The Ancients - The Origins of Rome's Empire

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

396 BC. The city of Veii lies in ruins, destroyed by Rome in a brutal act of early imperial expansion. Yet just six years later, Rome itself would face devastation at the hands of invading Gauls, a shock that would shape the city’s identity for generations.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Jeremy Armstrong to explore the origins of Rome’s empire. From the conquest of rival cities and the trauma of invasion to the development of Roman warfare, politics, and identity, this episode reveals how these early crises set the stage for Rome’s rise to dominance along the Tiber and beyond.MORE:The Kings of RomeListen on AppleListen on SpotifyThe Origins of Rome:Listen on AppleListen on Spotify Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. 396 BC and a city is a flame. Situated close to the River Tiber, it had been a prominent centre in central Italy for centuries. But now its time had ended. Its buildings had been raised, its people either killed, enslaved or displaced, its gods taken away, never to return. Never again would this ancient city be repopulated, never again, Never again would it be a competitor for influence along the Tiber. That city's name was Vey, destroyed by another city situated along the Tiber

that was keen to remove this rival from the area for good. Rome. Rome's brutal destruction of Vey marks one of the earliest examples of Roman imperialism that survives. But fast forward six years, and the Romans would get their comeuppance, and suffer their own devastating sacking. Nevertheless, both these events proved pivotal moments in the development of a Roman state and a Roman identity intrinsically linked to warfare and imperial expansion. This is the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the origins of Rome's empire. Our guest today is Dr. Jeremy Armstrong, Professor of Ancient History at the

the University of Auckland and the author of Children of Mars, the Origins of Rome's Empire. Jeremy, it is great to have you on the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here. You're more than welcome. I'm really excited for this episode because I think this is my favourite period in Roman history. It's not the later imperial times when they're the superpower in the Mediterranean. It's the story of how they rise to prominence in Italy itself. I mean, there's centuries long tale and a fascinating one. Exactly. And I think it's one that the Romans loved as well. There's a reason why, when they're in the middle of this great imperial period, the late Republic, the early empire, they keep going back to these stories themselves. This is something they love to think

with, to play with, and to constantly retell and rethink. So I mean, I love this period, too, obviously, but I also love that the Romans loved it. And why do you think today, maybe not back in Roman times, if they're always thinking about it centuries later and hearkening back to it, but why do you think today that the earlier history of Rome is, I think it's fair to say, overshadowed compared to, let's say, the first century AD and the Julio Claudians and the early imperial period? It's kind of always been that way. It's a very, you know, dramatic period. Lots of amazing stories. We have the kings and we have Lucretia and we have Camillas. We have a lot of these really interesting, amazing figures and stories. But they are almost too

fantastic and modern historians going back to the 19th century and the great Prussian and German thinkers have always kind of recognized that they're not very believable. And so I think we've always kind of pushed early Roman history into this kind of realm of myth. It's great stories, but I think a lot of people these days like to focus on the slightly more kind of tangible elements, the ones, you know, Caesar, where we actually have things that he was writing down, these much more detailed and kind of historically reliable characters. I think people kind of latch on to that and get a little daunted by trying to make sense and separate myth and history from these early periods. Is that separating myth from history, isn't it? I mean, even though you've got the likes of

the scandals of Suetonius and the life from the first century AD, those figures from when you're going some 1500 years back, as you say, it's more that meshing together of history and myth, and maybe it gets a little bit more uncomfortable. I think so. And I think archaeology has obviously played a massive role in helping us to decipher this as well. But at these early periods, they've got a very light archaeological footprint as well. So even, you know, taking all that, that wonderful new data that we have, that's, you know, Livy, one of our great sources for the early history was writing hundreds of years after the fact, you know, how much can we believe him. But even taking that kind of contemporary archaeological evidence, it's very, very limited.

We've got trying to make sense of post holes and the occasional pot shard. We don't have these wonderful aqueducts and cement and the Coliseum that you get in the early empire. So, I mean, I think it's trying to make sensible that is quite tricky. I often think about early Roman history as a bit like kind of making sense of the stars and constellations. You've got these data points, which are wonderful. But they're separated by these vast black holes, this incredible distance. And it's a lot of different ways you can put them together.

But you're always speculating quite a bit in the early period just based on the nature of the evidence. Jeremy, what I also love about this period that we're going to delve into is that sometimes today, with the benefits of hindsight, if someone mentions ancient Italy, you just think Roman. You think Italy was always Roman in ancient history. But by looking through these centuries that we're doing today, I think my favorite part of this favorite period of mine is the fact that it shines a light on all of these other cultures that interacted with Rome and influenced Rome to their own degrees as well.

I think absolutely. And I mean, a big part of kind of the work I've been doing recently is breaking down this kind of great monolith that is Roman-ness. You know, what does that even mean in these early time periods? There's been a whole lot of work recently in early Roman history, which is now, we now think about it in terms of early Italian history, because there isn't a lot of evidence for anything particularly Roman until you get relatively late, maybe about 300 BCE is when we start to get that kind of, you know, some solid contemporary evidence. for people thinking about the Romans as a group as something like a state. And if we remove that kind of huge monolith, that kind of monument of Romanness from that

early time period, we're left with, I think, a much more interesting picture. You're right, kind of that's the bright light of Rome, and that's taken away. We can start to see all these other groups, all these other kind of personalities that kind of appear across the Italian peninsula, which is, I think, and it's more interesting. It's more fun. It's more dynamic. It's not kind of a single big character dominating everything. It's a collection of really interesting, discrete cultural personalities all across the peninsula,

