Dan Snow's History Hit - The Rise of the Roman Empire

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

How did a cluster of Iron Age huts grow into one of history's greatest civilisations?In the first episode of our series on the Roman Empire, we're joined by Dr Simon Elliott to trace Rome's rise - from its humble origins on the banks of the Tiber to the moment Augustus became the first Emperor. Why did Rome thrive when so many competitors fell? What were the key battles, the turning points, the extraordinary individuals who shaped the story?Make sure to join us for our second episode next week, when Dame Mary Beard will shed some light on how this mighty civilisation was ruled.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe. It's very hard to imagine early Rome, knowing all that would come. 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-aged people just sort of milling about, tending their crops, trading their livestock, harvesting salt and timber, down at the water.

edge, but then every great empire has to start somewhere, and Rome started here. These little Hamlets villages would become the epicenter of one of the greatest civilizations 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 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 shape the story. To do that, I am joined by the one and only, the force of nature that is. Simon Elliott. He's a best-selling historian, archaeologist, author and broadcaster, an expert on all things Rome. This is our series on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Enjoy. Simon, thanks for going on the podcast. Absolutely pleasure, Dan. It's always lovely to come and join you on history here. 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 to say, 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 that, why do we associate it with this, well, what must have been in 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, what, you know, it being found, it was just that little township. That was what conquered the surrounding countryside, then just went on and on and on. Absolutely. But also, it's 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 Rear Sylvia, who is forced to abandon them on the back to the Tiber. I'm going to stop you there. Wait a second. 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. Okay, so that's more a mythological origin story, you'd say. Well, let's go through it, because the key thing is it's important to the Romans. It's very important to the Romans. So Rear Sylvia goes to a sanctuary of Mars, and then she leaves and she's pregnant, and she's got two sons who are born, Romulus and Remus, and she's forced to abandon them on the banks of the river Tiber.

And there they're saved by the river god Tiberinus, of course, and then they're raised and suckled by a she-wolf, of course. But later in life, they become aware of their origins, they realize that they should have been players in their own world, but then they fall out because they alight on a place where they want to found a city, and 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 gritty and it's violent, and 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 archaic? What do we know from other texts? What was there before Rome? Were these Greek people's, 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 Anaeus, who's a refugee from the Trojan Wars. Then Anaeus lands somewhere near Anzioso, a precursor of the Second War invasion. And he's a brother of Paris and Hector, so Royal Prince, escapes from Troy. Lans 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 Alice's 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? 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 skeptical about that. But what is an Italian place, a Greek place, they 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, Sis Alpine Gaw, north of the Po Valley, you've got the Gauls living, okay, Sysalpine Gau. Funnily enough,

transalpine Gawl is the other side of the Alps. That's where the other Gawls live, but the Roman relevant Gawls are in Sisalpine Gau. Below that you have a truria, 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 Grakia, 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, North America, you have Greater Greece, which is sort of Greek settlements in southern Italy.

Absolutely right. But then, to confuse things through the spine of Italy, through the Appanine Mountains, you have the Oscombe-speaking peoples, which is a very old language, actually. and it's from the Oskins that later you get the likes of the Luchanians, who were the founders of places like Pistam, 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 day is what, 753 or something? Yeah. 753. Do you think there's any truth to that?

No. Okay. No. Got no, no, no over knowing. Okay. So, but when it's founded, so roughly speaking, 500 BC, 600, it was just what? A little mercantile community, people gather together, and the nearest one could have been few miles away.

They're 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 Principate 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're great at nicking other people's ideas. 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 clues in the name, he's got Lorica Hamas Chame Mail, that's from the Gauls. He's got a Gladys Hispanic That's from the Spaniards. He's got Pellum javelins. They're from the Spaniards. He's got a Scootum Shield. That's from the Samnites. Everything's nicked. But the Romans are very good in 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 about the Roman Empire. 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 shoeings 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, 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 are 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 off in Italy is a backwater. It's almost irrelevant. When Alexander, under the great dyes, the contemporary sources, don't say his next offensive was 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 osmos of the 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 Grakens 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 and the Appanine 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 Great might have heard of them. Someone might have said, well, you know, there's a 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 is important at all.

