The Ancients - 'Killing for the Roman Republic'

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

In 281/280 BC, the Hellenistic King Pyrrhus ventured to southern Italy to aid the Italiote-Greek city of Tarentum against a rising power based in central Italy. This enemy was the Romans. Over the next 150 years this civilisation would rise to become the Mediterranean superpower, winning wars against the Carthaginians, the Antigonids, Seleucids, Ptolemies and various other enemies. But why were the Roman soldiers so effective? I was delighted to be joined by Dr Steele Brand who brilliantly answered this question. Steele explained how the Roman Republican military was far from invincible. Indeed what is so striking from this period is how many devastating defeats the Romans suffered in the process - from Heraclea to Cannae. What made the Romans so extraordinary, however, was their mindset: the Roman civic ethos that was ingrained in its citizens from childhood. Steele explained how the household farm served as an ‘incubator’ for habituating citizens to Roman virtue, which in turn ensured that citizens remained willing to serve even in the wake of catastrophic military defeats. In short, it was these part-time ‘soldier farmers’ that became the nucleus of antiquity’s most famous empire.Steele is the author of 'Killing for the Republic: The Roman Way of War'.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient 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. How did a bunch of soldier farmers from central Italy become the nucleus of the most powerful military force in the Mediterranean? Why were the Roman soldiers so effective?

It's a great question. And to answer it, I'm talking with Professor Steele Brand from the King's College in New York City, who has written a book all about the Roman way of war, using their citizen soldiers during the Republican period. Enjoy. Steele, it's fantastic to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being on.

Not at all, not at all. Fantastic to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being on. Not at all, not at all. And now this is an amazing story, which really, I guess, dives into the extraordinary mentality of the Roman Republican soldier. Yes, it's the story of a people who very, very slowly managed to conquer the world using farmers to fight as part-time soldiers.

What really struck me, first of all, with your book, and we were actually chatting about this just now, was the fact that I've never really encountered an ancient civilization that seems to suffer so many catastrophic military defeats in its career, but it still comes off on top as the supreme military power in the Mediterranean. Yeah, I mean, this is the secret to Rome's success. It's not merely about military power. It's not about military proficiency. In fact, the number one surprising fact when I first approached Rome was how many times they lost. And you see, they usually have to fight an enemy three or four times. Usually the magical number is three, before they can finally deal out that decisive defeat. And what that tells us is that it's not Rome's armies.

It's not Rome's soldiers that made them formidable, that made them indomitable, that made them the terror of the Mediterranean, eventually the civilizer of the Mediterranean. It's actually their civic ethos. It's their civic culture. It's the Mediterranean. It's actually their civic ethos. It's their civic culture. It's the citizen. And then when you go back a little further, it's not merely the citizen that's a soldier. It's also the farmer and the fathers and the mothers that are engendering these civic ethos in the family home

that then expand into the broader republic. So you mentioned the Roman farmer just there. How does the Roman farmer, why do they form the keystone of the Roman Republic way of life? So we've got some later authors that probably starting in the third century, second and first centuries, and they describe in a sort of nostalgic way what the Roman farm was like. And if you cut through that, you can put the pieces together with some of the other Roman historians like Titus Livy and especially Polybius, who's writing in the second century. And they're looking at, they're describing the kind of world that a

Roman would grow up in. So you've got a young man who's going to be born to a household that they call the smallholder farm. The smallholder farm, it's going to be around five acres, four or five acres minimum. That's going to give him enough to be able to afford the basic kind of equipment to serve as an infantryman or a legionary in the Roman army. So he has this sense of, I'm growing up, my father's sort of the king of this little farm and my mother's the queen. And what they do is they inculcate in them the kinds of virtues that every Roman should have. They should be pious. They should be loyal to their parents. They should be loyal to their community. And the father, we know this because

Cato describes the kind of training he goes through, and Plutarch describes in his biography of Cato, the kind of training that he went through. He's going to teach his boys how to box. He's going to teach his boys how to throw javelins, swimming, enduring cold temperatures and hot temperatures. They're going to be accustomed to death because they're going to be killing animals, hunting, kinds of things where if you look at a culture like Sparta, they remove citizens from the household and they put them into a military mess. It's kind of like basic training for every Spartan citizen, but very, very few people in Sparta do this.

They're the soldier citizens of the ancient world. But no, in Rome, it's the opposite. The household farm is the incubator for habituating citizens to virtue, for training the young men. And this is why later Roman authors would say, the Greeks, they have these gymnasiums. We don't need gymnasiums. We have the family farm.

Every father is expected to teach his son how to fight for the Republic. So it's ingrained right from childhood about what the Republic considered virtuous ideas. It is. And there are also these rituals and ceremonies that help engender this as well. And these are described by Polybius. You saw a lot of these firsthand. You'd heard about them as well from some of the most important families in Rome. A couple of them are, they would have trophies. Let's say someone does something

brave on the battlefields. And let's say a father comes home or a young boy comes home. He's earned a shield or a spoil of the enemy or a laurel wreath or like an oak leaves or a grass wreath. And they would hang that up in their home. And then that would be there to remind people, to remind his son someday, these are the things that I did on behalf of the Republic. And these are there all the time. If you're wealthy enough, you would have the busts. They're made of wax, which is why we don't have any more of them. And these would be put in little cupboards around the family hearth in the central room of the house. And they would

even open them during festivals as if the ancestors are partaking. And people would know the stories of their ancestors, and they would want to live up to the good deeds that their ancestors had done. The most famous of all these, and this is described in Plebeius book six, is a Roman funeral where they would have a sort of parade for someone who had lived an illustrious life and had done something truly remarkable on behalf of the Republic. Maybe it's a great commander, maybe it's a great general. And they would have a parade and they would even have actors who would don the mask. And it would almost be like the dead had come back to life for a fond farewell and they would celebrate this life. And what Polybius says is all the young men who watch this funeral,

whether they're wealthy, whether they're poor, they would look and say, I want to be like a Quintus Fabius Maximus, or I want to be like a Scipio Africanus. So as you see, it's this strong familial and Republican culture through all of these rituals on a daily basis that are habituating citizens to serve certain values like loyalty and honor to the gods and honor to your ancestors, but also sacrifice and service. And there's a sort of cult of public service that develops, particularly among the Roman elite, that is really, really unique, but that started in the smallholding family farm in the early days of the Republic. So these constant visual reminders. So does it not matter even if Rome has just suffered a catastrophic defeat, the mindset of these people is still to serve regardless. They're still motivated to serve.