doing very interesting things. In today's episode, I feel we're largely going to be focusing in on the 5th and the 4th centuries BC. So Lars, kind of big background question before we really delve into the chronology. You mentioned earlier Livy and the fact we have some Arclosian. evidence, not loads, but some. So can you highlight to us, can you reveal the types of sources that figures like you have available today to learn more about Rome and its expansion in the 5th and 4th centuries and what it looks like? It's a good question. The vast majority of our literary evidence comes from authors like Livy Dionysus of Halicarnassus. These are kind of

probably our two main sources, both writing in the time of Augustus. We've got Plutarch, who's writing a bit later, but probably using some earlier sources. And then just snippets pulled from other authors. Cicero is a big source. He's only sometimes talking about the early period. A lot of times he's actually talking about contemporary Rome, but trying to use precedents to make his point. And so in using some of, when he's citing a precedent for a legal principle, he happens to cite that the laws of the 12 tables, the great legal code of Rome in the fifth century. And well, we latch on to that is kind of, oh, that might be a bit of evidence we can use. You're often kind of sifting through piles of unrelated evidence to get the little nuggets of information about early Rome

from the literature. In terms of the archaeology, we have a decent bit from the city of Rome itself, but increasingly we're realizing that most Romans didn't live in Rome. They lived outside of Rome. Rome was a place where they went, but not necessarily where they lived. And in fact, most ancient cities, you wouldn't want to live in them. They're dirty. They're full of disease, you want to live outside and you came there when you needed to for religious or political reasons. So we're starting to get evidence for what we might call villas or farmsteads outside of the city of Rome, as well as some really nice, largely temples and other kind of religious sites from in the city. But again, it's a bit of a hodgepodge, and not a lot of it is particularly

Roman necessarily. There's not a lot of people inscribing, I am Roman on their door or anything like that. And a lot of the villas and farmsteads and things we're finding in the countryside around Rome look very similar to that. We're finding in a Truria and elsewhere all around the central Italian region. And that's been one of these big things where the more we've learned, the more we've realized there isn't a kind of clear archaeological signature or footprint for Romanness in these early periods, at least again from these kind of limited remains that we're finding. Well, let's explore that now. I think we should kick off with what the literature always seems to highlight is this really big event that happens at the end of the 6th century BC, Jeremy.

So what is this big event, this big change that happens early on at that time? The big change, 509 BC, the transition from a monarchy to a republic. This is the key moment. It marks the end of Libby's book one and before he kind of gets into the rest of his history. It is this kind of key turning point in the grand narrative of Roman Republican history. And it was a really big moment for the elite families because the beginning of the Republic is what kind of gave them access to power. Before that, power was kind of monopolized by one guy for one family in the office of the Rex or the king, as we often translate it now. And once we get to the Republic, there's a sequence of magistrates and they can, and different families share. power both in the same year and they each have a different chance at it. Each year there's magistrates

elected or selected. So it's very, very big for those elite families. But I think actually for most common people in Rome, it was largely a non-event. They wouldn't really have noticed they moved from having one leader to multiple leaders. But in terms of their everyday lives, in terms of how that power operated, what these leaders were doing, it was largely the same. So again, the example I often give of this is movement from a kind of single military dictator to a collection of generals governing a country or a state. It's very big for those generals because they now all have access to power. They share power rather than one guy. But for everybody else, it's still a military dictatorship. And that's, I think, effectively, what's happening in this early period of the early 5th century,

late 6th century. It's the movement from a single kind of military leader to a slightly larger collection. So how should we now be imagining today with the new archaeological evidence alongside the literature? What's this Roman state, if we can call it to state, what it all looks like at this time? How should we be picturing it if it's not this grand behemoth which it will become in later centuries? That is a great question. And I think you kind of hit the nail on the head with one of the early points you made there is should we think about it as a state. And I think increasingly, a lot of us who work on early Roman history would say, probably not. It's not really a state.

Increasingly, we have people talking about degrees of statiness. And let's get of 1 to 10, how much of a state are you? Exactly. Exactly. And, I mean, really all the way through the Republic, I think we can see whatever this kind of Roman system is, it's moving back and forth, not necessarily in a kind of linear way directly, you know, towards a higher degree of statiness. In fact, it moves back and forth. And by the late Republic, it kind of moves back again to a more devolved, looser arrangement. In the early period, I often think about it as more a alliance of families, a perhaps loose alliance of families.

Families seem to move in and out of this alliance on a reasonably regular basis down through the 5th century. It's not particularly stable. It might get renegotiated every year. There's some very good work showing that the Senate, may have been reconstituted every year down till the end of the fourth century. Tim Cornell has a great argument about this saying down to really the end of the fourth century, the Senate was a very flexible and fluid body, which was kind of reconstituted every year with slightly different membership depending on who was in charge.

That's how I think about it, is a kind of loose alliance of families which runs through the city of Rome. That's the place where they meet, and that's the place where they come together, but isn't kind of rigidly of Rome necessarily. So should we actually imagine that these different families, they were actually based outside of Rome in different areas in the countryside and this idea, I might be getting a bit too medieval in my thinking, but almost the local populations in that particular area were loyal to that leading families.