There are much more important cities in the Italian peninsula. So, for example, when I'm leading to in Campania, the place we go to first is Paisdonia, which was Poseidonia, which was an amazing sort of port with through the best classical temples in the ancient world. It had 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't identify in these early days? They just, 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 Etrisco Roman king talk when the prow 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 Tarquin's discarded that no more kings. 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 now 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 are man-emitted 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 Roma population, even into the empire. Now, the important thing is there that the senatorial classes, although they were at 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 on campaign and someone who can run things in Rome. You have regular magistrate, elections so everybody gets to 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. You just, the consul system, you're electing probably people at reasonably decent at the job, whereas you might be fighting a group with a useless king who's completely incompetent. It provides the stability you need when things go badly. So things do go badly frequently for the Roman Republic. So let's look at examples.

We'll move into the third century BC. So the first time the Romans fight a Hellenicianianianian. Kingdom, it's Piris and Vipypyrus, when Pirusavipyris invades in the 280s and you have Pyrrhic victories and ultimately a Roma victory. The Romans are fighting Pike Phalanxes for the first time. They're fighting and they don't like it. They're fighting Lansom shot cavalry for the first time and they don't like it. And they're fighting elephants for the first time and they don't like it.

But they're Romans. So they learn and ultimately they win the conflict. Now the interesting thing is there. We know that Pyrriss's main objective. He was brought over by the Taran. from the southeast coast of Italy. So these are Greek-descended colonial settlements in southern Italy. They've brought help from home from Greece to take on these Romans.

Yeah. So if the first time the Hellenistic kingdoms in the former Pyrrhus are sort of in this backwater of the Hellenistic world, which is an interesting way of looking at it, because I think there's a degree of truth in that from a Hellenistic point of view. That doesn't go well for the Hellenistic kingdoms, but we'll hold that for later. So Pyrrhus is actually basically trying to peer away the various urban allied states from Rome, but the Romans win. And again, let's go back to true grit

and the ability to nick other people's ideas. There's a line in the contemporary sources that to counter the elephants, the Romans created anti-elephant wagons, which had a balister in the front of the wagon and then two flaming poles. Like a catapult. Yeah, and then sides on the end of poles

to hamstring the elephants. Wow. Proper Roman ingenuity. And you're right, the stability of that political system. So if a king lose a battle, his brother knives him, the whole country collapses as the core. all turn each other and nephews emerge and takeover.

In the Roman system, the consul finishes, he hasn't been a success, someone else takes over the following year, there's a constitutional process. And also, within that constitutional process, if the consul isn't any good, you can get rid of him before the end of his term by voting to install somebody else to replace him as well. So it's a really, really, compared to the fairly inflexible kingdoms

that the Romans are now dealing with, it's actually a much more flexible system. So it gives the Romans an extra string to their back. They've got the grit, and now they've got the flexibility as well. If your king keeps losing battles, you can't get rid of them constitutionally. So you either have to kill him and precipitate a kind of domestic crisis, or just let him keep losing battles. Or let him lead a charge from the front.

Well, yeah, that's ideal. Yeah, then you get one of his incompetent sons. That's the problem. Okay, that's interesting. So it's expanding through Central Italy. It's pushing to southern Italy. And, well, pushing throughout Italy. When would we say, yeah, Rome is a regional power?

This is interesting. We need to keep an eye on this place. What year would that be? Middle of the third century. So here's our layer cake, and the Romans are gradually taking slices from the layer cake to the north and to the south. 250 BC-ish. I'm going to go 250, yeah. The reason is because it's in the middle of the first Punic War.