They want to serve. regardless. They're still motivated to serve. They want to serve. It's shocking how often they're asked to serve after horrific defeats. So I'll just take the example of Hannibal when he comes down and he has three victories between 218 and 217, a cavalry skirmish and the two big decisive battles. And the people of Rome are panicked. They can't believe they have been defeated and they've lost tens of thousands of legionaries already. And yet they're still confident that they can put more men in the field. It's only after a third or a fourth, I should say, catastrophic defeat, the Battle of Cannae, where they lose 70,000, up to 70,000 soldiers in one battle, that the Romans are at the breaking point. I mean, they're about to collapse. And what ends up happening is the

Senate, led by a couple of important figures, most notably Quintus Fabius Maximus, said, look, the way we're doing this can't go on. We have got to figure out how to defeat Hannibal by not fighting him. So they had to resist the urge to keep putting men in the battlefield because people kept thinking it's honorable, it's courageous. We can't let someone be walking around on Italian soil and us not countering him. We have to do something to oppose this guy. And Quintus Fabius Maximus says, no, there's a better way to do it. It's by fighting a war of attrition. And this is something else about Rome. It's not merely that they take these defeats because you can't sit there and say, kind of like a Rocky movie, well, I'm just going to take the hits.

I'm just going to take the punches. No, no, you got to punch back. If you don't punch back in the right ways, you're never going to win. And so Rome learns to adopt the tactics and strategies of its enemies and learns to adapt these strategies and tactics and then start to use them against them. But the only way they can do this is because they have a really, really large base, manpower base of citizens and allies. And that's where you get to the strength of that Roman constitution, which puts a lot of citizen soldiers in the field. Definitely want to get onto that striking back in a second. But just one last point on the Roman farmstead and that. It's remarkable how, I'm guessing farm life wasn't very wealthy,

they wouldn't have had much money. But as you said, this mindset must have been so strong that these young men were willing to buy their own arms and armor to serve in these armies. Right. And here's another key to the Roman constitution is it's very, very flexible. So we see this probably in the late years of the Roman monarchy. So the monarchy ends supposedly around 509 BC, and that's when the Roman Republic begins. But right before the Roman kings had ceased to exist, they created, it's called the Serbian Constitution, named after a king. And they have gradations of military service. And it was based on how much property you have.

So if you're in the wealthiest class, you would be given more political weight, like your vote would count for more. But that also meant you were expected to do more on behalf of the Republic. And you could afford a mount, you could have a horse, you could afford all the equipment that goes with being a cavalryman. Not many people can do that. Rome never fields a large number of cavalry. But what their strength was, was the heavy infantry. And they even have gradations of the kind of equipment that a heavy infantryman would have. So a heavy infantryman needs to have initially probably a round shield and a spear, kind of like a Greek hoplite. But eventually, they're going to have several javelins,

one that's really heavy. And then the gladius, or before they get to the gladius in the 3rd century, something kind of like a short cut-and-thrust sword. And then the shield is going to be a little longer. It's going to be kind of in the shape of an oval. And everyone needs to be able to afford that. If you can afford more, you'd get greaves to protect your legs. You really want some kind of helmet. Maybe some people could afford only a leather breastplate. Maybe some people just have a bronze plate. But the really wealthy

would have a bronze cuirass, and eventually they would even shift over to chain mail but you didn't have to have all of these pieces you had to be able to get whatever you could afford so there's a lot of variation throughout the republic until the very end of the republic and the reforms of a guy by the name of marius and if the poorest the poorest group because you're thinking okay so that we got the kind of the middling group we have the elites what about the poorest well these guys they can't afford hardly anything. You know what they can't afford? A few javelins.

And they'll serve as light infantry. They're going to harass the enemy before a battle, and then they're going to move back in through the ranks. And even the absolute poorest people could serve as citizen colonists in really, really important locations throughout Italy. And their job there is to be representatives of Roman culture in these areas and maintain a defense of the walls in these really important places. So it's this genius system where the Roman constitution says, we'll take the amount of money that you can use

to afford the kind of equipment, the amount of equipment that you can afford, but we're going to allow a lot of flexibility. And then we're going to incorporate that flexibility into your power as a citizen voting in the assembly and into your capabilities as a soldier when you face the enemy on the battlefield. It sounds like they're giving everyone a role in the state, as it were. They do, and a lot of people are going to critique, particularly today, hey, Rome's not a democracy. If you're among the poorest class, you have very, very little political power. It's really, you're in this, you're put into one century. This is the assembly. They had several different kinds of assemblies, but you probably don't have a lot of power. Maybe your vote didn't make a lot of difference.

Well, that's true. It doesn't look like a modern democracy, but we shouldn't ask for every republic to look like a modern democracy. In terms of ancient republics, it certainly fits the bill. It's divided sovereignty. The poorest had only a token show of political power. The smallholder farmer, he's able to fight as a heavy infantryman. His vote is going to matter a little more. It's going to be weighted a little heavier in the assemblies. And the people who are the commanders, the people who are expected to serve in positions of incredible responsibility, probably going to serve for longer periods in their life because they're expected to go into office and you don't get paid when you go into office. It's a service. It's not something where you get paid. This upper echelon is going to serve in this capacity. And that's, that they have all these different levels of political service and all these different levels of political participation. The idea being

everyone participates, but there's more representation and there's more power for those who are expected to give more and for those who are expected to sacrifice more. And people happily want to participate for the good of the state, for the public good. You know, every once in a while you'll have rebellions on the part of the allies. So another part of the Roman Republic is that they've got a broader federation and they have, again, really flexible, really adaptable treaties with every individual place. And they can either give them half-citizen status or they can incorporate them as allies, or maybe they'll have a special allied status in being Latin allies.

