Peter Heather

The next crucial move is really that, and this is the problem with, I mean, you asked about weaknesses in the imperial system.

The weakness in the imperial system is the lack of any clear succession.

plan policy in fact pre-modern empires don't tend to have clear succession things when it's really important who runs the empire you can't have primogeniture because you get an idiot son you do yes one hates to tell that to kings and things but it's only when they're not important that you can have primogeniture so periodically

The Roman Empire, the course of politics in the Roman Empire had always been emergence of a strong man.

It's a one-party state.

If you think of those images of Putin with those people around the table, his power is preeminent.

When he dies, you get chaos.

You know, it's like when Stalin died.

You had half a dozen people at each other's throats.

Yeah, exactly.

Until the next one emerges.

And that can take a while.

And in that interregnum, it offers opportunities once you've got these barbarian confederations on Roman soil.

they can start taking independent action.

So in the middle of the succession crisis that follows the unlooked-for early death of Flavius Constantius, the Vandals move into North Africa.

You've got to think...

Algeria, Tunisia, where all the millionaires had their summer houses, indeed their winter houses, in the interwar period.

It's gorgeous country.

I mean, if people have not been there, we're not talking the Sahara Desert here.

We are talking...