The first Punic War begins in 264. The Romans come into conflict with the Carthaginians. These are North Africans. So there's a regional power in North Africa starts crashing into the regional power in the Italian peninsula. Absolutely. And the regional power in North Africa, the Carthaginians, so originally from the Levant, settled, Puneic, Carthaginians, Punec Wars. they're gradually expanding their own empire across the western Mediterranean

so you're looking at the Belairek Islands, Spain and Sicily crucially and by this point the Romans are more or less controlling all of Italy so they're now crossing into Sicily this shall not stand in the Roman world so you get the first puny war 264 to 241 And so the first Punic War is their first sort of interregional war when they're sort of going beyond the sea

they're taking on enemies from quite different linguistic and cultural groups The wars against Pyrus are international, but they're in the peninsula. Right, yes. Whereas now we're outside the peninsula. So they're now going out of their comfort zone. But again, this is a very lengthy war, but again, that Roman ability to learn from your mistakes and then Nick your opponent's ideas is absolutely nailed on here.

They become a sea power. They do from absolutely nowhere. Yeah, extraordinary. And they win. What is that culture of learning? Is there a mechanism as a sort of bureaucracy? Why are they? Is it something about not having a king that makes you more open to those ideas of politicians

go, let's adopt this? I mean, what's going on there? I think it's been led by the military. This is a very militaristic culture. A very, very martial culture. If you used to use a modern analogy in popular culture, you'd say they were the Klingons, right? A proper martial culture.

And losing is not appropriate. If you lose, you're gone, but the person who comes up, make sure that they don't lose. Give you a great example as well. Marching camps. every Roman military campaign in enemy territory involves the building of marching camps

every night and it begins in the Pyrid Wars because the Romans learned it from Pyrusivirus Right and they're like that's good We're doing that So you've got two examples there within 30 years You've got the marching camps which are great for me

as an archaeologist because it means it can trace their roots for most of their campaigns But also they become a naval power as well Now that's important as well becoming a naval power and winning the first Puneic War because it drags the Romans now properly away from the Italian peninsula into the Western Mediterranean. And suddenly their sights are sort of, you know, going, oh, this is interesting.

And you can imagine the Hellenistic kingdoms over there. Who's that not? Yeah. What are they doing? So you've got north, they're into North Africa, they're into Spain. Okay, interesting. There's Dan Snow's history. There's more on this topic coming up.

Right, 250, what's next? At the second Punic War, so the famous one where Hannibal crosses out the biggie, this generational struggle against Carthaginians, alien versus predator, whoever wins, everyone else loses. Is that the next big stage? It is. It's an absolute classic example of a war of survival. From a Carthaginian perspective in particular,

this is not a war of choice. They know the Romans are in a position to beat them on land and sea unless they seize the initiative. So you have the great Hannibal Barker doing is Hail Mary invading Italy, three great victories in 218, 217 and 216 at Trebio. Treziman and Cana.

The losses at Cana were astonishing. One of the bloodiest days in history. And yet the Rome has come back. The Rome has come back. So the system is secure enough to take that kind of hit. And Hannibal's system isn't secure enough to fight a long war. And ultimately, again, he gets defeated at Zama. And that's it.

That's it for the Carthaginians at the end of the Second Punic War. Third Punic War doesn't really matter. Because that's at that point. A little operation to capture Carthage again. But something happens in the Second Punic War, which is then very relevant to the next part of the story. And what date? Second Punic War? Second Punic War is 218-202.

Right, so almost 200 BC now. Yeah. They're fighting across the hot Western Mediterranean. So they burst out of Italy and they're really... And now the East of Mediterranean. Oh, okay. Because there's an idiot in Macedon. And this idiot is called Philip V.

Who is the king of Macedon, is the latest of the Antigonid dynasty. Founded by Antigonus, the one-eyed, and then with his son Demetrius the procedure. So Philip V at the height of the second Punic War, while Hannibal is winning in Italy, thinks it's a good idea to side with Hannibal. So he's aware of Rome.

He's thinking, actually, we do need to get rid of these Romans. I think he's after loot. Okay. I think basically they all think that the Roman world's about to collapse, so that everyone wants to pile in. But his embassy to Hannibal gets intercepted at sea by the Romans. So the Romans now have, in their sights, the Hellenistic world for the first time.

There's a difference here, Dan. It's very important for the rest of Roman history. When Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, the last Accomni-Persian king, he inherited the wealth of the Akamnid Persian Empire, which is an astonishing amount of money, and it dwarfs anything you would get in the Western Mediterranean or Italy backwaters.

