The Ancients - 10 Key Roman Emperors

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Love them or loathe them, the Roman emperors were some of the most influential figures in history. In this episode Barry Strauss, Professor of History and Classics at Cornell University, talks through ten of the most important - starting with Augustus and ending at Constantine. Barry’s book, Ten Caesars, is out now. He is also the host of the podcast ANTIQUITAS: https://barrystrauss.com/podcast/

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, it's a good old top 10 Roman emperors podcast. We're looking at 10 of the most significant Roman emperors from antiquity. And joining me to talk through this list of emperors,

I was delighted to get on the show Barry Strauss from Cornell University in the USA. Barry, he has written books varying from the Battle of Salamis to the death of Caesar to Spartacus. And he's also more recently written a book about these 10 key Roman emperors. This, folks, was a great chat. We have stuff varying from Augustus to the death of Constantine, from dogs slurping in the background, to me slightly, rather embarrassingly, saying cue the music. So without further ado, strap yourselves in for more than an hour's chat on Roman Emperors. Here's Barry. hat on Roman emperors. Here's Barry. Barry, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're welcome, Tristan. It's great to be here.

Now, this is a massive topic, a book dedicated to some of the most influential figures in history. I think that's true, yeah. So what drove you to these 10 specific Roman emperors? Well, I got an assignment to write a book on Roman emperors, and that's pretty open-ended. It could be any emperors that I wanted. And when I thought about it, I felt that living in the early 21st century, the big question was, how do societies deal with change? And in particular, how do they deal with multi-ethnic, multicultural, diverse societies? And how can they, if they do, succeed in keeping individual liberty? So that allowed me to narrow it a bit. And I saw the story, the beginning and an end.

I decided to start with Augustus rather than with Julius Caesar. Suetonius and his famous 12 Caesars, of course, starts with Julius Caesar. But I really do think that Julius Caesar is the last figure of the Roman Republic. And it's Augustus who really is the first figure of the empire. And then I decided to end with Constantine. I could have gone further to Justinian even, or the fall of the Roman empire in the west, but I really felt that Constantine is the key figure who resets the empire, if you will, who refounds it as a Christian empire and one looking ever more to the east. That also allowed me to have Hadrian as the central figure

in between. He's almost chronologically equidistant between Augustus and Constantine. And he is a very interesting character because he also looks eastward, though in a different kind of way than Constantine. He flirts with a new religion, though a very different one than Christianity. And he's also a key figure in turning the empire inward. Not the first emperor to say, we're not going to expand anymore. But it's as if with Hadrian, the emperor said, I really mean it. We're really not going to expand anymore. So I like that. The other figures, well, the one emperor, so my informal survey of everyone I met showed me that the one Roman emperor that everybody's heard of is Nero.

So I thought, got to do Nero. With that in mind, given the chronological parameters I'd set, I wanted to have a certain representation of some from the first century of our era, some from the second and some from the third. Some were more important than others. I don't think Marcus Aurelius in the end was all that great an emperor, but he's such a big cultural figure through his meditations and through the influence of Stoicism that I really wanted to include him. I've always had a weakness for Diocletian. He's a really bad guy, but he's such an interesting guy and such, I think, such an influential one. Vespasian also, I think, is really a fascinating character, is the first non-Roman noble to become an emperor. Some of the others I had to persuade

myself to do. I didn't want to like Trajan, but I did in the end. And I thought that Trajan was a fascinating and kind of tragic character, an example of imperial overstretch, if there ever was one. Tiberius, he is the know-it-all smarty pants who's too good at school, and we all kind of hate him. But I think he is just a key figure in making the dynasty work. Augustus is the founder. But it's often the case that founders

aren't very good at continuing the legacy, and Tiberius did precisely that. I also think he's the absolute key figure in ending, the first one to end Roman expansion. That leaves Septimius Severus, also kind of a fascinating character from the point of view of the multi-ethnic, multicultural empire. It's not just that he comes from Africa and conceivably is of partly of African descent, though we can't be sure about that. It's that he marries a Syrian and creates this African-Syrian dynasty. And also he is a lawyer by trade, but he becomes a soldier and he really militarizes the empire in ugly, ugly ways. Gibbon thought that he was the single most important person responsible for the fall of Rome. I don't buy that, but I do think he was a tremendously significant and somewhat overlooked figure.

So I think that's all 10 of them. It's fascinating when you dive deeper into these characters, as you say, were hugely influential. Of course, ancient history and history in general. Yeah. And you mentioned Augustus there. Let's start with Augustus. When he inherits this, well, I say inherits this culturally diverse empire, he initiates a time of radical change. Yes, he does initiate radical change.

a time of radical change. Yes, he does initiate radical change. And I think he's one of the most remarkable strategists in history, a Machiavellian before Machiavelli. Though interestingly, Machiavelli has next to nothing to say about Augustus. Sorry if you hear my dog slurping in the background. But he's the person who copes with change. He has the advantage of having been Julius Caesar's great nephew and having sat at Caesar's knee, probably literally when he was young, and getting an idea of how you cope with change.

I think Caesar was a genius at understanding change and the need to accept and adapt to change. He could only go so far. Augustus takes it many steps further. He's very patient, very brilliant, very cunning, utterly ruthless. And he also has the advantage, probably in semen at the time, of having to fight very hard for nearly 20 years before he finally consolidated his control of the empire. That allowed him, grotesque as it is to say, it allowed him to kill most of his enemies and to have something of a clean slate.

It also allowed him the luxury to do something that Machiavelli talks about when you're starting new orders and new ways of government. It's really advantageous to be tough and brutal at the start, and then to switch into kinder, gentler mode, which Augustus does. Also, a genius at propaganda, one of the greatest propagandists in the history of the world. I mean, his very name, you can't even talk about him without buying into his propaganda. I mean, imagine if we were never able to say the name Mussolini, for instance, but could only refer to him as Duce. That's what we do with Augustus, though we don't even know it. It's not the guy's name.

