School of War - Ep 120: Iskander Rehman on the Emperor Tiberius and American Primacy

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Iskander Rehman, Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Kissinger Center and author of Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius, joins the show to talk about the military career and statecraft of Tiberius and what his career has to teach us today. ▪️  Times      •      02:32 Introduction      •      03:29 The Pentagon and Rome     •      07:29 Why Tiberius?     •      15:04 Parallels      •      18:26 Germania     •      22:38 Roman criticism      •      28:03 Auxiliaries and proxies      •      32:09 Diplomacy and a recruitment crisis     •      34:00 A brilliant military career     •      37:17 Force structure     •      41:18 Parthian Cold War Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack Buy the book here - Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius

We are going to get back into the tricky business of historical comparison today with friend of the podcast, Skander Raymond, who once joined the show to draw parallels between the long French competition with the declining Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, and who today will help us see parallels between the reign of the emperor Tiberius in ancient Rome in our strategic moment today in the United States. Be set by worrisome tribes, a near-peer competitor in the form of the Parthian Empire, and the occasional mutinous legion over his long reign, Tiberius favored policy and subtlety over force, achieving a Pax Romana that was significantly more peaceful than that of his predecessor Augustus. Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii.

December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stay on it. We continue to face a grave situation. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram, and also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War.

I'm delighted to welcome back to the show today, Iskander Raymond, who is the Axon Johnson Fellow at the Kissinger Center. He's a senior fellow for strategic studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. He is the author most recently of Iron Imperator, Roman Grand Strategy under Tiberius. And most importantly, Iskander is joining the really rare and august ranks of three-time School of War interviewees. I think it is currently, Column will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is actually, you are one of two now. It's just you and Alex Micah Berezzi, who have done three appearances on the show. So he, of course, is Mr. Napoleon, all things, Napoleonic wars. And you were more peripatetic.

Last time, it was protracted war in China. Right. Right. Yes, that's right. Pariettaxia. Exactly. No, you've done the long French competition with Spain, protracted warfare in general, and now Roman grand strategy.

So in your continuing effort to live my best life. Welcome back. Thanks. It's always a pleasure to be on the show. And congrats, by the way, on the on the milestone of having passed one million plus downloads. That's terrific. Thank you very much. All due to interesting guests like yourself. But no, I appreciate it. So I was going to start us today with, I mean, it's a really fascinating book. Another, I should say, for for people like me who are into this kind of thing, another physically very beautiful book. And maybe you can tell us a little bit about how that came to be. But the thing, before we get into the actual content, the thing that struck me the most that I was going to ask you about

superficially is this is a serious study of the grand strategy during a particular moment in the Roman Empire. And it's funded by, or at least original research for it that led to the current volume, was originally funded by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. And I just was going to ask the sort of obvious question, which is how on earth does one get money from the Pentagon to study Roman grand strategy? And why does the Pentagon think that's a good idea? Sure, that's a great question. So I was, of course, very grateful that DOD's Office of Net Assessment was willing to support the earlier iteration of this project that I actually first started working on in 2019, 2020.

So since its creation in 1973 under the Nixon administration, the Office of Net Assessment has played a discreet but invaluable role, I'd argue, at the heart of, Washington's national security ecosystem, championing the virtues of deliberate reflection and classical erudition, even and perhaps especially in the fast-paced world of defense planning and national security. And along the way, it's nurtured generations of historically-minded defense strategists and sponsored myriad detailed monographs and studies of past military campaigns, strategies and concepts of operation. And this study of Tiberian grand strategy in the tradition of ONA research products is multidisciplinary in nature, and it's a work of applied history,

i.e. an explicit attempt to illuminate current challenges and choices by analyzing historical precedents and analogs. And so although it engages in a deep analysis of the vibrant academic literature on the period in question, and it seeks to remain in continuous conversation of our troubled present, applied historians do not believe in perfect analogies, nor do they expect history to mechanically repeat itself, although it may sometimes rhyme. And I think that what's particularly interesting in the case of the Roman Empire under Tiberius is that it's a period when a hegemony managed to husband its resources with a fair degree of prudence, temporarily arresting its process of imperial expansion, and consolidating rather than overreaching. And so that's why we can

discuss this, you know, greater depth later on why Tiberius is also traditionally being upheld as a symbol of prudence and wisdom in Stakecraft. I'm curious to know if your starting point with Tiberius was the same as mine. So I read a little bit of Tastas as an undergraduate, but for the most part, my knowledge of Tiberius, such as it was before reading your book, I guess I read a little bit of Gibbon as well, right? but that's really just the intro. You don't get much.

