Dan Snow's History Hit - How and Why History: Rome and the Mediterranean

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

By the first century BC, the nuisance of piracy had become a plague in the Mediterranean. The Romans dispatched Pompey who freed the way for the expansion of commerce and the Empire. But why was the Mediterranean so important to Rome? How did they go about ruling its waves? And how did they rid the sea of pirates? Rob Weinberg asks the big questions about this important stretch of water to Dr. James Corke-Webster at Kings College London.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We've got some big anniversaries this week. Significant events in history of the ancient world. We're marking them here on History Hit, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for our new Ancients podcast, which I'll be featuring here for the first time on Thursday. Today though, I've got another episode from our sister series, How and Why History, in which we ask the big how and why questions. And this week's questions are all about the Romans and the Mediterranean. How did they come to dominate the Mediterranean world? And especially how they fought off those pesky pirates. If you like this episode, please search How and Why History

over your podcast and subscribe. There are 30 other episodes that you may well not have heard yet. But in the meantime, let's push off and, sitting well in order, smite the sounding furrows and set sail to ancient Rome. order, smite the sounding furrows and set sail to ancient Rome. While the Romans were embroiled in civil wars at the gates of Rome, the sea was left unguarded and gradually drew and enticed the pirates on until they no longer attacked navigators only, but also laid waste islands and maritime cities. Their flutes and stringed instruments and drinking bouts along every coast, their seizures of persons in high command,

and their ransomings of captured cities, were a disgrace to the Roman supremacy. For, you see, the ships of the pirates numbered more than a thousand, and the cities captured by them, four hundred. That was the influential Greek philosopher Plutarch describing how pirates dominated the Mediterranean Sea. By the first century BC the nuisance of piracy had become a plague in the region. The Romans dispatched Pompey whose fleet swept across the sea freeing the way for the expansion of commerce and the Roman Empire. fleet swept across the sea, freeing the way for the expansion of commerce and the Roman Empire.

But why was this sea so significant? How did Rome go about ruling its waves? And how did the decline of the empire impact the Mediterranean? History hits Rob Weinberg has been asking the big questions about this important stretch of water to Dr. James Cork Webster at King's College London. This is How and Why History. James, thanks for joining us. Thanks very much for having me. Why was the Mediterranean so significant? There's been a lot of different answers to the question of why the Mediterranean is so significant. Of course, traditionally people saw that as being the kind of the birthplace of civilization. But we've covered as we've come to learn more

about global history, we know that in many ways, other parts of the world got there first. But what is unique about the Mediterranean is the connection that it enables between a lot of different regions. So you don't just get the birth of individual civilizations, as you might do elsewhere, but you have this kind of clustering of developing civilizations around one almost circular seed that enables connections which is of course important not just for trade so you get kind of economic interaction and the developments and benefits that come from that but also social interactions so you have cultures that are learning from each other developing from each other growing together of course, it enables antagonism between cultures that are so close to each other and

are forced into close proximity once they start trading. Who were the dominant powers in the Mediterranean before the rise of Rome? When we say before the rise of Rome, what we really mean is before the period in which Rome becomes dominant, because Rome has been around for kind of much of the first millennium BC, but just playing in the sandpit while other cultures are more dominant. We need to go back really to Alexander the Great, who from Macedon moves through Greece out east and creates a dominant cultural hegemony that stretches right the way to India in the east. And when Alexander dies, this very quickly fragments, and you get what's called the growth of the successor kingdoms.

And these are named after prominent generals of Alexander. They carve up the territory between them. And so the dominant three really are what we call Antigonid Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Seleucid Syria. So these are the kind of the three main players. You then have some sort of lesser areas in Greece that remain independent-ish, so Rhodes, Pergamum, and certain of the Greek city-states that are in what we call two leagues, so two groupings of city-states, so that's the Achaean and the Aetolian leagues. So kind of the interaction between them is dominant in the Greek world

and in Asia Minor. And then you also, of course, have the rise of Carthage in North Africa. And Carthage was originally a colony of a much earlier civilization, Phoenicia, but it becomes one of the dominant players, certainly in trade, in this period. And note that all of these are either in the east or in North Africa. I mean, in the west, there are really no dominant players. We're still talking about tribal groups at this time. In Italy,, until the growth of Rome, is in a similar position of being lots of separate tribal groups and including a number of Greek colonies that have gone further west. So was it the fact that Rome began to coalesce into this very powerful empire that enabled it to exert this dominance over the Mediterranean?