And every once in a while, you'll have allies say, and this happens in the Second Punic War, say, we've given too many men. We can't serve anymore. And Rome will usually tell them, well, you've got to serve anyway, or we'll deal with this at the end of the war. There'll be some sort of punishment that occurs. But for the most part, you see people willing to serve and sacrifice. And I think the reason why is everyone in the ancient Mediterranean world, when you read ancient Mediterranean history, it is a brutal world. It's what international relations scholars would call multipolar anarchy. Every neighbor is trying to conquer, kill, and destroy his neighbor. And when you look

at the Mediterranean world, Rome is probably the most just. They have the best legal system. They're going to be the most merciful if you make a treaty with them or if you are conquered by them. Over the long haul, they're going to incorporate people into the Roman system. It's messy. Sometimes they can be really brutal. They'll ruthlessly put down rebels. But everyone realizes, yeah, I'd rather serve the Roman Republic than fight for Pyrrhus of Epirus when he crosses over in the early third century. Most of Rome's allies in the north and the central part of Italy decided, yeah, I'm not going to fight for Hannibal, regardless of how many times he defeats Rome, because we would rather fight for Rome because they're going to be better to us than the Carthaginians would be. And citizens say, I'm not going to have this kind of power in the assembly.

I'm not going to have this kind of independence as a smallholding farmer if I'm fighting for someone else. I think everyone realized this is the only way to stay alive. fighting for someone else. I think everyone realized this is the only way to stay alive. And the system that Rome has is pretty just. And Roman law is pretty great compared to everything else that's out there. It's a remarkable human mentality thing, isn't it? To be with the power which is best for you, as it were. And I'm presuming that's sometimes glossed over in the sources. It is, but this is what I love about the Roman historians. Polybius is a pretty fair-minded historian. He is a Greek who ends up – he's exiled.

He's captured by the Romans, but he ends up falling in with some of the – the two of the most elite families. He's pretty fair, and he will critique Rome when he thinks Rome has done unjust things. So, for example, the most famous example is he says, hey, Rome should not have taken the island away of Sardinia. They basically stole that from Carthage. But even Livy, who is a Roman partisan, he's from Batavium, he's very conservative, very traditional in his mindset. He writes during the age of Augustus, but he was alive at the end of the Republic. Even Livy is going to critique Rome when it doesn't live up to its own standards. But you're right. In the real world, that sometimes it's easy to lose sight of in our modern age, in the real world, people have to make hard choices.

And it's not simply that. These smaller polities in the Mediterranean world could say, well, we want independence, and we're just going to get annihilated if we can't keep our independence. Probably a lot of times the best decision is, all right, we've got two great powers. One seems to be a little better than the other. We're going to put ourselves into that system and we're going to have to end up fighting for them. But that's the worst or the best of two maybe not optimum choices. But I think in the long run, because Rome has this tendency to expand their alliances, allow allies to become citizens, and then grant more privileges to citizens, in the long run, this is a good thing, which is why by the time you get all the way down to the New Testament, you've got a guy who's from Cilicia, Paul of Tarsus, saying, I'm a Roman

citizen. And all of a sudden, even in the New Testament world, being a Roman citizen means something. What Paul is doing here is he's saying, he's drawing in this hundreds-year-old tradition of there are rights and privileges. There are things that you can and cannot do to me because I am a Roman citizen. And when he says this at Philippi, the magistrates of Philippi in the first century AD, they realize they've made a mistake because they are dealing with someone who has rights and privileges. That's fascinating. And how they get to there as well.

But you mentioned there Pyrrhus, of course, you mentioned earlier Hannibal, two of the most formidable opponents the Romans faced during the Republican age, who inflict some terrible defeats on Rome. the Republican age who inflict some terrible defeats on Rome. But how does the Roman Republic hit back and so decisively against figures like these? So we'll take the example of Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus, unfortunately, is the story that's never really finished with Rome, but it's sort of like an amuse-bouche, if you will, for what's going to happen, not only with the Carthaginian Empire in the west, but also with the heirs of Alexander in the east.

So Pyrrhus crosses over. He's invited over by some of the Greek, the Italiates, some of these Greek city-states, initially colonies in the south of Italy. Some of them join over and want to become a part of Rome's Republican Federation, and a couple of them don't. And Tarentum is one of these. And there's a lot of infighting between these Greek city-states. Well, Tarentum invites Pyrrhus over, and he crosses the Adriatic with around 20,000 or so of the kinds of soldiers that Alexander used to conquer the Persian Empire. But he's also got

something new, something that just terrifies every Roman legionary, particularly Roman horses, and that's elephants. He brings over some elephants as well. And there are two battles fought in 280 and 279, the Battle of Heraclea, the Battle of Asculum. And these two battles are defeats for the Romans. They're bad defeats. But the problem for Pyrrhus is they're also very costly victories. That's what gives us the term a Pyrrhic victory. So there are a number of famous quotes that come out of this. One more, such victory and I shall be crushed, is supposedly one of the things that Pyrrhus said.

And another line he says, after he wins this battle in one year, the next year another army comes out. He's shocked. Where are these guys coming from? He says they seem to grow back like the Roman armies grow back like the Hydra, the monster whose head keeps popping up that Heracles has to fight. And Pyrrhus decides, well, I'm going to try my luck elsewhere because I can beat these guys. And they keep throwing people into the battlefield. Well, he comes back five years later and he fights them again. But by this point in time, the Romans have figured out, they've tested some things out. First of all, they realized the

Greek phalangites or the Epirus, this is where he's from, he's from Epirus. He was even for a time a contender for the throne of Macedon. They're fighting with these pikemen. They're not very good in uneven terrain. And so we're going to try to get them a little off their feet and wear them out. The other thing they do is they're experimenting with how do we defeat these elephants? The first time we encountered these elephants, we just tucked tail and ran. The horses were scared off. The men got pushed off. And so they try flaming carts. They try javeliners. They try trumpets, all sorts of things. The best they can do in 275 at the Battle of Beneventum is they're basically able to reach a draw, maybe a victory, but it's not a very decisive

victory against Paris. But the problem is their civic culture, their constitution, their ability to put men in the field is totally unchanged. Pyrrhus, he keeps losing men every time he fights them. And moreover, now his elephants are becoming neutralized by these new strategies. Fast forward 100 years, and you've actually got the Romans using elephants against Macedonians. Why? Because they figured out, okay, we've got these elephants, they're terrifying, we're going to figure out how to beat them, but then we're going to figure out how we can use them ourselves. And so by the time we've got the Romans fighting in the Greek East, they're using elephants to good effect against Alexander's last heir, the last king of Macedon, with the defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168.