It was all Robert Graves. Everything I know about Tiberius is somehow downstream of Robert Graves, whether it's the magnificent novels, I Claudius and Claudius the God. If I'm being honest, probably more so, the magnificent BBC. Yeah, totally, totally. Which listeners to the show know that I have a, we'll just say, quirky fascination with a miniseries made in the late 20th century. But there's a magnificent portrayal of Tiberius in that.

series. And then even, you know, I think, I think Graves, the penguin, Soutonius is Graves as well, right? Graves is the translator of Sotonyas. Yes. Yes, exactly. There's a great Gouravidol review essay of that translation, which opens with a harrowing, Ravidal making a harrowing reflection on learning Latin as a schoolboy and translating Soutonius and coming across little fishes in the Latin and not quite knowing what that possibly could refer to. Yes. So all of which is that the serious way of making this point is that I had this mental image of Tiberius as a sybaritic, decrepit tyrant who, whatever you might be

interested in him, you know, whatever subject he brings to mind for you is probably not, you know, masterful statesmanship. And yet, and yet you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you are squeezing some analysis of masterful statesmanship out of this. So did you have to pick through the same Gravesian crud? Tell me about how you kind of came to knowledge of Tiberius. Yes. So, of course, I think I'm, yeah, I'm a huge fan of Robert Graves.

There was a period in my life where I think I reread I Claudius, in particular, at least once every two years in the summer. It's just just a terrific book. Of course, Graves is heavily inspired, not only by Tacitus, but also by Sertonius. I'd say principally by Sartonius. I mean, all of the sort of tasty, palace intrigue and gossip is very much inspired by Sittonius. Perhaps before briefly discussing the sort of structure and content of the book, I could sort of give a brief explanation of what this book is not. So, first of all, and perhaps most importantly, I do not make any claim to be a classicist.

So I'm a historian of strategy who can read some Latin, albeit somewhat slowly and haltingly, but I can't read ancient Greek. even though sometimes I wish that I'd chosen that instead of German as my third language, given how thankfully little I've ever had to use my atrocious German. So I therefore relied heavily in all humility throughout this lengthy research process on the rigorous work that classicists have produced on the period in question. And I'd add in passing that I wish more of my fellow scholars and commentators in strategic studies actually read the work that folks such as Neville Morley, Susan Matten, Clifford Ando, Craig Champion, Anna Cornwell, many, many other trained classes are produced in addition, of course,

to the actual primary sources. And second, this is not a traditional biography. So rather the biographical focus is intended to serve primarily as a prism through which to engage in a foreign nuanced examination of the early Roman principles, strategies for imperial control and privacy preservation. So why Tiberius, to get to your question, who ruled from 14 to 37 AD? Well, for a number of reasons, I'd say. The first being that Rome's second emperor is an endlessly fascinating and fundamentally

an ambiguous figure, who has confounded generations of strategic thinkers and students of statecraft. And for good reason, certain elements of his character, or let's say the evolution or devolution of his character, however you want to frame it, have always defied, comprehension. So contrasts have been repeatedly drawn between the relative tranquility and moderation of life across the empire under his reign and the alleged, and I specify alleged, grotesque depravity of the reclusive monarch's private activities on Capri during the second half of his reign, which, as you mentioned, from Sotonius to I. Claudius, many of your listeners will probably also be familiar with. And Chronicles of Ancient Rome have historically struggled to

reconcile Tiberius' apparent reluctance to rule and early deference for Republican norms with the dark blossoming of a viciously paranoid brand of tyranny in the later years of his life. But perhaps most importantly, for many writers and political philosophers, Tiberius has come to represent something of a curious archetype. So that particular breed of authoritarian and misanthropic leader, who, despite his moral shortcomings and tendency towards tyranny, also demonstrates a surprising degree of temperance and competence in the conduct of foreign policy. So for many thinkers, from Alexander Pushkin to Montescu, to the great Nobel Prize-winning historian Fyodor Mobson, who famously drew parallels between Tiberius and Frederick the Great. It was clear that one of