This is effectively in this known world, all the wealth. That's it. And then it gets divvied out when he dies in 3-2-3-3-B. see amongst all of his various commanders who then found the various kingdoms of the Hellenistic world. So you have the kingdom of Macedon, the Antigonids. You have... Ptolemy in Egypt. Ptolemy and Egypt, the Seleucid kingdom in Syria and Iraq, etc. They're dripping in wealth. They're dripping in wealth. And suddenly, they tapped on the Roman show and said, hello, mate. The Romans's going, oh, that's really interesting that is. And that's it. That's the

point. That's the point when the draw happens. And that ultimately, I think, leads to the end of the Roman Republic. For reasons I'm going to discuss. So the Romans they finish off the Carthaginians. So by about 200, they're dominating southern France,

lots of Spain, all the islands, a chunk of north of what we now say, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, that sort of coast. And they start expanding. As with empires, that's what you do. You have a town on the coast and you get a bit of trouble with the tribe and the interior. You'd conquer them, and there's someone else, and you've got to keep going, right? So, sucked into that whole area. So tell me about when do they first march east?

Very shortly after. Okay. So you get a series of four Macedonian wars. The first Macedonian war happens almost immediately after the end of the second Punic War. Then you get the second Macedonia. And they're marching, what, through what is now the Balkans into northern Greece? Yeah, basically. If you're, if you're in Rome, you go down the Vera Appia to Brindisi and then go across to... Are you sail across? Yeah, go across to modern Albania. Albania and then you're in? Yeah, that's right. And so you go, Albania is a Pyrrhus, and then you're into Macedonite itself. So the second Macedonian was a biggie,

because it's when Philip V leads his field army, his Pike phalanxes, and all the other sort of glamorous entities of a Hellenistic army. These are the successes of Alexander Great. And the Romans hammer them at the Battle of Carnotaphosophila, the Battle of the Doghead, which is the name of Two Hills. And the Romans absolutely hammer them. And it's a shock to the Hellenistic world,

because at that point, the pike phalanx is thought to be the bee's knees. Unstopable. And now it's not. I mean, it's a proper hammering. Then we ended with the third Macedonian war. And the third Macedonian war, the son of Philip V also picks a fire up with the Romans. And he won six, eight, he fights the Battle of Pidna. And he gets flattened as well.

And I mean, flattened, flattened. And that's effectively, there's a fourth Macedonian war, but that's effectively at the end of the Kingdom of Macedon, gets broken up into territories and eventually becomes part of the Roman world. So you get two major battles there, Carnosophilo, Philip, 5th, Pidner against Perseus, and that's it, the Romans have done. In the middle of that in 190, the Romans also fight the Roman Salucid War and win another battle against Pike Falaxes at the Battle of Magnesia around 190, 189. Where's that? Is that? That's Western Anatolia.

Okay, so they've moved through Maston into what is now Turkey, Western Turkey. And you know what's over there? All that money. Loads of cash. Loads of cash. So I have to say, actually, I'm a Roman historian, I love my Romans. I still want the Pike phalanxes to win. All those great battles. I still want them to win. But you know what, Dan? They never do. Right. And just while we're here, why is that? Because from my storybooks when I was a kid, it was because those Roman short swords could get in through that hedge of spears and actually get up close to the pikemen. The Roman system is more flexible, full stop. Much more flexible, which reflects the fact that Roman society is more flexible compared to a Hellenistic kingdom. Yeah, because all those

pikemen with their very, very long spears, sharp tips, it's great, but they're like a hedgehog. There's not much they can do, but you can't suddenly reform them and point them in a different direction. And going back to my earlier point as well, Dan, about the fact that, the Hellenistic kingdoms really couldn't wrap the head around the way the Roman's fort. So one of the things that the Hellenistic pikemen would do if they'd lost was they'd lift their pike up and that will be their sign of surrender. But the Legionaries kept butchering them and kept going and going and going. So they just did not get this Roman grittiness, this inability to accept anything other than total victory on your own terms.