He's born Gaius Octavius, which is just like an ordinary name. It's like Joe Smith or something. On his paternal side, he's not a Roman noble. He comes from an upper middle class family from a town about 25 miles south of Rome. And the Roman nobles like Antony just mercilessly attack him for this. But by the time he's 18, he becomes Gaius Julius Caesar, having been illegally adopted by Caesar in his will, an posthumous adoption, not legal according to Roman law, but he manages to get it through. Anyhow, then he becomes Gaius Julius Caesar Imperator, the victorious general.

Then by the time he's 20 or 21, maybe, he becomes Gaius Julius Caesar Imperator, Dewey Phileas, the son of a god. And he's now the son of a god. And then finally, after defeating all of his enemies, he becomes in effect the reverend, a loose translation of Augustus. But you can't refer to the guy without saying he's the reverend. And who is he? Everyone's forgotten who he is at this point. He's just some icon floating above the Commonwealthwealth and this process for augustus to get to where he does he has to be so careful in creating these changes he does and from what you're saying it sounds like he's very long-term as it were long-term strategy it's a long-term strategy he can't do anything quickly because he has to fight every inch of the way. But because he succeeds, the advantage that he has is that he has time, time to think things through.

He also has the advantage of being young. The guy is one of the top three politicians in Rome at the age of 18. Now, it's true that in the ancient world, sometimes people started young because they didn't have as much time as we did. But he lives to be in his 70s. That's a long, long time to rule. And also, one of the things that marks his family and legacy of Julius Caesar is the Caesars really think outside the box. And he does. I think he's learned from Julius Caesar to embrace provincials and make them part of his team. It's one of the things that Caesar does that makes the nobles unhappy. He really understands that Rome cannot be governed by the old elite.

He marries into the old elite. He marries Livia, who comes from two of the most noble families in Rome. And he wants to use that, but he fully understands that he has to use new provincials and he has to widen the charm circle of Roman politics, mostly to wealthy Italians. So it's not so much outside of Italy, but starting to do that. Nobody before Augustus, the possible exception of Caesar or maybe Pompey, had spent so much of his career outside Rome. The guy is traveling all the time, taking the roadshow to the provinces and taking his wife with him, which is also unheard of. And he's married to a very shrewd political woman. And as you know, women were very much a part of the story of power politics in Rome. So I think his ability to see beyond accepted boundaries is just such a great thing.

It's so important for a strategist in a time of revolution to figure out what you can keep and what you can change is essential. And he's got that. He's also, as I said, shrewd, cunning, political to the bone in what he does. And he does make mistakes. He's only human, but he gets an awful lot of things right. You mentioned just then Augustus's wife and also Livia. Yes. Which brings me to the next question is that how significant is the role of imperial women alongside Augustus in creating this strong brand. It's massively important. You know,

in the Roman elite, in the nobility, women had always played a very big role, sometimes unsung because they can't hold political office, but behind the scenes, they're immensely important. Brutus' mother, for instance, Servilia, who was also Julius Caesar's ex-mistress, is a great example. And we see it in Cicero's letters that she is playing a major role behind the scenes. And Livia is another example of a shrewd political woman who is giving her husband very good advice. We know that she was an advisor to him. And she also is a power behind the scenes, advancing the fortunes of her two sons by her first marriage. She was already married, in fact, pregnant with her second

son when Augustus divorced his wife, the day his wife gave birth to a daughter, his earlier wife. And then he married Livia, and then she gave birth to her second son. As in the famous Robert Gray's novels and the Immortal TV series, some people said that Livia was a poisoner who got rid of Augustus's grandchildren who he wanted to seat him on the throne. I don't think that's true, but she does help her son Tiberius to become his eventual heir.

But she gives Augustus a lot of good advice. And one of the things that Augustus and the later Caesars do is they mobilize women as supporters. It's mostly through religion, through serving as priestesses in the imperial cult. But I think they play a big role. Women have a fair amount of economic power in the Roman world, much more than they ever did in the classical Greek world. And so they have some clout to exercise. So I think they're a big, big part of the story.

And that leads us on to the next Roman emperor, Tiberius, Livia's son from an earlier marriage. With Tiberius, does it feel like he has these huge boots to fill following in the footsteps of Augustus? Yes, certainly. I mean, he's in the footsteps of Augustus, in the shadow of Augustus, and that makes life difficult. But that, I'm afraid, is often the role of the second person in any new administration. In a way, it's the problem of Tim Cook following Steve Jobs at Apple. In American history, it's the problem of John Adams coming after George Washington. You can't possibly fill those shoes, and you're going to disappoint a lot of people. Tiberius, in a sense, made it worse because he was decidedly unheroic.

So his great claim to fame is he's the guy who pulls Germanicus back from Germany and basically says, enough. We have expanded enough. We are a satiated power. Now, he claims he got that from Augustus, but I find that very difficult to believe. I think in all likelihood, this is Tiberius' plan. And it's because he himself is a professional soldier who spent a lot of time fighting on the frontiers in Germany and the former Yugoslavia, and he knows just how difficult it is and how Rome needs breathing space. Well, that makes him very unpopular with a lot of people in Rome, but even more so is the fact that, unlike Augustus, he doesn't start out bashing heads and then gets kind. It's just the opposite. He starts out kind, realizing that the senators are hopeless.

Supposedly, one day he leaves a Senate meeting muttering under his breath, men fit for slavery. And then he gets harsh. Then he gets tyrannical. Then there are treason trials. There are senators executed. So Tiberius says, you know, he leaves Rome. He moves to the island of Capri and he's exercising power through the head of the Praetorian Guard. Augustus had started this bodyguard, this military presence in Rome, but Augustus mostly kept them outside the city. Tiberius moves them to a permanent barracks on the edge of town, which is offensive to a lot of people. And Tiberius almost loses it all because the man he trusts, Sejanus, turns out to be utterly untrustworthy. Though not a Roman noble, he wants to have Tiberius offed and become emperor himself. Luckily for Tiberius, it is a Roman noblewoman, Antonia, ironically the daughter of Mark Antony, who tips him off about the plot.