So they almost had their retinues and then they kind of coalesced together in those grand meetings within Rome within the city itself? I think that's a very good way of thinking about it with kind of a couple of minor tweaks. One of the big ones is, increasingly we're finding that the populations of early Italy were actually probably more mobile and fluid than in the Middle Ages or another time periods. So yes, they'd be there for a season or two, you know, planting crops, developing agriculture, but they could move on and they often did relatively regularly. And you'd often have large segments of the population that were regularly on the move doing what we call transhumans

pastoralism or kind of, you know, taking the animals typically up into the, the mountains during the summertime, and then down to the coast during the wintertime, and just following the pasturage. You'd have chunks of the population that would be doing that on a regular basis. You have a certain set population that is going to be kind of maintaining the homestead and maintaining some of these settlements. But again, one of the ways I often think about how the city of Rome works and how a lot of these communities worked is very similar to, say, shopping malls. The stable population that lives there is a bit like the employees who run the shops in a shopping mall. If the only people that are there in that shopping mall, the employees,

it's not doing very well. It's not very healthy. But you want enough there that if people come through, that you're able to take care of them. But a really successful ancient community or shopping mall is one that is able to regularly draw in a significant number of customers or, you know, significant groups of people who often come there to do whatever they need to do in the city. So how should we be imagining the city at this time? Is it very urbanized or is it rather a place where people come to once in a while to trade, to communicate, to do politics and so on? Is it very different the Rome of the 6th and 5th centuries BC compared to what we imagine later when it's like one of the first cities to reach more than a million people? It is very different in this early

period, which is one of the things that makes the archaeology for it so tricky to figure out. We have amazing temples. We have great structures and by the middle of the 4th century, we have wonderful circuit walls that are going around the great Serbian walls, which you can still see now. If you go to the city of Rome, right by Termini Station, they're still quite impressive. But inside of that, actually, there seems to be lots and lots of open space. Ancient communities all around Central Italy have what we call a leopard spot pattern to them, where you've got little pockets of settlement separated by lots and lots of empty space. And this never seems to be filled in, at least during that time period.

It seems to be there to handle visiting relatives or other populations that are passing through. So they have a place to come, set up camps, stay there for whatever festivals or markets they want to attend, maybe vote in the local elections as they're passing through. And then they continue on bringing their animals with them. So again, you might think about the city of Rome as being something like a massive fairground. At certain points in time, it probably looked desolate. And at other times, it probably looked really dynamic. And the interesting thing about Rome is they increasingly over time, as they go into the 4th century, and find a way to turn it into almost a continual festival,

rotating through with, you know, they've got a festival to this god, they've got something happening every week. The religious calendar was crucial to the life of the city, as it kind of dictated who was coming and when and for what reason. And they always had to have room for all these people coming to pass through Rome. That whole line of all roads lead to Rome, I always think is very prescient because it's kind of really how Rome worked. It was all about going there and then leaving again. It almost does feel like a Roman league at this time, where they're all congregating in one place.

And almost, dare I say, may not even going a bit too far here, but like an Iron Age hill fort as well, how they were also a place where people from the countryside would come in for important activities, maybe a place of refuge as well behind the large walls at the time of crisis. So is it fair to say that almost it is like a Roman league at this time? I absolutely think so. I think that's actually probably one of the better models we can bring in, but not necessarily in the 5th century or even in the 4th. I think that is probably one of the closest state-like structures in the ancient world

that we can compare this 5th and 4th century Rome too. But it's not quite like that. A lot of the leagues we think of are Greek leagues, and they are based around a slightly different kind of cultural premise as well as different geography and different patterns of movements and behavior. So I think, yes, I think thinking about a Roman league is probably a good model, but again, it's a distinctive, a unique one, an Italian version of this, which is also why it behaves a little bit differently as it develops. It's not just another kind of, the Romans always get a bad rap for copying things from the Greeks, but that's, of course, not a really good way of thinking about it. They are different and they've got their own approaches. But I do think, yeah, it's a very good idea to think about it as a type of league or federation. So what does warfare look like at this time? Let's say they come together and they decide that they like to raid certain neighboring communities or something similar. What do we know about warfare in the beginning of the 5th century BC? Warfare in the beginning of the 5th century is probably very similar to warfare at the beginning of the 6th of the 7th century. It's probably a lot of low-level tribal raiding. Families raiding each other for spoils, for typically something portable, whether it's kind of luxury goods, armor,

attacking somebody else and trying to strip their armor, very homeric in that sort of way. The idea you would fight and claim their armor is a spoil of war, it's a symbol of your manliness and your ability to defeat. Cattle seems to be a very big one. They're often stealing each other's cattle. But I don't think we should think about this in strictly economic terms. I think a lot of this is symbolic. You are taking someone's cattle in some ways on the expectation that they're going to try and steal it back from you the next year. So it's the act of stealing rather than the things that they're going after.

So I think it's a lot of highly competitive banditry, effectively, going on. Not a lot of interest in land. There doesn't seem to be any particular interest in land down until. we get to maybe the end of the fifth and the early four century, because people are moving around so much. There's a lot of land out there to take. There's no reason to attack somebody. You can just go and settle the land that's available. It's not an in-demand commodity at this time. So a lot of, again, probably clans of maybe 500 people, maybe a couple hundred warriors there fighting each other, maybe small coalitions coming together is a bit of evidence of that. How far we want to trust the

literary sources is iffy. But it's typically going to be a, small group of elites wearing all their fanciest armor going out there and showing off in this kind of very socially competitive military environment. And did they dare poke the bear at that time, like the great power that was the Etruscans a bit further north? Or is it very much Romans in Atruria's shadow at this time? I tend to think that just as we've been breaking down this kind monolith of the Romans, the same thing is true for the Etruscans. They're all the same families, and they don't seem to have actually particularly cared about the Etruscans that really care about that label Etruscan as much either. So we have a lot of movement of families from Etruria down to Rome and from Latium and Rome back up into Etruria as well.