So the floodgates, so what, we're now in the sort of one 90s, one 80s, one 70s, BC. And is that now just Roman conquest starts to really push east? There are other things that are going to happen. So you have towards the end of the second century, the Symbrian Wars, when you get Germans from the far north of Germany, Jutland Peninsula, Frisier, places like that, who come down en masse and actually almost get themselves

into the Republican center. Wow. And the Roman army is there to lose multiple times before the great Marius comes along, completely reforms the Roman legions in a new form. This is very important, in a new form, and then ultimately is victorious. And here we can start talking about

the emergence overtly of the two major political cultures within the Roman Senate. You have the Optimartis and the pro-Senat reactionaries, and you have the Popularis, who are the Radicals. So Marius is on a Populari side, later Caesar's Popularis, Sulla, an extreme example of somebody who's an Optimites. And actually, it's the grinding between those two political classes from the time of the Cymbrian wars through to the end of the Republican 27 BC that actually sets the scene for what's going to happen.

but the key thing with Maris is this. He changes the nature of the Roman legions totally and he increases the number of legionaries and the legionaries in the legion to 6,000 and the Romans are probably got about 30 at this point but they're all equipped the same. They're all equipped the same way. Two Pellums, Gladysius Hispaniensis,

Lorca Hamata, Gallic helmet, Scootum Shield, all equipped in exactly the same way. 1800 of them are engineers who do things like they're woodworkers, they are stone masons, They can do everything and their soldiers as well. Okay. And in addition, every legionary is also trained to engineer as well.

So you have the experts fighting and the Roman legionaries who can be engineers fighting. You don't need a siege train behind you. You don't need a supply chain. It's all within that one unit. And he allows them to be recruited from the poor. Okay. So they become ultra loyal to the warlord. I call them warlords in my books.

The warlord who recruits them. So Sulla recruits his own legions. Marish recruits his own legions, Caesar recruits his own legions, they are ultra-loyal. And that's why you effectively get these independent warlords as you cascade into the first century BC who basically they can do whatever they want. Okay, so as you say, it's so interesting, so that Carthaginians get to the gates of Rome, these Germans almost get the gates of. I mean, even at Rome now, as a big Mediterranean power, it's still flirting with disaster quite regularly.

It's probably because it's quite thinly stretched. And also remember at the same time the drawer of the east. So they've been drawn into Anatolia already. They're going through Asia. They're taking out the various kingdoms now, Bithynia and Purgamine, 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 sentence, you're going to say, I want to go at that. Can I have a go at that, please? And there's a scramble between the popularity champions and the Optim artist champions,

all wanting to have a crack at making a name and fortune, absolute fortune. And then also you might return to Italy. You've got sort of troops loyal to you. 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. Plenty. And so as the Roman Empire expands, the opportunity of making wealth just blow everyone's mind,

and that competition for the spoils started to tear the Republic apart. It's a bad time, Dan, to be a classical statue in Athens, 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 for me.

Everyone's nicking everything. Right. He listened to Dan Snow's history hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us. And then people like, so Mariously defeats the Germans, But he then will face a warlord who ends up fighting it out with.

Absolutely, yeah. So you can go through the list. There's Marius, there's Sulla, there's Pompei Magnus, there's Caesar, there's Mark Anthony, there's Octavian later, and many of us as well. And at one stage or another, the popularis are in charge. At one stage or another, the Optimates are in charge. At one stage or another, somebody's leading campaign in Asia, making vast amounts of money, another stage somebody else is doing it.

And the whole Roman system is being bent, bent to breaking point. So when a guy like Pompey conquers great chunks of Asia, he comes back, he's unbelievably rich, he's got loyal troops. So he briefly, he will sort of dominate the politics in Rome, almost a dictator and all but name. Until Julius Caesar arrives, cross the rubicon on their legs. Right, exactly. So Julius Caesar, though, does the same, he conquers what is now France and bits of Belgium, into Germany, all that kind of stuff.