And he is able to turn the tables and get rid of Sejanus in time and save his power. That's very interesting about Sejanus. I mean, it sounds like Tiberius could, or do the sources make it sound like he could be easily manipulated? could, or do the sources make it sound like he could be easily manipulated? I think that at this point in his life, he was an old guy, and I think he was relatively easily manipulated. Augustus, through most of his career, had excellent advice. I mean, Augustus was a genius at attracting talent and having just the right balance. So his most important advisor is Agrippa, who's a great general. And unlike Sejanus, Agrippa doesn't march, doesn't try to execute Augustus. But Augustus is clearly worried about Agrippa because ultimately he makes him his son-in-law

and realizes that's the only way to keep this guy happy. Tiberius thinks that Sejanus is going to be his Agrippa, but Sejanus is utterly untrustworthy. It's also a disadvantage of living outside of Rome. Augustus does travel a lot, but when he's in Rome, he keeps his finger on the pulse of things. So it's a real problem, and I think the older Tiberius is being manipulated. When he dies, he's not deified by the Senate. And it's a sign of their lack of respect for him and their anger at him. Do you think this portrayal of Tiberius having this lack of respect, do you think it's justified? I mean, you mentioned earlier the military strategy of removing troops from Germania, setting the borders at the Rhine.

But of course, that's in the wake of the Teutoburg Forest disaster in Germany. Right. Now looking back at it, was there actually some sense in actually deciding, right, enough conquest, let's consolidate what we've got? Yes, I think that was the right strategy. I mean, Augustus didn't follow it after Teutoburg. So Augustus' ideology, as proclaimed by Virgil of Aeneid, is empire without end, imperium sine fine. And after the Teutoburg Woods disaster, Augustus says, right, let's revamp, let's recover and go out and reconquer what we've lost. It's Tiberius who says no. Now,

it's true that one of the reasons Tiberius says no is that he's worried about the political threat of Germanicus, who is married to a descendant of Augustus. And Augustus forced Tiberius to adopt Germanicus as his son so that Augustus' flesh and blood would ultimately sit on the throne through one of Germanicus' sons. And Tiberius no doubt resented that and felt threatened by it, as he should have. And some of the sources claim that ultimately it is Tiberius acting through Livia that has Germanicus poisoned. Now, we don't know for sure that Germanicus was poisoned. He might have died of an illness, but it's not implausible that he was poisoned. Still, I think there's excellent strategic reasons to say that Tiberius was right,

that Rome had expanded to its natural boundaries and did not really need to expand further. That would have left Britain out, unfortunately, because the Romans hadn't conquered Britain yet. But that was Tiberius's plan. No matter how strategically sound it might have been, it hasn't treated him well in the sources, has it? No, no, no. Tacitus is our main source for Tiberius and he hates him. Just absolutely hates him. It's a brilliant portrait written in venom,

his portrait of Tiberius. But few of the emperors saw the Senate as their natural ally and a lot of them really angered the Senate. Hadrian's another one. When he died, the Senate didn't want to deify him either. And his successor, Antoninus Pius, through a combination of cajolery and threats, had to finally talk the Senate into doing it. But neither one of them was popular with the Senate.

Well, talking about emperors that aren't popular with the Senate is the next one. Yes. The entertainer. Yes. Emperor Nero. Nero. But although he is such an infamous name nowadays, the start of his reign looked quite hopeful. Yeah. No, he started out well. And, you know, he had excellent advice from Seneca, a philosopher, a super shrewd guy. He was young, but he advised from his mother, Agrippina the Younger, who had secured the throne for him. And he was deeply popular in Rome. paid attention to the need, the welfare of the Roman people, made sure there was a free or cheap food supply, and he put on a lot of entertainment. And he also kept the empire relatively at peace.

So all this was good, but it's a classic case of power going to someone's head. He divorces his wife, the daughter of his predecessor Claudius, and arranges to have her die. He marries a woman who his mother did not approve of, Poppaea Sabina, and he arranges to have his mother assassinated, which is horrifying but true and appalled many in the Roman elite. His own personal life was very out there from the Roman point of view. The fact that he played the lyre and competed, the fact that he raced chariot horses, all of this was highly unacceptable to the Roman elite. But he probably would have survived all that if not for

the great fire. In 64, the summer of 64, destroys a large part of Rome. Nero was slow in rebuilding it. He was said to have played the lyre, singing about the sad fall of Troy as Rome was burning. Hence our saying, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. And he was all too gleeful about the fact that this was an opportunity to rebuild the city of Rome afterwards and to make the centerpiece of it a gigantic new palace for himself called the Golden House, the Domus Aurea. He would invite the common people into the Domus Aurea, but nonetheless, it was highly unappealing. Then he goes on a tour of Greece to win the various athletic contests, all jammed into one year for his sake. Of course, he wins them all. Surprise, surprise. Athletic and cultural contests, poetic contests. And then there's a revolt in Judea, and the Roman elite

has had enough. He's also had to raise taxes. And so they depose him. They force him out of office and to committing suicide. So it does not end well for Nero at all, despite a promising beginning. It's interesting in how we've gone so far, how Augustus, the Senate he filled with his own people, and they're quite happy with Augustus. And then you go to Tiberius, the Senate, And they're quite happy with Augustus. Right. And then you go to Tiberius. The Senate, not that happy with Tiberius.

So they refuse him the deifying honours. And then it ultimately comes to a head with Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudians. Right. With the Senate being the people who actually see about his execution. Yeah. But the Senate has the support of the military. I mean, the Roman emperors could not survive without the military. They really needed their support. And the opposition to Nero has the support of the Roman military. So that is a key part of the story. And the rebellions, the rebellions on the frontiers

in opposition to Nero. So the game is really over for Nero. The Senate in and of itself could not have done it. They could not have deposed the emperor without military support. And that power of the military at this time, does that pave the way for the rise of Vespasian, the next emperor on your list? Yes, Vespasian is a great general and he becomes the emperor by winning a civil war. becomes the emperor by winning a civil war. At the time of Nero's fall, he was in command of the armies putting down the revolt in Judea. And he pauses, but he has his allies fight, lead armies that fight their way into Italy. They win a very bloody battle in northern Italy and then have to fight their way into Rome, another very bloody fight in which Vespasian's brother is murdered by the opposition in Rome. Vespasian's also an insider. He's a political insider.