People are moving back and forth and they don't seem to care about these labels are things like Etruscan or Sabine, Vulture or Aikwe, a lot of these kind of regional labels actually seem to be products of slightly later times. periods, when the Romans in particular get very into trying to label people in order to control them, kind of a product of empires. We get into the third and second centuries when the whole political climate and economic and military climate seems to change. When people get a little bit more settled down, they're more stable on the landscape and these labels actually matter. We may have some of these labels in the earlier time periods as well, but they seem to be quite flexible, and they don't mean the same things as they do in later period. So it's a long way of

answering your question there. I would say that the Romans are not at all in the shadows of the Etruscans. They are the Etruscans. It is all just central Italians at this time who happen to pass through the city of Rome. Sometimes they go up and pass through the city of Tarquina, Volchi, any of the Etruscan centers, they're probably passing through them all on a reasonably regular basis. And sometimes one clan will fight against another clan, but as you say, it seems to be kind of low-scale 500 men versus 500 men kind of warfare seeking portable wealth, cattle and so on at this time. So how do we then get onto the next stage where it appears like these clans that will become

the Romans in that area near and around the city of Rome do start to show a bit more cohesion. You almost get the next step in the story. Yeah, it's a very, very gradual process, this kind of increasing cohesion. And it's something which is influenced by both kind of internal developments, as well as Italian developments, as well as kind of Mediterranean-wide developments. And we can see this kind of growing social, political, and military cohesion really across the Mediterranean at this time. And so the people in Italy are very much part of these wider trends. Internally, in the area around Rome, there seems to be a recognition that coming together occasionally is a good way of doing things.

If you come together that allows you to engage in more warfare and more successful warfare against others, it also protects you a little bit more. And the more friends you have, the better things are militarily. Also, we get shifts regionally in terms of economy and agriculture. People start to settle down more. There's more permanent farms appearing on the landscape as we get into the fifth century. And with that investment, if I'm investing in my farms, You're investing in your farmstead. We're putting a lot of time and effort and resources into the ground. There's a sense that we might want to protect those together as well.

So there's kind of regional developments there. And then there is also a kind of wider shift in the scale of warfare and politics in the fifth century and down into the fourth. Warfare starts to get bigger. It's not just the Italians and the Romans who are banding together. Other people are too. And they're finding interesting ways of doing this. We have increased use of, what we might call mercenaries. We've got alliances. We have leagues, the Greek alliance against the Persians. We've got the Carthaginians doing their own thing with leagues and mercenaries and allies. And so the people we think of as the Romans, people ultimately become the Romans start to realize that, hey, there's a whole lot of reasons we should probably work together. But it's always running in tension with their own self-interest. Most of these Roman families don't want to give up

their own personal power and independence. They're very happy doing things the way they have been doing them for hundreds of years. And so it's a slow process, which requires some impetus from various points. The Gaelic Sack of Rome is a key one when we get down to 390. That seems to be a turning point in Roman history, much bigger, I think, than 509 in the transition from monarchy to Republic, because it shows the Romans how kind of inconsequential they are in the grand scheme of things in Italy, they are destroyed by a group of gulls who might represent, if we believe, the reports that they are actually going to serve as mercenaries in the army of Dionysus I, the first. They are just a unit within a larger Hellenistic army, and they wipe the floor with the Romans. And that seems

to kind of show them, hey, if we want to compete on this, if we don't want to be pushed around by these big Hellenistic powers that are developing elsewhere, we really need to kind of come together. And that encourages these elites to give up some of that personal power and ban to get. into a slightly more stately, a slightly larger, more cohesive alliance. Let's explore that event you mentioned there, the Gallic Sack of Rome, and the events immediately preceding it, Jeremy, because we're getting to the 4th century BC now, and in particular this first decade of the 4th century, so the 390s BC, because I've also got in my notes the Sack of Véi that happens before then.

So can you explain the events of that decade and how it does ultimately culminate in the Gauls sacking Rome, this massive event? event. That is, I think, yeah, one of the most pivotal decades in Roman Republican history, at least until you get down to the events of the Second Punic War, which is another one of these big watershed moments. The sack of Vey and then the sack of Rome are kind of the two sides of the coin of, you know, kind of Roman development at this time. Vei's a community very close to Rome, 10, 20 kilometers away, walking distance within a day, and was always kind of a great rival. Again, if we think about Rome and Vey as shopping malls, it's the closest competition.

And that is kind of how I think we might want to think about it. And they work in synergy a little bit. Just like if you have two big shopping malls together, that's a nice little cluster. Everyone kind of goes and does all their shopping in that area of the Tiber River. That's where they're going to be regularly going, whether they're going to Vey or they're going to Rome. There's always reasons to be in that area. But by the time we get to the end of the fifth century and into the forth, it seems that the people in Rome, the powerful families in Rome have decided that they'd rather have all of the business. They'd rather have all the people and all the attention. And so they ultimately stamp out this close competition, the community of Vey. And it is amazing how

they stamp it out. Not only do they take it and sack the city after supposedly a 10-year siege. Most of us don't really think that's a real 10-year siege, partly just because it harkens back to the siege of Troy. It's very Homeric, very epic. But even beyond that, the Roman army at this point is not set up. It doesn't have the logistics to conduct this as a proper siege. We can probably think about it as kind of 10 years of consistent raiding or consistent activity there, but it's not really a kind of siege as we think about. It's not Caesar or Elysia or anything like that.