So he gets loads of money and loyal followers, and then he comes back to Italy. So it's just inherent, the system becomes unstable. hugely unstable, hugely unstable. It's interesting with Caesar. When I was doing my researcher for my biography of Caesar, basically it's called Julie Caesar-Roeuvre's greatest warlord, and I came in the book with a series of traits that all these warlords had to a greater or lesser extent.

So the ability to communicate with people high and low, true bravery leading from the front when you need to, tactical and strategic acumen, various traits. And Caesar's the only one for me who has them all. The whole package. And that's why he becomes so, so dominant. We should say, apart from foreign enemies, almost toppling Rome, just quick shout out for Spartacus, the slave revolt. People have heard of that. I mean, that shakes Rome to its foundation

as well. What date is that? That is early in the first century BC, and it's the third servile revolt. So it's the third major slave revolt, actually. So gigantic slave revolts that require total mobilisation of the Roman states to feed all these enslaved people? The Romans are absolutely terrified all the time of slave revolts. It's a big deal. That's why in the Roman world, it's very rare to get a ratio of slaves to freed people of any more than about 20% because they're terrified of slave revolts. It's astonishingly violent, isn't it? I mean, you're fighting foreign enemies, you're fighting slaves within Italy,

and then you also start fighting each other. Klingons. Klingons. Right. Klingons. Yeah. In the end, all these hyper-wealthy, ambitious, what leads that republic?

So the empire's grown, and yet in the centre, in and around Rome. they're just going after each other. You know, Sulla arrests, executes opponents. Pompey does the same, Julius Seas all famously do the same and become almost a king in all but name. Why is there that astonishing breakdown at the heart? Why does the system break down? Money. It's a Hellenistic wealth.

I think the access to the Hellenistic wealth, which Alexander, the great capture from the back of near Persians, was so great, it bent the nature of Roman society at the very top. because suddenly, if you were able to capture a fairly small kingdom in Anatolia, then you're going to be a multi-trillionaire. And anybody associated with you. So your troops are unbelievably loyal to you. No one's going to argue when you get back home unless they are also a multi-trillionaire as well.

So the whole nature of the top of Roman society has been bent and changed by this wealth. And then your loyal legions fight their loyal legions. They do, they do. And often what you find is that when, The legions are defeated, and usually the leader, Pompey as an example, are killed. A lot of the legionaries will move over to fight for the new guy because he's got all the money, you know. And it's an issue, to be honest, because if you think about when Octavian becomes the last man standing after the Battle of Actium, he inherits 60 legions. And that's 6,000 men legions, which even with the amount of wealth of Romans have got now, they can't afford.

He inherits hundreds and hundreds of polyrim galleys in the Mediterranean. and they've got no opponent anymore, so they're useless. So this is why one of the great things Augustus does, he sees the next great reformer of the Roman military after Marius, because of that. As you cascade, you go past Caesar, being assassinated in 44, you then end up with... Another round of civil wars after that.

And finally, the last man's standing is Octavian. Octavian, who is Caesar's great-nephew? Yeah. So Octavian defeats the people that assassinate Caesar, all these other warlords. then Octavian finally turns on his brother-in-law, Mark Anthony, the final clash of the two great warlords for control the Roman world. Octavian wins, and he becomes the Emperor Augustus.

It's also, more importantly, control of the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt. Right. So that's the last vaguely independent Hellenistic Kingdom, which is fabulously, fabulously, fabulously wealthy. And it's where all the bread for Rome comes from. Exactly, yeah. Okay. So it's a big deal.

And then that's it. And everyone just goes, you know, God, that was tiring, wasn't it? Yeah, because you've now had civil wars rocking the Roman Republic since sort of Marius. Yeah. Right. So, well, most of that first century BC, you've now got one warlord left standing. And do they deliberately say at that point, look, we've just got to change the system here. This is bonkers.

Effect, are we going to make you emperor for life? They do, because he's in such a powerful position. So he's brought peace to the Roman world. And with all that sort of tribulation and the fighting and everything, even there you've got the wealth coming over from the Hellenistic world, it's not good for business. So what the political classes want is stability. They're being assassinated and they're losing all their wealth and they're being outpaced and outplayed by the Novo Reish who themselves are leading their campaigns in the East.