He spent a lot of time in the court of Nero and even of Caligula before then, and he has a very well-placed mistress. His mistress is a Greek woman named Canis, or Canis, however we want to pronounce it. And she had been the assistant to Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony. So she was very well-placed. And no source says so, but I think it's likely that Vespasian uses the connections that he gets from his mistress to rise to the top. Certainly, by the time he becomes emperor, he's a widower. He can't marry her. She's a freedwoman by then. She had been a slave. Now she's a freedwoman. He can't marry her because a Roman

senator can't marry a former slave, but he lives with her. She's his mistress and she has enormous power. She's the first lady, essentially, of Rome until she dies. She dies before Vespasian, but enormous power. And she builds a villa on the northern edge of Rome, which later on becomes public baths. We have a few remains from that villa. And she has an incredible tombstone, which still survives. It's absolutely gaudy in the way that ex-slaves would make their tombstones. Roman nobles wouldn't do any such survives. It's absolutely gaudy in the way that ex-slaves would make their tombstones. Roman nobles wouldn't do any such thing. It's just quite magnificent. It's in a museum outside Florence. The slave who became a mistress of the Roman emperor? Yeah, the slave who became the first lady of Rome. Wow, I mean, that's fascinating. Once again, it seems to be

this recurring theme of these powerful imperial women behind the scenes. Absolutely, yeah. And with Vespasian, is it unprecedented because he doesn't come from a noble aristocratic background, does he? Not at all. He's a Sabine, so he comes from another Latin people north of Rome. They've been Roman citizens for centuries. of Rome. They've been Roman citizens for centuries. But the way things were in the late Republic, it was almost impossible to rise to the top of the political tree if you hadn't belonged to a noble family. The way that Cicero or Marius rise to the top is considered shocking because they are non-Roman nobles. And no one had been an emperor unless he was partly Roman noble. Augustus was

only half a Roman noble, but he was a Roman noble on his mother's side and adopted into a noble family. Nero was the descendant of Augustus. Vespasian has none of that. And so he has a harder job. He has to prove his legitimacy to the Roman people. So how does he do it? He builds. He rebuilds Rome. He rebrands it as Vespasian land, and in various ways, but the most famous way is the Colosseum. The Colosseum, which was known as the Flavian Amphitheater in ancient times, his family were the Flavians. Vespasian starts building. He dies before it's finished. It's opened by his son Titus, but that's symbolic of his stamp on the landscape of Rome. I'm legitimate. I must be legitimate because look how I've rebuilt Rome. So this creating, as it were, of a strong brand.

Yes. So to cement your dynasty in place. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And you can see similarities between that and Augustus in the dozens. Absolutely, yes. I mean, they look at Augustus as the kind of the model, the role model. That's how you do it. So, if Vespasian, he paves the way for his dynasty, but does he also then, having that soldier background, does his experience pave the way for the rise of the next big soldier, Emperor Trajan? Well, yes, in a way. I mean, Vespasian's older son Titus doesn't last

very long. He dies young in office. His brother Domitian is eventually assassinated because he makes too many enemies in the Senate. But the military was still on Domitian's side. They're not so happy with the coup d'etat. And they allow his successor, Nerva, to stay in office only on the agreement, on the condition that he appoint a military successor. And that one is the commander of the army of Germany, Trajan. And so Trajan becomes emperor.

He's the first Roman emperor to be born outside of Italy. He's born in Spain. He's of Italian descent, descended from Italian colonists, but not particularly Roman in the old sense of the term, and not even an Italian. So this is something new. He's married to a wealthy woman, Platina, who comes from the south of France. So not Italian either. But they're very shrewd politically, very, very shrewd politically. And Vespasian makes friends with not just the army, but also with the Senate and the people. And it's not by accident that the Senate declares him the best princeps, optimus princeps. He doesn't kill any senators. He promises not to kill any senators. He keeps his promise and they're very happy with his rule. And so what role does Plotina

play in this shrewd political relationship? Well, she is an important figure in publicity. When they get to Rome, when Trajan becomes emperor and they make their way to Rome, in publicity, when they get to Rome, when Trajan becomes emperor and they make their way to Rome, she is said to have stood before the palace on the Palatium and said, may I leave this house as humbly as I enter it? So she's an important figure to say to the Romans, we are not going to go overboard. There's not going to be any sort of the imperial decadence that you had under Domitian. We're going to keep things in a good Republican vein. She's also an intellectual, so she surrounds herself with thinkers, particularly Greek thinkers. She has a good

reputation in that sense as well. Trajan is anything but an intellectual. And he looks down on intellectuals. He's something of a populist, only in his cultural attitude. So Plotina is able to, I think, appeal to the cultural elite in a way that her husband cannot. So you mentioned the old-fashioned republic ways. Was there therefore this desire to portray themselves in contrast to the rule of Domitian before them? Yes, they wanted to say Domitian was a tyrant and tyrants, as any Roman could tell you, went overboard in terms of luxury and license and in every way they were undisciplined, whereas Trajan was a soldier in the old Roman vein. We're talking about that, talking about Trajan and his soldier background.

Do you think that his series of conquests, unnecessary series of conquests, or, well, but deliberate expanding of the empire? Well, not every emperor after Tiberius agreed with Tiberius. Claudius, for instance, had expanded into Britain. And that's a long running war because there's a lot of British opposition to Roman conquest. And Domitian had wanted to expand into Germany. He didn't succeed, but he tried. Trajan decides to get rid of the longrunning problem with Dacia. The Romans had long had their eyes on Dacia because it had gold mines. They wanted the gold. And also because the kings of Dacia pushed back against a Roman rule. We're talking about roughly modern Romania. Germany

was not so appealing to the Romans because Germany had forests. They didn't need trees. Romania had gold. So they wanted that. Dacia had gold. And they succeed in conquering it in an exceptionally brutal and even genocidal campaign, reminiscent of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul. Was it necessary? Certainly not. But it was highly profitable for the Romans and financed the famous imperial buildings in Rome. We can still see some of them today that Trajan built. Trajan had also started a welfare program in Rome for Italian children, particularly for the poor and for orphans. So that was helpful for that. Not so much his next military campaign, his attempt to conquer Mesopotamia, roughly Iraq.

