually achieve change. And I think that we should wear this particular example into that basket, because, of course, the patricians aren’t on board. In fact, I would wager that not even all the plebeians are on board, because as we’ve highlighted before, they are not like this unified class. Okay. There are people that have different interests. I mean, where the hell are the other Tribune’s in their story who don’t

Dr G  1:01:45

even get a mention, but they don’t. It’s amazing that would the ones that we have named, we’re still talking about, presumably a small group of individuals with space. So yeah, pretty amazing stuff.

Dr Rad  1:02:00

Absolutely. Don’t lose hope guys. Get involved with some groups show people that you care talk about it. In history of the early republic has shown us anything, talking about it endlessly. Eventually, we’ll get into some way it went long as you combine it with stubbornness, be

Dr G  1:02:20

resilient, know your values and fight for what is good and right, indeed.

Dr Rad  1:02:25

All right. So that means Dr. G, that we have got the Romans finishing 409 on a grand total of 14 Golden Eagles. Actually, that’s

Dr G  1:02:36

pretty impressive.

Dr Rad  1:02:37

It’s not bad. It’s been a lot worse. It has.

Dr G  1:02:42

Rome, you’re going up in my estimation.

Dr Rad  1:02:45

Yeah. And we’ve obviously got potentially a very exciting year ahead of a strategy because with military Tribune with connsular power elections lying ahead, and a plebeian quaestor. In fact, sorry, I shouldn’t say a several plebeian quaestors elected in 409. What does the future hold?

Dr G  1:03:08

Well, we will find out soon. Ciao.

Dr Rad  1:03:21

Thank you for listening to this episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources, sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes. and today we’d like to say a special hello to some of our patrons who entered our second alien giveaway. Alex, AJ, Dr. Kate, Dendrio, Kylie, Vincent, Dana Gray and RS Laugesen and of course Kyle De Cant. However, you can also support our show by buying us a coffee on Kofi. However, if those coins just aren’t jangling in your pocket these days please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. And that goes for our book as well. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome

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What a confusing decade the 410s have been. It’s definitely time for a Partial Recap! We run through what the ancient sources tell us about this decade.

The Partial Recap – The 410s BCE

Want to get all the details? Jump in at Episode 140: The Commonwealth of Slaves.

Our music was composed by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Dr Rad – Welcome to the Partial Recap for the 410s BCE!

Dr G – I’m Dr G 

Dr Rad: and I’m Dr Rad

Dr G: and this is our highlights edition of the 410s in Rome. We’ll take you through from 419 to 410 in an epitome of our normal episodes. 

Dr Rad: Perfect for those mornings when you don’t want some lengthy rhetoric with your coffee – but please be warned – the Roman world is a violent one.  

Dr G: Get ready for a recappuccino. 

419 BCE

418 BCE

417 BCE and 416 BCE

415 BCE

414 BCE

413 BCE

412 BCE

411 BCE

410 BCE

Dr Rad: And that was the 410s in Ancient Rome… or was it? 

Dr G: Remember, this has just been the highlights from the ancient sources, so if you want to delve into the complexities of the different evidence from this period, check out our narrative episodes. Jump in at Episode 140: The Commonwealth of Slaves  to join us for a deep dive into the 410s BCE. 

Dr Rad: Thanks for turning in to this Partial Recap!

The post The Partial Recap – 410s BCE appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

Carventum enters the annalistic narrative of Rome and raises some questions. But in order to get there, we need to consider what Rome faces in 411 BCE. And it seems that the Roman elite are having a run on consuls recently, which, if we follow Livy, means that the plebeians continue to be locked out of the highest magistracy…

Episode 144 – Where in the World is Carventum?

Sadly there’s not much to report about 411 BCE and what there is to know if the kind of thing the Romans would probably rather forget. Turns out that there’s a pestilence on the loose! To compound problems, sick people can’t farm and this has compromised the harvest. Rome faces challenges to its grain supply and they turn to their neighbours for aid.

Keen to catch up on the action from the years leading up to this situation? Check out Episode 143 – Special Victims Unit.

410 BCE gets off to a bad start when the Volsicans and Aequians decide to try to squeeze Rome’s allies the Hernicians… how will Rome respond? First they’ll have to find the citadel of Carventum (location unknown). And that’s only after they resolve the challenge of pulling together a fighting force.

Whenever there’s a tribune of the plebs, we can assume there’s going to be something going on between the elite families of Rome. The tribunes come into their own when there’s a military affair in the off-ing because they can push for rights and recognition for the plebeians in potential exchange for military service. Will the patricians negotiate land rights in order to field a force against the Volscians and the Aequians?

Map of central Italy including Rome and Praeneste, one of the theorised locations of Carventum to the east of Rome.

The Roman populace may be under the pump of the patricians much of the time, so perhaps a protest action at the scene of an ovatio is a very legitimate form of criticism! While Valerius attempts to process through the city to celebrate a military win, things don’t feel so much like a celebration as the people hurl abuse. Who will the crowd turn their support towards in the aftermath?

Our music was composed by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of BBC Beta and Freesounds.

Crop from “A new map of Latium, Etruria, and as much of ancient Italy, as lay between Gallia Cisalpina and Græcia Magna, shewing their principal divisions, cities, towns, rivers, mountains &c.”
Sheldonian Theatre (Publisher); Wells, Edward, 1667-1727 (Cartographer).
Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Edited for Latin terminology and to support our wonderful Australian accents!

Dr Rad 0:12
Welcome to The Partial Historians.

Dr G 0:15
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Dr Rad 0:20
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Dr G 0:30
And I’m Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different ancient authors and comparing their accounts.

Dr Rad 0:41
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.

Welcome to a brand new episode of The Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Red,

Dr G 1:02
and I am Dr. G.

Dr Rad 1:06
Welcome, Dr. G. I’m so excited to be back in this century with you.

Dr G 1:10
Woohoo. We’re nearly at the end of the fifth century BCE. It’s kind of incredible that we’ve made it so far.

Dr Rad 1:18
I know. I know. So welcome, everybody. Welcome to our world of ancient Rome. Here we are traipsing our way through the 410s BC as we look at Rome’s journey from the founding of the city. So Dr. G, before we head into a new episode, let’s do a bit of a recap, shall we? Where were we last time we met?

Dr G 1:42
Look, the big standout for me was the return of an Icilius into the role of the tribune of the plebs.

Dr Rad 1:51
That’s right. We have been dealing with all this conflict of the orders stuff for decades now. And I mean decades in the sense of the Romans decades.

Dr G 2:01
Maybe nearly a century now.

Dr Rad 2:03
A decade for us. But for them almost a century, this classic struggle between the patricians, the plebeians, who these people are, God only knows. But it certainly presented to us, like a battle between the elite and the powerful, and those who only wish they were.

Dr G 2:24
Yes, the old class struggle writ large in the early republic of ancient Rome.

Dr Rad 2:30
Yeah, and Icilius is from a family that’s very much historically been on the plebeian side of things.

Dr G 2:37
Yeah, they famously a family that has held the tribunician of the plebs on a number of occasions, each of them landmark events in the struggle of the orders in this classic tale. And yet, what we seem to discover in this third iteration of an Icilius coming into the role is that the potential for revolutionary changes kind of swept away by other matters, there seems to be a pestilence of some kind.

Dr Rad 3:09
There is a pestilence, it’s not the worst pestilence that room has ever seen. Because you know, we’ve had some bad ones in the time that we’ve been talking. I remember that time there was meat falling from the sky. Worse. I think that was I think that was in like the 450s. Maybe, maybe I should have checked that before I brought it up. But yeah, so we’ve had some bad things happening in the past. This one’s not the worst, but it’s certainly serious enough that people are very much focused on just getting by day to day.

Dr G 3:37
And this kind of leaves Rome and the situation of where we’re up to with this history on tender hooks, if you will run with the meat analogy a little bit further with me, because we’re like, what, what’s going to happen in the next year, and luckily, we’re here together to find out.

Dr Rad 3:55
We are indeed so without further ado, let’s delve into 411 BCE.

Dr G 4:21
is 411 BCE. It’s a very thrilling time. We’ve this means we have new consuls.

Dr Rad 4:29
We do have consuls. Note that we still don’t have any military tribunes with consular power. I think the patricians are still feeling a little bit concerned about who might get elected if they opened that door.

Dr G 4:42
Yes, much better to make sure it’s a patrician only situation and what better way to do that. And by having consuls in power,

Dr Rad 4:53
Exactly. So who we got Dr. G.

Dr G 4:56
All right, we have Marcus Papirius. Mugillanus, possibly Atratinus We’re not really quite sure.

Dr Rad 5:06
So I think some of those names sound familiar.

Dr G 5:08
Yeah, some of those names sound familiar

Dr Rad 5:14
Have I ever heard Marcus mentioned on this podcast before?

Dr G 5:18
Never! And fair enough. I mean, it’s a very rare name. So this Marcus Papirius Mugillanus was previously the military tribune with consular power in 418 and also 416. So he’s in the middle of quite an illustrious career at this point.

Dr Rad 5:38
Yeah, this is his decade, the 410s.

Dr G 5:42
It’s happening for him. And he is joined by somebody known as Spurius or Gaius – we’re not quite sure of the praenomen of this fella – Nautius Rutilus.

Dr Rad 5:54
Oh behave.

Dr G 6:00
Spurius Naughtiness, what are you up to? He was previously military tribune with concular power in 419, and also served together with Papirius Mugillanus in 416. So these guys have even held the top job together before.

Dr Rad 6:17
And yet, we’re still not certain of their names.

Dr G 6:20
And we still don’t know whether they’re friends.

Dr Rad 6:24
I love the confusion of the source material. Everybody has different names, and nobody can figure out where they go.

Dr G 6:31
Yeah, and the Roman propensity for naming everybody after everybody else in their own family does leave a legacy of some confusion for everybody else studying them 1000s of years later.

Dr Rad 6:44
Absolutely. So what are these consuls facing Dr G? We’ve got a pestilence on the loose, we’ve got a tribune who’s just itching to get an agrarian law passed, it doesn’t bode well for them. I’m not going to lie. And sure enough, the year does not start well. As we know, when people are too sick to get out of bed, they tend not to farm. Lazy.

Dr G 7:07
How dare they? And the trouble with that is that it has some knock on consequences. Because if you don’t farm while you’re unwell, nobody does that farming for you. And then nobody’s got food to eat. So then not only are you sick and hungry, then you’re also starving.

Dr Rad 7:25
Exactly. And this has happened to Rome before after pestilence. We’ve seen this pattern again and again. And it looks like this year was going to be no different. Rome was in dire need of some corn, and it would have been headed straight for a very serious famine, except they asked around, they kind of pass the hat around and said, “Please, sir, I would like some corn,” to some of their neighbours.

Dr G 7:51
“Could you possibly spare any grain?”

Dr Rad 7:53
Yeah, exactly. They were asking up and down the Tiber. They apparently were like, you know, looking around the Tuscan Sea area saying, “Excuse me, I don’t suppose you have any surplus grain?”

Dr G 8:07
I suppose they do have some are friends in the local region? Of course everybody would trade with them.

Dr Rad 8:14
No, this is true. So specifically the Samnites, who at this point in time, well ensconced in Capua and Cumae, would not engage in trade with Rome even in this dangerous hour of need, Dr. G. For shame.

Dr G 8:32
Yes, look, the Samnite relationship with Rome is going to be a rocky one. Let’s put it that way.

Dr Rad 8:40
Yeah, foreshadowing, foreshadowing. Yeah, absolutely. I think

Dr G 8:44
We haven’t seen a lot of the Samnites in the Romans yet, but just you wait.

Dr Rad 8:48
Yeah, exactly. But the person that does apparently come to their rescue is and I’m quoting Livy here: Sicilian tyrants.

Dr G 8:59
Hmm. Fascinating. Well, that’s quite interesting, actually, because the Sicilian tyrants haven’t been having a great run of it themselves, because they’ve just been under the military invasion of the Carthaginians. So it’s not like they’re in a great way right now.

Dr Rad 9:17
Well, this is the thing, right? So most people have pointed out that Livy must be a bit off here because there actually aren’t any tyrants ruling Sicily in this year.

Dr G 9:27
Ah Livy. He’s a lair!

Dr Rad 9:30
Well, how dare you? How very dare you. Look, it’s possible like it’s close in time. It’s possible. Obviously, we’ve just got the order things slightly out of whack, and it is possible.

Dr G 9:47
You’re being very generous to Livy here.

Dr Rad 9:49
Well, look, let me put it this way. We’re fairly certain that the person that he’s referring to even though he does not name him is Dionysius the First, who came to power in 409. So you see it is very close.

Dr G 10:04
Very indeed. All right.

Dr Rad 10:05
Yeah. And it is very possible as well that the Sicilians would have been wanting to win Rome over as an ally at this point in time, because as you said, last episode, Dr. G, there’s some issues going on in Greece, a little thing known as the Peloponnesian War.

Dr G 10:29
There are some things going on in Greece. And one of the consequences of that is that the Greeks are trying to push their way into Sicily. That is one of the grounds in which some of the battles are taking place. There’s a Carthaginian interest also in Sicily. Sicily, historically, as I’m sure listeners are aware, is its location, right smack in the middle of the Mediterranean makes it kind of like a very strategic location for all concerned, who’s who live around that Mediterranean edge. So interest is high. Sicilia is facing various incursions from different directions. So maybe they are desperate, even if the tyrant is not quite in place yet.

Dr Rad 11:17
Yes, I think that’s exactly it with the Battle of Syracuse, which has just been waged in 413 BCE, or in the whole campaign sort of running from 415 to 413 BCE, as Athens is trying to strike out at people who are allied to the Spartans and supplying them with grain. And as you say, with Carthage rumbling around, and Carthage and Rome at this point in time are technically allies, it probably was a wise move for them to help root out whilst you know, Rome is looking around for some friends. No. Yeah. Now, most of the corn, however, comes from the Etruscans.

Dr G 12:00
Curiouser and curiouser.

Dr Rad 12:03
I know. So it seems that the Etruscans, who, by this stage are mostly located to the north of Rome, they obviously don’t want Rome to take their business elsewhere, i.e. Sicily.

Dr G 12:18
“How dare you? We’ve got the best prices on grain.”

Dr Rad 12:22
Yeah. And the Etruscans also have a hostile relationship with the Samnites. Because the Samnites have kind of displaced them in Campania.

Dr G 12:30
Typical typical, the local politics is starting to get messy around here.

Dr Rad 12:36
I know an all over corn.

Dr G 12:40
Well, you gotta eat, what can I say?

Dr Rad 12:42
Yeah. So that’s kind of about all the detail that I have in that basically, there was almost a very serious famine, but Rome managed to find some allies and managed to pull itself out of that, and the danger was averted. It does seem like there was a bit of a shortage of manpower, following on the back of the pestilence, it seems like the consuls need to bring in extra people to help them with things like embassies, because they just don’t have enough people who are available to help them out with the day to day administration. But that’s kind of it. So 411 is a very quiet year. But don’t you worry, we’re about to enter 410 And we’re about to get some serious developments happening.

Dr G 13:29
Well, before we enter into 410, just to give you a sense of just how thin on the ground, my source material is currently-

Dr Rad 13:38
You’re joking. You don’t have any source material?

Dr G 13:42
I know I’ve been chatting about Sicily for like 10 minutes now, but I know nothing! So, in 411, the Fasti Capitolini is missing. So that’s our big list of consuls and magistrates.

Dr Rad 13:57
Yeah. Which explains why we have all the issues with the names. Yeah.

Dr G 14:00
Well, yeah, we’ll explain some of it for sure. Yeah. And then I have Diodorus Siculus, who we’ve talked about recently, is useless, but he comes and goes in terms of accuracy. And when nobody else was around, he gets to be very accurate because he’s the only one who’s got the names.

Dr Rad 14:20
This is true.

Dr G 14:21
That that may or may not mean that he’s correct. But nevertheless, so he has Mamercus Papirius and Spurius Nautius listed. Now there is the ongoing date discrepancy that happens with Diodorus Siculus. Because he always tells us the consuls in the same sentence as he tells us who’s the current eponymous Archon in Athens, right and this is always out by a couple of years. So by Diodorus is reckoning worried about 408-407

Dr Rad 14:57
Well, there you go. Tyrants in Sicily and Livy wasn’t lying.

Dr G 15:01
If Livy is following the same sorts of source material that Diodorus is following, then yes, he’s, he’s on the right track. And the other source that I ended up going to for this, and this is again, testament to the thinness of my source material. Cassiodorus.

Dr Rad 15:22
Wow. Okay. Well, I don’t think we’ve mentioned him at all ever before on this podcast.

Dr G 15:28
Look, I could have gone to him before now. But there was no need in some respects. And yes, things were so desperate for me that I decided that maybe Cassiodorus could help me. Now, who is Cassiodorus? I’m glad you asked. His full name is Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. Now, Senator is not a title. It’s part of his name. He is living in the late fifth century and doing most of his writing in the sixth century CE II.

Dr Rad 16:04
Okay.

Dr G 16:05
So he serves under Theoderic, the king of the Ostrogoths at Ravenna.