So this adaptation to be able to face their opponents, this learning from their enemies, I mean, what examples of arms and armor do we have that really emphasize this superb Roman ability to adapt? Yeah, so this is one of the things that I go into a lot of detail in the book because there are a lot of transitions in the Roman army between the time of the Roman kings down to the last Republican battle, the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. They start off, like I said, probably like something like a phalanx. It looks like we've got warrior bands fighting for aristocrats. Probably the most powerful aristocrat would be the Roman king. By the time the Roman Republic emerges,

they're fighting kind of like a Greek hoplite phalanx, but not really. It's a little different. So they're phalanx-like. But you do have this sense that, and this is the last Roman kings figure this out, the more political power we give our citizens, the more men we can have fighting with this kind of equipment. And it's interesting that the Romans figure this out, the more political power we give our citizens, the more men we can have fighting with this kind of equipment. And it's interesting that the Romans figure this out, but the Etruscans, this is a power to the north. This is where modern day Tuscany is. The Etruscans, they develop the hoplite equipment too. They have a lot of relations with the Greeks, but they don't develop the civic ethos that Rome does, which says, let's put this kind of equipment into the hands of as many people as possible, and that'll give us bigger armies. So this allows Rome to be successful for a while. They have a lot of trouble in the fifth century because they start encountering

a huge amount of people from the mountains. And I think when they encounter these mountain tribes, they realize that there's only so much we can do with a round shield, a heavy armor, and a spear. We need to adapt. So they start adapting tools and skills from the people like the Samnites. Over the next two centuries, they get that longer oval shield. They get a little bit longer sword than you would see a Greek hoplite would ever have. And eventually that's going to be replaced by the gladius. And what that allows a Roman legionary to do is fight in a unit when necessary but also to fight as an individual it's a lot more flexible which is really good and mountainous terrain this

is one of the things that they use against pyrrhus and by the time we get to the pyrrhic wars we've got rome fighting in it it's a peculiar formation that's called a checkerboard formation but they have three lines uh with these infantrymen who throw javelins into the opposing force and then they after they've attracted the enemy forces by the time they engage with the enemy then they use their their long shield with a big boss that they can crash into their opponent with and they use their gladius for that close hand-to-hand fighting the last line looks a little bit more like the greek phalanx but eventually by the first century, that last line of spearmen is going to disappear. And a huge change in this is going to occur during the Second Punic Wars when they have to adapt their tactics again.

We've talked about it already. Between 218 and 216, there is defeat after defeat after defeat by Hannibal. And the Romans figure out that we need to pull back and not fight this guy. And meanwhile, you've got a few people who fought Hannibal in these battles. They've seen Hannibal's victories. And so they start adapting his tactics, his techniques. And they realize that using smaller units effectively, setting up ambushes, more drilling, being able to have a better command and control over your forces, that's what's making Hannibal the better warrior, the better fighter.

And so you've got these guys who pin in Hannibal by not fighting him, while there are others who are trying out Hannibal's tactics in places like Spain. This is the famous Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. And the war ends when the guy who has perfectly adapted Hannibal's tacticsius Scipio Africanus. And the war ends when the guy who has perfectly adapted Hannibal's tactics, Scipio Africanus, and even learned a few new things, conquers Spain. And then he takes the war to Africa. Hannibal's recalled. And there's this epic showdown between these two guys. And basically, Scipio Africanus says, look, I've learned everything you've got. There are some new things that I'm going to teach you. And he defeats Hannibal at the Battle of Zama by using the kinds of strategies

and tactics that Hannibal had used against him. That is just demoralizing. If you're an enemy of Rome, on the one hand, you can beat them in the battle, but you cannot win a war. And anything you're good at, they're going to take and they're going to throw it right back at you. I'm presuming another thing with Zama. Is Zama a very good example with elephant warfare at how the Romans have now mastered how they are able to counter that style of warfare? Yeah, so the Battle of Zama, it's like, using the Rocky analogy again, it's almost like Rocky fighting Drago in Rocky IV. I mean, this is this epic showdown between these two figures that you've been waiting for. And Hannibal and Scipio are at their—Hannibal's old and tired, but he's still wily. He's got more war elephants.

And then you've got Scipio Africanus, who's the rising star. They put their lines against each other, and they're playing a game of chess. And there's three phases to the battle, and it it's really touch and go uh throughout every phase of the battle and it starts off with them throwing their initial rounds of infantry at each other actually that's after the elephants the first thing that hannibal does he's got some relatively untrained elephants he's got around 80 of them and he sends these 80 elephants into the lines of Scipio. Well, Scipio, he knows what to do with elephants, and he knows also that the elephants are a little too immature. They're rookie elephants, meaning they're more easily scared. So he scares some of them, terrifies some of them with light

infantry, with trumpets, and they scatter them back into Hannibal's lines and cause problems there. The other thing he does is he opens up, and this is part of that small unit flexibility I talked about, he opens up ranks in the Roman legions. Instead of having a checkerboard column, he aligns all, imagine if you're looking at a checkerboard, he aligns all the reds and the blacks. So you have empty spaces and the elephants just go right through unharmed. Some of them are killed and some of them just sort of leave the battlefield. And so now you've got this elephants that cannibal was counting on, they've been neutralized. And the oddest thing is you've got this really, really long infantry slugfest that occurs and it's evenly matched. No one knows who's going to win. The oddest thing, or I should say the most ironic thing is how the battle is eventually decided.