But they go and they take it and then not only, do they take it and take everything of portable, all the portable wealth, everything of value from the city, they take its gods and they perform a great ritual, which only happens a couple other times in Roman history, where they basically summon the gods out. They invite the gods to come from Vey and to go to Rome, and they set up a temple to these Veyentine gods in Rome, and then they basically hand the city of Vey over to the infernal deities. It's a kind of a permanent, killing of the city in a way which doesn't happen often in ancient warfare and Roman warfare. The Romans had sacked many cities up until that point, and, of course, again, Rome gets sacked a little bit later and it survives. And then archaeologically speaking, it's well attested archaeologically. And exactly this time, very coincidentally, Vey goes into a marked decline from which it never recovers. So this is one of those times when the literary record actually does get backed up by the archaeology. Something interesting happens in Vey here.

whatever the Romans do to it really does remove it as a rival power, a rival community, a rival kind of nexus point of interaction within the region. And that's kind of this high point of Roman development at this time. It's kind of the first real imperial thing they do. And they don't even take over the land, but they remove the competition. They take over the land a bit later. But when they first destroy the city of A, it's really just about getting rid of the city as a hub of interaction, which kind of, I think, shows how they're thinking about things up to this point.

And it's never resettled. They must be destroyed. I'm imagining a Cato the Elder equivalent at that time, like hearkening strongly the destruction and eternal destruction of the city. That's a, it's brutal. It's a brutal event in Rome's early history. It is. And it's actually, it's a very good reference there,

bringing in Cato the Elder, because the city of Carthage is another time where they perform this particular ritual by, you know, invoking the gods and letting the, infertile deities take it over and destroy. Gods are hugely important in ancient cities. Temples are one of the main reasons why people go to cities for the religious reasons, but also because their marketplaces, temples are centers for economy as well as religion. And by removing those gods, you remove the heart out of the ancient community.

And so that's what they do. And that's one of the first real imperial things they do. But again, it shows that this early Roman imperialism, if we want to call it that, even at this early stage is not about land. It's not about necessarily resources or anything like that. Those kind of extractative aspects of empire, we often think people are trying to get, you know, silver or gold or those types of things. Yes, that's there.

But when the Romans take VE, what they really are doing is taking the conversation. They're taking the social and cultural power of Vey and bringing it to Rome, bringing it to where they have their conversations, where they have their political meetings. And if you want to worship those Veyentine gods, you have to come to Rome to do that now. So they bring the festivals, they bring the activity, they bring all of that to Rome, and center it there in the

community. The Sacave is 396 BC. And so how do we get from there, where the Romans seem to be doing pretty well, albeit brutally destroying this city? How do we then get to, almost them getting their comeuppance a few years later with the Gould's arriving? Well, this is the thing. The Romans don't go into decline or anything in between. They are able to defeat Vey. They have the most dominant community after the Saccavei. They are the peak when it comes to the local region. But they are just outmatched by this group of Gauls, which apparently comes down

south, Brennis and his goals, and he wipes the floor with them at the Battle of the Rivalia, and then goes on famously besieges the city, even though Rome doesn't actually have city wall. at this point, so it's not much of a siege. They all retreat to the Capitoline Hill and then have to negotiate a ransom in order to get Brennis and his troops to go on their way. I think it just shows that at this time, you can be a dominant power in Central Italy and still be a very small fry on even the wider Italian stage. You mentioned Italian there, because these goals, we shouldn't be imagining that they're coming from Central France, should we? The goals, by this time, lots of trade with Etruscans over the past century.

they have established themselves in northern Italy, like the Sonones and people like that. Exactly. This seems to be a branch of the Sononese. And of course, Livese from up in this region, he is writing, of course, hundreds of years later, but likely based on some local knowledge. This group of Gauls or Celts had migrated into Italy well before then and had been based up there. In fact, in the 5th century, and as we get down into the 4th century, it gets very hard to tell Etruscans or kind of northern Italians apart from Gauls. They look amazingly similar. The material culture, particularly what the warriors are wearing and equipped with the so-called Etruscan equipment starts to look very, very Gallic or Celtic. And this, again, it shows these labels. We keep using them now because, well, our ancient sources use them, but they don't hold up that well.

So, yes, we could talk about the sack of Rome by the northern Italians. But it just doesn't have the same ring to it as the sack by the Gauls. And of course, Caesar uses this to great effect in his propaganda. Later on, when he goes and attacks Gaul, he wants his conquest of Gaul to be kind of the removal of the great Roman boogeyman. They've always caused us issues from the sack in 390 to Gaius, Marius and his fight against the Gauls in the final years of the second century BCE. So yes, you're entirely right. We can call them maybe not Etruscans, but yes, northern Italians, Gallic troops coming down south. And again, there's a couple different traditions here around who they were or what they were.

doing, but the one that I generally like is that they were probably mercenaries or allies. Again, the difference between a mercenary and ally is largely context on their way down south to serve in the army of the tyrant of Syracuse. So they were kind of part of what we can call a kind of Hellenistic or Greek army that happened to pass through Rome and decided to do a little bit of raiding while they were there. Shows the power of the Greeks at this time. In southern Italy and Sicily, are they? They're very, very rich and control a lot of territory. Shall we quickly mention the sacred geese story? Because this is linked to the Galaxack of Rome or their failure to take the Citadel? It is. It's a great little story. I mean, this is, again, when we get into

Libby and this very rich narrative, he seems to be working from this. I mean, the Galaxack, there's lots of debate around whether there's any archaeological evidence supporting it or not. Generally speaking, there's definitely not any wide burn layer or anything in Rome that we can convincingly say that this is when the Gauls came in, burnt everything to the ground, as Livy said. But Livy is clearly working from a very rich tradition with these lovely little stories about, you know, the geese who are sacred to Juno up on the Capitoline hill, and they start to honk when the Gauls start to try and scale the sides of the capital, warning the Romans, and allowing them to organize their soldiers. and fight them off on this great last stand. And that's where people think there's the temple of Juno Moneta up on the Capitoline now, which is supposedly named after this. However, you know, frustratingly for those who really like that story,

Juno Maneta doesn't seem to be a strictly Roman god or goddess, I should say. There's actually other versions of her elsewhere, which complicate this lovely story that Libby gives us. I think it tells us a lot about kind of what Libby's doing is he's piecing together these interesting little anecdotes and tidbits that he's finding in his sources. just to give a really nice, convincing narrative. But it might not all be as accurate as we would like it to be. It's a great story, though.