Dr Rad 16:13
Wow, so we’re not even really under Roman rule anymore.

Dr G 16:19
I’ve got some bad news, listeners of this podcast, the Romans are gonna take some heavy blows. And they shall be no more. Yeah, by the time we get to Cassiodorus, the Romans it’s a little bit over. We’ve got the Ostrogoths that Ravenna. Ravenna is the new capital in some respects, in the Roman West. It’s it’s pretty over. Anyway, he writes a work that’s known as the Veriae – it’s a collection of letters. And he also does some epitomes of other historians. So he’s got a whole list of magistrates, which is very exciting. And it has been translated very kindly by people who live on the internet.

Dr Rad 17:06
Thank God

Dr G 17:06
I know, aren’t they delightful? Scholars who are like, You know what, this will be a great service to all concerned. Translating is a time consuming task. And so we do have the names for this year of the consuls, also from Cassiodorus. But this is where the Gaius Nautius name comes in.

Dr Rad 17:31
The controversy

Dr G 17:32
So yeah, we think he’s Spurius. But Cassiodorus says you might be Gaius and such being the thinness of our sources, we let Cassiodorus get away with that one. But that is all I’ve got. That is literally it. I’ve got like three sources, maybe with some names.

Dr Rad 17:54
Okay. Well, I’m glad we got to meet Cassiodorus because I’m sure he will come up again.

Dr G 17:58
I hope so. I hope so. I’m not sure that he’s going to have too much more to offer us besides names, but, you know, it’s fun to know he’s out there.

Dr Rad 18:06
Okay, well, let’s move on from this year of trade and corn and potential famine, and talk a little bit about 410 BCE. So who are our magistrates for 410? Dr. G.

Dr G 18:18
All right. I have a few magistrates, so I’ve got consuls, and I’ve got a tribune of the plebs.

Dr Rad 18:23
Mm hmm.

Dr G 18:26
Okay, so our first consul is Manius Aemilius Mamercinus.

Dr Rad 18:34
Know that name.

Dr G 18:37
This guy is gonna go on to have a bit of a career. It’s a it’s a time for people having new careers. This is his first time I think is consul, maybe his first time in any particular high level magistracies that we’ve we know about. So this is an exciting year for him. He is joined in the consulship by Gaius Valerius Potitus Volusus. Now this guy we have heard of before.

Dr Rad 19:04
I was going to say I think I remember that name. Volusus.

Dr G 19:07
Yeah, Potitus Volusus. Sounds a bit like a terrible cough actually was a military tribune with consular power in 415. And tribune of the plebs, Marcus Menenius.

Dr Rad 19:25
Ooo interesting name.

Dr G 19:30
Are names all I have? Maybe.

Dr Rad 19:35
All right. Well, let me tell you, let me give you a little bit of narrative to flesh this out. So in 410, we abandon the peacefulness of the previous year because the Aequians are once again getting ready for war, Dr. G.

Dr G 19:48
I hope the plague’s over.

Dr Rad 19:50
Yes, now. Well, I mean, I think the plague was just affecting Rome. They don’t really talk about it being more widespread than that, but we’ll we’ll see. Now the Volscians are going to be teaming up with the Aequians. Once more, however, not in an official capacity, they kind of just want to earn a bit of pocket money. And they’re like

Dr G 20:12
“We’re just going into this as silent partners.”

Dr Rad 20:14
Exactly. Yes, “we will fight as your employees but we’re not going to fight officially.”

Dr G 20:21
Wait a minute, the Volscians are now mercenaries?

Dr Rad 20:24
Yes. Absolutely. So the Romans start to hear of the usual signs that trouble is afoot, which is that the Aequians and the Volscians have teamed up and are attacking Latin and Hernician territory.

Dr G 20:42
Hmm. All right. Now this makes perfect sense because the Aequians are to the slight north east of Rome. And the Volscians are to the south and south east, and Hernician territory lies right in the middle between the Aequians and the Volscians.

Dr Rad 21:02
So they’re like, Let’s get together and make a Hernician sandwich.

Dr G 21:06
Well, with a big huge pincer movement, we can punch that Hernician sausage straight out of the sandwich!

Dr Rad 21:14
Yes. Now the Latin-Hernicians are of course going to call on Rome for aid. Rome is going to obviously make sure that they’re going to fend off these attackers. So one of our consuls, Valerius starts getting the troops ready for battle. Except there’s a little thing called domestic politics that he hadn’t counted on, even though we’ve seen this pattern so many times before, and that is our tribune of the plebs ceases as his golden opportunity to stop the levy and try and push for an agrarian law before anyone goes into battle anywhere.

Dr G 21:52
I kind of love these tactics. I mean, they don’t get old and they just keep happening.

Dr Rad 21:57
Yeah, well, exactly. So we’re getting into sort of the classic conflict of the oldest stuff that we have dealt with before where the pavilions know when they’ve got the patricians over barrel. They know that the patricians need them to go to war deal with these issues, and that therefore, they’re going to actually pay more attention than they might normally do, to their cries for land reform. Fair enough. So the men who don’t particularly want to go to war now have a perfect out, and they can go to Menenius, tribume of the plebs, for protection, okay, and they can refuse to take the oath to serve. However, disturbing reports start flowing into Rome. The citadel of Carventum is captured by Aequians forces. Where is Carventum? Nobody’s really sure.

Dr G 22:51
I do have some details on that.

Dr Rad 22:53
Okay, excellent. Do you want to say them now?

Dr G 22:58
Carventum. This is known as an ancient city of Latin. And listed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, yonks ago as one of the 30 states, that’s part of the Latin League.

Dr Rad 23:12
Right.

Dr G 23:12
So definitely part of this Latin group, which means that they probably are on the border line on the edge of Hernician territory. The Hernicians aren’t Latin speakers as far as we’re aware?

Dr Rad 23:28
Yeah, that’s right.

Dr G 23:29
They speak at a slightly different language. So for Carventum to be a Latin city, we’d have to assume that it’s slightly, it’s one of these border land type places. So this means that people have speculated for ages about like where this place could be. And one of the big speculations is that it’s somewhere in the Alban Hills.

Dr Rad 23:52
Yes, that is what I found as well,

Dr G 23:54
Specifically a place called Rocca Maxima. Now, there’s an alternative theory, because that’s pretty old theory. And that’s one that’s mostly discredited. Now, more recent scholarship suggest that the town is near Praeneste. Which is also a member of the Latin League. And if you you can still see it on maps today. And it’s basically due east of Rome. And the Alban Hills are kind of in the middle between them. So to get past the Alban Hills, after you still go east, you hit Praeneste, and they think that this town of Carventum might be there, and the Citadel was obviously inside it somewhere. We haven’t found any trace to prove any of that. But that’s kind of the gist.

Dr Rad 24:45
We;;, there you go. It all makes sense to me that regardless of where this place is the fact that it has been captured by the Aequians. Whilst the Romans are bickering amongst themselves is highly embarrassing. The patricians are not happy. Yeah. The patricians are really not happy and they decide, “You know what, we’re going to use this to our advantage. We are going to use this military setback to shame Menenius, we will manage to turn him around, he will allow the levy because we can’t allow this to stand.” Allegedly, the rest of the tribune of the plebs that are serving this year, who are nameless, of course, have already been won over to the patricians side in this argument, in fact,

Dr G 25:34
But how? But why?

Dr Rad 25:36
I know, I know, there’s so many details I’d like to know, I kind of think this relates back to something we spoke about a few episodes ago, where they had this idea of like dividing and conquering, you know, using like a classic method from way back in the beginning of the conflict of the orders, where, I guess they promised the tribunes, you know, favors, or, I don’t know, some sort of unofficial alliance or something like that. And therefore, the tribune is like, well, you know what, this is a pretty crappy gig that I’ve got here. I may as well make friends with the powerful people in this place. I may as well betray my kind, yeah, I’ll betray my kind and everything that we stand for, so that I can get ahead in this work.

Dr G 26:17
I feel like the only thing that would lure plebeains over at this point would be the promise of becoming a patrician. But I feel like that’s normal on offer that is not on.

Dr Rad 26:28
Yet, we don’t really know the hows and the whys and wherefores, but we know that a few years ago, one of the younger Appius Claudius as of the world has suggested that they bring this tactic back. And I feel like it’s actually never really gone away. Even when they’re not talking about it. I feel like they’re patricians, are continuing to keep the tribune of the plebs divided and winning over some of the ones who may be a little less scrupulous to their side, because apparently, they’ve already been turned against the idea of an agrarian law and land reform or that kind of stuff. And now they’re just using this military defeat to publicly sided against Menenius. And it gives them like sort of the perfect excuse, like they don’t have to try and cover up the fact that they’re doing something a bit weird by siding with the patricians on this issue.

Dr G 27:16
I wonder if this might also be related to the changing dynamic over time of that, what does the tribune of the plebs represented? I feel like potentially Livy’s doing a bit of a retrorejection here, where one explanation you could posit for why tribunes would behave this way is that they actually come from very rich plebeian families.

Dr Rad 27:41
And so as we’ve spoken about before, this is not a class struggle between the rich and the poor. It’s a struggle between the people that hold a lot of power in an official capacity and people that are barred from that.

Dr G 27:55
Yeah. So it might be the case that some of these people who get into the role of tribune of the plebs see this as the top job for people with their kind of background. Yeah. And they’re willing to use that wealth in whatever way sort of furthers their own ambitions rather than looking after as much as we might like them to the little guy who could use some representation.

Dr Rad 28:18
Yeah, exactly. And this is what we’ve talked about before that probably a lot of the people that we hear about from the tribune of the plebs position, or even some of the named plebeains that we get in our sources, they probably have more in common with the patricians that are named in our accounts than they do with the average person in Rome at this point in time. Because if they’re this involved in politics, then you kind of have to imagine they’ve got a fair amount of free time on their hands.

Dr G 28:46
Oh, boy.

Dr Rad 28:47
Yeah. Now, so you think that this would obviously be really bad for Menenius? You know, Hey, there he is the sole tribune standing out against the levee. Militarily, things are not looking great for Rome’s allies, the Aequians are making incursions into their territory. Is this the moment that he caves? Oh contraire, Dr. G. It only makes him stick to his guns all the more. And so we have a really long drawn out argument apparently ensuing. Between the patricians who were like,” please, for the love of God, just let us hold the levy. We got to go and deal with this,” and Menenius being like, “Not on your life, not until I get some land reform. God dammit!”

Dr G 29:35
It’s like as soon as you do land reform, you can have a levee.

Dr Rad 29:39
Yeah. Now the consuls obviously at their wit’s end, they do not know what to say to this guy to convince him. So the consuls call on the gods and all of Rome to witness that Menenius personally, is to blame for anything bad that is happening or would happen in the future. Whether it’s defeat, whether it’s the ultimate disgrace, whatever it is, it’s all going to be Menenius’ fault because he has held up the levy.

Dr G 30:08
This does sound pretty disturbing. So they brought the gods into this.

Dr Rad 30:14
They have.

Dr G 30:15
This is a bad sign for the patricians.

Dr Rad 30:19
Now Menenius comes back to this, you know, big threat. I said, well, not threat. But you know what I mean? Like Menenius comes back to this big call, I suppose, and says, “Look, it’s quite simple. Just give up the land that the patricians are illegally occupying. And I will allow the levy to go ahead. That’s all I’m asking.”

Dr G 30:39
Yeah, that’s very simple.

Dr Rad 30:41
Yeah. And again, we return to this idea which you highlighted again, and again, seems so weird that the land is being occupied illegally, which, as we’ve said, just doesn’t really seem to make sense for Rome in this period. But this is the narrative that they’re sticking with.

Dr G 30:58
Ah look, Livy’s not going to give that up. And I would assume that if Dionysius of Halicarnassus were here with us, he would not give it up either.

Dr Rad 31:05
Yeah, exactly. So we’ve got this very late Republican idea of land and land reform and what that should look like, in the early republic, nonetheless, let’s power on. This is where something incredibly weird happens. And I honestly don’t think there is a good explanation for what I’m about to say,

Dr G 31:05
Oh, this sounds exciting.

Dr Rad 31:06
Yeah. So there are nine other tribunes of the plebs. These are the guys that have already turned on Menenius and now publicly have a reason to be calling him out and saying that he shouldn’t be holding up the levy. Okay. So all of these other tribunes agree to back Valerius if he starts using harsh measures to get people to enlist in the army.

Dr G 31:56
Oh, they’re going to use violence to enact the levy?

Dr Rad 31:59
Not just violence. Money too. Valerius is allowed by these tribunes to start using fines and other forms of coercion, which I presume does mean physical force to get people to enlist, even though Menenius is using his veto power to hold up the levy. Now, this is apparently passed as like some sort of actual decree. It’s not just like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge will back you up, buddy. It seems like there is something made very official about this so that Valerius can go about his business.

Dr G 32:40
That is very interesting, because and it doesn’t make sense. I agree with you.

Dr Rad 32:44
It does not.

Dr G 32:44
Because: one, it calls the whole concept of the veto into question. And the veto power of the tribune of the plebs is something that we haven’t really strongly historically established yet anyway. And so for it to be sort of dismantled so robustly in this moment, is a bad sign. And I would question whether that would be the case. But also, what the hell is going on?

Dr Rad 33:16
I know, I know, I think this highlights as you say, it definitely highlights I think the fact that supposedly, we have this position of the tribune of the plebs that has come out of the conflict of the orders, you know, it’s been one of the only big wins that really had, I mean, I’ve had a few, but that’s probably the biggest one. However, you and I have also talked about the fact that we’re not really sure if any of the magistracies actually exists, all their consuls are there, I don’t know! And so it’s very possible-

We definitely have lists of names.

Yes, we have lists of name. Exactly, we have lists of names. But as we’ve talked about before, you and I very much run with this theory that actually it’s probably a lot more ad hoc, and you know, clan based power, you know, at this point in time, rather than having these very structured systems in place.

Dr G 34:11
It’s pretty clear that Rome is working out its systems of governance. And we were just on the cusp of hitting one century of the Republic, if those sorts of timelines are ones that we sort of notionally want to agree to. So we’re in a working out kind of phase. And arguably, and I think this is true for Rome throughout all of its history, there is never a moment of clear political static stability. The whole thing is always, always dynamic. So, what is happening here, this clash between what seems to be various magistrates, that might be clashes between families, as you say This could be gens versus gens, some with more prestige, some with more wealth. Some who maybe want to see Rome go in a different direction, but that doesn’t get articulated or recorded, and it doesn’t make it into our annalistic histories that are written like centuries later.

Dr Rad 35:18
Yeah, exactly. And as we’ve talked about last episode, this is a period where Rome does seem to be militarily getting back into its game, you know, we do have some expansion happening, like nothing too crazy. It’s not like they like capturing Greece. But we are definitely seeing a slightly different direction for rowing than we have seen for some time. And it seems like the dark cloud that it kind of settled over the latter half of this century is starting to lift and allow for more of these kinds of moves on Rome’s behalf. But certainly, I think it does. It definitely highlights once again, this idea that the tribune of the plebs has like fully is fully formed. And we know exactly what the tribune of the plebs can and cannot do. I think that this highlights that that’s not the case. But it, it’s possible, like if we say for a second that okay, maybe there are people that hold some titles, at this point in time. Maybe one of those titles is tribune of the plebs. Let’s run with that for a moment. If we go along with this idea that they maybe have some sort of veto power, that they’re invested in some sort of sacrosanctity. What this incident might be highlighting is that that isn’t really worth a lot if your colleagues aren’t willing to back you up.

Dr G 35:18
Yeah.

Dr Rad 35:18
Because we’re talking about at this point in time, and we talked about this when I think the tribune is very first came about, literally, the idea is that that the tribune would physically be there to offer protection if someone was in need. Usually, when we were talking about it originally, in this sense, I think we were talking about, you know, being dragged off into debt bondage or something like that. But the idea was, the tribune would be there to physically offer you his protection. And if he wasn’t physically there, you may not get that protection. And I think you can kind of see that potentially, in this instance, as well, in that it’s all very well and good for Menenius to say, “You shall not pass.” But it doesn’t really mean a lot if people aren’t willing to, you know, go along with and back him up and that sort of thing. And he can’t be everywhere at once.

Dr G 37:37
Yeah, that’s that is part of the problem that if he is going to, if he does, indeed have a body, which is considered sacrosanct while he is in this role, to allow him to do that physical kind of protection, he does have to be somewhere really obvious and have everybody who needs his help run to him. So he can then attempt to run a circle around them of protection. You know, this is the only way that it would work. You might have people coming into his house, he might be able to save one or two, maybe 10 people. But if the consuls are getting their military officers to enact a violent levy to enforce enlistment, it’s going to be very hard for Menenius to be everywhere to see that off, particularly if he doesn’t have the support of his other nine tribunes.

Dr Rad 38:30
Absolutely he is absolutely an island right now. He’s the walrus. Now the consul Valerius, of course, now that he is backed by this power that’s been given to him by the other tribunes, it seems he starts dragging people who are refusing to enlist in front of him and making such a spectacle of their set. Everyone else gets really intimidated and is too scared not to enlist so that the tactic works perfectly.