empire that enabled it to exert this dominance over the Mediterranean? Essentially, yes. So Rome is, of course, a city. So Rome is just one city amongst many other cities, urban settlements in Italy at the time. And it slowly starts to exert pressure and ultimately dominance over the many other Italian, we call them city-states, so cities and their kind of rural environs around before the period where it starts to dominate the Mediterranean. But this is not a kind of simplistic story of conquest. So Rome doesn't just kind of fight one neighbour. It's not like Pac-Man eats one neighbour, then eats the next neighbour, then eats the next one. What it does is create almost bespoke arrangements for all of the other city-states, some of which it engages in kind of military antagonism with. But it essentially forms a series of alliances with these other city-states

in which it is the dominant partner to a greater or a lesser extent. And over a long period of time, it kind of gains more and more power over these other regions in Italy until eventually in the third century BC middle of the third century BC it sort of finally overcomes the Etruscans who are the kind of last to hold out at that point you can really say Rome dominates the Italian peninsula like the whole of the territory that we think of as being Italy. And so you can start to talk about Rome as not just a city, but as almost a country. But we wouldn't really call this an empire at this point. But certainly Rome, in the initial stage of its dominance, goes from being a city-state to a city that exerts influence over an entire peninsula.

How did Rome then start to have this wider influence on territories outside of Italy? The key is what we call the Punic Wars, so a series of three conflicts with Carthage that take place through the 3rd and 2nd centuries. And it's in the process of exploring this conflict with a foreign power in North Africa that Rome gains foreign territories almost by accident and then has to figure out what to do with them. So, you know, Rome's gaining of an empire is very much an accident. It doesn't set out to gain an empire. Some in Rome are very against the idea that it ever should control foreign territories. And once it does sort of

end up accidentally with foreign territories, it then is only grudgingly prepared to administer them. And the key initial territory is actually not Carthage itself in North Africa, but Sicily, where Roman Carthage had coexisted for quite some time before the middle of the third century when hostilities arise. And they quite clearly both decided to avoid hostility. And in a way, they're both drawn into conflict unwillingly. And it's over the question of influence in Sicily. There were a number of Greek colonies on Sicily with which Carthage had been vying for prominence. And Roman Carthage had put in place a series of treaties to try and avoid direct conflict. And what ultimately prompts aggression is actually the same thing that at this stage prompts aggression further east as well, which is Rome likes to think of itself as living by a kind of almost a moral code or certainly a diplomatic code, where it makes an

alliance with another group. Another territory will make what we call a derdittio in fidem. Essentially, Rome agrees to come to the aid of other groups in return for their alliance. And it's other groups that pull Rome into conflict in Sicily, ultimately with Carthage, and in Greece and Asia Minor as well. And so the first Punic War with Carthage develops quite slowly. It's quite a complicated series of catalysts, you know, rather like if you think of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, who was a sort of small catalyst. The catalyst in the First Punic War is a group called the Mamertines, who are terrorising part of Sicily. They're attacked by the King of Syracuse. The Mamertines appeal to Carthage for help, then the Carthaginians won't

go home, and so the Mamertines then appeal to Rome, and so Rome is sort of pulled into a conflict. And it's really at this point that Rome has to sort of explore how do we fight a group who are across the sea from us. For example, they realise they need a navy. Rome until this point has no navy, and so they speed build a navy for example. And the conflict goes on for the First Punic War for almost 20 years. Back and forth, Rome is successful, Carthage is successful, but it's very obvious that Rome had no clear plan for expansion and when the dust settles they sort of end up in the position where they have foreign territory in Sicily and they end up then having to think about, well, what do we do with this? We're going to have to appoint a governor of

some sort. So then you start to have extra praetors are appointed to deal with the territory. So that's the First Punic War. Things then don't really happen for a while. There's a kind of truce or an alliance between Rome and Carthage. Second Punic War comes much later in the third century. So it's between 218 and 201. Note again that it takes a very long time. This is the famous Punic War, right? This is the one with Hannibal, the one that leads to really serious conflict between Carthage and Rome within Italy. But again, it erupts over foreign territory, over Spain. So Carthage has been getting stronger in Spain. Hannibal has been gaining territory there. Rome's ally, a place called Massilia, is worried about Carthage's influence. And so they

agree to something which is called the Ebro Treaty, where the Carthaginians can't cross the river Ebro. And then, again, you get a sort of inevitable slide towards conflict rather than a desire to gain territory on either side. And Rome ends up in this conflict with Hannibal, which goes on for 20 years. And we tend to think about conflicts today, wars as lasting, you know, six months, a year, two years. But in fact, these wars with Carthage are much more like what the war in Afghanistan or the war with Iraq became, you know, long 20-year campaigns that ebb and flow and it's very difficult to achieve anything, and that are not waged with clear strategic aims, certainly on the