I mean, you know, saved by the geese. They need a story like that, don't they? It's got a safe face in the wake of this infamous event where Brenner sees. He exacts tribute and, you know, destroys some of the city, we presume, and then marches away with his goals, with his Celts. The sack of Rome is associated with one of these great figures in Roman history that, sadly, no one really thinks about any more Marcus Furious Camillis. He's a great military leader who is, again, pivotal in Roman history at this time.

He's like the Morius before Marius. He dominates all the magistracies in the Roman Republic for years and is involved in almost every major event in Roman history from the end of the 5th century down through the beginning of the 4th. And some of the stories are famously, he is not in Rome when it gets sacked, so he's not associated with the defeat. But there's multiple stories of him coming in at the last. last minute to save the day and actually stopping the ransom from being paid and defeating Brennis and saving Roman honor. Or there's another version where the Gauls take their gold

and start to march away and Camillas chases them down and gets the gold back and again saves Roman honor. So yes, there is a tradition that I think the one I believe that the goals just take the money and head down south. But there are a few other stories. Again, and the Romans definitely trying to save a bit of face there with inserting Camillis into some of them. as a way to solve their pride a bit. What does it catalyze in the Romans? How do they respond to this infamous event with Camillas in the narrative at the center of it all?

Again, I think it's a massive event, which I think actually took the Romans by surprise in a number of different ways. I think militarily, it took them by surprise. They knew the Gauls were coming, but I think they were a little bit shocked by how quickly they crumbled in front of them. But I think the main thing that surprised them

is I think it showed them how important the city of Rome was to them. Up until this time, families were able to move around. They could bounce from community to community. There is this increasing focus that Rome is the place to be. And I think, again, we see that with the sack of they. The fact that they're removing competition. That's also removing a place where they might be able to move to if they decided they didn't like things in Rome anymore.

Removing Rome was removing an option for them. But it showed they were really kind of investing in the city of Rome. And when the goals came in and sacked it, most likely the ransom that they took was from the temples that were there. It wasn't necessarily the population. They probably took all the items that were there. They probably took all the wonderful fixtures and votive deposits. And I think when the Romans came back to the city after this event, the temples, everything's been lying in a bit of ruin, even though the personal wealth of the families probably was not impacted.

particularly much. But I think they've realized at that point how much Rome actually mattered to them and kind of again catalyze this cohesion, which is kind of slowly building. And then they, in some ways, double down on Rome. They say, this really is important. And the fact that it was just basically taken away from us has made me realize that. Interestingly, for Rome and this particular sack as well, there is the famous story of them evacuating the gods, the statues, the penates of Rome before the goals arrived. This is a really important thing. So the goals aren't able to do to Rome what Rome did today. They can't take its gods.

They're able to evacuate those and bring them back, which is, again, another key part of this whole story and kind of the rebirth of Rome afterwards. So you have this big event and this realization of how important Rome is to them. So the 4th century BC really feels like this pivotal moment where Rome starts to grow and ultimately become the dominant force in Italy. When do we start seeing the Romans in the 4th century starting to expand into areas like Campania,

where modern-day Naples is to the south and so on and so forth? When do we start to see that shift and Rome actually becoming so much more than just that area along the River Tiber? I think it's really slow, slow and gradual and halting and stuttering and stumbling. I think in the immediate aftermath of the Gaelic Sack, they really focus on the city of Rome. That's when we get this massive building project, building the Servian walls. This was a truly huge undertaking, took them years, massive mobilization of manpower and resources. We get that, and that, I think, is a really key thing. But in terms of expansion and empire, and again, spreading into other regions, I think it's very slow, very gradual, and not particularly intentional.

One of the key things that the Romans do in the early years of the 4th century is they start to think a bit more about citizenship. They start to think a bit more about what it means to be Roman. So right after the Gaelic Sack, one of the first things they do before they even build the walls is they create some new tribes. Now, I mean, there's traditionally three tribes of Romulus tribes are kind of an entity or a group that's been around for a very long time in Roman history. and they seem to connect with these kind of powerful families or clans that we have in the early city. And going back to the beginning of the Republic, supposedly created by Servius Tullius, but right there, right around 509, right when the Republic is formed, we get kind of the first division of Roman society into a whole series of both urban and rural tribes.

There's four urban, 17 rural, and these are created right there at the beginning of the Republic. And then they don't create any more for almost a century. But right after the Galaxac, they create four new tribes, which are possibly connected with the land of Vey, the area around Vey, that community they had just destroyed. And then during the course of the 4th century, they increasingly add more and more of these tribes. And this is all part of a kind of rethinking of citizenship, of membership,

and what it means to be kind of part of this Roman project. And the main thing that being in a tribe means is that you have to serve in the Roman army. It kind of solidifies this military alliance that was a bit more fluid and flexible. From the beginning of the 4th century, they really entrench it. They start to make it more permanent. And they start to make it something that you can't opt out of. If you are made of Roman tribe, if you are given Roman citizenship, the main thing that comes with that is the obligation to either serve in the Roman army or to pay for the Roman army.