Rome's most overlooked and unpopular emperors was also one of its most capable, at least with regard to the formulation of grand strategy and foreign policy. So under Tiberius, the administrative appratus of the Principates, that is the early Roman Empire, were strengthened, and the parlous state of the empire's economy, which had been weakened by decades of profligacy, predatory usury practices, and heightened military expenditure was remedied. He arrested the process of imperial expansion into Germany, or Gomannia, which had previously resulted in disaster with the Battle of the Tutuberg Forest in AD9, when free entire legions were brutally annihilated by Gamarnian tribesmen. And content with solidifying control over the empire's existing territory, he sought wherever possible

to preserve Rome's dominance through the exercise of subtle diplomacy and military pressure rather than direct invasion and annexation. And mindful of the ever-looming possibility of provincial unrest, he sought to maintain stability through a policy of fiscal moderation. So he famously reminded some of his more rapacious governors that, I quote, it was the role of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not flay it. And there were no major battles that ended in calamity during Tiberius' reign. So no legions bled their last on Parfayas' sands or vanished into dark, rain-lashed Germanian forests.

No sacred standards were captured and soiled by barbarian hands. But at the same time, he did prove powerless to prevent the eruption of certain large-scale uprisings, whether in Gaul or in North Africa. He remained deeply unpopular, and he was subsequently accused by, by many Roman historians of weakness or negligence in the defense of their imperium's international credibility and interests. So it's this aspect of the longstanding historiographical debate

surrounding Tiberius's reign that interested me the most as a historian of strategy, and especially as someone who's done a fair amount of work on early modern European strategic thought. Because this interpretation and reading of Tiberius as the symbol of prudence and wisdom in state craft first becomes really prevalent in the late, Renaissance and early Baroque periods, largely through the growth of the so-called Tacitian traditional

movement in places such as France, Spain, and Jacobian England, a period when European rulers and their advisors were completely and utterly obsessed with the dark wit, penetrating psychological insights, and epigrammatic wisdom of Tacitus, who devotes much of the surviving sections of his annals to an in-depth examination of Tiberius's rule. In fact, more than half of what survives of the analysis, basically focused on Tiberius' rule. And at the moment, I'm writing a book on Sudi Rishulu and Mazurin. As you mentioned at the beginning of the show, I've already been on the show to discuss those free French chief ministers. And it was actually over the course of that multi-year project that I first came into contact with this facet of the

Tiberian historiographical legend, let's say. And that naturally spurred me to want to plunge down that rabbit hole and investigate the matter further. Now, of course, there's another very important and much darker side, the Tiberian legend, if you will, and that's the legend of Tiberius, the despot, a blood so psychologically tortured, sort of all tyrant in the vein of Xenophon's hiero Syracuse, increasingly consumed with bitterness and paranoia, and an entire book could be written about that aspect of Tiberius and what it teaches us about the sort of self-perpetuating and corrupting nature of authoritarianism. And indeed, much has been Russian,

but that's not the prime focus of this study. So not to be too cute, but to be a little cute and oversimplify, you've written a book about an authoritarian leader of a great power who settles and retrenches from military conflict with non-pure adversaries while pursuing detente with the remaining great power, pure adversary to Rome and suggest that there are parallels to the present day? Yes, I guess that's a minute.

