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Chapter 1: How did Rome evolve from small settlements to a major empire?
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It's very hard to imagine it as a smattering of little dwellings perched atop the now famous Seven Hills, clusters of small farming plots, wattle and daub huts, the Tiber River running below. It's Iron Age people just sort of milling about, tending their crops, trading their livestock, harvesting salt and timber down at the water's edge.
But then every great empire has to start somewhere, and Rome started here. These little hamlets villages would become the epicentre of one of the greatest civilisations in history. You'll all be familiar with that joke that men think about the Roman Empire every day. And as a man who does, I say, of course we do. It's not hard to see why.
At Rome's height, it encompassed parts of at least 50 modern countries and something like a fifth of the entire world's population at the time. The Romans laid down founding principles that still influences our societies, our law, our governance this day. They forged trade routes across Europe, Africa and Asia. They built the roads that connect us.
They gave us a religion still worshipped across all continents. So how on earth did these little villages coalesce and grow to become a mighty empire? So powerful, so influential, so instrumental in building our modern world. Why did it thrive? How did it manage to see off all of those competitors?
Well, for the next few weeks, every Thursday, we'll be answering some of those enormous, those important questions of some of the greatest Roman historians we know. We're going to be joined by the likes of Dr. Simon Elliott, Professor Peter Heather, and Professor Mary Beard. And our first episode, I think it makes sense to go all the way back to the beginning.
We're going to trace the rise of that empire from those little huts, that little settlement, In the first half of the first millennia BC, we're going to go right from there to the cusp of Augustus taking power as the first emperor of Rome. We're going to trace the key moments, the big battles, the extraordinary individuals who shaped the story.
To do that, I am joined by the one and only, the force of nature that is Simon Eliot. He's a best-selling historian, archaeologist, author and broadcaster, an expert on all things Rome.
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Chapter 2: What were the founding myths of Rome and their significance?
This is our series on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Enjoy.
Simon, thanks for coming on the podcast. Absolute pleasure, Dan. It's always lovely to come and join you on History Hit.
I'm always fascinated by empires that have the name of, not of a sort of region, a province, a country or a state, as we'd know it today, like the British Empire, Russian Empire, but which have the name of a town. Like, this is the Roman Empire. It's not the Italian or the... Why do we associate it with this, well, what must have been quite a small settlement back in the day?
Because within a few hundred years of it being founded, it came to dominate its entire, entire known world.
And it is true to say, it being fact, it was just that little township. That was what conquered the surrounding countryside, then just went on and on and on.
Absolutely. But also you get this really beautiful origin story, or I should say origin stories. So you have Romulus and Remus, who are the sons of a Vestal Virgin called Rhea Silvia, who is forced to abandon them on the banks of the Tiber.
I'm going to stop you there, wait a sec. Vestal Virgin is meant to be a virgin, and she's a priestess, effectively.
Yeah.
Right, but she has two sons. And the father is Mars. Mars, god of war? Mars, god of war, yeah.
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Chapter 3: What role did geography play in the rise of Rome?
But then they fall out because they alight on a place where they want to found a city. This is the city of Rome and it has seven hills famously. And Romulus wants to found the settlement on the Palatine Hill, which later becomes the site of the Imperial Palace. Remus wants to use the Aventine Hill, which later becomes one of the fabulous sort of districts for people to live in.
So all well and good, but they fall out and ultimately Romulus kills Remus, of course. So there's a first learning experience there about the Roman world. It's gritty. It's violent. It's gritty and it's violent. And they know it. They know it. And they're raised by wolves.
They're raised by wolves. Right. So these guys are tough. Okay. Well, that's the origin. That's the mythological story. One that the Romans believed. What do we know from the archaeology? What do we know from other texts? What was there before Rome? Were these Greek peoples, Greek settlers coming in? What's going on here?
But Dan, there's another mythological story as well.
Let's do that one.
It's never ending in the Roman world. So the second mythological story is Aeneas, who's a refugee from the Trojan Wars. Then Aeneas lands somewhere near Anzio, so a precursor of the Second World War invasion.
And he's a brother of Paris and Hector, so royal prince escapes from Troy.
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Chapter 4: How did early Roman society and governance contribute to its success?
Okay.