This was a vanity campaign. Also, there's a lot of money. There's a lot of wealth. Iraq is one of the wealthier parts of the ancient world. But Trajan is not the last conqueror to get into Iraq, to defeat the armies, to think that he's in charge, only to be faced with a series of uprisings that ultimately destroys the whole thing. And pretty much everything that Trajan had won in Mesopotamia, he loses in Mesopotamia. He wants to go back and retake it, but he dies. He has probably a stroke. His wife and sister are in Anatolia or Syria, rather, I think, waiting for him. They're not on the front lines and they want to bring him back to Rome, but he dies in a small out-of-the-way port on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

And sure, he's been poisoned. Probably not, but he claimed he was poisoned. So it does not end well for him. So financially, he increases the wealth of the empire substantially, but militarily, they're not there for the long-term gains. No, and what he gives with one hand, he takes with the other. He increases the wealth, but the military campaigns, especially in Mesopotamia, are enormously expensive.

So that is a real burden on the empire as well. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park? And were the Dark Ages really all that dark? I'm Dr Kat Jarman.

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Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. So going on from Trajan, the great wealth there, although it cost a lot in the east, in a way, do his conquests fund the constructions, the famous constructions of his successor Hadrian for the complete opposite purpose of cementing the borders?

Well that's an interesting question, how much Trajan's conquest funding Hadrian's building, as opposed to the taxes that Hadrian raises. I don't really know actually the answer to that, that's a good one. I kind of doubt it because Mesopotamian wars were so expensive. But Mesopotamian wars were so expensive. But yes, interesting question how Hadrian paid for those. Certainly there was a building boom in Rome in this period. And Trajan's widow, Plotina, continues to get rich because she owns brick factories that are used for Hadrian's boom, Hadrian's building boom. Oh, so Plotina owns an industry in Rome. It's not in Rome, but it's used for Rome. And amazingly, the foreman of one of her factories is a forewoman,

a freedwoman, a Greek freedwoman. We actually have brick stamps that tell us this. Wow, is that unprecedented for a woman at that time? Do we know? It's not unprecedented. There are others. I can't say it's an everyday event, but there are other examples of women playing managerial roles in Roman industry in this period. I think we tend to underestimate the role of women in Roman life, Roman economic and religious life, to say nothing of home life. It's considerably more substantial than what we see about women in classical Greece, say. So you mentioned the death of Trajan and Trajan's wife Plotina.

Yeah. What role does she have over the choice of Trajan's successor? Yeah, well, it's an amazing story. So Trajan was never all that fond of Hadrian. He looked down on Hadrian as an intellectual, the little Greek he called him. And I think he knew that Hadrian was not in favor of his expansionist policy. But Plotina loved Hadrian. She was an intellectual too. She promoted him. She had him marry Trajan's nearest female relatives, Sabina. Trajan and Plotina did not have children of their

own, and she was always promoting Hadrian. The story goes that Trajan never named Hadrian as his successor, unlike some of the other emperors who did name their successors first. Trajan never named Hadrian. Supposedly on his deathbed, he does name Hadrian as his successor, although some people say that he didn't really do that, that Platina claimed he did it. She signs the document after he dies saying that he named Hadrian as his successor. Some people say that she actually hired an actor to ventriloquize Trajan's voice. He was already dead or beyond the ability to speak to say that he was naming Hadrian. We'll never know. But we do know that there was substantial opposition in Rome to naming Hadrian as a successor because Trajan's friends in the army wanted to continue Trajan's

policy of expansion. Hadrian was dead set against it. So Hadrian moved smartly once he took power. He was in the East too. And he immediately arranged for the assassination of four prominent ex-consuls, four of the most prominent and most distinguished members of the Senate. That's one of the reasons why the Senate hates Hadrian. And it was as if to say, anyone else want to speak up against me?

I didn't think so. So it's a brutal start of his reign. And from there, from that brutal start, what policies does he pursue? Well, he becomes friendly with the Senate after that. But the Senate had been spoiled by Trajan, who was their friend throughout. So he pulls back the Roman armies of the East, and he pursues a policy of frontier defence. He builds a series of frontier fortifications, the most famous of which, of course, is Hadrian's Wall, which we can still see today. But in Germany, he expands the frontier on the Limes. It's not so dramatic because there it was a wooden palisade,

but you can visit parts of the foundations of it that still exist, and some forts have been reconstructed. No emperor since Augustus has spent as much of his reign traveling as Hadrian does. He is peripatetic, constantly traveling around the empire, constantly visiting military bases. We have a wonderful inscription that survives about his visit to a military base in what is now Algeria, about his visit to a military base in what is now Algeria and the exercises that were put on for him. It's as if Hadrian wanted to say, I know I'm not going to expand the empire, but I'm still a soldier. I've been a soldier for all my career. You know, he eats with the men. He goes on marches with the men. He said, I'm going to pay a lot of attention to the military.

We are going to defend Rome. We're just not going to expand. to the military. We are going to defend Rome. We're just not going to expand. Instead, he turns his energies to huge building projects, both in Rome and around the empire, and particularly in the east. He rebuilds the city of Athens. If you go to Athens today, a lot of the ruins that we see come from Hadrian, not from the classical Greeks. He's considered the second founder of Athens after Theseus. He also raises the status of a number of Greeks in the empire, creates Greek-speaking senators. He sees the empire as more of a commonwealth than his predecessors had. So in his eyes, it's very different. I find that fascinating how he was a bigger patron to Athens than he was the city of Rome itself. Well, he was a big patron of the city of Rome, too. But yes, he is a huge patron of Athens.