The thing is, yes, so the money is important to note that, so the book is basically divided into two sections, and the opening section, well, the first major section, let's say, is largely devoted to Augustus's rule. British, because Tiberius actually only exceeded to the throne very late by Roman standards. So he was 55, so by Roman standards, already an old man when he came to the throne. And the bulk of his life and career was spent serving as a general and probably one of Rome's most effective generals across the span of the Augustan Empire, from his campaigns with his

younger brother in the Alps to Pannonia, which corresponds more or less to. today's Croatia and Hungary, to Comania. So a lot of the book is actually focused on Roman strategy and statecraft during the Augustan period. And then the second part of the book focuses on Tiberius's rule and also on the debates within Rome's strategic commentariat, let's say, for want to a better word. So the Roman historians and chroniclers who are either contemporaries of Tiberius or were writing in some cases in the cases of Tiberius, Acidus and Svetonius, six to seven decades following his reign, or in the case of Cassius Di, he's actually writing at the beginning of the third century. So considerably later, debating the

merits and drawbacks of his more prudent approach to statecraft, let's say. So I viewed that in a way, not necessarily as providing a blueprint for American strategy, but I did think that the very vivid and often quite granular debates within Roman strategic circles about various grand strategic issues, whether it comes to right-sizing force levels, adjudicating in between different strategic theaters, the merits of pursuing a more forward-leading

or defensive grand strategy, etc., etc., without necessarily pronouncing categorically on the merits of Tiberius's approach, I thought that encapsulating that debate for a modern audience would be useful in and of itself. Well, let's push on that then. And maybe we can start, again, in my policy here of oversimplifying, because there's a lot to work with here.

But if we take the foreign policy challenges in two big buckets, one being, you know, the problem represented by Germany, which is to say the problem represented by tribal confederations, rebellions along the frontier, you know, problems that stem from your own military deployments along that frontier in terms of mutinies that happened in the legions, the problems of the management of the frontiers, tier and on the other side of the frontier, there are non-pure competitors.

This is a space in which Augustus was extremely aggressive, right? And Tiberius, Marx takes a different path. Talk us through that. Talk us through Augustus' competitiveness or rather aggressiveness and its fruits, bitter or otherwise. And Tiberius' decision to change it. And then what is the objection in the Roman strategic commentary yet? And then we'll do that, and then I want to do Parthia in the pure competition later as well.

Sure. So for the first few decades of Augustus's reign, and he ruled for a very long time, so he ruled for over four decades, the Roman Empire seemed to be sort of engaged in a process of almost euphoric expansionism, much of that being driven by legions under Tiberius' command. So the annexation of the remaining alpine regions that were not under Roman control, which allowed Rome to establish clearer connections in between its territories in Gaul and its territories, let's say, in southeastern Europe, a series of campaigns deep into Gomagna. And for a while, it almost looked as though the Roman Empire might be able to reach all the way up to the Alp instead of the Rhine. And there was even a moment in time when it would appear, although this is debated amongst classicists, but it would appear that Augustus was contemplating a full-scale invasion of Great Britain.

So Caesar had made a sort of abortive foray into Great Britain before withdrawing. At the back of their heads, there was always the idea that maybe this would be another territory worth absorbing into the Roman imperial, but it was only under Claudius that England was finally absorbed into the Roman Empire. The real watershed moment, I would argue, is the Battle of Tutaberg Forest in 89, when free Roman legions were famously drawn into a trap by an ally, actually, an erstwhile ally of an auxiliary commander called Arminius, who was a nobleman of, from the Cheruski tribe, who basically yored these free Roman legions and their accompanying baggage train and auxiliary forces deep into the Gabanian forest, into a trap where they were annihilated.

And it was an absolute disaster. And it had a huge psychological impact, both on Augustus and on Rome's general sense of confidence or collective psychology, let's say. It's impossible for me to talk about this incident without hearing Brian Blessed's voice in my mind screaming, I mean, where are my equals? From my qualius, incredibly hammy performance is Augustus.

Yes, yes, but he's probably drawing from an equally hamy section of Sotonyas, where he describes how Augustus was so distraught that he, you know, he sort of stumbled around this palace on the Panotine, ill-shaven, banging his head, banging his head against the walls and shouting out, where are my Vigens? Where are my legions? So, anyway, subsequent to that event, Augustus, reportedly before passing away instructed Tiberius to maintain the boundaries of the

Imperium within their current form. So some historians, such as Cassius Dyer, for example, have said that this was in the form of a memorandum, which unfortunately has been lost to us. If ever we found it, it would sort of be the Roman equivalent of NSC 68 in terms of a grand strategic document. Others have suggested that this advice was passed on in a more informal fashion. So, in fact, Tiberius would argue that he was merely respecting Augustus' last wishes. And then you outline in the book a series of objections that Roman writers raise about the policy that Tiberius follows in this Northern European zone, this trans frontier zone, of retrenchment, that it, you know, I'll let you go into detail, but that it damaged to deterrence.

