701. Roman Civil War: Rise of the General (Part 1)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/28128d0e0b535c0e

Hello, now before we go to today's episode, I have some insanely exciting news for you. On Friday the fourth of September, Dominic and I will be forming live
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in eighteen sixty eight, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Theodore II, has kidnapped fifty nine Europeans, and he is holding them hostage.
after descending into this demented rage because
One of his fellow monarchs, Queen.
Has
declined to answer.
His
letters. I'm not making this up.
And the British
after months and months of fruitless waiting, have lost patience, and they have sent a military expedition under General Napier half way around the world to save them an expedition includes thousands of mules,
Loads of
Elephants and they've even had to build their in their own railway across the highlands of Abyssinia or Ethiopia to try to get to his mountain citadel. It is a bonkers story. Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary, full blown British imperial epic.
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Mad characters.
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And now it was.
The news began to reach Rome of the Teutons.
And the Kimbury.
Initially, the reports detailing the numbers and strength of these invaders seemed fantastical.
But it soon became clear that all the rumours were in reality.
underestimates of the truth.
Three hundred thousand warriors were on the march, accompanied by even larger numbers of women and children,
All of them looking for lands and cities in which to settle.
Who were these people?
From what distant part of the world have they emigrated?
It was unclear.
For prior to their descent on Gaul and Italy,
No one had ever heard of them.
The best guess.
They were Germans, and had travelled from the lands that border the Northern Ocean.
This supposition
Derive from various clues.
Firstly,
Their enormous size.
Next.
The light blue colour of their eyes.
And finally
The fact that Kimbury
is a word which in the language of the Germans
means plunderer.
That was the Greek historian Plutarch, and he's describing a very chilling
and spine tingling terms, one of the most terrifying moments in Roman history, a migration of barbarians
Which by the year
One one three.
B. C.
had arrived at the gates.
Over.
Roman.
Italy.
And
These people, the Tutons and the Kimbury. Tom, am I am I stretching a point to say that effectively they're the Danes?
Yeah, Plutarch says that they come from the lands that border the Northern Ocean.
And the general
thinking is that this was probably Jutland and the regions north of it. I mean it's a kind of proto Viking invasion, if you like. And it would have taken them a long time to get from
Jutland.
Damn to
down to the Alps. Um, so it could well have taken
um the Tutons and the Kimbury anything up to a decade to get there.
And if so, for most of that decade, obviously the Romans
And the people of Italy.
had no idea what was approaching them.
And it always.
Kind of.
makes me think of those kind of Hollywood dramas where