Lands at Angio, like the Second World War. And then his son is the one who actually, in this mythological story, founds the town Alba Longa, where Rea Silvia came from. So it's all very confusing. It's confusing for me. I'm sure it's confusing for you and our listeners as well. It was confusing for the Romans.
So we have the great Virgil coming up with the Aenid, his astonishing poetic narrative, where he ties them together. And from the point that's written, that's what the Romans go with. Oh, interesting. That's what the Romans go with. And it's important for the Romans, right? Yeah.
This is a very traditional society, a very traditional society, and so they love grounding themselves in the narrative of their history, and this is what they go with.
Okay, so they think that they're descended from a mixture of wolf-raised brothers, Trojan princes who've come from the East. What do we think? I'm sorry to be a bit sceptical about that, but what is an Italian place, a Greek place, they're settlers, they're Phoenicians, where are they coming from?
I'm going to talk to you about the great Roman bake-off. So it's all about layer cake. So I'm going to give you a geographical slice through the Italian peninsula. And we're looking at about 500 BC. So at the very top, Cisalpine Gaul, north of the Po Valley, you've got the Gauls living, Cisalpine Gaul. Funnily enough, Transalpine Gaul is the other side of the Alps.
That's where the other Gauls live, but the Roman relevant Gauls are in Cisalpine Gaul. Below that, you have Etruria, so the Etruscans, who are heavily influenced by Greek culture because they're a mercantile maritime nation. Then you have Latium, with a variety of different towns and cities, Rome is only one of them.
So it's astonishing that Rome comes to dominate Latium, let alone everything else. Then below that, you've got Magna Graecia, sort of where you have the Greek settlements through the Bay of Salerno, through towards Sicily.
So just like New England is on the east coast of North America, you have Greater Greece, which is sort of Greek settlements in southern Italy.
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Chapter 5: What were the major conflicts that shaped early Roman power?
Absolutely right.
But then... To confuse things, through the spine of Italy, through the Apennine Mountains, you have the Oskan-speaking peoples, which is a very old language, actually, and it's from the Oskans that later you get the likes of the Lucanians, who were the founders of places like Paestum, and also you get the Samnites, who are one of the later Roman major enemies in the Italian peninsula.
So it's a layer cake. So at the point when Rome is founded, however it's founded, whenever it's founded, it's one of a number of... quite powerful growing towns and cities sort of in the Tiber area, which we call Latium.
So when Rome was founded, and the traditional date is what, 753 or something? 753. Do you think there's any truth to that? No.
Okay. No, got no way of knowing.
Okay. So, but when it's founded, so roughly speaking, 500 BC, 600, it was just what, a little mercantile community, people gathered together, and the nearest one could have been a few miles away. Their sort of, you know, nearest competitor or...
Neighbours. Absolutely. And the interesting thing there then is how the Romans came to dominate the rest of the towns in Latium. Yeah. Because they're the same people speaking the same language. So there's something different about the Romans from early on. And then if you go back to their origin stories, which they believed...
There is a grittiness, there's almost a darkness there, actually, the willingness to do whatever it takes to win. And this later plays into the psyche of the Roman Republic later, and then the Roman Empire preoccupated dominate phase, where I say the Romans had two things which gave them advantage over every other people we're going to talk about today. They had true grit.
They always came back and they never accepted a peace agreement unless it was on their own terms. And that's a big deal, actually. When we talk about the Hellenistic kingdoms, they just didn't understand that at all. They just completely were wrong-footed. And the other one, Dan, is that they were great at nicking other people's ideas.
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Chapter 6: How did the Romans adapt military strategies from their enemies?
Okay.
So if we run through a little bit further before we go back, if you look at the classic Caesarian legionary, he's got a Gallic helmet. The clue's in the name. He's got Lorica Hamata Chainmail. That's from the Gauls. He's got a Gladius Hispaniensis. That's from the Spaniards. He's got Pilum Javelins. They're from the Spaniards. He's got a Scutum Shield. That's from the Samnites.
Everything's nicked. But the Romans were very good at nicking ideas and technology, especially if they lost. If they lose, they almost always come back and they're better.