Dr G 38:58
Sounds about right, sounds very patrician, I have to say.

Dr Rad 39:01
It does. So as a result, the Romans are finally able to send an army marching off to this citadel that has been captured – Carventum – wherever that is.

Dr G 39:11
East! Let’s say east.

Dr Rad 39:13
Yeah, to the east. Okay. Now, with everything that’s happened. There isn’t a lot of love happening in this military buddy, Dr. G.

Dr G 39:23
Are you telling me morale is low?

Dr Rad 39:26
It is a little bit the troops hate Valerius and Valerius hates them right back.

Dr G 39:32
Ah, you know, one could have guessed if you violently beat people up to force them to be in your army that maybe they wouldn’t care for it very much.

Dr Rad 39:41
I know. Yeah. I thought when I read this, okay, so we’re headed for one of these classic Roman military defeats or something like that. And this guy is going to end up getting into so much trouble for being a terrible commander. But that’s not actually what happens in spite of the fact that there’s this tension between them. They all do their duty. They serve well and they manage to drive off the joint Aequian- Volscian force, the Aequians having kind of made it easy for them by not putting up a particularly strong defense.

Dr G 40:09
They sent the mercenaries that they’d hired from the Volsci home?

Dr Rad 40:13
Well, I think that rather than maybe having everybody you know, in the Citadel holding on to it, they’d said to people, yeah, you know, if you want to take five, go for a wander, Look for some stuff, do some pillaging, do some rapping, that kind of stuff, you go right ahead, just be backed by six.

Dr G 40:30
Hmmm, discipline was lax.

Dr Rad 40:33
Exactly discipline was lax. And so it was quite easy for the Romans to sort of breeze in and take over. And it’s becoming a bit of a sad and typical story, they did not find a lot of plunder, because of course, the Aequians and the Volscians know that there’s a war going on, and therefore they’d stash anything that was really valuable for safekeeping.

Dr G 40:52
I kind of love that it’s taken like a good century for everybody in the area to figure out that it’s like, “Let’s hide the spoils somewhere else.” You know, first steps first.

Dr Rad 41:04
Let’s not just keep it in the living room.

Dr G 41:07
Let’s hide it somewhere. That could be good. This has taken a while, but we got there.

Dr Rad 41:12
Yeah, so they obviously captured some stuff, because what happens next is that Valerius allows the quaestors to auction off any booty that they have captured. And whatever money is raised is going straight into public territory. Is this a strange thing for the questions to be doing? You betcha.

Dr G 41:31
Very odd. Public territory. Does this mean? Is this a tacit sort of suggestion that there’s ager publicus involved here?

Dr Rad 41:42
Look, I think it’s more the fact that that kind of a job would usually fall to an urban praetor. So someone who’s located in the city of Rome, they might potentially be involved in something like that. But if we’re talking about military quaestors here, which I think is what is meant to be happening, that is not usually part of their role. It just again, it just doesn’t seem right. It seems anachronistic.

Dr G 42:11
It does. I would say that that may be what’s happening here is that the writers – potentially Livy’s thinking about the quaestorship in it’s much later form exit where it does become this kind of the financial attache of the military commander. That’s not really quite where the quaestors are at far as we can tell.

Dr Rad 42:34
Yeah. Yeah, at this point in time, it doesn’t really make sense if we are reading this the way it’s being presented. And so this is obviously meant to be a big public statement. To the army. “You’re not going to get a cut of anything that we capture until you are obedient. So stop your whinging. Stop your whining or no more spoils for you!”

Dr G 42:58
Aw man.

Dr Rad 43:01
Now, this of course, does not endear Valerius to his man.

Dr G 43:06
Well, there’s a surprise.

Dr Rad 43:08
Yeah. And because most of the people who are serving as your regular rank-and-file soldiers are plebeians. They, of course, let other plebeians know that they are unhappy and the mood spreads. Now Valerius is granted an ovation.

Dr G 43:23
Oh

Dr Rad 43:24
Yeah. Yeah, fancy. And it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. To be honest. It seems kind of like he just waltz into this.

Dr G 43:33
Seems like it wasn’t hard to take back this citadel. So is it really deserving of an of an ovatio? But I guess it’s desperate times. And Rome hasn’t had heaps of military success for a few years until the last couple. So maybe they’re excited and their standards are low.

Dr Rad 43:50
Well, yeah. And also, I mean, you know, he’s also from, I guess, one of those families like the Valerii. Like, we’ve talked about them a lot. They’re pretty prestigious.

Dr G 43:56
Yeah, they are very prestigious.

Dr Rad 43:58
They’re really powerful. I’m sure they know who’s back to scratch, if you know what I mean, then anyway, so Valerius rocks up for this ovatio – not quite a triumph – but still, you know, Rome going, “Well done.” And finds that Rome is not actually saying well done. Instead, he’s being pelted with abuse.

Dr G 44:16
Oh, okay. So he’s so he’s been awarded the ovation by the Senate, presumably,

Dr Rad 44:23
it looks it doesn’t actually say but I mean, you would presume so

Dr G 44:27
I would presume so. I think it’s kind of that sort of suggestion would come through like, you don’t get to just have an ovatio, it gets granted in some way. But yeah, if the general urban population is not into that, I can see how a walking procession through the city in a very slow and deliberate – supposedly celebratory way – could be great fodder for your rotten vegetables.

Dr Rad 44:55
Exactly. So he starts getting abused and that’s not really what you’re here with me. tend to be about to be a special moment. And everyone’s kept calling him. And then interestingly, praise starts to be showered on Menenius. So Menenius starts to become, you know, a figure of appeal again, I mean, not that I think everybody like turned on him, for example, but I would imagine that he obviously lost a bit of credibility after everything that had happened. But when everybody starts shouting at the name Menenius, it kind of spreads through the crowd, the enthusiasm just builds. Menenius is now the man of the moment. And he’s the one who’s getting cheered, and everyone’s really crazy for Menenius. And that’s not really how ovatios work.

Dr G 45:46
I love this redemption arc, though, where it’s like, the people have realized that Menenius was the guy that was on their side, and they’re like, “You know what, this has gone badly. And the only guy who stood it our corner? Menenius.”

Dr Rad 46:00
Yeah, and this is the thing, I don’t think that people ever doubted that he was their guy. I think they were just intimidated into obviously behaving a certain way. But now that they’ve seen the way that Valerius has acted after this victory, I kind of think they’ve got nothing left to lose at this point in time, and they’re just being they’re just being vocal. They’re just expressing their feelings, Dr G.

Dr G 46:22
Nobody can get into trouble for that, can they?

Dr Rad 46:25
Exactly. Now, the patricians are extremely nervous by this public display. They’re like, okay, it’s not out of the ordinary for there to be some tension between the regular soldiers and their commanders, who are at this point in time, usually consuls or military tribunes with consular power. They’re like, that’s fine. We can deal with that. That’s apparently how things normally are. We can also accept that there’s usually a lot of tension between patricians and plebeians. Apparently, that’s what our society is all about this century. It’s hashtag trending. But this demonstration kind of puts them on high alert. So once again, we see the paranoia coming out. They feel incredibly certain after everything that’s gone down recently, that if they allow military tribunes with consular power the next year, rather than consuls, Menenius will be the first plebeian to be elected into that position.

Dr G 47:31
Oh, they’ve been paranoid about this for a couple of years. Now. That’s why we keep getting consuls, isn’t it? Well, at least that’s the rationale we’ve been given.

Dr Rad 47:37
They have been paranoid about the plebeians. Finally, getting to that point, however, in this particular instance, is because they’ve actually got a guy like they’re like, “this is the one, this is the one that’s going to cause all these problems.” Okay. Now, this is interesting, because this is where I’m going to highlight this Menenius is not a name, I think we come across much again, there was if we go back to 483 BCE, there was mention of a tense relationship between a Valerius and a Maelius. But that’s not the same name.

Dr G 48:21
No.

Dr Rad 48:21
Okay. So that’s a bit of a – hmmm, not sure about that.

Dr G 48:26
That’s questionable.

Dr Rad 48:27
Mm hmm. Yeah. Literally, the Menenius family certainly is a well known plebeian family, but it’s just this particular guy, we don’t really hear about him again. So it’s interesting that they’re like, this is the one. This is the one we’ve been afraid of. But yeah, if we, if we go all the way back again, you know, as you highlighted before, we were talking about the Icilius of the previous episode that we were talking about. He’s obviously from a very well known plebeian family with a long history of you know, these important moments of resistance against patrician rule. Menenius, we actually do have a Menenius mentioned back in the First Succession as well. But that’s a Menenius from a patrician family,

Dr G 49:11
I was gonna say this name is unknown to us. We’ve got this patrician side of the gens, and we’ve got a plebeian side of the gens. So…

Dr Rad 49:21
We do. Yeah, yeah. And the plebeian side is well known. And they will be associated with this position again, but yeah, this particular guy, he’s going to be disappearing into the mists of time.

Dr G 49:33
Look, I think this might end up being like a number of things that we see in this time period with our annalist historians, which is that they’re inserting potentially names that are quite familiar from later generation-

Dr Rad 49:47
Exactly, yes

Dr G 49:48
-into this narrative, one to sort of maybe flesh out the details a little bit. And to maybe there’s some legacy of those family oral histories where people tell of the great people They’re great ancestors, and the stories are coming through in those sort of family traditions. So, without sort of having more independent evidence to think about, it does get quite messy to figure out whether this is like, is this guy real? Is he more of a symbol for something in this narrative, and he needed a name. So we’ll associate him with the kinds of qualities that we associate with the Menenius family from a later period. All that kind of stuff might be going on here.

Dr Rad 50:30
Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, they are so paranoid, they’re like, “not in our treehouse, pal! You’re not coming in, none of you plebeians are coming in! We’re locking the doors!” And so they make sure that there are going to be consular elections, because as you said, not only have they been paranoid about plebeians, you know, crossing that threshold, but now they see this guy, and they’re like, they’re like, “he’s got the fire, you know, he’s got, he’s got the gifts. He’s got the charisma. He’s got the uniqueness. He’s got the nerve, he’s got the talent, he’s going to make it!”

Dr G 50:57
The name on everybody’s lips is gonna be, Menenius.

Dr Rad 51:06
I’m amazed that you managed to make all those syllables fit.

Dr G 51:10
I was really proud of myself that.

Dr Rad 51:14
Anyway, so that is where 410 ends for me. And I can tell you now we are in for more fascinating, bizarre, probably anachronistic, maybe fictional moments in the conflict of the orders in the years ahead.

Dr G 51:30
Stay tuned.

Dr Rad 51:32
That means, Dr G., that it is once more time for The Partial Pick. All right, Dr. G, tell us what The Partial Pick is all about

Dr G 51:42
The Partial Pick, there are 50 golden eagles on offer for Rome, Judge across five categories. So for each category, they could get a score of 10 Golden Eagles if they perform exceptionally well. And we’re just going to judge them by their own standards, really. So we’ll see.

Dr Rad 52:01
How will Rome perform for me today. All right, what’s our first category, Dr. G?

Dr G 52:08
Our first category is military clout.

Dr Rad 52:11
Well, I do think they deserve some points, because obviously, we have got the recapture of the citadel of the mysterious place that nobody knows where it is, except that it’s east.

Dr G 52:22
Is this the place that they also lost? Or do the Hernicians technically lose it?

Dr Rad 52:28
No, that they didn’t, I mean, they didn’y. They didn’t lose it. It was just taken by the Aequians. And then they took it back.

Dr G 52:34
Hmm.

Dr Rad 52:35
Yeah. And this is why this is why Valerius got the ovatio.

Dr G 52:38
Well, yes. I mean, I understand that concept, but who owned it in the first place?

Dr Rad 52:43
Well, I guess we don’t really know where it is. But given given the narrative that I have, to me, it seems like it must be in either Latin or Hernician territory, because that’s, that’s what the Aequians and the Volscians are doing. They’re attacking, Rome’s allies. Yeah, I’m

Dr G 53:00
Yeah, I’m just wondering, like, you know, does it count as a, as a substantial victory worthy of high praise? And thus, a lot of Roman golden eagles? If they’re just sort of taking back something that maybe wasn’t really part of their stuff anyway, like,

Dr Rad 53:19
this is true. I mean, we don’t it’s not really clear if it’s even maybe it’s this maybe

Dr G 53:25
these are the questions I’m asking.

Dr Rad 53:26
I mean, the consul certainly are very worked up about it. It’s definitely seen as like a really big deal that they’ve allowed this to happen.

Dr G 53:36
It strikes me that Carventum and its citadel may stand at this point in time as kind of like a buffer for Rome on the edge of it’s on the edge of Latin territory, this is just a guess. And so it’s maybe strategically important, and that’s potentially why they’re so invested in making sure that they retake it.

Dr Rad 53:58
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s obviously a huge deal. It’s not like they’re like, “Eh what’s one citadel?”

Dr G 54:03
A citadel here, a citadel there. Whatever.

Dr Rad 54:07
Yeah, they definitely kind of allow it to happen. So I think it’s, I mean, I don’t know, I guess I see it as, if Valerius is getting an ovatio. That’s what I’m using as my barometer here. I feel like it must be significant enough to matter. And therefore I feel they deserve like maybe like a two or three.

Dr G 54:27
Oh, all right. I was gonna give them like a four or five. And I was like, Look ovatios are hard work. But I you know.

Dr Rad 54:34
Let’s saym three. I think it’s three because as you say, I don’t think it’s that big a deal because it was taken by the Aequians of the Romans just got it back again. It’s not like it’s new territory. Yeah,

Dr G 54:44
All right.

Dr Rad 54:46
Although, I mean, again, we don’t really know if it’s theirs or someone else’s, but…

Dr G 54:52
The vagaries of history.

Dr Rad 54:56
Alright, so we got three. Alright, what’s our next category?

Dr G 54:58
Our second category is diplomacy.

Dr Rad 55:02
Okay. I don’t think although I suppose if we go back to 411, sorry, they’re getting 411 because it was a bit of a blah year. There is obviously the whole issue with, you know, securing grain which they do very nicely. They don’t steal it, they buy it.

Dr G 55:17
That’s true. They make friends with the Sicilians. They do the tyrants. Wow. And they also seem to buy some from the Etruscans. So things seem to be going well with that relationship, kind of.

Dr Rad 55:31
Definitely. Yeah. Okay, so what, like a two?

Dr G 55:37
Yeah, I think this has to be held in balance with the fact that diplomacy within Rome doesn’t seem to be going great.

Dr Rad 55:45
I’m still so not sure that we should even be talking about diplomacy if it’s within Rome. I don’t think that makes any sense.

Dr G 55:52
Well, you know, negotiating is negotiating.

Dr Rad 55:56
Yeah, that’s certainly war with the Aequians. It’s not diplomatic now that they started it, but that’s true. They finished it. So we’re gonna give them two points for the grain. Okay. All right. Next category?

Dr G 56:09
Expansion.

Dr Rad 56:11
Hmm. This comes back to the question. Again, I’m really not sure.

Dr G 56:16
I feel like it has been mentioned little enough. That it’s not Roman. It’s yeah. And Look, the Latin place and it’s run by some Latin people.

Dr Rad 56:26
Look, the places that I’ve seen mentioned in connection with this spot, none of which were the ones that you mentioned. So clearly we’re reading different sources. It doesn’t seem like this site is actually that far away from Rome. But it’s certainly not within Rome right now.

Dr G 56:43
Yeah.

Dr Rad 56:44
Yeah. So it’s close. I mean, maybe like Tusculum distance.

Dr G 56:50
But Tusculum isn’t Rome, either. So you know,

Dr Rad 56:53
That’s what I mean. Yeah. It’s not far from Rome.

Dr G 56:56
Yeah, but all of these places are kind of running themselves. So I think this is not so much expansion. Or maybe, if they hold on to it?

Dr Rad 57:09
Well, they do. I mean, at this point in time, they’re holding it and we have to judge them on what we’ve got for this year at this point in time. They’ve held it. Alright, let’s give them to. Okay. I feel guilty because I know something about what happens in the future, which might affect this, but I have to judge them on what we’ve just said.

Dr G 57:26
We can’t talk about the future now. You made it explicitly clear that we could only talk about this year.

Dr Rad 57:32
That’s, I mean, like I feel guilty, because I know what’s coming, but anyway, judging them based on this year, in this year, they hold it. Yes, exactly. All right. Next category?

Dr G 57:47
Virtus.

Dr Rad 57:51
I mean, Menenius is a bit of a stand up guy, but I don’t think that you could call it he does virtus.

Dr G 57:59
Yeah. I’m not sure that we have enough detail to be able to claim virtus for him.

Dr Rad 58:04
No, no, he’s a good tribune of the plebs. Huh? Yeah. And Valerius. He’s just a douchebag. And so

Dr G 58:12
Sometimes that is virtus, though.

Dr Rad 58:15
I know, I know not in the Roman, not in the Roman sense. And like, he’s, he’s a douchebag by like, a lot of people’s standards. Alright, so I think that’s a zero.

Dr G 58:25
Yeah. All right. The final category is the citizen score.