He is the first of a series of Roman emperors who are great patrons of city building in the east. And for him, it's going to be Athens. That's what he sees as his eastern capital. So following on from Hadrian, it's the time of the adoptive emperors. How does that end up with your next emperor, Marcus Aurelius? So Hadrian wants as a successor to be Marcus Aurelius, who's a young man. He's too young to become emperor when Hadrian dies. So Hadrian appoints a stopgap, an older man named Antoninus. And his idea is that Antoninus will keep the throne warm for a few years until Marcus Aurelius is ready. But in the end, Antoninus lives for,

I think, about 25 years as emperor. And Marcus Aurelius doesn't become emperor until he's about 40. Now, the good news about Antoninus is that he continues Hadrian's policy of peace and prosperity, and many people would say the Roman Empire is at its height under Antoninus. The bad news is he ignores frontier defense. He never leaves Italy. He gives Marcus Aurelius about zero military education, zero travel abroad, and Marcus Aurelius is utterly unprepared for what he faces as emperor. Marcus Aurelius has studied rhetoric and philosophy. He's the most philosophical of the emperors. Hadrian was quite an intellectual emperor as well and very interested in philosophy. Marcus Aurelius even more so. Marcus Aurelius is perfectly poised

to become, if you will, a domestic policy emperor. That's what he wants to do. But instead, he's faced with a series of crises, particularly on the frontier. in the West. And he has to devote most of his time as emperor to dealing with that, on top of which it's in his reign when a new epidemic breaks out in the Roman world, the infamous Antonine Plague. So regarding, as you said, he's the philosopher emperor and his meditations is one of the most famous books of antiquity. But what do you think of Marcus Aurelius as a person? Is he striking in that regard? Oh, yes. I mean, Marcus Aurelius is perhaps the only Roman emperor who seems like a truly good person, you know, a really decent human being and philosophical in many admirable ways. When you read the Meditations, it's hard not to be struck by its nobility. It really is a noble and beautiful work. I don't know about you, I read it when I was an undergraduate, and it really just blew me away then. I've still, I've loved it ever since.

And he really wanted to do right by Rome and by the people of the empire. Another thing that's appealing about him is that it's not totally unprecedented to have a joint reign. Several other emperors have ruled with their sons. But Marcus Aurelius chooses a co-emperor who's not his son, Lucius Verus. Marcus Aurelius marries his daughter to Lucius Verus. But he has this co-emperor. Marcus Aurelius realizes the problems of the empire are too big for any one man. So this is a very appealing humility and realism, I think.

Indeed, because how does he deal with the military issues and the issues of plague? Does he do a good job? No. No. Well, he does an okay job. I mean, he sends Lucius Verus out to deal with the Parthians in the east. Lucius Verus is the figurehead. It's a general, actually, who does the heavy lifting of with the Parthians in the east. Lucius Verus is the figurehead. It's a general, actually, who does the heavy lifting of defeating the Parthians. That general, unfortunately, later on rewards Marcus Aurelius by revolting against him, starting up a rebellion in the east.

And Marcus Aurelius's wife actually colludes with that general, probably because she thinks her husband is dying and she wants to secure the succession for her son. The rebel is beheaded early on in the revolt. That takes the steam out of the revolt, obviously. The incriminating letters are found and Marcus has them burned. He wants to forgive his wife and to move on. He himself, his military career is in the north fighting on the Danube frontier. It is, shall we say, a learning experience for him because he has no military background, but in the end he does pretty well. He decides that he wants to carve out two new provinces north of the Danube, which probably would have been imperial overstretch. And they never happened because he dies on the frontier before his work can be finished and his successor decides to pull back. As far as the so-called plague, it's not a plague, it's a viral epidemic. Many scholars think

it was smallpox. We're not really sure, and it might have been some variant of smallpox. sure, and it might have been some variant of smallpox. It's a very severe one. How severe, it's hard to say. There's a lot of fake news in ancient history, as you well know. A lot of sources saying that whatever they're covering was the worst ever. And modern scholars who know a lot more about epidemiology than I do are really divided as to how serious the plague was. But it was a bad one. Perhaps killed a million people in a population of somewhere between 50 to 70 million, perhaps killed 5 million people. Starts in Mesopotamia, the army brings it back. It ravages all over central Mediterranean and western part of the empire. Very hard in Italy. Lucius Verus dies young, probably of the epidemic. When Marcus Aurelius

dies in 180, it may be because the epidemic has recurred then. We know it does recur then. Very devastating and forces him to rebuild the army, which means he has to buy new soldiers. And the only way that he can do it is to inflate the currency, which he does in a big way to pay for it. So really bad inflationary economic effects on Rome. It sounds like a very mixed reign for Marcus Aurelius, this personally good person, but met with all these problems. What is your personal take then on Marcus Aurelius? Was he one of the great emperors or was he hindered by problems of his time? Can I say both? I think he is a great emperor because of his personal nobility and because of the remarkable legacy of the meditations.

But he is deeply hindered by the problems of his time. I think he does a reasonable job in responding to them. But I have no doubt that others could have done better. They could have won the war more quickly in the north, rather than dragging it on as he did and learning how to do it. He's very noble in how he responds to it. I mean, he moves to the frontier, which is not a fun place to be in those days. And he gives up the flesh pots of Rome and brings his wife with him. Maybe that's one reason she's not so happy with him. She has to live on the frontier as well.

She grew up in the palace as an emperor's daughter. I mean, the other thing that he really messes up in is his succession. He's the last adopted emperor for a while. He arranges for his birth son, Commodus, to succeed him. Not only is that a rare thing to have your son succeed you, but no other emperor had ever been succeeded by a son who was born to the purple. When Vespasian succeeded by Titus and Domitian, they had just been ordinary upper-class Romans before then. They had not been part of the imperial dynasty. Commodus is the first one to be born in the

imperial dynasty. And as you know, it's a disaster. So emperor number eight, Septimius Severus. Yes. Why is he so significant? Well, he's significant, first of all, because of what he represents about the willingness of the Roman elite to let new people in. The first African, North African to become emperor. And he has a wife who comes from the Syrian priestly aristocracy. So he is really dipping deeply into the native elite. And the fact that someone like that could become emperor of Rome is a big change. His becoming emperor involves a great civil war, a bloody one, even worse and longer than the one that brought Vespasian to the throne.