Roman side. And this is partly because of the way Roman generals are appointed. The generals tend to be the consuls for the year, and they are reappointed every year. So it's like having an army and changing general every year, and each general has a different strategy and a different idea of what the war should be trying to achieve. But in the process of these first two Punic Wars in particular, Rome, for example, gains a navy, it gains territory abroad. It starts to see that it is, in order to protect its own interests, it's going to have to engage in increasing numbers of, or intervene in increasing numbers of foreign conflicts, and it starts to see the money to be made, essentially. And once money starts to flow in

to Rome, people get a taste for it, the appetite for further campaigns increases. And so you start in the second century BC, some scholars would say, to get a changing motivation in Roman terms, that it starts as an accidental empire, and increasingly Rome starts to think, well, maybe we should be doing this deliberately because it's proving so beneficial. we should be doing this deliberately because it's proving so beneficial. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt,

and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. So what kind of activities would Rome be engaged in around the Mediterranean? So, you know, the most important is trade. There's already a thriving Mediterranean trade before Rome gets there. And Rome starts to take equal part with the Greeks and the Carthaginians, for example.

traders on the oceans, you also have poor pirates seeking to profit from the former. And so Rome ends up getting drawn into the piracy question. First piece in the puzzle is the development of a navy. So in the first Punic War, in order to deal with Carthage and Carthage's influence in Sicily, Rome builds and equips a navy. Once it has a navy, it can start to exert influence on the seas. And between 230 and 229, Rome attempts to deal with the so-called Illyrian pirates, which was the sort of the centre of piracy in the region. And so it sends its fleet and a significant number of resources to try and deal with that problem, which works to a certain extent. But piracy is one of those Hydra-esque problems where you cut off one head and another head rises to deal with it. And one of the most famous attempts the Romans made to

deal with it is actually much later in the first century BC, where they give Pompey, now known as Pompey the Great, a special command to deal with the pirates, and they essentially give him imperium over the seas, and Pompey dedicates time and energy to ridding the Mediterranean pirates. The power of pirates extended its operations over the whole of our Mediterranean Sea, making it unnavigable and closed to all commerce. This was what most of all inclined the Romans, who were hard put to it to get provisions and

expected a great scarcity, to send out Pompey with a commission to take the sea away from the pirates. Gabinius, one of Pompey's intimates, drew up a law which gave him not an admiralty, but an out-and-out monarchy, and irresponsible power over all men. For the law gave him dominion over the sea this side of the pillars of Hercules, and over all the mainland to the distance of four hundred furlongs from the sea. These limits included almost all places in the Roman world, and the greatest nations and most powerful kings were comprised within them. And this is relatively successful in terms of real plagues of pirates, but piracy on the small scale as a problem continues right the way through

the Republican and Imperial period. And we have Greek novels written as late as the second century AD that tell dramatic stories of young maidens being captured by pirates, for example. So it's clear from that literature that pirates are still, at least in the popular imagination, a current and present threat. How long did Rome's domination of the Mediterranean last and how did it begin to crumble? So I mean, Rome starts to gain territories, as we've said, in the 3rd century BC. The great increase in territory comes in the 2nd BC, and most famously the Carthage and Corinth are both sacked in the same year in 146 BC, which leads to a huge influx of wealth into Rome. But Rome keeps gaining territories right through the Republican period. Augustus gains quite a lot of territory. So Spain, for example, Rome has been fighting in Spain since much earlier, but really Spain is only brought properly into the empire under Augustus.

And odd emperors add odd bits of territory. So the emperor Claudius, for example, fights in Britain for a while. The empire reaches its biggest extent in 117, so under the emperor Hadrian. So this is the point where Rome's empire is at its largest. Trajan goes and conquers new territories in the north and in the east. His successor, Hadrian, immediately gives it back. So the empire shrinks again. And at that point, you start to get, I think, what we'd call the crumbling. So I would say in the later second century, you know, Marcus Aurelius, for example, the philosopher emperor, actually spends a lot of his time putting out fires on the northern frontier. You have increasing numbers of barbarian incursions from the Goths, as we call them now, as an umbrella turn on the northern frontier. In the third century, things start to go really wrong.