If you go back and you look at Hannibal and his brother and the others who are fighting, the other Carthaginians who are fighting in Spain, they're always winning through superior use of cavalry. They're always using cavalry in ambushes. They're always putting the Roman cavalry to flight, usually with good allies. Well, Rome takes that constitutional system and incorporates wins over using also some good statesmanship on the part of Scipio Africanus. They win over some of the best cavalry in North Africa, the Numidian cavalry. And by doing this, they actually have a superior cavalry force to Hannibal, which is really unique. That doesn't frequently happen, but Scipio's learned we need good cavalry. In fact, we need better cavalry. And it's the Numidian cavalry and the

Roman cavalry that come back at the end of the battle and they hit Hannibal's heavy infantry in the rear. It's almost like a reverse of the first great victory of Hannibal in 218 of Trebia when this is exactly what he had done. He'd sent his cavalry in the rear of the Roman army. Now we've got the Romans using cavalry and hitting the Carthaginians in the rear and that's what decides the battle Hannibal will lose with all of these tactics that he had used so well being used against him. I love that parallel you said right there between the Battle of the River Trebia and the Battle of Zama. But I guess what's also remarkable is that it takes one decisive defeat

of the Carthaginians in their homeland, or North Africa, for their superpower to completely collapse. Whereas with Rome, when they're fighting in their homeland, they suffer three decisive defeats, and yet they're still fighting. Yeah, and this could be described as, you know, the First World War, or it's certainly as a kind of world war, because it encompasses all of the Mediterranean, almost. The fighting's in Greece, it's in Spain, it's in Carthage, it's in Southern France, it's in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica. It is a truly epic war. And it's not even the longest war. The First Punic War had actually been longer, a little more contained. But yeah, you see Rome's ability to be able to muster, in the long run, all of these legions and keep putting them in the field that allows them to

pull off a victory. And I think a good parallel that we could see is with World War II. With World War II, you've got a far more highly mobilized and ready German fighting force. And they are able to knock out allies, places like Belgium and Poland and France, because they're more ready in the beginning of the war. But what that causes is for the other powers like Russia and the United States and Britain to begin their mobilization. It's the same thing in the Second Punic War. Hannibal is more ready. Rome's actually the underdog. Hannibal's got over 100,000, maybe 122,000 or so men ready to take the field. They're

in the field. They're trained veterans that have been fighting in Spain. The Romans maybe only has 70,000 or so mobilized. But what happens is Hannibal's not able to gain that surrender at the beginning that he needed. And so what that allows is Rome to kick that mobilization effort into gear. And slowly but surely, the longer the war goes on, the more impossible it becomes to defeat Rome because the more men they're putting in the goes on the more impossible it becomes to defeat rome because the more men they're putting in the field the more equipment they're borrowing the more tactics they're borrowing just like you saw the allies do in world war ii is they're they're just basically outproducing the access powers this is the same kind of thing that ends up happening in the second punic war that's remarkable i mean it's remarkable how these catastrophic roman defeats and as you said

this inability to get a swift victory actually in turn makes rome become the superpower it does become yes and so this is with the end of the second punic war you have carthage basically uh shut down into this tiny little area their areas area is lost out in Spain. All the island holdings are now gone. They're basically just in Northern Africa or in the area. And their former allies, the Numidians, are now Roman allies. And that means the Western Mediterranean, which had been in doubt throughout the third century, is now in the hands of the Romans. So when the Romans look east, and part of the reason they're looking east is they're not thinking, we need to keep building the empire. Part of it is they feel like they're being drawn to the east. They're not imperially minded, a way a lot of people want to

think that they are. But when they look east, they see three great powers, the Macedonians, the Seleucids, and the Ptolemies that are all the heirs of Alexander. But they're slowly drawn in. Sometimes they're happy to go in, but sometimes they're drawn in to these wars with these hellenistic monarchs and then one by one in rapid fashion they defeat them uh much faster than they had uh with carthage and this is why polybius writes his great history is he's trying to explain how rome able to do, he says, in 53 years, what no one in the world has ever been able to do. Oh, I know. The heirs of Alexander in the East, it's absolutely amazing when you think 50 years before Rome's arrival, these successors were fighting over Alexander's empire, stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan all the way to Epirus and Albania. And then so swiftly, Rome comes in and defeats them one by one.

Yeah, and I think what's shocking about this, it's like Rome, they've mobilized, and now they've gained so many more holdings. So after the Second Punic War, not only did they have Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, but they also have holdings in Spain, substantial holdings in Spain, and they have very important allies in Mauritania and Namidia in Northern Africa, but they still have some holdings across the Adriatic as well in Illyria, or at least they have some allies in each

of these places. And what that's going to do is it's going to cause them to keep legions mobilized, but also to fight there. And the second century is this really, really complicated situation where Rome is sending out armies to fight in Spain at the same time that they're sending out armies to fight against the Hellenistic powers in the East, particularly Macedonia. Now Macedonia is brought into this in the first place because in Rome's darkest moment, the Macedonian king, the young Macedonian king, Philip V, probably makes a strategic blunder when he allies himself with Hannibal. It seems like a good decision at the time, but when he does this, the Romans are never going to forget this. This is a Hellenistic king who, when we were at our lowest, he joins in with our enemies. And so it didn't take much for them to be invited back over.

And when they go into Greece, at the same time that they're fighting wars in Spain, when they go into Greece, they're sort of shocked at how sophisticated the culture is. They're shocked at how impressive the buildings, the art, the architecture, the schools of philosophy, the education is. And they start bringing these things back at the same time that militarily, they're defeating peoples who are far more sophisticated than them in terms of culture.

Yes, and the citizen soldiers of the Roman army, you said now they're going to Greece, they're going to Spain, they're going to North Africa. With this Roman ethos, as it were, are they very happy to be leaving Italy, to be going on these, let's say, offensive campaigns, if it's for the good of the state, as it were, are they very happy to be leaving Italy to be going on these, let's say, offensive campaigns, if it's for the good of the state, as it were? Oh, yeah, this is one of the great

questions and one of the great debates among scholars. Let me just cut through some of those debates and give some pretty basic facts that we're pretty sure about. There are a lot of complaints that are emerging. You know, there's parallels if you think to the American Cold War, when you have citizen soldiers agitating against the draft. Why in the world are we fighting in places like Vietnam? Why are we going to Korea? Are these really the places we're supposed to be? You've got a lot of Romans and their allies asking, why are we going to Spain?