And he fires the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard had all been Italians. He replaces them with men from the Balkans and the Danube regions, who the Romans saw as barbarians. And he increases the shackles of Rome. He creates a legionary garrison on the Appian Way south of Rome. Fabulous place to visit, by the way. Lazio Albano, very few people go to it, but really worth visiting. And makes it clear in a way that had never been before that Rome was a military dictatorship. He also wants to expand the empire. Like Trajan, he's not buying Tiberius's philosophy. So he fights a war in the east and he does create a Roman province in what's now northern Iraq, or the Iraqi-Turkish

border. And he also spends a lot of his reign campaigning in northern England and in southern Scotland. He wants to conquer Scotland. He dies in York, Eboracum, and on his deathbed, he tells his sons, pay the soldiers and don't worry about anyone else. So he's a key figure in the militarization of the empire. So not such a great thing. It's a bad thing for Rome because it's quite useful for the Romans to have the Senate and to have an elite, a civilian elite that buys into the rule, that can sell it into the provinces, because many of them are provincials, that can serve as advice and a sounding board. Once you've got a government that's mostly the military, well, it can be a more efficient

government in some ways, but it loses a lot as well. The plus side about Septimius Severus is that he's an indication that the Romans are really willing to change in order to survive. You know, the Roman Republic fell in a way because the old nobility was not willing to expand. Well, now the Romans say in the form of Septimius Severus, not only are we willing to expand, we're willing to do whatever it takes to survive. If we have to be governed by Africans and Syrians, no problem, we're willing to do it. So that's really quite remarkable that they should be so open about this. And I think it's one of the reasons for their success. It sounds even more remarkable when you compare it with two centuries earlier with Augustus. Yeah, I know. But Augustus, he starts it in a way because Augustus is a phony

Roman noble. He's only half a Roman noble. He really is a member of the Italian upper classes on his father's side, which the Romans thought was the only side that mattered. He papers it over with his public relations and his marriage. But I really do think that's one of the reasons, secrets of the Roman success, their willingness to change, their willingness to adopt change while preserving a lot of their heritage. In that regard, we're talking about Severus a little longer. His military reforms, radical military reforms. Yeah. Although he creates a dynasty, does it also pave the way for the great instability that seizes the rest of the third century? Well, it does in a way. I mean, the degree to which the empire, the government,

is in the hands of the military means that anyone can become emperor. Any general can become emperor. And it creates a crisis of legitimacy, which is one of the big problems facing the Romans in the third century. Another advantage to the Roman system when it works is that you have people on the throne for a relatively long time. You don't often, I mean, all too often these reigns are short. But when you have longer reigns, as long as the emperor is reasonably good, that can create stability and continuity. And as you rightly point out, that is soon severely lacking. So we go on to emperor number nine. Yes.

At the end of the same century, interesting figure from what you said in the introduction, Diocletian. Yes. He brings in change, but the change that he brings, it's not all positive. No, not at all. But by the time Diocletian becomes emperor, Rome has been facing a series of crises for half a century. To be sure, some of Diocletian's predecessors have taken important steps, important reforms in dealing with these crises. But it's a series of military invasions on all the frontiers.

It is financial problems because of the increasing tax burden of paying for the military, the need to reform the Roman military to make it lighter and more mobile without becoming smaller, and also yet another epidemic, which is quite problematic. Instability, a series of revolving door emperors that cause major problems for the Romans as they come and go. So all these are problems that Diocletian faces. He himself came from a non-elite family, to say the least, from the coast of Croatia, near the city of Split. He had a military career. He rose in the military. The sources claim that his parents were very poor, but the sources often do that. It's hard to say how poor they were. And he supposedly came to power

in a military coup, which is true, and supposedly personally murdered his rival in front of the army. That, we're not so sure, is true, though it is a wonderful story. He had been to Rome once in his career before then for a brief visit. He's a man who rose outside of Rome and only goes to it once again while he is emperor. And he puts through these mind-boggling series of reforms. He says the empire's problems are too big for any one man. So he has a co-ruler in the west and then he gives himself and his co-ruler each a subordinate emperor. So it's ruled by four men. It's called the Tetrarchy. He rules from a capital near what is nowadays Istanbul, from ancient Nicomedia. There's no doubt that he's number one in this group of four, in this gang of four. He's still number one. But he does

decentralize the rule, and he gives tasks to others. And their job is to reestablish the frontiers and defeat Rome's enemies. And they succeed brilliantly in every area. And so after a certain point, he does reestablish the frontier. He then moves on to what he sees as his next task, moral rearmament. And the Romans were pretty religious people and they always felt it was important to have the peace of the gods. They had a legalistic relationship people, and they always felt it was important to have the peace of the gods. They had a legalistic relationship towards religion, and they thought you needed to have the gods on your side if you wanted to be successful. And several of Diocletian's predecessors had felt it's not working. We need to change religion. Diocletian's solution was to double down on the old gods of Rome, Jupiter and the Olympian gods, and to attack

the group in Roman society who he considered to be atheists, the people who didn't believe in the gods and had brought the wrath of the gods down on Rome, namely the Christians. So Diocletian begins the great persecution of the Christians. There had been sporadic persecutions, but they were mostly local of the Christians. Up to then, Christians were limited in what they could do in Roman life, but they tended to be left alone. Diocletian tries to reverse this in an act of religious fanaticism and violence, and it's quite brutal, causes many Christians to recant. Others refuse to recant. They're martyrs and they die for the faith. The upshot is that it's a failure and the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and Diocletian is forced to call off the persecution. The other thing he does,

which is remarkable, is he retires. Emperors don't retire. They die in their beds or by the assassin's hand. He retires. He's married his daughter off to one of the subordinates, one of the subordinate rulers, a man named Galerius. And Diocletian's hope that Galerius will ultimately replace him. Diocletian retires to a fortress that he's built himself on the coast of Croatia at Split. Diocletian's palace is still amazing to see. It doesn't work out the way he wants. There's a series of bloody and rather tawdry civil wars. And when the smoke clears, the ruler of the Roman West is Constantine, the son of the man who had ruled the West for Diocletian, Constantius. Constantine conquers Rome in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge,

and it's one of the great turning points in civilization, because before this battle, Constantine has become a Christian, and he has his soldiers carry the cross, the Cairo symbol, the symbol of Christ, the first two Greek letters of the name Christos, on their standards. They go into battle and they defeat the emperor of Rome, Accentius, in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Constantine enters Rome into the shock of the pagan senatorial elite. Their new emperor is a Christian. And that turns out to be one of the great turning points in history.