Dr Rad 58:30
Well, I mean, I feel like it’s positive that they don’t starve to death. And I think that it’s positive that they have a pretty good tribune of the plebs on their side, but on the other hand, they have nine who are terrible.

Dr G 58:44
Yeah, the counterbalance isn’t great there.

Dr Rad 58:46
Yeah. But on the other hand, it seems like the wars not too long, doesn’t seem like many people die. And then they have the guts to stand up to the patrician legal areas, when they get there.

Dr G 58:59
They do get to throw some rotten fruit. So that’s fun. That’s good. I feel like that’s gonna count for something. I don’t think that makes up for the trauma of being beaten up to be in the army in the first place, but it certainly helps.

Dr Rad 59:10
Look, I don’t know that many people were actually beaten up. I think that a few people were and everyone else was like, “Okay, I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Dr G 59:20
Like, ew, yeah. All right. But I’d say on average, then we’re probably looking at maybe a three.

Dr Rad 59:26
Okay, all right. Well, that’s good Dr. G, because that means that all my fingers are accounted for. We’ve got 10 Golden Eagles for room for the joint years, 4 11 and 410 BCE.

Dr G 59:43
Now look, that is a whole Golden Eagle up on the previous two years.

Dr Rad 59:48
So it is an improvement

Dr G 59:50
They’re definitely making ground.

Dr Rad 59:52
And I’m really looking I’m looking forward very much to talking about the next couple of years because there’s definitely some prime patrician for the in drama that is going to be happening. If and you know I love exploring the conflict with you, because it’s so crazy.

Dr G 1:00:05
Well, I Look forward to seeing what turns up in my research. Maybe I have some sources and discussing more about the struggle of the orders with you soon,

Dr Rad 1:00:15
indeed.

Dr G 1:00:24
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Partial Historians. A huge thank you to our Patreon supporters for helping make this show spectacular. If you enjoyed the show, there’s a few ways that you can show your support. You can write a review wherever you listen in to help spread the word. Reviews really make our day and help new people find our podcasts. Researching and producing a podcast takes time if you’re keen to chip in, you can buy us a coffee on Ko-Fi or join our fantastic patrons for early releases and exclusive content. You can find our show notes, as well as links to our merch and where to buy our book, “Rex: The Seven Kings of Rome” at partial historians.com Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 144 – Where in the world is Carventum? appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

In this special episode we sit down with Dr Emma Southon to discuss her brand new book A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women.

This is the Roman antidote to all those fabulous reimagining of Greek myth by delving into the very real and very fascinating lives of some of the women who lived under the Romans.

Special Episode – A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women with Dr Emma Southon

We discuss the choices Emma made about who to include and who to leave out as well as consider some of the women who stood out for us when reading the book.

If you have a history-minded people to consider at certain upcoming celebrations that may or may not resemble the Saturnalia, this book is worthy of your consideration. Not only is Emma erudite, but she has a great understanding of just how quirky the Romans were.

We firmly recommend checking out Dr Southon’s work, which can be found on her website: https://www.emmasouthon.com/

If you’re interested in her latest book, here are links to where to buy online:

Emma is the co-host of the History is Sexy podcast and can also be found on Instagram. Emma is a great friend of the show and you’re most welcome to check out our other conversations on Agrippina the Younger and murder in ancient Rome.

Just look at those glorious book covers! Despite the title difference, these are the SAME book. The US release is known as A Rome of One’s Own while the UK version is entitled A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women.

Our music was composed by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Lightly edited for clarity!

Dr Rad 0:12
Welcome to The Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome. Everything from political scandals to love affairs, the battles waged and when citizens turn against each other. I’m Dr. Read.

Dr G 0:30
And I’m Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different ancient authors and comparing their accounts.

Dr Rad 0:41
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city. Welcome to a special episode of The Partial Historians, I am one of your hosts, Dr. Rad.

Dr G 1:08
And I am Dr. G.

Dr Rad 1:10
And this is a special episode because we are talking to someone extremely exciting. Dr. G. Dare I say? scintillating?

Dr G 1:19
I think you should say scintillating. Yeah, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Emma Southon back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dr Emma Southon 1:28
Thank you so much for having me back. I just feel extra special when I get invited back like I didn’t do something monstrous last time.

Dr Rad 1:35
Exactly, exactly. So, Dr Emma Southon, for those of you who haven’t caused our previous episodes is one of our favorite guests for three reasons. Number one, she likes RuPaul’s Drag Race and therefore will understand my random references to it unlike Dr. G. Number two, she likes women in history. And number three, she shares our outlook on the ancient Romans, which is that they are unintentionally hilarious and weird. Now to be a bit more specific, Dr. Southon is renowned a smarty pants and here’s why. Aside from the obvious title before her name, she is the co host of the history comedy podcast ‘History is Sexy’, along with our Kiwi cousin, Janina Mathewson. She’s also the author of some of our favorite history books, including ‘Agrippina, Empress, Exile, Hustler Whore’, autobuy autobiography, a biography of the most extraordinary woman in the Roman world, and ‘A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’. However, we have already had the pleasure of talking to her about these books. And today, we get to talk to her about another exciting volume that has just been released ‘A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women: How Women Transformed the Empire’.

Dr G 2:53
Yay!

Dr Emma Southon 2:56
Impressive.

Dr Rad 2:58
Well, I will say this, you don’t like a short title. I don’t like a short title.

Dr Emma Southon 3:03
And you think I’d learn but that people struggle to remember short titles, but But yeah, I don’t know. They end up being really long. In America, this book is called ‘A Rome of One’s Own’, which is snappier.

Dr Rad 3:18
Ahhh, nice.

Dr G 3:18
I do like that. I saw that on Amazon. And I was like, Oh, that is sweet. I enjoyed the pun.

Dr Emma Southon 3:25
It’s yeah, I have friends who have much better puns than I am. And they come up with these great puns. And I’m like, right, well, that’s my title. Thank you.

Dr Rad 3:34
Now you cover a staggering array of women in this book. And I have to say up front, we’re not going to talk about the Regal period at all, because quite frankly, we can’t talk about it any more. We’ve talked about it so much. The only thing I will say is, I think in a second edition, you’re going to have to amend your chapter on Tanaquil, where you say that there are no popular histories that mentioned Tanaquil.

Dr Emma Southon 4:03
Yes, that’s true, because you have now finally written one.

Dr Rad 4:07
Yeah, we both have we both had.

Dr Emma Southon 4:09
Yeah. But it is. I don’t know. It was just so like, I went through as many as I could find, like all of them for like books of like a history of the Roman Empire. And like that I have kind of lying around in my house and reflect through the ones I could see. And they just skip right over her. They skip over the regnal period, like a lot like the whole, the kings are just kind of coughed over fairly often. But still, I was like, this is such a good story.

I know. I know.

Why would you not want to like go out of your way to include this. So yeah, so second edition paperback edition will have a specific reference to The Partial Historians.

Dr Rad 4:48
Yeah, thank you very much. So we feel okay now, we can calm down and talk about your book.

Dr G 4:53
Okay, the interview can happen now.

Dr Emma Southon 4:55
When I finally – because your book came out just before my end like a couple of months ago, where mine had already gone off like, and I wasn’t allowed to change it anymore. And I was like, no, I could I could have done this with this so much. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it. So everybody should buy it.

Dr G 5:13
Oh, thank you

Dr Rad 5:13
Ahh thank you. Well, we definitely felt that way about your book. And so we’d love to ask you some general questions to start off with about the style of your book. So your last book was about murder in ancient Rome. Why did you decide to, you know, change tack and go for a history of Rome, using the lives of women as your next project?

Dr Emma Southon 5:35
It’s partly spite. So my other thing that I do during my days is I work in a book shop, and you will have noticed, it’s impossible not to have noticed and moment that there is a been in the past two years ish, like a really big spike in interest in Greek goddesses, like retelling Greek myth, specifically, like retellings of female stories and Greek myth, which is great for, you know, ancient history in general, kind of, but also, you, as you will know, when you’re a Roman historian, you think that Romans are the best. Yeah. And it’s constant, like, oh, yeah, I mean, I guess the Greeks are fine. But Romans are better because they’re funnier. It’s so I kind of out of spite, when it’d be like, Yeah, but Roman women exist, too, and that they’re better because they’re real. And they don’t like turn into spiders, or like, they’re not goddesses, they’re bad. So that makes them better. And so, a 50%, out of spite that I wanted people to also be reading about Romans. And to know that Romans are better than Greeks, and 50%, because I just feel like so much of like, popular Roman history is talking about men and like the, the standard narrative of Roman history of the store of the story of Roman history is so much just war and politics, basically, which is the sphere of men, which women are explicitly excluded from, and I thought it would be fun to kind of disrupt that a little bit and be like, one, there is a history of the Roman Empire that doesn’t have any politics in it really, or has a limited amount of politics. And there is a, there is a history, which is more than just politics, it can also be what it is like to live in the Roman Empire at various times as various people. And it’s more interesting to tell that story through women than it is through men and to show that women are always kind of around about and I realized quite early on into writing it that as kind of a historian of my age, I am really only the second generation of historians writing about women in the ancient world, like my supervisor, for my PhD, who is still working was like one of the first generation of people to do her PhD on women. And like, people like Amy Richlin and Suzanne Dixon, who are still around and wrote those first books about women in the Roman Empire are like, they’re still teaching. They’re still they’re still at conferences like this. They’re you know, they’re older. But as we all know, historians never retire. So they’re still around, they’re still alive. Like they. This isn’t like an old discipline women in Rome, or women in the ancient world at all. It’s very, very new. And so, yeah, so it’s time to bring it to their, the popular imagination out of the academy and start talking about it.

Dr G 8:45
I think you’re doing a great service, particularly to readers who have become hooked on ancient Greek myths, because there is so much more to the ancient world than just, you know, having your tongue taken out or turning into a monster or

Dr Emma Southon 9:02
And like it not to be like everybody loves the Greek myths, and they love them for a reason. But a lot of them are victimized women, and there are but there are stories which from a kind of feminist perspective, I have minor issues with like stories of perpetually victimized women and womanhood as being perpetually victimized. So it’s nice to tell stories about ancient women that were not like being turned into spiders or having their tongue taken out or being held into the sea or like or have to be literal goddesses in order to be able to do anything.

Dr Rad 9:36
Yeah, and as as we can definitely testify, we realized once we started focusing on the early republic, that he’d have literally been years of episodes sometimes before we mentioned a woman, we suddenly realized when a woman would come up as you say in your book, like a Vestal Virgin or were like God, it’s been like five years since about women at all.

Dr Emma Southon 9:58
Yeah, yeah. And it’s so easy to fall into that and to be like, oh, all of the important stories are the ones that the Romans thought were important. But the Romans can’t be trusted, because they have bad opinions about a lot of stuff.

Dr G 10:12
So true. So true. And I think this leads nicely into thinking about like, how did you come to the decision about which women to focus on because it seems like you’ve hinted already, in some sense, it’s about availability of evidence. But there must be other criteria as well.

Dr Emma Southon 10:28
So in that early period, a lot of it is availability of evidence up until the later of because the archaeology is so limited, and you are kind of trapped with texts, particularly for like the Regal period, and then the early and middle Republic before their epigraphic habit kicked in. It was about who can I find, basically, and finding stuff for the very earliest period when they basically mythical was easier than I thought it would be like those early bits of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. So so you’ve got Hersilia and you’ve got Tullia, like, there were more women than I thought. And so I just included all of them, because why not?

Dr Rad 11:15
Yeah, that’s what we were surprised by as well. We started writing about the kings were like, actually, we get it like it’s a it’s a dynastic situation. It’s not a dynastic situation, it’s a family situation. So women have more of an opportunity to get sort of, you know, get a bit of soft power.

Dr Emma Southon 11:34
Yeah, exactly. As soon as you have a situation where one person is in charge, you have wives, and you have children. And when you’ve got children, you’ve got daughters in law, grandchildren, and then you have women who can do things like murder, their husbands marry their brother in law, who’s also their cousin, murder their father running over,

Dr Rad 11:54
as you do as you do,

Dr Emma Southon 11:56
as you do, and can, they can do all of this really fun stuff. So that was fun. The Republican period is harder. And that was tough work, like finding women that you can include. Because they only appear at points of crisis. And very often, they only get a couple of lines to illustrate how terrible crisis is. But once you get into the Empire, like once things really start to kick off evidence wise, so late Republic, going into the Empire, and then coming like the later empire, there’s so many women that it became a part of like, what story do I want to tell, and what women kind of will tell that story. So always wanted it to be not the women who are already included in books. So for women already had a biography about her, I kind of was like, No, and that kind of easily cut out all the emphasis. And I didn’t want it to be a book about politics, and to tell the story that we already know. So I didn’t want it to have you know, Livia and Agrippina. All of the kind of big women that we already know about, I wanted it to be women that you’ve probably not really heard of, or that tell a story that is more about what it is like to live in the empire than to rule the Empire. There are some exceptions, just because I like the stories like Julia Maesa and Julia Mamaea. I include because I just think that Julia Maesa is so cool.

Dr Rad 13:24
Look most people wouldn’t have heard of them?

Dr Emma Southon 13:26
I don’t think yeah, no, yeah, they’re not women that you have heard of very often. And I wanted people from around the Empire. So I wanted to leave Rome at the point when the Empire becomes Imperial, and talk about women from around so that anytime that it was a choice between a woman that was in Rome, or a woman that was outside, I picked somebody who was somewhere else, basically just to because I wanted that empire to feel expansive. And I basically kind of had the time line almost and wanted it to be so we’ve got someone from every century, we’ve got someone pits people from various different parts of the empire, we’ve got different types of evidence. So we’ve got epigraphic evidence, you have archaeological evidence, we have text, different types of texts. And so if I have people that overlapped, I would cut them out. So I had at one point, there’s a woman in Nero’s like court, who is the keeper of his wardrobe. And then when Nero is overthrown, she goes to Egypt and blockades Alexandria, in an attempt to basically force Rome to put Nero back on the throne before he kills himself, which is a cool story, but also one, it’s just the story of Rome. And two, it’s a bit of political story, and it’s would be so I chose instead for that period to tell the story of women living or on the frontier in England, and having birthday parties and writing letters to each other, which is a story that people don’t know, everybody already knows that Nero was overthrown. So basically, when it came down to a choice of like, who in this period, this kind of like, middle of the first entry period is the lesser known, more interesting, more expansive story to tell? So that was like the criteria that I had.

Dr G 15:27
Fantastic. And I think this, I think you’ve also hit upon some of the potential challenges that come up with writing a history like this using women, because you, obviously that selection criteria allows you to sort of embody the expansiveness of Rome in a way that wouldn’t be possible, as you say, if you follow through that sort of imperial line, and imperial women. Are there additional challenges that come along with those sorts of choices, though?

Dr Emma Southon 15:56
Yes. Many, I mean, the writing about women is always a challenge, because you’re so rarely writing about the wear them as they present themselves, like women are so very rarely given this low their text don’t survive, basically. And when you do have texts that they wrote, like, like the like birthday party letters from the, from Vindolanda, which are delightful, but is like, four sentence. It’s, and you’re like that, I mean, that’s I’m so delighted to have these four sentences, but you’re not a lot to work from. And so, or Julia Balbilla, who’s like one of my favorites, who is in the court of Hadrian, and wrote four poems, which survive because she very, very cleverly had engraved on the bottom of an ancient Egyptian statue.

Dr G 16:53
Very clever, very clever.

Dr Emma Southon 16:55
And even better, because she was clearly very smart included her name in every single one of them.

Dr G 17:02
She knew somehow

Dr Emma Southon 17:04
She knew, and I feel like there must have been something where by like, life as a female poet, or like a woman who writes poetry must have already been that annoying thing where people were like, do you know you get that thing? Oh, well, she didn’t really write it, like maybe Propertius wrote it and just pretended to be a woman like, yeah, obviously. That’s it thing that men do. So she yeah, she included like, but you get so little. And so much of it has to be extrapolation. And, like, trying to add context from external things, which is tough work. And it’s why people don’t do it as much. But I think makes for more interesting stories in the end, because as it turns out, like when you start digging into archaeology matches, I find it hilarious to make fun of archaeologists out of like, minor jealousy. You know, there’s so much in archaeology and ethnography that you can illuminate the world that they lived in that is just not available in the in the text like Tacitus can only give you so much. And then when you start to Look at the archaeology, like the archaeology of forts for example, when you start to Look at it, you’re like, oh, wow, like life here was completely different to the way it is presented in the text like it was vibrant and semi luxurious for some people. And like learning that forts were rebuilt every time a different legion turned up to be so that it was specifically fit that legion, like, that’s amazing.

Dr G 18:40
I just need to redecorate this place it’s not speaking to me.

Dr Emma Southon 18:43
Yeah, basically they’d be like, Right Well, the last Legion that was here like had like, you know, eight units of cavalry, but we’ve got 12. So we’re just going to like build on an extra section for that. We’re not going to like feel like a lot like now you’d be like, well, we would just cram them in, like stick them in. But that no, we’re gonna knock down the whole thing and rebuild it. And you can see that in the archaeological record and then you can tell how big the legion was that was there is delightful.