They can be tempted to a certain extent with the prospect of booty and spoils, but those are limited and they're not guaranteed. And Spain's bad spain is is really really tough fighting with some pretty vicious and very capable um celta-hiberian tribes and this is going to start taking a toll on a number of these small holding farms now the debate is is it actually the case that more citizen soldiers are dying in the Greek East and in Spain, and so you start having the failure of smallholding farms? Or is it the case that Rome's actually producing a lot more people and a lot more – there are actually more citizens that are being born, and there is more wealth that's coming in and being concentrated into the hands of fewer people. So you have more citizens on the same amount of land, and so their land is getting progressively smaller, and that allows concentration into the hands of larger landholders. We're not sure which way it is. If we buy the ancient narrative,

it's that too many citizen soldiers are dying, not that there are too many citizen soldiers who are having less stuff so they can no longer afford the equipment. But let's just go with the ancient narrative, which is we have too many citizen soldiers dying. We have some family farms that are starting to fail. The smallholder class is starting to disappear. So by the time we get to the famous Gracchi brothers, tribunes of the plebs, these are these sort of democratic representatives, if you will, within the Roman constitution. By the time you get to the Gracchi brothers, they're saying we've got a serious problem because we don't have enough citizen soldiers. And we need to pass some legislation that solves that problem and also elevates the status of our allies. Because the allies are wondering if we're not defending our homes anymore and Rome's taking in more of the spoils and we're not getting an equal share like

we used to then why are we fighting in Macedonia why are we fighting in Asia modern day Anatolia why are we fighting in Spain so throughout the second century you have a lot of questions about should we be engaged in these places and And more importantly, what is that doing to our nature as citizen soldiers? And if you're an ally, what is that doing to our nature as allies of the Roman Republic? Fascinating. In the second century BC, let's focus on one key battle which really emphasizes this Roman ethos, the Battle of Pydna. Against Macedon, I think it's 164 BC, one of the final wars against the Hellenistic kingdoms that the Romans fight. But why is the Battle of Pydna such a good example of the Roman ethos? Yeah, so you've got the Second Macedonian War, which starts in 201.

It's prosecuted pretty swiftly by the Romans is against Philip the fifth it's almost like a revenge war but it does now get Rome involved in Macedonian affairs and they're gonna stay involved but it's interesting they keep trying to pull out and then they keep going back in so there's there's no like Imperial ethos there's no grand strategy of taking over the Greek East it's almost part of the time it just seems like it's accidental that it occurs but you've got another major incident flare up in 172 this is the so the Greek East, it's almost part of the time it just seems like it's accidental that it occurs. But you've got another major incident flare up in 172. This is the so-called Third Macedonian War.

If you're a student of Rome, you know, oh, this is the Third War. It's usually the Third War where everything is decided. This is the way it goes with the Samnites, this is the way it goes with the Carthaginians, and it's the way it goes with the Macedonians. And you've got typical Roman war that we see. So third Macedonian war, several legions are sent out to fight against the pretender king fell by the name of Perseus. And, or he's not the pretender king, he's the king that emerges, but he possibly usurps the throne. There's the part of the debate as to maybe he actually has one of his half brothers or brothers killed, and that's what brings him in in the first place. But he's on the throne, and he starts a re-army.

He starts gaining allies. And so the Romans, they're sought for assistance by their allies in the area of Macedonia, and this launches the war. And for the first couple of years, Roman armies do badly. It is a constant refrain. The first few Roman armies sent out performed horribly against the Macedonians. They're defeated. And so finally they elect an up-and-coming commander. This is Aemilius Paulus, who is a dogged old commander who's fought against barbarian tribes in the north. And he takes command and he's going to fight in the Battle of Pydna. barbarian tribes in the north and he takes command and he's going to fight in the battle of pidna now pidna is really interesting because i think at this point you've got the final vote on which

is superior is it the macedonian phalanx that conquered that persian empire or is it the roman legions it had been you've got about a two victories in the part of pyrrhus two victories against antiochus and philip in the second century andyrrhus, two victories against Antiochus and Philip in the 2nd century. And then you've got two stalemates, or one stalemate, I should say, with the Battle of Beneventum. But it's about an even draw. So the question is, who is actually going to win this? It's like if you're watching a match between two great boxers. This is the final round.

Everything is tied. And at Piedmont, you've got the classic formation of the Macedonians. between two great boxers, this is the final round. Everything is tied. And at Piedmont, you've got the classic formation of the Macedonians. You've got the phalanx, the pikemen with a really long 10 to 15 feet, maybe sometimes even longer than 15 feet pike, a smaller shield that's slung over their shoulders. It's almost like a porcupine that is just impossible to get into the center of. You've got light infantry and then cavalry on the wings of the Macedonian formation. And then you've got the king's elite guard forming right

up next to that Macedonian phalanx. And the Roman legions have their standard checkerboard pattern. They've got their two ranks of heavy infantrymen that are armed with the long shields and the gladius and the javelins. And then they they've got their what they're called the triarii these are the the third line of men who fight a little more like the old hoplite with a smaller shield and a spear you've probably got cavalry on the wings but notice what else you have here you've got elephants fighting on behalf of the romans and when the battle starts off it does not look good for the Romans. That Macedonian phalanx starts pushing back the Roman legions.

Now, the commander, Aemilius Paulus, had feared that this might be the case. In fact, when he first arrived on the scene, he saw the Macedonian phalanx lined up and he thought, oh, my goodness, I'm a little alarmed by this. So he executes a really, really good delaying maneuver and builds his camp. So he executes a really, really good delaying maneuver and builds his camp. But then when the battle gets started the next day, his worst fears have come true because that Macedonian phalanx starts pushing back the Roman legions. You've got a group of really noble Roman allies. I mean, this is the kind of Italian allies that you want in the Roman Republican Federation. Now, one of the commanders throws in the standard and the Pyligni, all these people try to race into that phalanx to get the standard.

This is their honor. They have to go and get it. And all that ends up happening is they just get speared by that robotic, slowly moving forward phalanx. It looks bad. But then you've got a change in the terrain. And the terrain, as it becomes broken, a little uneven, perhaps some boulders that are on the field, as the Macedonians are moving closer to the Roman camp, you've got a few gaps that develop in the line. See, this is the problem with that Macedonian phalanx, which is very hierarchical. It's based on an older democratic model, what everyone has to say together. But the Roman legionaries, they are expected to fight as a unit, but also as an individual. And Plebeius stresses this. He says, look, they've got twice as much feet, maybe six

feet per legionary compared to about three feet per pikeman. And what that means is that they can get in between these gaps. And I think the story that we have preserved in Livy is the true one. When these Roman soldiers who are gaining a sense of independence, they've learned how to fight, they see themselves as the heads of their own smallholding farms. When they see these gaps in the line, they know what to do. They take the initiative and they rush in. And they start getting in on the sort of miniaturized flanks of the Macedonian failing giants. And they start hacking them to bits where all these gaps are. And when this happens, the Macedonian line starts to break. The cavalry is put to flight and you have a retreat back to the camp. And what ends up ending the battle at the end, and this is telling, is the Roman elephants.