So the political classes in Rome, the senatorial class, they want basically some stability. And so you have the Pax Romano brought in by Octavian and the Senate acclaiming in Augustus and say, okay, we'll leave it to you, crack on. And then he begins his reforms of the military. So that's the beginning of the story of the Roman Empire. empire.

What's weird is that during that first century BC, Romans are at each other throats the whole time. They're at each other's because the empire is still expanding. Then they get lucky there were no massive peer competitors at that time. I mean, if the Persians had sort of re-emerged or the Germans are north, presumably they're a bit vulnerable when they're all fighting each other constantly. The warlords are picking their fights. They're picking their fights. So, for example, if you're one of these warlords will say, Krasus or Malkantany,

you will not choose to pick a fight with the Parthians. Right. Because they did and they lost. and in fact Kras has actually lost his life and his son got killed as well and Mark Antony his reputation's military leader was broken by the Parthians so I think these guys were quite canny

at picking fights and it only becomes brutal when they have to fight so Caesar forcing the issue cross on the Rubicon in 49 as an example Pompeii can't ignore that can't ignore that and actually that's when he bottles it and flees to Greece but usually they're very good at picking fights and you look at Caesar as an example

Caesar fights the fourth misphrodatic war. That's where Veni, Vidi, Vichy comes from, etc. But there's effectively no opponent there whatsoever. Very shrewd. Right, okay. So while they're having these internal fights, they're careful not to poke anyone on the border who might take advantage.

No, or recruit them. Or recruit them. So Cassius and Brutus, for example, for their army which fought against Octavian and Mark Anthony. So these are the two of the leading people that assassinate Julius Caesar. Yeah. They're now fighting Caesar's successors.

Yeah. And they recruit lots of Eastern Horse archers. into their army as an example. So you can either neutralise them, ignore them or recruit them. We're now into the Roman Empire proper, the imperial phase of it. But in terms of the red on the map, had most of the conquering taken place by the time Augustus comes to throne? So what proportion of Rome was yet to be conquered by the time it reached its peak under the Emperor Trajan, a hundred years or so in the future? So the Roman Empire is a Mediterranean Empire. That's the first thing to remember. And it becomes a Mediterranean Empire, I would think, from...

all about North Africa, in actual fact, because after the end of the Thurpeunuch War, the Roman elites really didn't want Africa to recover. And it's only in the leaders like Caesar, where people start reinvesting in the region. So it's as you come into the first century BC that the bits of North Africa start getting joined together again. And then ultimately, Egypt joins them. And that's it. That's your Mediterranean Empire. By then, Caesar has already bolted on Gaul. Yeah. Okay. So that's more or less it. And then... So it's the sort of... The people can imagine, It's just the whole red strip all the way around the Mediterranean, including Greece and Western Turkey, down in Lebanon, but it's Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and I think.

That's where we are when Octavius turns into Augustus and becomes emperor. And then there's only one or two other Boltones that come along after that. You've got Britain, you've got Dacia, you've got Judea, etc. But broadly, it's in place. So for the next episode, we're going to be looking at that Roman Empire, as it reaches its territorial maximum extent and just ruling over that empire and how effectively they do it. But in the meantime, Simon, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Absolute pleasure.

So folks, thanks so much for listening as we've learned, The Rise of the Roman Empire. One of history's most extraordinary stories, journeys, transformations, it was built on that ambition, on that toughness, on that discipline, on that ability to adapt and innovate, and their unshakable belief that they would eventually win. In our next episode, we are going to find out what that winning really looked like in practice. We're going to be joined by the wonderful Marybeard. to hear about what happened when the empire reached its height,

what it took to run a sprawling empire successfully, always with barbarians knocking on the gate. A big thank you to Simon 8 for joining us. This is the first episode in our series, and make sure you hit follow in your podcast player. Don't miss the next episode coming next Thursday. And if today's episode gave you a different perspective, we've got any questions about Rome and the ancient world,

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