It allowed for the possibility of, you know, less organized groups to become more organized because they had the space in time to do so. You sort of, you sort of strapped your chronological account with the end of Tiberius's reign. So it's hard to, for those of us who are not immersed in the details, evaluate to what extent these guys had a point and to what extent they were, they were grousing. But speak to these objections, if you will, and, you know, tell us, what substance, if any, they had? Yes. Well, what I found quite interesting about them is that these commentators are often

riven with a certain number of inner contradictions. That might remind some of debates that we would have in Washington, D.C. today when it comes to foreign policy and grand strategy. So I describe how there are sort of inherent tensions in Rome's view of its place in the world or in its vision of the future of its hegemon. power. So on the one hand, there is this urge to consolidate and to not over-extend. And there are certain cautionary tales in the form of traumatic defeats. So there's loss of Cressus' legions in Parfay and 53 BC, which is a sort of grand cautionary tale of overextension on the eastern front.

And then you have the Battle of Tutuberg Forest in 89, which is sort of the grand cautionary tale of over-expansionation on the northwestern front. At the same time, there is this nostalgia for the sort of helicon era, the Punic Wars, other great periods in Roman history, when the Romans were facing down grand strategic competitors, existential threats. And Tacitus, when he begins writing his and ours, he actually complains about the uneventful nature of the histories that he's describing. In some ways, it's quite darkly comic. He sort of apologizes in advance saying, look, I'm sorry.

you know, under Tiberius's reign, there really wasn't that much going on. So, you know, maybe it made for somewhat prudent foreign policy, but it doesn't make for very exciting history. And throughout a lot of these commentaries from subsequent generations of historians, so Florist, for example, who's the second century A.D. historian, there's this almost sort of schizoid attitude in between on the one hand saying, you know, we really should be subjecting the Parthians. And we really should be extending further east and, you know, and for too long now, these insolent oriental foreigners have refused to fully respect, you know, the might and majesty of the Roman Empire, etc., and they need to be taught a lesson. And on the other hand, you'll have them occasionally arguing,

oh, well, the parts of the world that we don't fully dominate, they're not worth dominating anyway, because they wouldn't bring us much in terms of revenue. They're inhabited by these savages, you know, who don't even understand the meaning of peace, who, drink mead instead of wine, you know, who live under gray and overcast skies and horrible climates, why would we seek to dominate those regions anyway? So often within the same historiographical commentary, you'll find both critiques of over-expansion and a desire to further expand Rome's imperial rule. Yeah, that apology for, you know, sorry that the, you know, this is an uneventful history of foreign policy.

It's a bit like if you're writing a history of American foreign policy in the 90s. Yeah. I don't want to overdo it. It's not, I mean, the analogy doesn't hold in a variety of ways. Yes. No, no, no. I think that's a very good analogy, actually. I mean, we all, you know, look back on the 90s as being a pretty great period,

now in American history. At the same time, would I want to spend a lot of my professional life doing a strategic history of the 1990? I don't think so. Yeah. Talk a bit, if you would, about the Roman practice of using proxies. I mean, we talk about in terms of auxiliary military forces,

but I mean in the first place, political entities on the Roman perimeter as a tool of foreign policy. And we can talk about this in the German context. We can also, you know, pivot to Asia and talk about Parthia, where you describe, you know, the Romans is maintaining this shatter zone statelets in between themselves

and really at this point, in Roman history, the only, the only real competition, which is the Parthian Empire. It's a fascinating, it's always been a fascinating topic to me. I first sort of started thinking about it because of I've ever looked back in his book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which, you know, when I read that years and years ago, it was the first book, it was the first book that actually helped me understand the structures of American primacy. I mean, obviously huge differences between Roman practice and American, but there are