They got about 22 of them, are going to go out and stomp to death those of the Macedonians and their allies that are fleeing the field. So what you've got at the Battle of Pidna is a decision that Roman legionary, the independence, the initiative, is a decision that Roman legionary, the independence, the initiative, the emphasis on community and individual success is going to be superior, especially when you add in the adaptation of things like enhanced cavalry and elephants against that older Macedonian phalanx, which had been so powerful and had conquered the Persian Empire. Goodness, yeah, that ending sounds very reminiscent of Heraclea but on the other side yes yes and i guess as you say taking the initiative of these soldiers is it in the mindset of these republican soldiers one day returning to their farmsteads to put something on the wall as you were saying earlier to show i earned this fighting my way through a phalanx at pidna or being the first to climb the walls of Carthage or something like that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is really important. And if you just take a look at the Roman camp,

and this is an important part of, I think, what happened before the Battle of Pydna, which probably scares the Macedonian king and the Macedonians themselves a little bit. When the Romans build a camp, and the Macedonians got to see this before the Battle of Pydna, they build it on the same model and they line up the legions in the center of the camp it's almost always in the shape of a square we've excavated these sometimes you have to adapt them a little bit to the terrain but they always try to put them in the same kind of shape around the shape of a square they've got legions in the center allies on the wings kind of like in the constitution kind of the way they fight battles they've got the auxiliary uh and the special troops uh to the rear kind of like in the Constitution, kind of the way they fight battles. They've got the auxiliary and the special troops to the rear. And then right in the middle, you've got where the

Roman commander, the Roman consul's tent is. And then right next to that, it's called the Praetorium, right next to that, you've got the supply, and then you've got a little forum. And this little forum is like a miniaturized microcosm of the Republic, and it's brought out to the camp. And in the camp, this is where, if you've got someone who has fallen asleep on guard duty, who would be touched with a cudgel, there'd be an immediate court-martial, and in the forum, all the soldiers would gather. And if he was determined to be guilty of falling asleep on guard duty, they would stone him right then and there in the camp. It's communal punishment.

It's communal shame. And if he escapes and goes home, then this soldier would be instructed to be turned away by everyone. He would no longer have a home. He would basically be in exile. He would be politically dead. But the reverse is also true. but the reverse is also true if you are the guy who had mounted the wall at the battle of new carthage for example uh there's this fierce fight to get into uh the uh the carthaginian base in spain and new carthage and two men are saying i was the first over the wall the other guy is saying

i was the first over the wall and they're they're debating this and the commander skip your africana says i think you were both the first over the wall. What do they get them? They get them special wreaths or a cup or a spear or a shield. And this would be done in front of all the men in this little forum. And so there's public shame. There's public honor. Sometimes there's also going to be public agitation that would take place in this camp.

And this is the hierarchy, but it's also a sense of the Republican elements of the democracy, because you've got to have a democracy as well, and the aristocracy. Because the military tribunes, these are the younger men, some of them are elected, some of them are appointed by the commander. They're also going to be distributing all the orders to the men. And all of these men who are going to serve in the assemblies, they end up voting for who's going to be the next praetor, the next consul, the next commander. They're watching these tribunes. They're having face-to-face interactions with them.

So in the Roman camp, you see the hierarchy of the consul. You see the aristocracy of the tribunes. And you see the democracy, the communal sense of shame and honor that's bestowed by the men of the assemblies as well. of the assemblies as well. And this is hardwired into the soldiers only because they're copying it from what they've done and the republic's functioning as citizens back home. That's fascinating. I might be wrong in this, but did I read somewhere, is it from Pyrrhus that they adopt this camp design? I mean, is it Pyrrhus they adopt it from? this camp design? I mean, is it Pyrrhus they adopt it from? This is debated where they actually get the form from. I can't remember what Plutarch says about this. He mentions that they get it from Pyrrhus. Plutarch is a student of the difference between

Greek and Roman camps, he himself being a Greek cavalry commander. And Polybius actually distinguishes at least the Roman camps of his day from the Greek camps of his day. And he says, when the Greeks put together a camp, they usually just pick the best site. They kind of sloppily put it together. They don't care how it looks as long as it's defensible. He says, but the Romans, that's not the case. They're engineers. They build it according to a scheme. They always want to build it in the same manner we might look at this and say oh the romans do this because they're boring and they're just engineers and they they're not imaginative no no no they build it this way and it's different and it's stronger than a greek camp because there are other things going on in the roman camp than you

would necessarily see in a greek camp during this day and this is why polybius includes in his discussion of the roman constitution a discussion of the Roman camp, because he's saying this Roman camp's a part of the Roman constitution. And it's part of what makes the Romans stronger and better than guys like Pyrrhus and kings like Perseus. And that's why the Romans are able to defeat these Hellenistic commanders that are the heirs of Alexander. Wow. Final question, and I hesitate a little because it's been so amazing so far, but I feel like I have to ask it to wrap it all up. Where does it all start to go wrong and why? You know, when I had first written this book, I had intended to finish it with the Battle of Pydna.

And I thought, this is a story about the rise of Rome. And I got some really good reviews back, and they said, hey, it's great so far, but you really need to take it all the way to the end. I remember two revisions. I took it all the way to the Battle of Mutina. And then another revision, they said, well, can you take it all the way to Philippi? And this is why the peer review process can be really good when you're writing a book. It ended up being the best way to write this book. And I really did need to take it to the end, but it's just so tragic the way this whole thing falls apart. So where does it end? Well, first, Polybius would say everything ends. You can't expect a republic to last forever. So how does the end begin? Well, Appian says it begins with the Gracchi, these two tribunes of the plebs who try to expand the Roman system by creating more citizens out of

the allies. They try to strengthen the Roman citizen soldiers, and they fail, doing so in fact they're assassinated in the attempt to do so. Maybe that's the case. But certainly by the time we get to these really, really competent, capable commanders, Marius and Sulla, two guys who are fighting the North African prince Jugurtha. They're also fighting the first major round of Germans, the Teutons and the Cimbri, who come down and nearly overwhelm Roman armies in the area of the Alps. They're very successful commanders, but they start changing things about the Roman army. They remove the qualifications for property holding. They don't just wholesale enlist all volunteers, but they chip away at what it means to be a citizen soldier. And I think Plutarch,