Yeah, that is the interesting thing about the Roman Empire, is they're not invincible. They get shooed all the time through their history, but the point is they come back. And we're going to talk about some of the biggest shooings on this pod. Well, because greatness is actually forged in defeat. That's the truth, Simon.
It's easy to be great when you're winning, but real greatness is when everything has gone disastrously wrong. Exactly right. Okay, so they're a town in Latium. I'm thinking 500 BC. So you've got Athens and Sparta, a magnificent building, great big site. Rome would have been what? A collection of mud huts during that Athenian golden age? What are we thinking?
Absolutely, yeah. Let's run through to 323 BC when Alexander the Great dies in Babylon. So the great things happening in the world...
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Chapter 7: What led to the transformation from Republic to Empire in Rome?
building up to the real rise of the Roman Republic, which actually takes place probably as you get into the third and second centuries, the great things happening in the East. So you're having the Greco-Persian Wars, you're having the Peloponnesian War, which involves Sicily. You're having the various campaigns of the Greek states against the Persians. Later, you're getting the rise of Macedon.
Then you're getting Alexander the Great and Alexander the Great literally conquers his entire known world. Truly astonishing feat. That's all happening. So in a way, what's going on in Italy is a backwater. It's almost irrelevant. When Alexander the Great dies, the contemporary sources don't say his next offensive is going to be against Italy. It was going to be Arabia. So why bother with Italy?
So in that sense, in actual fact, you can almost see that the Romans, with their grittiness and with their ability to osmosis other people's ideas and technologies and culture, are given a free hand. And so we'll run through to 323. They're fighting various wars against the Etruscans to the north, and they're losing, but then win.
They're fighting various wars against the Magna Grakians to the south, but losing, and then win. They're fighting their own Latin city neighbours, and they win. They're fighting the various tribes in the Apennine Mountains, And they win. They're losing and winning and losing, but they're always coming back. Always coming back.
So as you get towards the time when Alexander dies in 323, they're more or less beginning to dominate, certainly central Italy, and looking towards the south.
So Alexander the Great might have heard of them. Someone might have said, you know, there's new lads on the block there in Italy. They're not doing too badly.
I have to say, that's a really good question, actually, Dan, because... I wouldn't personally definitively say he would think that Rome was important at all. There are much more important cities in the Italian peninsula.
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Chapter 8: What were the implications of wealth and power in Roman politics?
So for example, when I'm leading tours in Campania, the place we go to first is Paestum, which was Poseidonia, which was an amazing sort of port with through the best classical temples in the ancient world. You'd have probably heard of Poseidonia, maybe not have heard of Rome. That's a really good question.
And again, you said the Romans are adaptable. Great. Is there anything else you can identify in these early days? Are they better at mobilising their citizenry? Have they got better? Why are they taking the fight to these other neighbours and why are they winning? They don't like kings. Okay.
They really, really, really don't like kings. So the last Etruscan Roman king, Tarquin the Proud, was overthrown in 509 BC and that's when the Roman Republic begins. So 509. 509. Now that runs all the way through to 27 BC when Augustus is acclaimed the first emperor by the Senate. So that is the Roman Republic that we're talking about there. And they don't like kings.
You can see by analogy the same thing happening in the States today where you have campaigns saying no kings. So it's intrinsically threaded through Roman psyche from the point Tarquins discarded that no more kings existed.
And that's quite energising because you're taking on kings elsewhere. So it must be quite cool to be that, yeah, we're the guys that have a king.
And they're quite clever at sharing power. So let's quickly run through Roman society. Bottom, slaves. Then freed men who were manumitted slaves. Then free men who had never been slaves. And then three classes of aristocrat. Curial, so the middle classes. Equestrians, the knights.
And then the senatorial class at the very top, which is a tiny percentage of the Roman population, even into the empire. Now, the important thing is there that the senatorial classes, although they were teachers of throats all the time... In terms of political unity, for most of the time, they actually worked in the best interests of Rome. So you have two consuls all the time.
So there's always someone who can go and campaign and someone who can run things in Rome. You have regular magisterial elections. So everybody gets a say in that kind of thing.
And so their politics is part of the reason for their success. Absolutely. So you come up against problems with inherited monarchy. The consul system, you're electing probably people that are reasonably decent at the job, whereas you might be fighting a group with a useless king who's completely incompetent.
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