Dr Simon Elliott

They're taking out the various kingdoms now, sort of Bithynia and Pergamene.

which are in Anatolia, and every time they take one out, whoever the warlord is becomes incredibly rich, and his troops become incredibly rich.

So if you're in Rome and you're an upcoming senator, you can say, I want to go to that.

Can I have a go at that, please?

And there's a scramble between the Populares champions and the Optimates champions, all wanting to have a crack at making a name and fortune, absolute fortune.

Which is an issue because soldiers need to be kept busy.

So you end up with sort of a really vicious series of civil wars beginning again and again and again as you cascade all the way through the first century BC.

The best known ones are obviously the civil wars of Caesar.

But there are many.

There's plenty more.

There's plenty.

It's a bad time, Dan, to be a classical statue in Athens.

Right.

Because you're not going to stay there very long.

You're going to end up in Rome in some posh senator's house.

Everything's nicking everything.

Everyone's nicking everything.

then people like so marius he defeats the germans but he then he will face a warlord who ends up fighting it out with absolutely yeah so you can go through the list there's marius the sulla there's pompey magnus there's caesar there's mark anthony there's octavian later and many others as well and at one stage or another the popularis are in charge at one stage another the optimates are in charge

At one stage or another, somebody's leading a campaign in Asia, making vast amounts of money.

Another stage, somebody else is doing it.