he's wrong about, he overemphasizes this change, but I think he's right in the sense that you've got a chipping away, starting really in the second Punic war, but especially by the end of the second century, you've got a chipping away at this idea that you cannot fight for the Republic unless you have a stake in the Republic. But if anyone can just fight and they're fighting for a living and they're fighting for their commander, then they might be more loyal to that commander. They might be more loyal to the spoils of war that they can get by fighting on behalf of him. They're not pulled back to that family farm. Now, these changes are slow. They're not immediate. They

take place, I think, starting in the second century and they accelerate in the first century but all the way down to the end it could have gone a little different i think what the real change starts to occur under julius caesar and he's the guy who follows in the wake of marius and sulla now marius and sulla had broken a major taboo. And in the 80s, Rome itself, the city, had been invaded by Roman commanders with armies to achieve political ends. That had not happened in the history of the Republic. The bad boy of the beginning of the Republic, Coriolanus, had never even been able to achieve an actual invasion of the city itself. But now we've got two Roman commanders who have used Roman armies for political ends to enter the city of Rome. Well we've got two Roman commanders who have used Roman armies for political ends to enter the city of Rome. Well, Julius Caesar is going to be the heir of Sulla and Marius,

and he's going to, with Pompey and with Crassus, set up a really strong political pact. And he's going to basically go out into France and commit war crimes. I mean, he's going to. It kind of has a policy of genocide. He himself says he kills 1.92 million people out in France. He's a very competent, capable commander, but he uses these citizen soldiers, and he creates a really, really loyal base of men loyal to him, not to the Republic. And a campaign of conquest that looks a lot more like Alexander than it does like a typical Roman commander. And it's these veterans of Caesar's war in modern-day France in the 50s who've been doing horrific things, even horrific by ancient standards.

At one point, an opponent of Caesar says, we need to hand this guy over to the Gauls as a sort of sacred sacrifice because of the horrible things that he has done. But it's these veterans who are more loyal to Caesar that empower Caesar to be able to defeat all the Roman armies that are sent against him in a civil war that takes place between 49 and 44. 49 and 44. Ironically then, Caesar himself is assassinated. And I think there's still hope here. There's still hope for the Republic to return. And my story, the way that I end in the book is with, I think the last Republican hero, it's not Crassus, it's not Brutus, I think it's Cicero. And Cicero is a man who's not a very bellicose person. He doesn't really fit the mold of what it means to be a good Roman commander. But he believes in the idea of persuasion, of free speech in the forum, of using words to identify who are the friends, who are the enemies, who are the ones that're out to destroy the Republic. We need to do what we've always done with tyrants in the past. And Cicero is going to return to the fray as an old man and build a coalition of people to bind together all the people who still want a Republic and they don't want an autocracy under Caesar. And he almost wins. And in 43, Mark Antony, the heir of Caesar, is defeated. But unfortunately, the two commanders that he fights happen to be killed in the fighting, and he stays alive.

So he is able to form a pact with, this is the so-called second triumvirate, it's really the first triumvirate, but the second triumvirate with Octavian, who becomes Augustus, and Lepidus. And these three then go down and hunt down the assassins of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius. But really, the Republic, as a political constitutional entity, ends with the death of Cicero and the formation of the triumvirate, I would say. But you've still got legions that have been levied, citizen soldiers that are fighting on behalf of Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi. And I still think you've got a chance for the Republic to survive the Battle of Philippi. And you see it in the speeches that are provided by the ancient historians, which I think have

glimmers of truth in them. The speeches that we have by Cassius, and he's the real Republican. Shakespeare gets it wrong. Brutus is not the diehard Republican. It's Cassius. He's the diehard Republican. And Cassius says, look, we're fighting for a way of life. We're fighting for a Republic. And if we lose, the Republic loses. Whereas Mark Antony tells his men, hey, you're fighting for me. You're fighting for spoils and you're fighting for me to be able to give you those spoils. There's no appeal to a higher idea. There's no appeal to a Republican sentiment. The men that are fighting for him they're no longer fighting for the republic and unfortunately for the republic mark antony he's really the the hero of the hour because he he wins the battle he's the best commander on the field he defeats uh in two battles uh brutus and cassius commits suicide after the first battle this is probably the end

of the republic when cassius decides to do this. And Brutus is just no good commander, and he loses that second battle of Philippi. And at this point, that's when the Republic dies, but it dies fighting. It dies with those citizen soldiers who still believe the words of Cassius, which could have been the words of the founder of the Republic, Brutus. We are fighting for a way of life. We are fighting for a Republic that we have a say in and that we call our own. And when they die, that dream dies with them. Yes, it sounds like it comes around full circle then. So what can we learn from the Roman Republic today? I think the thing that I want people to learn, first of all, the story is incredible. And it's a worthwhile read to see some really good pictures, complex pictures, not simple pictures of political and civic virtue and vice.

And there is such a thing as civic virtue. And there are civic vices. And those civic vices need to be avoided. And all citizens need to exercise civic virtues. And that brings me to, I I think the most important point and that's I want average citizens to be empowered by the story there are tales of great commanders I love the story of Cicero I love the story of Scipio Africanus and Quintus Fabius Maximus you know the guys who fight Paris all these famous commanders

but the real story is the story of the Roman citizen soldier. And it's this belief that if I want to serve in a republic, or if I want to have a republic, I have to serve it. I have to sacrifice for it. And I have to make decisions that sometimes aren't the best decision for me for the good of the republic. But in the long run, if you have an attitude and a sentiment of civic virtue, I think you can benefit your republic. We can't have a me culture that's just worried about me and what's best for my personal economy and my personal income. Instead, we have to have an us culture that wants to share sacrifices, share liberty, exercise liberty, have rights and privileges, but also share the

experiences and the burdens of being a part of a republic. And if you don't have that, I think you don't really have a republic anymore. Instead, you've got something that looks a little different. And that's what I want us to all take away from the book. Some very wise words there. want us to all take away from the book. Some very wise words there. Steele, the book is called? Killing for the Republic, Citizen Soldiers and the Roman Way of War. Fantastic. Steele, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. It's been great.