Gregory Aldrete
speaker
587 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard Sep 2024
Gregory Aldrete’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Because the sources are all these male elites who have very definite ideas about women. The conventional notion has always been that business in the Roman Empire was a male field.
Well, but then there's this woman, Eumachia in Pompeii, who actually had the largest building in Pompeii right on the forum named after her with a giant statue over it, and she was a patron to a bunch of the most important guilds in Pompeii. Okay, she's the exception to the rule. Oh, but then there's these other four women we have from Pompeii. Pompeii, who also were patrons of guilds.
And then there's this woman, Plancia Magna, in this other place. And she was the most important patron in the town and put up all these statues. So at some point, when you start to say, well, maybe women did play more of a role, but they just haven't been recorded in the sources in the way that maybe they deserve to be.
And the bias of the historians who have written history up to this point. I was just writing a lecture, which was about this woman, Musa, who is a crazy story. And she ties into Augustus, actually. Augustus
His biggest diplomatic triumph that he boasted about constantly was that about 50 years before him, the Romans had sent an expedition into Parthia, this neighboring kingdom led by Crassus, and they'd gotten wiped out. So it was this big disaster, military disaster. And the standards of the Roman legions, the eagles that each Roman legion carried, had been captured by the Parthians.
And this is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a Roman legion, to have its eagles captured. And Augustus desperately wanted to negotiate with the Parthians to get these eagles returned. Okay, this was his big diplomatic thing. So he was constantly sending these embassies to Parthia. On one of these embassies, he sent along as a gift to the Parthian king a slave woman named Musa.
Musa seems to have pleased the king of Parthia because she becomes one of his concubines. And then she gives birth to a son by the king, and eventually she becomes upgraded to the level of a wife. And Musa eventually murders the Parthian king. arranges it so that her son becomes the king of Parthia, and she's really ruling the whole empire behind the scenes as his mother.
So this is a literal rags-to-riches story of a slave, someone who starts out a slave and becomes the queen of an empire almost as large and powerful as Rome. Okay? But yet, how often do we hear about Musa? And when you look in traditional histories of Roman-Parthian relations, and I went and looked at this because I was just writing this lecture, most of those histories didn't even mention her.
They just talked about her son, like he had just come out of nowhere and become the new heir to the Parthian throne when it was all her doing, clearly. Now, that's selective editing of history by historians to downplay the role that this woman played. And there's a lot of examples like that.
She got overthrown after a few years. There was a revolution against her. We don't know what happened to her then. But she's a really interesting figure. Oh, and by the way, Augustus did negotiate the return of the Parthian standards and got them back. And he was so proud of this that this is what he constantly boasted about.
And the most famous statue of Augustus, the Augustus from Prima Porta, which is in the Vatican today, he's wearing a breastplate. And on the breastplate, right in the middle of the stomach, is a Parthian handing over a golden eagle, legionary standard to a Roman. So this is what Augustus thought of as his greatest achievement.
And that embassy that arranged that was the one that sent Musa to Parthia.
Well, I mean, I think Octavian slash Augustus, it's the same guy, is one of the most influential people in history because he did found the Roman Empire. So he's the one who oversaw this transition from republic to empire, and he sets the template which every future emperor follows.
So just in the most obvious way, for the next either 500 or 1,500 years, depending how long you think the Roman Empire lasted for, everyone is trying to be Augustus. They all take on the same titles. Every Roman emperor after him is Caesar Augustus, Imperator, Pater Patre, all these titles he has, they take two. And so he's hugely influential for Western civilization and all this.
But beyond just that literal thing, which is already 500 years, 1,500 years, he becomes the paradigm of the good ruler. So of an absolute ruler who is nevertheless sort of just does good things, builds public works, is popular. Right. So if we jump ahead, let's say, to the Middle Ages, the most significant ruler of the early Middle Ages is Charlemagne, right?
He's the guy who unites most of Europe. He becomes the paradigm for all medieval kings after him. Well, what is the title that the pope gives to Charlemagne? Because there's this famous moment when the pope acknowledges Charlemagne as the preeminent European king. and crowns him on Christmas Day of the year 800.
And the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne is Charles, that's Charlemagne, Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. He's giving him the title of Augustus because that's the nicest thing he can think of to say to Charlemagne is to say, you're the new Augustus, you're emperor of the Romans. Yeah. So that image is hugely powerful. And that persists on and on.
I mean, even the literal names of most rulers afterwards come from this. In Russia, the czars are… Caesars, that's where czar comes from. Prince comes from princeps, first citizen, one of the titles. Emperor comes from imperator, one of the titles of Augustus. When Napoleon becomes emperor, what does he call himself? First consul, which is kind of like princeps. And then he calls himself emperor.
I mean, everybody wants to be this kind of ruler. So he's the paradigm of this for the rest of history. And you can see that is both a positive and a negative legacy. It's kind of like Alexander. I mean, everybody wants to be the next Alexander. Now, nobody does become the next Alexander. Nobody's as successful as him, but a lot of people try.
And you can see that either as, oh, inspirational or awful because lots of people killed lots of other people and started lots of wars trying to be the next Alexander. At least Augustus has this notion of good rulership, that you're not just a great powerful person, but you're a good ruler somehow.
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