All the mosaics must go.

Yeah, exactly. Like I hate this. This does not speak to me. I need a Medusa.

Dr Rad 19:15
Yeah, exactly. A merman? Who are they kidding?

Dr Emma Southon 19:18
Yeah. Also delightful from the Vindolanda, just like if you sit down and read, they’re just how much bureaucracy was going on in the Roman Empire. This is also delightful. Like, goddamn they love a list. They are just listing everything.

Dr Rad 19:32
Funnily enough, we were just talking about early quaestors and how the Romans wanted them for paperwork.

Dr G 19:40
Somebody needs to do the paperwork and it can’t be me because I’m too big and important.

Dr Emma Southon 19:44
Yeah, exactly. The two things that Romans loved one is beating up other people than the other one is just making lists about it like just paperwork. And it is devastating but we don’t have it.

Dr Rad 19:56
Hilarious. Now segwaying away from just this book, but thinking about your work as a whole, you’re obviously an academic, but you have recently been choosing to write for more of a popular audience. And in order to do that, effectively, you’ve adopted quite a distinctive style as a historian, which is obviously really resonating with readers, I know that I absolutely adore your books. I read them faster than anything else. Can you talk a little bit about your journey as a historian and how you got here?

Dr Emma Southon 20:29
Yeah, well, I realized this is this year has been 10 years since I like left academia. Because I left pretty much straight after my PhD, I did a bit of teaching afterwards. But because my department, I did my PhD and got closed down. And it was also the year that I turned 30. And I thought, at the time, academia in the UK looked really terrible. And it’s worse now. And I thought, do I want to do to eight to 10 years of short term contracts, and working at lots of universities. And my advisor for my PhD, he was Ray Lawrence, who’s now over there with you in Australia. And he once told me that he worked at five universities simultaneously when he graduated his PhD, and like, was teaching and just traveling around the country. I thought, do I want to do that? Or am I 30, and I don’t. And, like and it is, you know, is nine month contracts, it’s not having any job security for longer than that nine months, it’s not having to have three part time jobs on top of it. And honestly, I was not willing to do that as

Dr Rad 21:48
You make it sound so tempting, I don’t understand!

Dr Emma Southon 21:50
I know and also, then you have to be writing constantly, they brought in the REF. That was the year that they brought in the REF as well. We’re here the Research Excellence Framework, where you have to be writing constantly and trying to get points based, like literally trying to get points for your research, which is wild. And so I was like, do – do I want to be writing for points in a culture that is mean? Or do I just want to be not doing that. So I was actually teaching academic writing, is what I went into, and I was teaching mostly people doing vocational things like nurses and engineers, and allied health care professionals like working with them on their writing, which really made me a better writer, because working on people who don’t have any background in writing, or a lot of people coming to writing as late career changes and things like that, who will find writing to be terrifying, and then being like, No, it’s not, it’s fine. It’s okay, we can do this. Made writing more fun for me because it like, broke it down. And then I honestly accidentally became a writer for popular audiences, because I pitched Agrippina the book to a friend of a friend because he had an open pitching session. And he thought it sounded fun. And then I wrote the book that I would want to read. Because by that time, I had been out of academia for like, five years, and I had a job a full time job and a life and do not sit down and read like big chunky history books that are 600 pages long that feel like I have been told like intoned or lectured at, I also wrote a book that I would want to be in bed, or on the train commuting to my job, like, what’s the book that I want to read, I want to read the book that tells me the story in the most entertaining way. And it helps that I find the Romans to be hilariously pompous and deluded about themselves. And to the disconnect between how the Romans see themselves and how they actually are is inherently very funny to me. And so yeah, so basically, my thing is, I love history, and I left because academic history sucks, not because I was fed up with like, the process of academia and I, the thing that I love about history is being what my friend calls a time detective, like you have the evidence, and then you’re like a little poro, like trying to put that evidence together into make it make sense in some way. And you come up with a little hypothesis, and then somebody else goes, Oh, that’s interesting. What if the hypothesis was this and then you kind of have a bit of a chat about it. And so I’ve just been a time detective in a fun way now.

Dr G 24:55
Look, that sounds great. And I feel like that’s a pretty good description of what Dr. Rad and I I do as well. And it’s like, we hold up our little magnifying glasses and we gaze very closely at things. We’re like, you know, what, wouldn’t it be exciting if this was what was based on what we’ve seen here?

Dr Emma Southon 25:10
Yeah.

Dr Rad 25:11
When people ask me, how did you get started in history? I always say Nancy Drew.

Dr Emma Southon 25:15
Yeah. I mean that. Yeah, it’s basically. And I, you know, I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that I also love mystery novels.

Dr Rad 25:24
Absolutely

Dr G 25:24
Like, are you saying there’s a Venn diagram that could be a circle?

Dr Emma Southon 25:30
I think so. Yeah, I think you would find, like, especially people who love like the historiography part of like, the bit where you’re like, oh, cool, like the story of Lucretia. There’s like five different versions, and they’re told at different times. And when you put them all together, you realize that they’re actually like, emphasizing different parts of it. And they’re telling a story that speaks to themselves. And actually, this is just a fairy story that tells us more about the writer than it does about their actual events. And

Dr Rad 26:00
A creepy creepy fairy story.

Dr Emma Southon 26:04
As all fairy stories are like, if you read Grimm stories

Dr Rad 26:07
That’s true. That’s true. Yeah.

Dr Emma Southon 26:09
But yeah, I think that people who like that side and people who like Poirot books, there’s a significant overlap.

Dr Rad 26:17
Absolutely.

Dr G 26:19
All right, well, let us think about the content of the book for a moment, we want to whet the reader’s appetite, because everybody is obviously going to listen to this podcast and then immediately go out and purchase your book. Because of course, we’ve both read it and we love it. We’re giving it five stars. But I’m interested in first of all, like, before we get into like some of the women that we really enjoyed, which of the women that you’ve looked at, were you less familiar with when you started writing? And if it’s not too big enough, do you have a favorite?

Dr Emma Southon 26:54
I am quite a few of them kind of middle ones. So Turia I had only kind of vaguely like I knew of the ‘laudatio Turiae’, but never really read it. So she is the late Republican Woman who is the subject of the biggest, private inscription that we have from the Roman Empire, which is very cool. And Julia Felix, who was also my favorite, I think, I came across, it was Sophie Hay, Dr. Sophie. Hey, who works at Pompeii, who told me about her and she also told Elodie Harper, who wrote ‘The Wolf Den’ trilogy about her so she’s in that trilogy as well. And Sophie Hay is doing God’s work telling the world about Julia Felix, is based in Pompeii, like her complex that she runs. So those were probably the ones like anybody who came from archaeology, because my background is text was somebody that I had a really good time delving into and learning about completely, and being like, Oh, wow, you can Look at all these women all over the place, living their lives, being brilliant.

Dr G 28:04
Look at them go.

Dr Emma Southon 28:05
Yeah.

Dr Rad 28:06
Well, I have to agree that I had heard of, obviously, quite a few of the women that you’ve mentioned before. But like you, Dr. G, and I are very much text based people. We don’t often don’t an Indiana Jones outfit and go out into the wild. So

Dr G 28:22
Although maybe we should

Dr Rad 28:23
Probably but Turia was definitely one of the ones that piqued my interest the most especially coming from a time period that’s actually probably one of the better documented ones in terms of what we’ve got. But yet I had really not heard very much about Turia. So can you tell us a little bit more about her?

Dr Emma Southon 28:41
Yeah, so she is she’s a clearly of like, she is a woman of senatorial rank, definitely of consular rank, her husband is a consul. And she is so we know about her from this huge inscription that was found in five parts. When, during the, like 18th 19th century, Europeans went all over, like, putting together their big corpus of Latin inscriptions, and God bless them for doing but they found the four sections they put together, we don’t actually know that her name was Turia because there’s two bits that are missing. And both of them are the bits with the names. Which feels

Dr G 29:26
Roman history, jesus!

Dr Emma Southon 29:28
Doesn’t it feel like like just emblematic of history? We just, we just lost her name. But this inscription was found and it tells it’s written by her husband because she died before him. And it tells the story of her life, starting from when they get engaged, basically, or at least the bit that we have starts from when she gets engaged. It starts with her family being murdered during the war between Caesar and Pompey and her entire family is murdered on that in the villa. Bye Somebody, and he praises her for single handedly in the middle of a war, identifying and prosecuting the murderers.

Dr Rad 30:08
So she is Miss Marple.

Speaker 3 30:10
She is Miss Marple, and she successfully prosecutes them which is, you know, impressive. And then she is subject to a what is quite fascinating like little insight, somebody tries to claim her as part of their gens so that they can take guardianship of her, because she’s not yet married. And her father is now dead so that they can take control of the state that she has inherited from her murdered family. And she has to go to court and prove basically that she is not part of this gens that she is part of a different and therefore these people have no claim over her, which is fascinating, like thing that must have happened all the time. But it’s not in any text, because obviously that’s not interesting. But basically, her husband says like she just made it so much trouble for them. And she just kept fighting it so much that they gave up and went off to find an easier job. And he is not there to protect her during this time. And they’re not yet married because he has sided with Pompey and it’s off fighting with Pompey. And then when Pompey dies, and the war is over, she both sends him money and sends him resources and sends him enslaved people to help him out lest he ever suffer a moment of discomfort, and also personally talks to Caesar to get him pardoned, basically, so that he can come back to Rome. So she manages to rescue him from his bad decision of picking Pompey. He comes back to Rome and immediately joins the wrong side again, and is on the side of the killers of Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar. And

Dr G 32:01
I don’t know if she’s picked a winner.

Dr Rad 32:02
It’s really her patience that’s the amazing thing.

Dr Emma Southon 32:04
Yeah. So he says she immediately throws in his luck with Brutus and Cassius. And then during the wars between Octavian and Cassius and Brutus, he is fighting with them, and he goes off again, he is then put on the prescriptions list. So when the troit Second Triumvirate comes in, and they are putting together the prescriptions list to kill off lots of people who are considered to be enemies, because Octavian and Antony are significantly less lenient than Caesar ever was a he’s put on that list, which makes him basically prey it means that there is anybody can kill him, and there is a bounty on his head, you get money if you kill him, which opens up a whole way that you can talk about what the proscriptions were like and what that period was like in Rome, where people were literally just being murdered in the street constantly and lots of terrify stories. This is why we think that she may or may not have been called Turia, because there is a story and Appian who has a litany of these stories about a woman who hides her husband in an attic, which is also what the woman in the inscription does. He says she hit me in an attic, her and her sister hit me in an attic and then personally went to Octavian and then went to Lepidus and begged and begged and begged until they got him off the prescriptions list. So she protects him. She keeps him get manages to get him off of the list, manages to save him, manages to make it so that he can continue living his life. During that period, she also they’re living in Milo’s ex-house, the demagogic gang leader. He was exiled and so when Milo’s was exiled for doing a murder, he, his house was sold and they bought it beer so they were very, very rich and moved into it and then Milo’s supporters tried to take it back. So they literally invade her house while her husband is way and so she fights them off with her mother in law, she’s extremely great during all of this period, she saves him multiple times as she protects him from his series of bad decisions and she’s also obviously very you know, they have up to meet sympathies like in every situation they are against the popularity so and she’s and they also talk a lot about mixing their property as a romantic act which is really fascinating because the the story of marriage and women’s rights always says that oh elite women stopped doing ‘manus’ marriage and stopped mixing property and that is how they got more power. But so they talk a lot about how she they mix their property and she handed it all over to him and she didn’t run it herself as like this really romantic act. So they’re obviously like quite conservative couple. And then when things settled down, he continues to tell her story. So you also get the story not only of this woman who is like very politically engaged and politically active, but they can’t have children, it turns out that they try for years and years. And this is a bit where you’re like, oh, wow, you’re really telling the world everything about your wife.

Dr Rad 35:22
Airing it for everyone to read.

Dr Emma Southon 35:23
Yeah, yeah, just putting it on a like two meter high things. say she’s like, she tries everything to have children. And she’s like, but she can’t. And so she comes to him and says, obviously, the point of marriage is to have children and I can’t give them to you. And so what I’m going to do, my plan is I propose that we will get divorced. And I’ll find you a fertile wife. So that you can have as you can have children and continue your family name. And I’ll stick around and we’ll keep our property mixed. So we’ll still be like, kind of married in a way. But you will be able to have children and then I’ll be like, the third person in your relationship, and I’ll raise them like a sister in law, basically.

Dr G 36:06
Is this woman even real? Goodness!

Dr Rad 36:11
‘Stand by Your Man’ was clearly written about her.

Dr Emma Southon 36:15
They do and they are super sweet because they do really seem to love each other. Like the way he writes about her at the end of like, you know, she, like, you know, I can’t I don’t know how I’m going to live without her. Like, shoot, my life is never going to know happiness again, that I’m like, so heartbroken. Everything is I should have died first. This isn’t fair. Like she was so good. And I am so rubbish.

Dr Rad 36:35
He’s right about that, he should have died a number of times!

Dr Emma Southon 36:39
I mean, if it hadn’t been for her, he would have died several times. But he, yeah, but he says, basically, he’s like, Absolutely not like I would never dishonour you that way. I would never make you like a kind of concubine to me like you’re my wife. I married you. I love you. This is no way marriage is more than just having kids, which is, again as a way that you don’t see marriage, Roman marriage, especially elite Roman marriage written about that much like it’s so rarely described as a meeting of hearts or something that is romantic. And so they, yeah, so they stay married for 50 years. They don’t have children. They are aunts and uncles to her. She has a sister who has children and so and then she dies when she’s in her 60s and he is bereft and writes this funeral oration and then inscribes it on two meter high monoliths and puts them on the Via Appia. And there they stay were presumably to his mind forever, so that everybody walking along Via Appia will know how much he loved his wife and how good she was and how she had all of these amazing qualities. And it’s so delightful because it’s such a it’s so emotional, in the way that they love each other, and also in the way that they like they talk about, or he talks about her in this such a beautiful way. But she or doesn’t come across in the way their love women do in a picker feed. Like when you’re reading women’s stories when men are writing about them after they’ve died very often. It’s like she was the most chaste woman and all she did was spend her time weaving wool, and she breastfed her children and she that’s how perfect she was like, okay, so she just had no personality at all she like she just wove wool for you and was chaste. But she has such a personality and this that it’s captivating.

Dr Rad 38:39
It is. So I’m actually exhausted just after I listen to that story. I can’t even imagine what it’d be like to live her life. But I kind of wish that she’d you know, being prepared for his clearly inevitable death. That we had her side of things where she’s like, Oh, my God, you’ll never guess who I married. And what he made me put up with.

Dr Emma Southon 38:59
But the thing is, she really seems to love him.

Dr Rad 39:01
I know. That’s the story that he tells though, right?

Dr Emma Southon 39:04
Yeah. But she does do all this stuff for him.

Dr Rad 39:07
She does.

Dr Emma Southon 39:09
And so I feel like, you know, everybody,

Dr Rad 39:12
She must have she must have.

Dr Emma Southon 39:13
There’s like a point I feel like it’s a bit like, you know, Marge and Homer.

Dr Rad 39:18
It must be because otherwise, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to walk away.

Dr Emma Southon 39:22
She’s like, is he a bit useless? Yes. Do I adore him with all my being? Yes.

Dr G 39:30
Oh, oh, Look, she’s a great character. And it’s just so impressive that we have, like the epigraphy is the is the thing that gives us insight into this – into her life at all. And this is where thinking about different types of evidence becomes really important because obviously like when we’re thinking about written sources, it’s very much that elite male perspective. And the prioritization of subject matter, it really shows. And so this more expansive Look at what Rome could be like and what life was like is becomes really important. And you mentioned Julia Felix before, and she’s one of the figures that I really enjoyed reading about. And obviously Pompeii stands out in people’s imaginations as well as this sort of landmark site and the eruption sort of put to a whole sort of like, how can I say without making it sound terrible?

Dr Rad 40:27
Time capsule?

Dr G 40:29
It kind of creates a time capsule? Yeah.

Dr Emma Southon 40:34
Yeah, it’s a it’s a terrible tragedy, but after 2000 years, suddenly becomes a historians blessing. Their way like, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, that happened, but also, at least something good came out of it.

Dr Rad 40:45
Yeah, the silver lining. It’s the silver lining.

Dr Emma Southon 40:47
Yeah. Yeah. After two millennia you, you’re like, Okay, everybody’s dead now. I guess. So we can,

Dr Rad 40:54
we can move on.