also parallels that it's a bit like when you. when you study a foreign language for the first time, seriously, you don't really understand English grammar until you're stumbling your way through, you know, Greek grammar or something like that. And Lovac makes a big deal out of, you know, the stages, I don't know if you accept his scheme, but the stages of, or the structural evolution of imperial practice for Rome, which begins as sort of a constant, you know, ballet of, of, you know,

diplomatic dealings with these proxies and over. time becomes increasingly a story of annexation and hard frontiers, et cetera. Just, just, you know, why did Rome tend to pursue this policy? How did it work? You spent a lot of time in the book talking about Armenia as a critical state in between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire and how Armenian politics was much on the mind of Augustus and Tiberius. Just talk to us about this issue. Sure. Well, I think that there are, so there are two or three separate things. So one aspect of Roman military dominance and force structure that I think has historically been underestimated, including, I would argue, of in the community of classists, and as only in relatively

recent years, been gaining sufficient levels of attention, is the importance of the role played by auxiliary forces, including during the early principle. So auxiliaries were non-citizens soldiers who formed an integral and hugely important part of Rome's force design. So it's estimated that there were as many auxiliary forces, if not more, as there were Roman legionaries. So a Roman legion was usually constituted of about 5,000 men, and it was a self-sufficient force largely composed of heavy infantry, which is where the Romans had traditionally excelled. There might be about 120, cavalry within a legion, but they usually played the role of scouts. It was a very, very heavily infantry-dominated force with the sort of standardized legionary, equipped with armor,

the heavy pylum, gladius, the stutum, you know, the iconic rectangular shields that you see in most representations of early imperial rome, et cetera, et cetera. But the auxiliaries played an invaluable role not only by supplementing the legions, but also by providing more specialized troop categories. Whereas in the form of cavalry, so most, the vast majority of Roman cavalry, growing the early prince but was composed of auxiliary forces. And actually auxiliary cavalry cavalry could be better paid

than an average Roman legionary. Auxiliary infantry were usually paid about four-fifths of a Roman legionary. Arches, slingers, for example, were usually auxiliary forces. And they were formed into cohort size. structures. So about 500 men, smaller military formations that could sort of be bolted on to allegiance. So yes, the role of auxiliaries was absolutely fundamental. And it's only in relatively

recent years that you're actually starting to see detailed works of in-depth scholarship by military historians on the roles played by auxiliaries. And it's absolutely fascinating because it also reveals the extent to which Rome was a vast and cosmopolitan empire. You end up at the end of the first century AD, you end up with North African cavalrymen serving along the border of Scotland, or with Portuguese auxiliaries learning to ride camels and serving in Egypt. The role of auxiliaries was absolutely fundamental, and that also came with certain risks, you know, as we can discuss as well later. And then there was also the role of client kings, buffer states, that played an especially critical role, as you mentioned, to Rome's

East. These client kings and their military forces were nominally autonomous, but occasionally they were absorbed into Roman force structure. So, for example, Herod's forces, Herod that we all know from the New Testament, subsequent to his death, his armies were basically absorbed as an auxiliary unit into the Roman military. So one of the reasons behind the durability and cost-effectiveness of Roman power and hegemony was precisely its ability to subcontract in many ways, key aspects of its security, either to auxiliary forces or to Klein kings and allies. And if I recall the Lodbakian argument, this was actually cheaper and better than hard frontiers, you know, with, you know, the equivalence of walls and a lot of four deployed

legions, which ultimately become more taxing. I mean, in the literal financial sense, but in other ways as well. But, of course, it requires a great deal of diplomatic agility. Absolutely. And the real statesmanship to manage a system. So in some ways, also, the Romans didn't have that much choice, largely because from the late Republic onwards, they had more and more difficulty recruiting Roman citizens who are willing to sign up for a life of military service.