So I think this expansion of tribes and Roman citizenship, which we often think of as a positive thing, and definitely our later sources thought of as a positive thing, in the 4th century, they start to develop and expand this in a much more kind of extractive way, largely based around kind of solidifying Roman power and particularly, again, the size of the army. So the army increases in size and its strength following it. Is this also the reform of the army in how they fight as well? This is contested. I have my thoughts on it.

Other people have slightly different ones on it. But since I happen to be here, I'll give you mine. Traditionally, we have in Livy and a few other texts. This is against some of these other fragments. We have this wonderful little thing called the Inedsum Vaticanum, which is found in the Vatican, which is why it's got that name, which supposedly contains a speech from the early 3rd century. which talks about the development of Roman warfare. It's a Roman politician or ambassador talking to the Carthaginians,

and he says, we didn't use to fight in a phalanx, but we learned to do that from the Etruscans. We didn't use to know how to do siegecraft, but we learned that from the Greeks. We didn't used to fight in manoples, but we learned that from the Samnites. And this whole little narrative of kind of Roman development and reform, which we have in that text and a couple others,

is how we have often thought about the development of the Roman army. I think that is largely invented. I think what we really have is basically just clans fighting as they always had. And then as the Romans start to include more clans in their army on a regular basis, those clans bring their particular ways of fighting with them. And of course, some of these clans may change how they fight over time. Maybe they used to fight with a big circular shield, but increasingly, because everybody else is doing it,

they're starting to fight with oblong shields. Maybe they used to fight with thrusting spears. But increasingly, in the 5th and 4th century, everybody in Italy is moving over to javelins, so they start to do that. So rather than a sort of reforms, I think this kind of expansion of the tribes, expansion of citizens, expansion in the number and type of troops,

which are coming into the Roman army, bringing their native ways of fighting with them, that naturally results in some change. changes in Roman tactics and strategy. I think the main thing the Romans are able to do is with their so-called Manipular Legion is they find a way to accommodate loads of different fighting styles in this one particular army. That's the amazing thing about Rome, is it's not this kind of specialized troops each

doing separate things. It's the fact that you can show up with whatever you've got. The Romans have a place in their battle line for you. So with this increase in the size of the Roman army, making it's, you know, part of the requirements of all these clans that they're creating, how long is it in the fourth century? If you said it takes a bit of time. So let's get to the second half of the fourth century BC. When do we see the Romans expanding out of their regional area into the nearby area with this new army, with this new system, with more soldiers and so on? What do we know about this? Well, what happens is when the Romans add new people as tribes, add them as citizens, that basically means they can't fight them anymore. And so they have to look a little bit further out in order to find a new target. And then what they seem to do is to fight and raid in areas until there's nothing left to take

or until there's just no one left to fight. And then they incorporate those people into their army and to their citizen body as a last thing. That's the last thing these people had to give us is their future service. We're going to take everything, and then once that's all gone, then we own you afterwards as well as citizens. It is interesting that that citizenship seems to be kind of the final punishment that the Romans enact on a lot of these groups. We see this, particularly when we get the so-called Great Latin War from 340 to 338, when the Romans ultimately defeat a lot of these other kind of Latin communities. It seems to be kind of in some ways a rival federation.

The Central Italians who didn't sign up to this Roman deal yet and who were kind of trying to have had their own vision of how they could all work together. What the Romans largely do is incorporate them as citizens. They bring them in under that kind of umbrella. They bring in some as allies, but many as citizens. And the difference between citizens and allies is very limited at this time. Yes, technically citizens can vote and things like that,

but particularly in Leisham, they actually share a lot of similar legal rights. And it may have actually been a benefit to be an ally rather than a citizen. And we have instances of communities and groups turning down Roman citizenship in order to stay as allies because they felt that was the better deal. So one of the ways they expand is just by incorporating that kind of removes those peoples, those communities as targets. And then they keep expanding, looking for other targets. And of course, as they expand, they bring those people's agendas, they bring those people's enemies, you know, the people that they're engaged with, the people who they want to fight, the people who they want to raid, they bring them in as well. So all of that leads to this ever-increasing kind of network. It's almost like a disease or a virus, the way it kind of a cancer, the way it kind of spreads.

I mean, imperialism's not a very nice thing. This is the beginning of it, isn't it? It really is. This is when you're starting to see Rome grow and trying to explain just. just why the Romans need to keep finding new enemies in their kind of mentality? It is. And I think the reason they want to keep finding new enemies is for very traditional reasons. It's not really about trying to spread this glory of Rome across the map. It's a lot of these guys, particularly in the 5th and 4th centuries, they like to fight.

This is part of their identity. This is part of who they are. It is the fighting and the winning in many ways more than the spoils that they are still after in the 4th, century. I think as they expand, as you get into the third century, that starts to change. When things expand a bit too far, you end up facing opponents you don't know. You end up facing enemies that you don't know if they're an equal or not. There might not be the same glory to be won. And the spoils of war have a greater appeal once you get to that stage. But I think as we're going into the fourth century really down as they're fighting in Campania, Samnium, Etruria, a lot of

those great battles and wars are between families that have known each other for centuries. They are known opponents. They are not that different. They are used to moving around and through each other's territory. This is all very much part of a kind of known central Italian world that they're engaging with. It just so happens that the Romans are increasingly dominating it, their network, their connections, the idea of unity that they're bringing here is increasingly the one that's winning out. And it's forcing some of these other groups to also kind of come up with similar ideas.