Dr Emma Southon 40:55
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, Pompeii is amazing by Julia Felix’s complex is one of the most amazing things. I think the things that people think of when they think of Pompeii, are the theater and then also the like the big houses the villas, which are the story of Rome, that we kind of know like the big impressive houses. And for a while, that’s what people thought Julia Felix’s complex was when they excavated thought was just a kind of a big, weird villa. But outside of it, there is a inscription which was attached to the wall, which said what it actually was, and it says “Julia Felix, daughter Spurius, offers for rent her leisure complex, which contains shops, baths fitted out for the well to do apartments and gardens for a period of five years, Inquire within.” and all of a sudden, archeologists could look at it and go, Oh, it’s a it’s a space where people can go to hang out, it’s not like a private location, because what it is is to was to two houses that have been knocked together. And she moved a road like you can see where a road was redirected, so that she could knock through walls through to expand it, which is amazing. And so it’s got a hot food bar. And in the book, I take you on a we like tour of it so you can see up it’s got a hot food bar outside, which appears to up added on because five years ish prior to the eruption, there was an earthquake in Pompeii, like little warning sign, and that knocked out most of the original leisure district and meant that people coming from the amphitheater, when after games had to go down different roads, and one of them was the road that Julie Felix’s thing was on and so she popped in a hot food bar in order to take advantage of foot traffic, which is brilliant. So it’s got a hot food bar, and it’s got baths, which are very fancy, but very like boutique. So they’re like a little like you can only fit about eight in the toilets, you can fit eight people which is small for a Roman public toilet. And then it has this at the entrance way has a really unusual, almost unique painting – fresco – of not of mythological characters, not of like garden scenes, or of scenes of religious character. But of an every day scene from Pompeii is forum on market day. And has ordinary people doing ordinary things which is so unusual and it’s got like people buying cloth and a person making shoes and horses with inexplicably enormous penises and and like children in school and a person giving a penny to a beggar. And like all of these just like normal activities of like basically the kind of middle classes of Rome. And then inside it has these gardens with little fish ponds and little bridges and a little dining room like a tiny little trick scenario where you can recline and dine. So you have the three couches, and you can do upper class elite dining where you recline on your arm and then people bring you tiny little things of food and it’s got a water feature in the room. And it’s basically a fancy restaurant, for people to go and have a fancy meal out for a fancy occasion and then have a walk around a private garden where there will not be a million other people like in the forum.

Dr G 44:51
I kind of love this where it’s like, I can’t afford my own villa, but what I can afford is I can afford to rent this fancy dining room and we’ll have the lead experience without having to

Dr Rad 45:01
Like a spa day with a lovely meal at the end.

Dr Emma Southon 45:04
Exactly. You know, and it’s like I always imagined it as a kind of thing that you would do for like a special occasion. So like for my birthday, I go to, you know, a Michelin starred restaurant for one meal. And it’s like a big splash out thing where I spend lots of money, but I get like this experience or Yeah, going for a spa day where you do not normally have the leisure time to spend an entire day having, like just basking in steam, but for that one day you can. And that’s basically what seems that Julia Felix’s complex is, it is a space where people can go and have the experience of luxury of time of being served of quiet and privacy, which is something that is so rare in an urban environment, and they can splash out for it, or they can pay for it because it is not something like people like Cicero, and the rich guys are like the Villa of the Silver Wedding or whatever, they can have that all day every day, because privacy and silence and quiet and lush greenery are things that are only available to those who can afford it above you, apparently there was a market for people to be to buy that for one day, or buy that for one evening and to experience it as a luxury, which is and that kind of middle class of Rome of the Roman Empire is so invisible. And it’s so nice to know that that happened and that there were people who would, you know, come in for a birthday or for an anniversary or for, you know, a special little treat and recline and be fed fix instead of having porridge on the street like we normally do.

Dr Rad 46:51
Because you want to eat porridge when you’re on the move, of course, yeah.

Dr Emma Southon 46:55
You know, some you know, sometimes you’re running through the street, you get a big bowl of stew and a bit of wine on a quick go. But sometimes you want to sit down and take your time.

Dr Rad 47:04
She is fascinating, because the very fact that she’s obviously involved in business and her name as well. Julia Felix, it obviously hints at someone who truly is a self made person. And obviously, yeah, obviously does not come from the elite herself.

Dr Emma Southon 47:16
Yeah. And like I said, She’s the daughter of Spurius. So people have suggested that maybe she’s illegitimate, or she doesn’t know who her father is. But she has a citizen. And she, you know, doesn’t mention her husband. And then she has like in the back rooms. There’s her space where she lives through a door. That is a tiny little like villa with an office and where she does her work. And the office walls are covered in paintings of food and money.

My favorite things, yeah.

Which for someone who was apparently making her money serving food, I think it’s great.

Dr G 47:59
Just really embracing everything about how far she’s come and how she’s made it.

Dr Emma Southon 48:02
Yeah exactly. And then she’s got to this point, apparently, in 79, where she’s like, Okay, I’m ready to let someone else run this, and I’m going to rent it out. And you know, I’m still the owner, but I’ll make making my money from rents, and I’m gonna go and maybe she’s gonna go and live a life of luxury somewhere. Or maybe she’s got a new business that she wants to start. But she’s like, at that point. She is she’s ready to let somebody else do the day to day.

Dr G 48:29
I think that’s really cool. It’s like it gives you such an insight into Pompeii, and how Roman life is actually working. And I imagine this is not the only place where this kind of thing is happening at all.

Dr Emma Southon 48:39
Yeah, it’s just the only one we can definitely identify like, because it is the only one that has a sign.

Dr G 48:47
Very clear signage. Very handy.

Dr Emma Southon 48:49
Yeah, put more signs on things, people.

Dr G 48:52
Come on, guys. Come on guys. For history.

Dr Emma Southon 48:54
Yeah, ideally, you must really inscribed them in stone. Because yeah, inscribing stuff in stone is the way to make sure that things last.

Dr G 49:03
We’ll keep that in mind. I want to turn your mind now to like a really later period and sort of getting towards the the edges of the Roman world in a different way. And the figure of Zenobia, who is a figure that maybe people have heard of, but maybe don’t know much of the story about, but she’s also a very intriguing figure in her own right.

Dr Emma Southon 49:24
She is and she’s quite not controversial, but like the interpretation of her is quite contentious, I think. So Zenobia is a woman who is known as a Syrian kind of invader, I think is probably the way that she is often described. If you know any kind of Syrian history. She is a symbol of Syrian identity to a lot of people and she used to be on Syrian banknotes, and the way that she is often described as as a woman who ran an empire in Syria that is somehow outside of the Roman Empire. And the way that I interpret her is as a woman who did the exact same thing as like every general in the third century did which is declare herself and Augustus, and attempted to take over the Roman Empire. Because she, to me is a Roman woman within the Roman Empire, who uses an army to attempt to rule the Roman Empire, which makes her more interesting. So she is the wife of a guy called Odaenathus, who is a kind of weird liminal figure on the edge of the Empire during the third century. So the period when the Empire is fragmented, and there’s about 50 people who claim to be emperor in a 30 year period. And it’s kind of militarily and politically chaotic, whereby nobody knows and prayers don’t really seem to last more than 20 minutes, almost all of them die of being murdered, except for one guy who’s hit by lightning. And it and nobody has the kind of combined military power and personal power to be able to get more than two legions to follow them. And at the time, like basically, a lot of keeping the borders happy. Keeping them secure, is to outsource to people who are big men in their area. And he is one of those guys on the border in Syria with the Persian Empire, the Parthian Empire, and the Parthian Empire at the time is on the rise and is encroaching on Armenia, as it always is. But it’s and this is after Rome is going right the way down into Mesopotamia. So Roman power goes all the way down into Iraq and Iran at this stuff at this time. And so they are charged with basically keeping Mesopotamia as a province and Syria. And he is described in a way that is either means that he is a kind of ko emperor, or it’s just a kind of honorary title. And you can argue about it for the rest of your life. But there’s no real answer to it. But he is running Roman legions, and he is a power down there. And he’s given consular power. And he’s very important, and they have a son together. And then he is murdered by one of his men, because he allegedly he, he takes away this guy’s horse, and this guy is so furious about it, that he murders him.

Dr G 52:41
That’s it. That’s the last straw, you cannot have my horse.

Dr Emma Southon 52:44
Exactly. And so. But what Zenobia does, which is kind of on Roman, but makes sense is, she goes, Okay, and we’re so he had all of these titles and names, and we. And so now my son has all of those titles and names. And so she just kind of gives her son who is like eight, all of the titles that her husband had, and then start ruling as his regent. So she just takes over the role that her husband had running the armies being the face of power in that whole region of Syria and Mesopotamia, she seems to do some military stuff down in Mesopotamia, which we only know because there are some thoughts that are built down there, which have her name on them. So she’s doing something. And then at a certain point, she turns around, declares herself Augusta declares her son to be Augustus, and invades Egypt.

Dr G 53:48
Plot twist.

Dr Emma Southon 53:50
And this is a point where everyone’s like, Oh, hang on, so she destroys a legion in Arabia, then she invades Egypt goes right the way down to Alexandria, and chases out the governor there and sends him on his way, kills a bunch of people, and then settles in and she starts producing coins, and she starts producing lots and lots of bureaucracy. Because where the bureaucracy does survive is in Egypt, because the papyrus survives really well.

Dr Rad 54:18
And the climate.

Dr Emma Southon 54:19
Yeah, yeah. And so what we have is loads and loads of documents, which suddenly start saying, oh, in the year of the reign, like year two of the rain of Iranian and year one of the rain of my son and she basically declares him co emperor of the Roman Empire, which are ralien, who was now emperor and he’s kind of dealing with stuff with the Goths over in the West, he is less keen on this idea, because he’s like, hang on, Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck is that?

Dr G 54:54
Also, what are you doing in the breadbasket of Rome? Get out! Get out, now!

Dr Emma Southon 54:57
Please, you are stressing me out in the breadbasket of Rome! Exactly. And so he pivots very hard away and kind of abandons the situation with the Goths and comes charging into Egypt and fights her. As it turns out, she picked the wrong person to declare herself co Emperor with because if it had been one of the rubbish ones like a Claudius Gothicus or something, he probably would have left it. But Aurelian is the least rubbish and is the person as it turns out, who has the political and military power, and the charm and the ability and the kind of profound balance of being interested in paperwork and being nice to his his soldiers to pull the Emperor back together under one person? So he turns around and blasts into Egypt to fight her she withdraws from Egypt and is like, oh, no, it’s okay. Maybe I’ll just stay.

Dr Rad 55:50
You have it. You have it back.

Dr G 55:52
Byeeeee.

Dr Emma Southon 55:54
But she is still producing coins. And she has, like, we have all these coins from Syria where she’s like, it’s Zenobia on one side, and Juno on the other. And it has her son on one side and Jupiter on the other end, like they’re Roman coins, and they she’s calling them Augustus, and she calls herself an Augusta. And she very clearly is wants to be a part like is a Roman person being a part of the Roman Empire. And they have a bunch of battles. And eventually she is defeated, in in Antioch. And she tries to allegedly, possibly maybe tries to flee on a camel and is caught. But which may be it seems like the kind of story that Romans in Rome would tell about like a woman from the east like, Oh, she just got on a camel, you know what they’re like,

Dr Rad 56:39
She hopped on a magic carpet, and she was out of there.

Dr Emma Southon 56:42
Exactly like but, but it’s a good story. So and she has captured but Aurelian has a bit of Julius Caesar in him. So he lets her live. And he takes her to Rome. And then she lives the rest of her life in Rome, and apparently has more children.

Dr Rad 56:55
Mind blowing, I thought for sure she’d end up dead.

Dr Emma Southon 56:58
Yeah. Yeah. And so she, she is very often presented as someone who tries to invade the Roman Empire. But to me it is very clear that she is someone who wants to rule the Roman Empire and who was like, all these other rubbish guys are doing it. Like she herself puts down another person who tries to declare himself emperor and his children Emperor’s in Syria, and everybody else is doing I don’t see why I can’t get involved.

Dr Rad 57:25
It’s hashtag trending guys.

Dr Emma Southon 57:27
Exactly, like jumping on that bandwagon. And like thinks that she has a real chance. And she you know, she does. She’s the only person who ever invades Egypt, which is impressive, all by itself. And so I think she’s really interesting, both as in the way that we and the way the Romans themselves, but the way that we talk about Romanness, like what about her means that we don’t call her Roman, but also the way that we talked about the Roman Empire and like, at particularly at this period, like when it is all kinds of fragmenting around what gets does still be included in the Roman Empire, and what certainly gets written off from what from thing because this is happening at the same time that the Gallic Empire succeeds. And a guy over in Gaul takes Britain bit of Spain and declares it’s no longer part of the Roman Empire that he is doing his own thing.

Dr G 58:21
We’re independent now. Yeah, it’s been long enough, it’s time to go it alone.

Dr Emma Southon 58:26
It’s like, No, I want my own little empire. And they did. They’re doing their own little kind of situation over there. And but it seems that Zenobia was going to basically keep going, like, be fun to see what she had done had had she had a rubbish Emperor against her rather than gigachad Aurelian.

Dr G 58:51
Yeah, certainly, this seems like the possibility for it to politically work out, actually, yeah, she can hold those regions. And the emperor in Rome is also like, well, I can’t take them back necessarily, let’s make a deal. Then all of a sudden, you’d have something very different going on there in terms of what’s happening with her career and how it pans out for her son as well.

Dr Emma Southon 59:13
Exactly. Because this is the time when the situation with the Goths is really like a problem. And for a good few decades, there emperors have been tied up just desperately trying to keep the gods out, even though all the gods want is to be Roman. And had they been like right, they would have resolved that situation immediately. But they they have been tied up fighting Gods on the Danube and so our ralien is smart enough as a military leader that he takes a tactical loss in order to take Egypt under his own personal control again, but had you had a less tactical one who was like, oh, no, this is the more kind of threatening thing I need to stay here. I can leave the guards and had let her stay in Egypt then you might have a very different – there’s a novel that somebody could write about that counterfactual.

Dr Rad 1:00:04
I love it. Well, so far, the women that we’ve talked about are all what we would loosely describe as pagan because of course, for the vast majority of Rome’s history, the religion that is followed is made up of many gods, etc, etc. However, right at the end a bit of a plot twist of Christianity becoming a major religion, if not the religion of the Roman Empire. And that leads us to the final woman that we thought we quickly discuss, who is Melania the Elder?

Speaker 3 1:00:36
Yeah, who is on this kind of cusp. She lives in a world where Christianity wasn’t legal than it was. And she kind of exemplifies this time when Roman elite women could be Christian out loud, kind of for the first time, but is a woman who does not want to leave behind the benefits of a life as a Roman. And so she is one of the first women who can call herself a Roman Christian, basically. So most of the women before that you have to or most Christians really, before Constantine, you have to choose whether you are a Roman or a Christian. And a lot of you know, the line that that is in all of the trial transcripts and lives that we have for Christian martyrs is that they say no, I am a Christian ‘Christianus sum’ or ‘Christianus sum’, some rather than ‘Romanus sum’. and you cannot be both like and that is why they are persecuted because they won’t sacrifice to the Emperor. Because there seems to be undermining and eventually, they’re, like, constantly in caves. And it’s like fine, we’ve managed to do here is make you stronger. And so she is one of the first people who can say I am a Roman Christian, and she can exist in the Roman world as an elite woman who owns huge amounts of land like she is she actually descends from Marc Anthony’s family line. And she owns as part of her family, enormous swathes of Europe, and is taking income from that. And she she grows up in Spain, and then she moves with her son to Rome after she is widowed. And this being the ancient world, she’s like 23. And she’s widowed, she has already lost two children. And she goes to Rome, where she sets him up as the urban prefect and then spent 10 years living in Rome, preparing her son to be the prefect. And what you have to do is do the games like the big games of the year, and you have to save up for like a decade to do that. So they declare who the prefect is going to be 10 years in advance, so that they have time to save up to the

Dr Rad 1:02:58
Like the Olympics.

Dr Emma Southon 1:02:59
Yeah, exactly. So you have time to prepare. And so she she does actually spent 10 years living in Rome, and then her son comes of age, she becomes a prefect, she does the games. And then she immediately leaves Rome, sells all of her like personal possessions, and then takes huge amount of money and goes to Egypt, because the monastic I was gonna say trend for like, monastic life is kicking off in Egypt at this time, this is a fourth century, kind of mid late fourth century. And she goes off to Egypt to go and visit all of the desert mothers and fathers and ingratiate herself in life in Christian Egypt. And she goes around all of these people and talk to them. And like, these are people who have walled themselves up into their tombs so that they can live there and people who are like, it’s a, it’s a great period of Christian history and history in the Roman Empire, where people were doing deeply odd, like, exercises of stamina and endurance, and of deprivation, like Simon Stylites is, is standing on a, he’s just standing on a pole. And people come and see him and the more people that come see him, the higher his pole gets, but that’s what he does. He just stands on a pole all day, every day, and people are going off into the desert and not masturbating and crying about it a lot. And there’s some great stories about like men, like like thinking about killing themselves, because they’re just constantly tormented by visions of women and young boys and they

Dr Rad 1:04:41
What a life. What a life.

Speaker 3 1:04:43
yeah, but they’re not allows to touch it. And women walling themselves into tombs, or like, you know, these really intense aesthetic practices. And she goes around and visits them all and then kind of decides that she’s not that’s not the life for her because what she enjoys is the life of a patroness. And so she goes to Jerusalem and starts a nunnery. And with her friend, she opens a, they open, open a nunnery, a monastery next to each other where women can come and live monastic lives. And she dedicates herself to a life of very performative asceticism whereby she sort of refuses to wash and then borates people who do, like, rich, she has a huge amount of money, and which she continues to get because her son is now running all of her states, the family estates, and he is sending her money. So she is still benefiting from all of the states that she previously had. And she is pouring all of that money into building up Jerusalem as a Christian space and planting Christianity all over Jerusalem and kind of tamping down the Judaism because they, after Helena, they really want Jerusalem to be the home of Christianity and to shove out the Jews. And she is popular enough there and doing a good enough job that they give her a bit of the True Cross.