So from the time of Augustus onwards, you start to see. that the recruitment patterns, the Roman legions, start to move away from the Italian peninsula. First of all, they sort of move up to northern Italy, and then into Gaul and Spain and elsewhere. And by Tiberius' time, the only unit that Italian Roman citizens were really interested in joining with the Praetorians who were stationed within Italy, largely within Rome by the time of Tiberius, and were paid three times more than the... than the average legionary and also retired after 16 years instead of 25. So they had much more advantageous service conditions.

So the reliance on auxiliaries was also a response to recruitment challenges that actually only grow over time. So by the time at the 4th and 5th century, it's increasingly difficult to get people to sign up for life of service. Another awkward parallel perhaps to a present day where we have a massive recruiting crisis. Talk about the evolution of, of, you know, call it what you like,

defense policy, military practice. We talked about a little bit, but, you know, the, you talk in the book about evolution and force structure to meet new threats here in the first century AD. How does that work? What role does Tiberius play in that? He is first and foremost a soldier and a fuel commander and has a kind of brilliant career as that,

that, that I don't think there's really any serious disagreement about that, right? There's also complexities about his career as emperor, But as a field commander, he's distinguished. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so even the most hostile sources towards Tiberius will grudgingly recognize that he was a superlative military commander. Much is made of his willingness to endure hardship and discipline alongside his troops, his care for the wounded, his willingness to sleep on the ground rather than an offensive tent,

his willingness to share his physicians and his bath, even with his mud cake legionaries, his willingness to lead from the front, then also his sort of old-fashioned severity, which for a lot of Roman writers reminded them of the sort of granite-faced generals of the old Roman Republic. It is noted that he was willing to pursue military strategies that perhaps lacked daring, do, or glamour, but that could be brutally effective. So, for example, during the Pannonian Revolt, which was a massive revolt in an area stretching from, let's say, the Balkans to Croatia, and that necessitated the deployment of 10 legions during Augustus' reigns. This was from 6 to 9 AD. Tiberius was entrusted of overall command, and much is made of his

willingness to gradually wear down the numerically superior Pannonians through basically a Fabio, campaign of attrition. And of his willingness to withstand criticism, let's say, from other more ambitious or, well, one might say, vain, glorious commanders in favor of this very, very sort of deliberate and prudent strategy of gradually whittling them down. So yes, he's recognized as being a very effective commander. He also seems to have been quite popular among his troops. So one of the best sources we have from Tiberius's reign is written by someone called Velaus, who actually served. under Tiberius. And in the past, he was sometimes dismissed a little bit too hastily as being too biased to source and as being cloyingly sycophantic. And there are sycophantic

aspects to his history. But at the same time, it does provide a very useful perspective of someone who actually knew and served under Tiberius, whereas some of the more hostile sources that we have, Tessus and Svetonius. I mean, they're writing several decades later. So, yeah, in terms of his overall military approach, he was recognized as being a brutally effective commander. So he's downstream. I mean, the disaster in Germany happens during his lifetime and while he's active in his career. The disaster against Parthia precedes him substantially, right? That's the middle of the first century BC.

Yes, so the Battle of Carrier is 53 BC. but then during the period of civil war in between Mark Antony and Augustus, Mark Anthony launched several largely abortive campaigns into Parfia. Yes, so that was that legacy of humiliation as well. My question is, you know, how does the Roman,

in addition to perhaps increasing reliance on auxiliaries, how does the Roman military adapt structurally during the period that you're writing about? So you don't see a huge amount of adaptation in terms of force structure and force design during the period that I'm examining more specifically. But later on, about 100 years later, you do see a fair amount of changes. And what's interesting is that the armies of the early Roman Republic were more phalanx-oriented, let's say. And then that formation over the centuries was gradually phased out in. favor of the legionary, who was equipped with a heavy throwing spear and a short sword.

What we begin to see later on along the eastern front is, first of all, a much greater reliance on auxiliaries in the form of mounted arches, et cetera, to counteract the heavily cavalry-dominated Parthian core structure, and also a reversion to phalanx-type formations of in the Roman military. So you see Roman legions begin to re-adopt frusting spear. c, et cetera, et cetera, that are more conducive to countering heavy cavalry charges, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that's what I was going to ask you is what is going on in the east that seems to demand that?