I'm no caller. That was well-timed, very well-timed. One of the great turning points in history. Cue the music. Cue the music. Turning points in history. Cue the music. Yeah, cue the music. So I guess that brings no introduction as to why your 10th emperor, the last emperor,

is the Emperor Constantine, because as you said, he brings about radical change on the religious front, but also on the political front. Yes, radical change on the religious and political front. I mean, he starts the process of turning Rome into a Christian empire. He advocates toleration of pagans in the West, but when he conquers the Eastern empire, he hadn't promised toleration there. And he moves smartly to advance the church and to take state funding away from pagan temples. Obviously, tremendously significant in the history of civilization. It takes almost a century before the empire is officially Christian, and there's still a lot to be accomplished or to be done in the process of Christianization. But this is the absolutely

key turning point. The other thing that he does is that he builds a new eastern showplace. He takes the city of Byzantium. There had already been some rebuilding of it. And he now goes further with that, and he redubs it as Constantine City, Constantinopolis, Constantinople, the modern Istanbul. It's unclear whether he called it the new Rome. Within 50 years, it's called the new Rome. Unclear whether he called it that or not. And certainly he hadn't given up on Rome as the capital. But without question, he sees Constantinopolis as a very important new city. How do we know this? Because he makes it a Christian city. In Rome, he Christianizes the city of Rome, but in an interesting way. He builds churches on the outskirts of the city of Rome. He leaves the downtown alone. That continues to have its pagan identity. He's a politician,

like Augustus, and he knows that you have to make compromises with the old regime. He leaves it alone. He builds the great churches on the outskirts, thus where the poor people had lived, the most Christian part of the population. It's also where the martyrs were buried, because that's where they had been executed. And two churches in particular in Rome, Church of St. John Lateran, and also the Church of St. Peter's in the Vatican, started by Constantine. But Constantinople is different. It's going to be a Christian city from the word go. It's also interesting that that's where he

builds his tomb, his mausoleum. Each of the emperors, beginning with Augustus, had made their burial an important part of their public relations. So Augustus builds this huge, in many ways, very un-Roman tomb outside the walls of Rome in the Campus Martius, which is also the ruins of it today, the mausoleum of Augustus. Various other emperors build their mausoleums. Hadrian is the most spectacular one after that. Vespasian and his dynasty have a mausoleum, but very little of it has survived. There's not really much to see. Diocletian builds a mausoleum in Split. It's part of his palace. Galerius, his son-in-law, the great pagan, builds a mausoleum

in, I think it's in Serbia today. I've not been there, but there are some interesting things to see. Constantine builds this amazing mausoleum in Constantinople. It's the Church of the Holy Apostles. And he arranges for the bodies of the apostles to be brought to this church, the alleged remains of the apostles to be brought to this church, to be reburied there. And he's buried in the center of them, Constantine buried, surrounded by the 12 apostles. Remarkable change in Roman ideology. And you mentioned a bit earlier there, when you talked about remarkable change, Augustus. Can you see quite strong links between Augustus and

Constantine as these radical changemakers? Yes, absolutely. They're both radical changemakers. They both think strategically, and they think big. I mean, they think in huge, big ways. In some ways, Constantine even bigger than Augustus. And they are willing to adopt a great deal of change, create new dynasties, rebuild their capital cities. They each create a new religion. Constantine does so more dramatically, but we shouldn't forget that Augustus creates a new religion too, the cult of the Caesars, first deifying Julius Caesar and building the temple, and then the cult of Augustus. His name is a religious name, the reverend. And although he's worshiped as a god outside of Rome, but not in Rome, he's worshiped as a god in the East. In Rome, he has people,

local neighborhoods, offer offerings and sacrifices to his name, to his genius, the genius of Augustus, the spirit of Augustus, the local deity of Augustus. There's a huge altar of Augustus built in southern Gaul, in Lyon, Roman Lugdunum as well. So the cult of the emperors becomes a very major part of Roman society. Constantine is building on that. Constantine understands that you can't have a successful empire without a successful religion. He just adopts a new religion in that sense. Augustus is not a great soldier warrior in and of himself, though he certainly works with people like Agrippa, who are military conquerors, and he sees himself as a conqueror. Constantine is a great soldier. He fights his way to control of the empire. Even more than Augustus, he is a soldier statesman. It's very much a part of his

identity, and it's most impressive. Finally, last point, in regards to the 10 Caesars that you've chosen for your book, is there any underlying theme that you would like readers to take away from it more than any other? Yes, the underlying theme is that in order to survive, an empire or a great nation has to know how to embrace change. It has to know how to embrace change and yet keep what is worth keeping about the old. And I think that's one of the reasons why the Romans were so successful. They were utterly ruthless about this. And I would never advocate that we adopt the ruthlessness or violence of the Romans, but their ability to analyze change and decide what to make of it, and their ability to expand the elite. I mean, these are really remarkable. And I think there are lessons in this for every society and for us today.

Barry Strauss, you've been fantastic. The book is called? Ten Caesars, Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. Fantastic. I must also mention your podcast, Antiquitas, Leaders and Legends of the Ancient World. Yes, thanks. I'm having huge fun with that and trying to reach a new audience. It's been a really challenging, I hope a fruitful one and a successful one. I'm absolutely sure it will be. Anyways, Barry, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Tristan. It was great. Thank you.