Dr G 1:06:13
Sweet.

Dr Rad 1:06:14
This sounds very much like a case of her being able to have her cake and eat it too.

Dr Emma Southon 1:06:18
Yeah, it’s very much a case of a woman who chooses to present as poor while not ever being actually poor. So she, they give her a bit of the True Cross. And then she goes back to visit her family in Rome. One of whom is a quite famous bishop in Italy, where she does a lot of marching around triumphantly, basically. But in the most part, so her family, like go on a visit. And they, they all turn up in like golden carriages wearing purple and red and whatever. And she turns up riding a donkey dressed in rags, holding a bit of the True Cross.

Dr G 1:07:02
Nice work.

Dr Rad 1:07:04
And just like Jesus before her.

Dr Emma Southon 1:07:05
Exactly and you just feel like rolling your eyes so hard, like, like pretending to be poor and so silly. But anyway, she gives a bit this bit of true cross away. And then she gets into a bunch of fights with St. Jerome, who she hates, and he hates her, which is fair, because he’s awful. And she is possibly in Rome, just before the sack of Rome in 410, or she has left. But she inspires her daughter, Melania the Younger, who is potentially the more famous to also become an aesthetic woman, and her and her husband decide that they’re going to sell all of their land free all of their enslaved people, give away everything and become genuinely poor. Which Melania the elder and her son are appalled by and they write to the Emperor.

Dr G 1:08:02
You’ve taken it too far!

Dr Emma Southon 1:08:03
Yeah, exactly. No, no, the thing is, we pretend to be poor, like we’re not actually poor.

Dr Rad 1:08:08
We get to turn it on and off. It’s like a switch.

Dr Emma Southon 1:08:11
Like if I need to have a nice bed, then I need the nice bed like we don’t like and I don’t need to use this money to buy influence and power like I don’t. It’s not what how else, okay, will take me here. Yeah, I need to be purchasing it. Otherwise, because what you have at this time, like, Jerome’s Paula starts her own monastery as well in, in, in Jerusalem, and she is very famous for basically giving over her daughters to Jerome, who He then proceeds to starve to death. But she starts her own monastery and and they’re they have a very specific hierarchy depending on how much money you bring into the monastery with you. So if you want your your social status is outside of the monastery, you there is a hierarchy within the monetary and so the trappings of the world outside Do not leave you when you go and become a nun, you can absolutely go and become a nun and still be a rich, or still be treated as rich and even if you’re pretending that you’re not, but Melania the younger is like no, no, no, I’m gonna give it all away. That’s what Jesus said. And they genuinely try to get the Emperor to stop her, but they can’t. So she sells off everything frees 8000 people, and then goes off to live a genuinely aesthetic. Much to the horror of the rest of her family and then Romans sacked and everything changes. But she she is so fascinating at this point at which Christianity has become legal and so Romans can kind of paste the trappings of a kind of, I suppose, like secular life on to Christianity and can and it’s stops being a thing that you actually have to die for. And you genuinely have to suffer. You can kind of choose to suffer in a way that you can opt out of that.

Dr G 1:10:12
Wait a minute, performative Christianity?

Dr Emma Southon 1:10:15
Yeah. But like they still desperately want to suffer, because that has become part of Christianity. But they don’t. It’s only impressive if you’re choosing to suffer. Like it’s only impressive if you are a rich person who is choosing to wear scratchy rags. If you’re just a poor person who is wearing scratchy rags, you can then that that’s not impressive, like, no, that’s just having a shit life. But being a very rich person who could be wearing silk and who is surrounded by people who are wearing silk, but you’re riding a donkey and wearing scratchy things, that everybody’s like, Oh, my God, what a wonderful.

Dr G 1:10:59
The sacrifice, the sacrifice

Speaker 3 1:11:01
Exactly. And all of a sudden, the fate of Christianity changes and becomes something that people can compete over in a way that you couldn’t really do before. And you’ve the first inklings of what a Christian Roman Empire is going to look like start to appear. And it’s, it’s fascinating.

Dr Rad 1:11:24
I must admit, it’s been a while since I looked at this period, so I was glad to be reminded that the Romans was still unintentionally hilarious. Mostly, yeah, mostly when they were trying to be really serious, even when they became Christian doesn’t make a difference. Doesn’t matter what religion it doesn’t Yeah.

Dr Emma Southon 1:11:41
The more serious the Romans try to be, very often the funnier they are. And there’s this story, like Melania is always surrounded by men who are writing. And so there’s a couple of stories like stories that run about, and there’s this great one about her traveling, she’s moving a new nun from Jerusalem to Egypt, and then traveling across Egypt and cranker, traveling across the desert. So as a little group, and one guy who’s with them, who’s a bishop, they get to their resting place, it’s the desert, they’re in Egypt, it’s hot, and he washes his hands and face and Melania loses her mind, and like, berate him as like, I never wash my face, and I have never laid on anything softer than the hard ground. And even though I’m in my 60s, you will never see me do anything so decadent as to wash my hands, even though doctors say that I might actually be less ill if I did. I still like, Oh, my God, wash woman. But yes, she just loves to be grubby. And just so that she can one up people.

Dr Rad 1:12:47
Well, you know, I actually made her a bit of my own patron saint when I went to school camp and could not wash for several days.

Dr Emma Southon 1:12:57
See, this, incidentally, is why I never became an archaeologist, because I could never deal with the grubby hands.

Dr Rad 1:13:04
Yeah, I get that, I get that. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of those amazing stories, people definitely need to go out and grab your book because it is filled with so many more. So can you please tell us where can people buy the book? And where can people find you.

Dr Emma Southon 1:13:21
So you can you can buy the book hopefully in any good bookshop. You so it’s called ‘A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women’. And it should be hopefully available anyway. You can go to my website, which is emmasouthon.com. Then there are links to places that you can bite there, you can also find me at ‘History is Sexy’, which is historyissexy.com. As long as your adult filters don’t filter out the name, because apparently they sometimes do. But you can find it on all good podcast feeds. And we answer questions that people don’t want to spend two days researching themselves. So and you can ask us questions there. And yeah, I think that’s all the places and you can find me on Instagram at ‘Nuclearteeth’, where I put links to things when I remember. And you can also see many, many, many pictures of my cat.

Dr G 1:14:16
Oh, Look, thank you so much for spending this time with us. We really appreciate it. And reading this book has been a real thrill and pleasure. And we can only imagine that people listening to this episode will feel the energy and the vibrancy of the women coming through in this conversation because the whole book is like this. It’s full of great stuff. As a final question, Would you have any hints about what’s to come in your writing world?

Dr Emma Southon 1:14:45
The next book that I am currently writing is a children’s book with Greg Jenner who used to be the historical consultant for Horrible Histories and now does the ‘You’re Dead to Me’ podcast on the BBC. And we are writing a children’s book about Roman Britain, which is an introduction to historiography for kids.

Dr G 1:15:08
Fantastic. That sounds really, really exciting.

Dr Rad 1:15:11
Sounds like another winner. Well, we as we cannot thank you enough for coming back, back, back back back again – which only you will find funny – and we hope very much to be able to chat to you when that next one comes out.

Dr Emma Southon 1:15:25
Thank you. I’m always here to chat to you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Special Episode – A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women with Dr Emma Southon appeared first on The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies.

In this episode we tackle the years 413 and 412 BCE. These years come hard on the back of the murder of the patrician Postumius. Rome is facing challenges that seem to be bound up in the spolia in times of war and the broader annalist focus on the idea of the Struggle of the Orders which has been the defining feature of the early republic in Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. To catch up on the unfortunate fate of Postumius, check out Episode 142 – A Wrongheaded Man.

Episode 143 – Special Victims Unit

Murder is not something to be overlooked lightly, especially when the victim is a Roman patrician. It might be time for an investigation! And not just any investigation, but a special taskforce is assembled to consider all the evidence and follow the clues wherever they lead.

Livy mentions this group as a quaestio perpetua, but there’s good reason to be suspicious of this classification for the investigators. Strong evidence for the quaestio perpetua doesn’t emerge until the second century BCE over 250 years on from 413 BCE!

Will Rome find a way to reform its practices around conquered land? This topic comes back to the fore as we have the name for a of the tribunes of plebs. Roman conquest of new lands also brings this thorny subject back into the public discourse. How historical could the issue be at this point in the early republic? And will the patricians finally offer the plebeians something on this matter? Time will tell!

Rome’s perennial tousle with their neighbours, the Volscii, continues in 413 BCE. The Hernicians seek Rome’s aid against the Volscian forces and Rome is happy to oblige. The city of Ferentinum comes to our attention through this situation. We learn about the location of Ferentinum as likely corresponding with modern Ferentino, which is to the southeast of Rome, and likely part of the territory of the Hernicians at this time. What happens next to the city of Ferentinum? Tune in to find out!

Is that Ferentinum way down to the southeast of Rome in the territory of the Hernicii? It surely is! Source: https://www.heritage-history.com/

Perhaps Rome’s most famous plebeians gens at this point in early republican history is the Icilii. And in 412 BCE, we see another member of the Icilii gens come into the role of tribune of the plebs. Famously, the Icilii are connected with the Lex Icilia de Aventino Publicando which our annalist tradition places as early as 456 BCE. Looking to brush up on this? Check out our Episode 104 – Aventine, Aventine. Another Icilius is also connected with the second decemvirate on account of being engaged to Verginia. To revisit Verginia’s tale, see Episode 114 – The Tale of Verginia.

Our music was composed by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of Freesounds.

The Roman remains at Ferentino (ancient Ferentinum) include a first-second century CE archway which now has a road running around and through it. Image credit to Pietro Scerrato.

Edited for Latin terminology and to support our wonderful Australian accents!

Dr Rad 0:12
Welcome to The Partial Historians.

Dr G 0:15
We explore all the details of ancient Rome.

Dr Rad 0:20
Everything from political scandals to love affairs, the battles waged, and when citizens turn against each other. I’m Dr. Rad.

Dr G 0:30
And I’m Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different ancient authors and comparing their accounts.

Dr Rad 0:41
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.

Dr G 0:55
Hello, and welcome to a brand new episode of The Partial Historians. I am Dr. G.

Dr Rad 1:04
And I am Dr. Rad

Dr G 1:07
Whoohoo, together at last across the waves of the internet.

Dr Rad 1:13
Excellent. Well, Dr G., here we are chatting about the history of Rome from the founding of the city. It’s been a bit of a weird moment, I think lately, because we’ve just been speeding through, you know, in a way that we never had really before. It’s crazy. The years are whizzing by

Dr G 1:30
Our sources are crumbling around us its the sort of thing that makes ancient historians concerned. And also avoid writing scholarship on because they’re like, I don’t know what to say. Everything’s, it’s just cracks, cracks and no evidence. Ah!

Dr Rad 1:49
Definitely. I mean, one of our big themes of light has definitely been this conflict of the orders between the patricians and the plebeians, that seems to be the narrative that they are flogging to death.

Dr G 2:00
It is a narrative that we’re not sure is real, but continues nonetheless in the sources that survive.

Dr Rad 2:08
You gotta love that when you when you’re not sure that it’s real, and yet it continues on.

Dr G 2:14
It’s amazing. It’s amazing. So we’ve had some trials and tribulations with a certain Postumius over the last couple of years,

Dr Rad 2:24
Yes, we have indeed, and this kind of fits into this whole conflict of the orders thing. So the last year we were talking about was 414 BCE, and in this year, a very shocking event happened, actually, because the Romans are big on military stuff. Most people I think, know that. There you go. headlines around the world academic says, “Rome was big on military stuff”. No one’s ever said that before. So they’re big on their military stuff, which means that they are big on order, discipline. And yet, we had the murder of a patrician elite one Postumius by his own men, seemingly insulted by a comment that he made during a conflict of the orders moment where there was debate about what was happening, you know, with the policies back in Rome. .

Dr G 3:20
Yeah, now, this is interesting, because I do have a source that’s going to come up in this episode. So we’re going to be looking at 413 BCE. And it suggests that this moment with Postumius is one that like many things in this early period of ruins history is difficult to nail down to a very specific time period.

Dr Rad 3:43
Okay, okay. I’m intrigued, I’m intrigued.

Dr G 3:46
Does he come back from the dead only to be killed again?

Dr Rad 3:50
He had some more sick burns and he hasn’t done leveling them at the plebeians yet

Dr G 3:57
Look, he wakes up from his grave has another shout and gets murdered for a second time.

Dr Rad 4:03
How dare you all question me you lowly vagabonds.

Dr G 4:09
Goodness me.

Dr Rad 4:10
But we did leave on this very dramatic moment, because I mean, honestly, I think in any society, the murder of someone who’s supposed to be in charge is a big thing. And I think in any society, they say it’s particularly the murder of someone who’s like a general or something like that. Yeah. Someone who’s really invested with authority in that society. It is a really big deal. So I don’t think that the Senate are just going to turn around and go, Well, he was a bit of a douchebag. I, I think they’re going to want answers!

Dr G 4:42
I didn’t like him either!

Dr Rad 4:43
I think they’re going to want the truth!

Dr G 4:46
This is hugely problematic, as you say, because he was invested with legitimate power as a general of the Roman army. He is one of these figures that we assume is legally capable wielding what we call imperium, this capacity to lead troops for those troops to then turn around and murder him, suggests a severe breakdown of Roman discipline on the one hand, but also calling into question the whole apparatus of how does legitimate power function. And part of the way it’s upheld is through the process of enacting it repeatedly. So power gets reified over and over again, through every Roman general being able to successfully lead an army, whether they win or lose, coming back with that may where possible, and still in charge of them. And for him to not get to that point and for the troops to make the decision that revolting against the general is a is the best course of action, in any scenario suggests that there is some real internal problems in Rome, if this story is to be believed.

Dr Rad 5:58
Definitely. And I mean, even though what he said was despicable. I mean, he’s patrician elite now come on. At the same time, it was just a comment. It was just a comment said in passing, for them to, you know, take it so personally, that they’re going to go to murder. I mean,

Dr G 6:18
sources might disagree, though, as well. So like, the one sort of source that I had was talking about how he just refused to allow them to have an appropriate cut of the spoils.

Dr Rad 6:28
That’s true. That’s true, like there was the backstory, but it seems to have been this comment that kind of tipped them over the edge, which to me, suggests that there is something more serious going on here. If that’s the trigger. There’s something really serious going on.

Dr G 6:43
Yeah. What is it that we don’t know?

Dr Rad 6:45
Yeah. And in my account, as well, last episode, we really did leave on a cliffhanger not just in the sense of the murder happening, but also a real fear amongst a senatorial slash patrician class, because in Livy, they’re interchangeable that there was going to be a plebeian elected for the first time to supreme command: military tribune with consular power if they didn’t do something to try and prevent that from happening. So they definitely concerned that once this is that they’re taking it seriously because they’re like, if we don’t step in right now, we’re going to actually have plebeians get ultimate power, which even though technically we agree that that was possible. We also secretly agree that it was never gonna happen.

Dr G 7:31
I’m having to agree on paper. Never want to see it in real life.

Dr Rad 7:34
Yeah, absolutely. So.

Dr G 7:36
Typical patricians.

Dr Rad 7:37
I know. So shall we segue to 413 BCE and see what the Romans are going to make of this mess?

Dr G 7:43
Let’s do it.

It’s 413 BCE in ancient Rome.

Dr Rad 8:20
And I know we’re not having military tribunes with consular power this time because it’d be too much of a risk – a plebeian might get in so Dr G., tell me who are the consuls for this year?

Dr G 8:30
We have first off, we have Aulus or Marcus – we’re not sure about his praenomen – Cornelius Cossus.

Dr Rad 8:39
A name we know well.

Dr G 8:42
Yeah, but from a branch of the family that has been in power before certainly, but we’re not sure that this guy has necessarily had the top job before.

Dr Rad 8:52
No, no. I mean, he’s not the famous Cossus that was very involved in the conflicts that we were talking about in the 430s and the 420s.

Dr G 9:00
But presumably related to him.

Dr Rad 9:02
Presumably.

Dr G 9:04
And we also have Lucius Furius Medullinus.

Dr Rad 9:11
Furii!

Dr G 9:14
Now this is a guy that you want to remember. Okay. He is going to go on to have a very illustrious career.

Dr Rad 9:23
You didn’t even need to tell me that Dr. G. Oh, you need to say it’s a word Furii and I know it’s going to be on fire.

Dr G 9:29
That family they can do no wrong. I also have listed an interrex for this year.

Dr Rad 9:36
Yes.

Dr G 9:37
A certain Quintus Fabius Vibulanus who you may recall or not, because all Roman names start to sound the same, was previously consul in 423 and was also a military tribune with consular power in 416 and no less than the very previous year 414.