Yes. Well, what's going on in the east is a very different form of warfare being practiced by the Parthians. So during the Battle of Karai, for example, the Parthian force was 90% mounted. And a large portion of it was composed of mounted arches. and the Parthian commander Serenas, he also brought with him what one could call a mobile missile train. So a huge amount of ammunition that were, you know, carry that were transported alongside his forces. And which also flummoxed the Romans, because in the past, when they had been facing mounted cavalry or cavalry archers, they would basically absorb the ammunition.

They would perhaps, you know, pulse out their wings of cavalry, usually auxiliary cavalry. the Battle of Karai, they were Gallic cavalry. And then once, you know, the enemy force had used up all its ammunition and the cavalry had been engaged by their own cavalry, then the Roman legions would advance and grind them down into submission. In this case, for a whole variety of reasons, that is not what happened. And so they found themselves in a very difficult position. In terms of military adaptation along the Gomanian border, it wasn't so much in terms of equipment and weaponry and more in terms of not allowing themselves to get lured into unfavorable terrain again, where, you know, the legions would not be able to draw on their comparative advantages

in terms of drill, formation, etc., etc. If the massacre of the Tutuberg Forest happened, it was in large part because they had allowed themselves to be lured into deeply unfavorable and heavily forested terrain, which largely negated their traditional sources of advantage and pitch battle. Let's finish with Parthia. And there's just a very big picture question, which is, you know, Roman strategic history is a, is a, is a story of the defeat of major rivals and the consolidation of hegemony, of empire around the Mediterranean, first Macedon, then Carthage. And it's, it's Parthia that's left. It's the old, it's the old Persian complex with the

capital. Is it near Beth, is it in the Euphrates or the Tigris? Wherever the, is it Sotestphan? Am I, am I? Yes. Yes. Which more or less corresponds to present-day Baghdad. Yeah. Yeah. So a Mesopotamian, Persian kind of political complex. Why the decision to stop? Why, why why does Rome not in the end pursue full hegemony in the East as well. I described, as you know, sort of cutely, Tiberius is pursuing a policy of detente with with the Parthians. You know, what, if you wouldn't mind, in somewhat more detail, what was the policy? How did he deal with the Parthians? I think it can best be described as a cold war rather than a policy of detente because the Romans and especially Tiberius are

constantly interfering in Parthian domestic and aristocratic politics. And Tiberius is particularly good at that. So he sponsors uprisings, for example, against Artabanus II, a Parfyan ruler who is trying, who is maneuvering to put one of his sons on the Armenian throne. And this is actually a constant pattern in Roman and Parfian interactions whereby exiled Parfian nobles will end up spending a considerable amount of time in Rome being cultivated by Rome. And then afterwards, you know, were sent back to Parfia to ferment discord and weaken that powers internal political coherence. And I'd say that the major advantage that Rome wielded over Parfia is that Parfia had no formal standing army. So its system of military mobilization could be more aptly compared to that of early

medieval Europe. So leading nobles would engage in levees. And so they could have mass considerable amounts of forces, but only for relatively short periods of time, whereby the fact that Rome had a standing army meant that it was much more able to engage in the kind of protracted wars of attrition that are critical to great power success. The reason why Rome decided not to try and absorb Puffin territories is that I think that they realize that many such attempt to, you know, to overextend in that direction might be met with disaster. And, that it was better to sort of reach a sort of tenuous division of spheres of influence. There are some Roman historians who even referred to this as division in orbit.

It's a division of the world with the Parfiance to the east, as long as Rome could preserve a modicum of control over this extended buffer zone of territories stretching from Armenia to present-day Turkey. There was a period under Trajan when Rome did actually conquer Catezophon, the Pauphin capital. But Trajan's successor, Hadrian, decided to withdraw from those conquered territories, because I think that he realized that it just wasn't worth the cost. Scander Raymond, author of Iron Imperator, Roman Grand Strategy under Tiberius. Fascinating to talk with you as always, even if the analogies aren't perfect and the lessons aren't Pat, but very valuable to think through

nevertheless. Thank you so much for making the time. Thanks so much for having me. This is a nebulous media production find us wherever you get your podcasts