So you have regular Gothic incursions on the northern frontier. You get the rise of a new, what we call call Seleucid Persia in the east. So you get repeated invasions and Rome starts losing quite regularly on that frontier. The empire splits into three pieces at one point in the third century but is then put back together again by Aurelian. It limps on through the end of the third century in the Tetrarchic period. We then transition to sort of late antiquity, where you get the formal split of the Roman Empire into east and west upon the death of Theodosius. So at that point, I suppose you could say the Roman Empire has changed in kind, but it's still Rome in some sense. 476 is the date commonly bandied about for the fall of the Western Empire. So you get the last

roman emperor of the west romulus augustulus in the east so people often use that date for sort of the fall of empire in the west but then byzantium carries on so it depends whether you think does byzantium count as the roman empire in the east and it's worth saying that the ostrogoths who take over in it Italy for example after you know the fall of Romulus Augustulus they still think of themselves as being Roman and the Roman Empire so from their point of view the Roman Empire is going on so you know when Gibbon writes in 1776 Edward Gibbon writes his history of the decline of all of the Roman Empire people always talk about that for the Roman period but he takes that right up to the Ottomans. So in some ways, you can say that Rome's empire falls in the

third century, the fifth century. You can argue in some ways it carries on in the east, at least. Constantine moves the capital from Rome to, or at least establishes a second capital in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. You can argue that the Roman Empire carries on to the 14th, 15th century, and obviously the Holy Roman Empire, in some ways you could argue, kind of continues in some sense in the Vatican. So the question of when falls is almost an unanswerable question. I would say the more interesting way of looking at it is, you know, Rome gains an empire by accident.

Initially it doesn't really want one. And you can, I think, make quite a good case that it never really figures out how to have one. The gaining of territory causes the fall of the Roman Republic. The Roman Empire is a sort of stopgap that plugs the holes. But in many ways, Rome's empire is falling before it's even gained. Of course, the influence of Rome is still very prevalent when you go to Italy and certain other parts of the Mediterranean. But what do you think the lasting mark that Rome made on the Mediterranean still is today? When people look at the great classical civilizations,

is today? When people look at the great classical civilizations, they usually see that the twin legacies of being from the Greek world, we got political systems, democracy, for example, but from the Roman world, we got law. And I think this is one way in which we still see the influence of Rome today. The Roman legal project, which develops throughout the republican and imperial and late antique periods, produces the great codification projects of late antiquity, and in particular the Theodosian and Justianic law codes. So they try and kind of collect law together, the laws from previous centuries together and make some attempt to systematise them. And those law codes become the basis of the law codes of the successor kingdoms, so the kingdoms that crop up in the West, the Ostrogoths, the Goths, Vandal Africa,

the Burgundians, the Franks, for example, which are in some way the foundations in a roundabout way for the modern nations that have come afterwards. And many law codes today still find their basis in Roman law, you know, through the law codes of the successive kingdoms. So certainly that approach to jurisprudence is one legacy. I would be inclined to say that it's difficult to get away from the influence of the Romans much more widely. All of our architecture is heavily influenced by classical models. The Renaissance is likely to have been influenced by the rediscovery of various ruins in the city of Rome. So much of what we think about the early modern period is also influenced by Rome. And also more culturally, I think the big thing that marks out Rome's empire, which is different from any empire which went before and a lot that came afterwards, is that Rome was prepared to share citizenship.

This is actually an extraordinary thing. You know, if you think about it, the idea for a lot of people having an empire is that you exert dominance over another people. And the Romans do that, certainly, but they're also prepared to give membership in the city of Rome to people who have never been to Rome and might never go to Rome. And this leads in 212 to the declaration of universal citizenship by the emperor Caracalla, where huge numbers of people are given citizenship at once. And one of the reasons for Rome's success in imperial terms is that buy-in to the project that that helps cultivate in other people. And I think that cultural project, which is also aided by what we call the Pax Romana,

so Rome creates the sort of environment in the Mediterranean where people can travel, people can move, people can be influenced by other societies, that cosmopolitanism is, I think, the greatest legacy of Rome, that it's one of the first kind of civilisations in which you can genuinely talk about multiculturalism. James Cork Webster, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. How and why history? you