So the Latins have their kind of short-lived rival lead to the Romans in the 4th century. The Samnites as a group probably came together against the Romans. They were probably really Samnites before that. I mean, they may have been, they've had religious festivals. And that label was definitely around. but as a kind of unified military force, that's probably in response to this growing Roman threat. Jeremy, we won't go any further forward in time. I think the Samnite Wars is a topic for its own episode in itself to really explore it and its importance to the growth of Rome.

But just to finish off, we started at the turn of the 5th century BC, and we've come down to the middle of the 4th century BC. So just to summarize all that we've been talking about, how different does the Roman state in a level of 1 to 10, how different does it look by the time we reach the mid 4th century BC from where we've come from? How much transformation has there been? And can we say that this time in history, in its early history, is when we do see the origins of Rome's empire? Well, in a lot of ways, I don't think the state is all that different. between kind of even the regal period and the end of the fourth century. It's still got a powerful Senate, which is still probably the most important body there in the city.

It's the collected heads of these powerful families that have come together to do whatever they decide to do, pursue their agenda under this kind of Roman banner. They have military leaders. That changes from a rex to kind of the praetors, or we're not quite sure what they're called in the early republic to by the mid-fourth century. their consoles, and there are different assemblies and things like that. But actually, most of the core mechanisms, the core aspects that we might think of as a state, aren't changing that much.

And in fact, many of the ideas that are driving their behavior also aren't changing huge amounts. I think most of the warfare that's happening is still largely dictated by kind of greed, by, you know, raiding in a lot of ways is still, I think the default way, of operating for a lot of these families, that hasn't changed a lot either. But what has changed by the time we get to the end of the 4th century and into the Samnite Wars in that time period is how they think about themselves. There is an increasing kind of connection to a identity that is associated with the community of Rome. Rome is the place where they meet. It's increasingly the place that they kind of attach their identity to, at least in this kind of military.

political context. And by the end of the 4th century, we start to see the beginnings of things like Roman coinage. So up until this time, they were obviously engaging in trade across the Mediterranean, but they weren't minting coinage with the name Roman on them, with the Roman people on it, until we get to the end of the 4th century. There's also Peter Wiseman has identified the end of the 4th century as the time period when we can probably pin the origin of the Romulus and Remus myth, as well as maybe the importance of Aeneas. So a lot of these kind of unifying myths and ideas that brought the people together are there in the 4th century.

So from kind of a modern perspective where we often kind of fixate on the laws and the institutions. And of course, that's often how we've thought about the Roman Republic. Again, going back to the 1800s. We've often defined it as a political set of institutions and structures and ideas in a very kind of Ciceronian way, in that sense, it hasn't changed a lot from the early fifth down to the late 4th century. But again, the ideas and the identities have changed. And I think it's amazing how important and powerful that is, that kind of sense of belonging

that people have, that the idea of something a little bit bigger than themselves, bigger than their family, the idea that there is this kind of wider umbrella, a group that they can latch on to and identify, that is something we see as we get towards the end of the 4th century. And that's something which only continues to grow as it gets a bit later. So I think if we identify imperialism and empire and the Roman empires as kind of the real birth of Romaneness, that is what we see in the 4th century.

And I think in a lot of ways it's interesting that that Romanness is intrinsically connected to imperialism, that you can't be Roman without being imperial, and you know, that these kind of go hand in hand. And I think that shows in some ways how limited this Roman identity was for a lot of people at this time. Of course, later on, we get to the late Republic. It starts to mean a lot more, and it can mean different things. I think in the fourth century, Romaness really did mean imperialism. It meant this kind of one imperial layer at the top that, again, kind of turns into something a bit more later on, but in this period, that's what it is. So fascinating how even early on, before Rome is even the clear masters of Italy,

that Roman identity is intrinsically linked to imperial thought. Jeremy, this has been absolutely fascinating. We'll have to get you back on in the future to continue the story, almost that second part as Rome really expands, Samnites, rich Greek cities in the south, Etruscans in the north, Pyrrhus of Epirus and so many others still to do, Punic Wars. but we will save that for the next episode because this has been really fun to delve deep into this easily overlooked period in Roman history, that early century and a half after it becomes a republic, sorting fact from fiction what we have in our surviving sources and how Rome looked at that time, and how it gradually expands, how it's affected by these big events like the sack of Vey and the sack of Rome itself, and how all of that intertwines to create Roman identity by the four century BC. It is an amazing story. Couldn't have said any better myself. This is, I think,

just a wonderful time period. You can't really understand the later time periods unless you really understand what's going on here at the beginning. So very happy to come back and talk a bit more about this and getting into Pyrrhus and the Punic Wars as well at some point. And of course, Jeremy, you have written a book all about this. Yes, indeed. I've recently published The Children of Mars, the Origins of Rome's Empire, with Oxford University Press, which covers a lot of this in a lot more detail that we're able to go into today and does take things down into the Punic Wars, covering a lot of that really interesting third century as well as these ideas of Rome increasingly stabilize and turn into that slightly bigger Rome with a capital R that we often think

about. Jeremy, it's a fantastic book and just goes to me to say once again, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Jeremy Armstrong talking through the origins of a Roman identity, the development of a Roman identity, and one intrinsically linked to imperial thinking, the sacking of they, the sack of Rome by the Gauls, and so much more. It was really fun to go that far back in the story of Rome. Before it's the dominant force in Italy, before it's even the dominant force in central Italy. It's always interesting to explore the origins of this well-known ancient civilization. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much

for listening. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.