Dr Rad 9:58
Well, that all makes sense, doesn’t it? So they want some continuity there.

Dr G 10:02
Old mate knows how an election goes.

Dr Rad 10:04
Yeah, well, basically, in my account he comes in because they have an interregnum because there’s this standoff about are they going to have military tribunes or are they going to have consuls. Obviously the plebeians are pushing to have military tribunes, the Senate like, “Absolutely no way, no how is that going to happen. Because we know that you’re going to elect a plebeian and and that’s disgusting. How dare you even thinking it!” And so they hold out. There’s like this extended interregnum period apparently, until eventually they get their consular elections and consuls, which means that only patricians can hold supreme office in this year. So that guy that guy becomes interrex because as we know, interrex means that it is period where you don’t have the official magistrates being elected, you’ve got a sharing of power happening. It’s a weird hangover from the regal period that we continue to call interrex even though there is no king the king is dead. And this guy was the one that organized the consular elections whilst he was holding the temporary power of interrex.

Dr G 11:11
Yeah, and I’m sure he does an excellent job. I don’t have any real lengthy animalistic sauce to rely on this year. I have a little bits and pieces. So for instance, I’ve got Diodorus Siculus, who lets us know that we’ve got Marcus Cornelius and Lucius Furius as our consuls, and also gives us the heads up that this is a tricky time for the Athenian war in Sicily. So just you know, to put broader Italy in its Mediterranean context, Diodorus Siculus gives us that little tidbit. He goes into heaps of detail about that war, but I stopped reading him.

Dr Rad 11:56
We don’t need to know about the Peloponnesian stuff.

Dr G 11:59
This is not a history of Greece from the founding of the Greek-ness.

Dr Rad 12:03
Absolutely not.

Dr G 12:05
That’ll be another podcast.

Dr Rad 12:06
Perish the thought.

Dr G 12:08
Await our spin off series.

Dr Rad 12:11
When we’re done talking about the history of Rome, because we’re going to be done so soon, obviously.

Dr G 12:15
That’s right. We’re preparing ahead for our next series. I’ve also ended up reading a little bit of a writer called Florus.

Dr Rad 12:24
Oh, a much later source than Diodorus, I believe.

Dr G 12:31
Indeed. Let me introduce you, to Publius Annius Florus. He is a man of African extraction, goes to Rome in the late first century CE and is flourishing and writing a lot in the early second century CE, so think Trajan think Hadrian, that kind of time period.

Dr Rad 12:58
Okay, so, so high empire stuff. Yeah.

Dr G 13:01
Yeah. And he seems to have been pretty good friends with Hadrian at certain points in his life. And one of the things that he is famously known for is his epitome of Livy.

Dr Rad 13:13
Which is handy because unfortunately, and I know it seems impossible, dear listeners, but it will happen one day, we do not have all of Livy either. Eventually, Livy also will peter out.

Dr G 13:25
I’m excited for when the tables turn, and maybe I have some sources. And maybe you’re like, I don’t have anything. I’m like, Ah, ha!

Dr Rad 13:34
It’ll take a long time.

Dr G 13:37
You’ve got years left in Livy. So Florus is famous for this sort of epitome of Livy. So we’re not getting necessarily anything new in terms of the history. And so if you have Livy, I’m probably not going to be adding much to what you can say.

Dr Rad 13:55
You never know. I mean, Look, this is the thing like Sure, sure. He’s doing the Wikipedia version of Livy

Dr G 14:04
Ouch.

Dr Rad 14:04
But does it mean that he’s maybe not adding his own spin to things you never know?

Dr G 14:11
It’s possible. Yeah. Likely? I don’t know.

Dr Rad 14:14
All right. Well, let me tell you what’s happening early on in this consulship here. So as we suspected, the first order of business is the murder of Postumius. Okay, they can’t just leave that to go unavenged. Even if, even if it’s a remote land, they thought that this was okay, which they do not. As we know, murder is taken very seriously. Again, in most societies, it’s a pretty big thing. And so you can’t just ignore it, particularly when it’s so public and violent. So they start an investigation into the death of Postumius. However, there is I think, genuine concern about how this investigation is going to be handled. Okay. So then the Senate aren’t like racing in all guns blazing. They’re not like forming together. They’re in posse. I mean, I was kind of thinking is this whether young patricians come back in finally speeding out of the horizon in their Ferraris to cause mayhem and havoc, to seek revenge? But no,

Dr G 15:20
I could see them doing it. But I can also understand or appreciate that the Senate might be a bit concerned for their own lives as well, they’ll have to tread quite carefully in some respects, because if the anger of the soldiers continues, and does not dissipate, during the natural course of things, that could be a problem for them.

Dr Rad 15:39
Yeah, so this is an interesting case. So we have talked a little bit about investigations into murder, because obviously, it does happen. Obviously, in every society, we have mentioned it, but this is the first time that we’ve apparently seen like a special commission into somebody’s murder. Okay. And there are going to be a few of these that pop up throughout Rome’s history where there is like, something that happens, it’s so extraordinary, that it requires this special kind of investigation, and we’re not really sure where they came from, like, is this actually the first or just the first recorded? No, no, yeah, we’re not really sure. But it’s basically that the commission is given by a legislative act by the people, okay, to the consul, or the chief magistrate. And they’re able to use their full powers of imperium, which means full powers of life and death during the investigation. Now, we obviously were just speaking about imperium. It is obviously where, you know, the true power of a magistrate resides, but obviously, they’re not going to get very far if they’re constantly making people genuinely afraid that they’re going to exercise powers of life and death. So usually, it’s life. Usually, they’re not walking around murdering people not murdering sorry, they’re not well,

Dr G 17:00
I mean, it’s not the hallmark of a great detective investigation is it, to kill all of the witnesses or all of the suspects before you’ve really had a chance to question them?

Dr Rad 17:09
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So it seems to be basically giving them total scope, you know, to do what they need to do in order to investigate what’s happened. Apparently, the next time that we’ll really see this exact kind of condition, or like the way that this one is kind of set up, it won’t be until much much later in the Republic. So in a more in a better documented time, we’re talking about apparently, there’s going to be a case coming up in 141 BCE. So put that in your diaries, listeners.

Dr G 17:40
That is a long way from where we are now put a cloud of suspicion over this being the first.

Dr Rad 17:47
Well, I mean, I think this is the thing, there are a lot of questions about what this exactly is exactly how it is set up. And there are a couple of ways that it can that’s that’s just one way, I think that you can set up these sorts of special conditions. And eventually, once you have these particular kinds of quaestors, the quaestiones perpetuae? I can’t do Latin, it just comes out as Italian.

Dr G 18:19
This is not the parricidium?

Dr Rad 18:21
No, no.

Dr G 18:22
Ahhh interesting.

Dr Rad 18:23
Once you have these particular types of crisis, they would then set up the commissions on a need-by-need basis, not using imperium as the basis of their actions. So it’s basically I think that a law that sort of set them up had given them the power to enact these special conditions. And again, we’ll see examples of this cropping up in about 110 BCE and 90 BCE. But it’s fairly clear from the details of this event, that that’s not what we’re dealing with here. Yeah, yeah, we’re definitely dealing with the first type because there isn’t another example for another couple of 100 years. Obviously, there are huge red flags around this, whether we should actually be believing that this is something that actually happened is tricky. And certainly, what has been suggested by one of the academics I’ve been reading is that again, this is one of those examples of something from later in the republic that is being sort of retrojected back. And interestingly, might be because there were concerns being raised by the time you get to sort of mid and later Republic that the Senate were potentially kind of abusing these commissions – their ability to set up these commissions and use them for political purposes. So this is actually the same kind of commission that we see set up in 186 BC with a Bacchanalian Scandal when they investigate that and it will also be used in the Gracchan era.

Dr G 19:54
So alright. There is a big cloud of suspicion now.

Dr Rad 19:59
Yeah, It definitely is. There’s a big cloud of suspicion. But certainly, again, if even though we might not be able to say, okay, yes, this is exactly what happened to investigate the murder of Postumius. It does tell us something about obviously, again, what is concerning later on in terms of maybe abuses of power or the exercise of power, certainly in the middle to later Republic and the way that these sorts of special conditions might be become to be used, I suppose.

Dr G 20:27
Hmm. Yeah, that’s all very interesting.

Dr Rad 20:31
Anyway, but in this particular example, if it did happen, and I’m sure there was an investigation, as I say, they’re not going to defer.

Dr G 20:37
There would have had to have been some kind of an investigation, it’s just a matter of what it really looked like.

Dr Rad 20:41
Yes. So wisely, the special investigation, oh, my God, oh, my god, I just realized it’s an SVU special investigation unit. So in our Special Investigation Unit: Ancient Rome, they don’t get too vindictive they only select out, you know, like, sort of the minimum amount of people, like the ringleaders, I would presume, who were most involved in, I guess, leading the charge against Postumius, when he was murdered in a mob scenario. And even the ones that are chosen for punishment, it seems that most of them are allowed to commit suicide, rather than the State being the ones to enact that punishment, which, by Roman standards-

Dr G 21:30
That’s actually very generous by Roman standards.

Dr Rad 21:32
It really is, because this is the whole thing. Obviously, suicide can be a very troubling issue. It is a very troubling issue. But by Roman standards, they have a slightly different way of looking at it to the way that we do it is a way that you can restore some honour. And also potentially, I mean, we don’t really know what the deal is with property laws, obviously, in this time, but it is potentially a way of also protecting property and that sort of thing, depending on what kind of crimes you’re being charged with. So yeah, it is. Yeah, it is very generous for them to allow this to happen, even though it sounds awful, obviously.

Dr G 22:08
Yes, very intriguing. Yeah, I’m not really quite sure what to make of any of this. I don’t have any questions so far. Just curiosity, does Livy offer more detail in this?

Dr Rad 22:20
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. So obviously, you’d think, okay, moderate investigation, not an abuse of power, fairly generous penalties, even though obviously, it’s still death, but at the same time, limited in scope and method, I suppose. And yet, Dr. G. It just goes to show you give as you give as you give and still, the plebeians are unhappy with the situation and room still, they did to have questions about their lives still. They gave the patricians problems. How is this possible that did you just goes to show that the patricians are in the right at all times?

Dr G 23:04
Oh, yeah, they’ve been super generous. You know, they’ve been insulting the plebeians for centuries at this point.

Dr Rad 23:11
So whilst the consuls have been busy playing Agatha Christie with their Special Victims Unit, there will be things pointed out, you know what, it’s interesting that you’ve dealt with this murder so quickly, because I can’t help but notice that it’s been Oh, I don’t know, a century since we asked you for meaningful change in this place. And yet nothing? Nothing.

Dr G 23:38
Anybody, agrarian reform?

Dr Rad 23:40
Exactly.

Dr G 23:41
Anyone? Anyone?

Dr Rad 23:42
He’s amazing that the patricians can act so quickly when it is in their interests. They have questions, oh, they have questions.

Dr G 23:51
That is a very fair criticism.

Dr Rad 23:55
Now Livy, he actually says this might have been the moment to appease the audience, calm the situation, by dividing up the territory that had been conquered at bullae. And just, you know, trying to put the matter to rest before anyone else gets murdered. But-

Dr G 24:15
There’s always a but isn’t there?

Dr Rad 24:17
The patricians don’t roll that way, as we know, they were not clever enough to make this move at this point in time, which means a little bit is still hungry for an agrarian law. Yeah, specifically, they’re obviously keen at the moment at this point in our narrative for an agrarian law. That would, and I quote, expel the patricians from their wrongful occupation of the public domain.

Dr G 24:46
Yeah, Look, this is the same claim they have been making for the last 50 odd years. They want the Ager Publicus “the common land” to be redistributed out because it’s currently being squatted on by patricians.

Dr Rad 25:03
Yeah. And as we’ve highlighted a number of times, they seems highly anachronistic and unlikely because we’re probably living in a time of warlords where everyone’s just kind of squatting on land because that’s what warlords do. There probably isn’t really public land. It’s probably just land that’s occupied by clans and their dependents and they hold it like that’s probably what’s going on here. So this is all very Grachhan-late Republic again, that’s trending hashtag trending. So instead the plebeians are left soaking feeling very much like they were being had done by the patricians were unfairly occupying public lands and holding them off at using force. The patricians would not even consider giving any of the most recently captured territory to the plebeians, I mean, ugh

Dr G 25:58
Concede nothing!

Dr Rad 26:00
It’s just like, it’s always been the rich get richer, and they’re left with nothing.

Dr G 26:07
Hmm, yeah. I have some thoughts about that. But I will keep them to myself.

Dr Rad 26:13
Well, it’s around this time, it’s around this time that we have some military action happening externally. So the Volscians start attacking the borderlands of the Hernicians.

Dr G 26:24
Oh, very interesting. Okay, before we get too far into that, okay, let me give you what Florus gives us because Florus doesn’t get into what might be happening on the military front.

Dr Rad 26:35
Okay.

Dr G 26:36
So this might round out the plebeian-patrician agrarian issue. So Florus tells us that this period in Rome’s history is considered a second age of the Roman people.

Dr Rad 26:52
Oh, I told you, you he’s have his own little flourishes. Flourishing Florus.

Dr G 26:58
Yeah, it’s beautiful. This time period is thought to be the one where Rome is at its most vigorous. And, and in the heat of its strength. So something about the virility of the people is really, what Florus is sort of touching on here. And he sees this action against Postumius as being part of a broader set of actions that the plebeians are taking against the patricians. In this roundabout sort of 50-100 year period, everything in this really early republic that we’ve dealt with kind of gets a mention in this passage. Okay. So he says that the army mutinied in the camp and stone to the general Postumius. Right, when he denied them the spoils which he had promised.

Dr Rad 27:48
Check, check, check.

Dr G 27:50
That also another action that falls under this kind of mode of strengthen virility from the plebeians is under Appius Claudius, when they refuse to defeat the enemy when it was in their power to do so. And I feel like I remember vaguely when that was, but I can’t remember exactly when that was.

Dr Rad 28:14
Research, what makes the podcast great.

Dr G 28:18
Believe me, I did try to track it down by going back through our episodes, it eluded me and I was like, my happiest Claudius. I mean, he was he was terrible for a long time.

Dr Rad 28:27
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s a year that goes on forever if we’re talking about the Appius Claudius whose the second decemvir.

Dr G 28:34
Yeah exactly, which I assume this is where we are. And he talks about when under the leadership of Volero many refuse to serve and the consul’s fasces were broken. So that is a reference back to really early events in 472.

Dr Rad 28:51
I was gonna say I do remember that that Volero is a name from Yeah, like 10 years ago, in terms of in terms of our podcasting, not the Roman history.

Dr G 29:02
So Volero Publius, as tribune of the plebs riles up everybody, and then they break some fasces, which is pretty good. Yeah. He then talks about Coriolanus another big figure,

Dr Rad 29:16
But again, going back to what the 480s?

Dr G 29:18
The 490s even.

Dr Rad 29:20
Oh, my god, yeah.

Dr G 29:23
When he orders the troops to to their fields, things like this. And then he mentions a figure that is a little bit foreshadowing for us, because we haven’t gotten to this guy yet. But we’re going to keep your ears peeled, listeners – not literally because that would be gross – for Camillus.

Dr Rad 29:48
Oh, yes, yes. Yes. He’s going to be another big guy.

Dr G 29:52
Yeah, he’s coming up really soon. So we’re anticipating his eventual presence but obviously there’s an attack spent there between what happens in Camilla’s career and what is happening with the plebeian struggle. So Florus bundles, all of these kinds of moments together as letting us know that there’s the plebeian struggle has been ongoing and continuing and this murder of Postumius is one of these landmark events of civil disobedience, essentially, against the ruling class.

Dr Rad 30:28
Oh, Look, it’s a huge deal. I mean, Look, I shouldn’t actually, you know, I shouldn’t have said what I said earlier about the comment being the thing, obviously, I think it’s more his actions that have rolled them up to this state, you know, their broken promises about bougie, whatever they were, and then I think the general harshness of his demeanor. I think that’s, that’s definitely obviously the thing. But the comment, I think he just embodied his attitude, which is very typical, I think of a lot of patricians of this time, where even though they’re doing the hard yards and winning the land, it’s him and his mates that are allegedly benefiting from these sorts of conquests. Yeah, yeah. And the people, they’ve had enough and they’re not gonna take it anymore.

Dr G 31:14
I fought for this land to I want a slice.

Dr Rad 31:19
All right, cool. So is that Florus’ contribution to Postumius?

Dr G 31:24
That is what Florus has to tell us. I could tell you that I also went to Zonaras.

Dr Rad 31:30
Oh, wow. Okay. Getting late with your sources.

Dr G 31:35
Zonaras is a 12th century CE source.

Dr Rad 31:39
So actually closer to us than it is to Postumius – it’s not but almost.

Dr G 31:45
Almost Yeah. So Zonaras is living under the Byzantines empire and writing from the glory and glamour of of the Roman east.

Dr Rad 31:54
Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, listeners, listeners. Do you hear that? That’s Dr G. clutching at straws?

Dr G 32:01
Dammit, you know what,