An asteroid hurtling towards planet Earth.
Or there are scientists experimenting with some
zombie mutation in a lab and people are going about
their everyday lives just waiting for this kind of appalling apocalypse to hit them.
Yeah.
It's December n twenty nineteen and you're hearing the first reports from one.
Yes. Of of people with people with unusual colds. And around the breakfast table people are discussing their summer holidays. Exactly. And so in today's episode, we are going to be looking
Uh what is going on in Rome?
As this
Migrationary apocalypse is hurtling towards them.
And just to give people a sense of of where we are in the history of Rome, we are a century before the age of Augustus, so before the establishment of the rule of the Caesars, and Rome at this point is still a republic. It is not ruled by
An autocrat and the star of this episode, the star of the show is
is the dominant figure of this period um in the kind of the the one tens, the one hundreds BC. And he is a brilliant soldier.
Um he is
A superb political operator.
And he has emerged seemingly from nowhere.
to become the city's great popular hero.
And this is a man called Gaius Marius.
And he is a man whose achievements, whose
Ambitions
Over the course of um
The uh the one ten's.
and the and the one hundreds have increasingly put the whole of Rome in his shadow.
and will continue to do so for several decades after he is a a titanic figure in the history of the Roman Republic.
Yeah, and we'll be tracing his story, won't we? So he has a he has this great confrontation, doesn't he, with the Tutons and the Kimbury, but that's merely the beginning of his extraordinary career. I mean, spoiler, he is the guy who is going to see off this apocalyptic threat. He is the kind of the the Bruce Willis seeing off the asteroid. Then in ninety one B C
When he's considerably older, he plays
An important role in one of the most desperate wars that the Romans ever fight.
Um it's not very well known, but it it brought Rome almost to the brink, and this was a war that was fought against
The Soccii, they called them, their comrades in arms, and these were the Italian allies who had been by the side of the Romans for centuries by this point, and suddenly they erupt and there's this terrible war that rages across Italy.
And then most fatefully of all
and escalating gradually throughout the series to an incredibly bloody climax.
We have the bitter rivalry.
Between Marius and
And a younger man.
Who had once been
Marius' deputy.
This is a man called Lucius.
Cornelius Sulla.
So I've been looking forward to this since we started the rest of history because when I was uh a teenager, I read a series of books by Colleen McCulloch, I think, who wrote The Thornbirds. And she wrote this Roman sequence in which the Marius Sulla rivalry played a huge part. It was a brilliant if you're a teenage boy interested in Rome, you know, this is absolute catnip. And
The great thing about them is they seem such
archetypes. So Marius, the representation, this is how she portrayed it anyway. Marius was ordinary, kind of rough hewn
He was uh sort of unpolished. He's the representative of the of the of the ordinary people, and Sulla is decadent and he's golden haired and he's cosmopolitan and sophisticated, and he's the representative of the upper classes. And I'm looking forward to finding out if this is absolute Tosh or
Or if this is actually true.
And you can tell from their name. So Gaius Marius, he just has the two names. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, if you have three, that's a giveaway. You are from a kind of a higher class.
background and and Seller is actually a patrician, which is the kind of the grandest of the grand in Rome. So there is definitely a class animus there. But
The two of them.
in lots of ways are not entirely dissimilar.
So both of them are
Intensely ambitious.
And both of them are are kind of dazzlingly ruthless opportunists. So they are completely worthy rivals.
And Domini uh this rivalry, as you were as you were implying.
Between
The self made man and the patrician
Um
The one time commander and the one time
subordinate, the guy with the two names and the guy with the three names. This is going to end up
shaking the very foundations of
Rome's Republic.

For the first time ever.
In a Roman army.
Marching on Rome itself.
Then there will be a murderous civil war.
prescription lists will be posted in the heart of the city and Rome will end up being ruled by
A military dictatorship.
And this is a crucial turning point in the history of Rome, and it is a massive waystep.
on the road that will lead to the final collapse of the republic and the establishment of the autocracy of the Caesars. So in some ways it anticipates, doesn't it, the civil wars
between, you know, I don't know, Brutus and Cassius on one hand and Antony and Octavian
On the other end, as you said, it's the first step in this process that leads to
The Empire.
Well I think more saliently between Pompey and Julius Caesar.
And Pompey.
We are going to see the young Pompey.
towards the end of the series.
And
Marius, as we see, is going to develop links with the family of Julius Caesar.
And so it's a kind of preface to that great Titanic struggle. But it's more than just a story about Rome, isn't it? About Rome as a city. Because we're at a point in Rome's history where Rome is a real geopolitical player. And so what happens here matters across the Mediterranean.
Yes, absolutely. And this has been signalled in incredibly brutal fashion um a few decades previously in one four six BC.
When the Romans had wiped out
Two of the oldest and most celebrated cities in the whole of the Mediterranean.
And the first of these was a city called Carthage.
We did three whole series on the terrible wars that Rome fought against the Carthaginians. It's their was their old enemy. It was the kind of the great rival superpower in the the Western Mediterranean. And those three wars had culminated in the complete annihilation of Carthage. And then in the same year
the Romans wipe out the Greek city of Corinth, which again, I mean, it's one of the most famous cities in Greece. It's
you know, a place rich in mythology and culture and history.
um absolutely obliterated.
And this obviously serves as a devastating warning to the Greeks that there's very much a new sheriff in town. You do not want to mess with the Romans. And to be honest.
The destruction of these two cities.
is a shock that reverberates across the Mediterranean.
But there are plenty of people in Rome itself that feel a bit queasy about it.
But there are Romans who start saying, Well, you know, are we actually the baddies here? And this worries them because the conceit of the Romans throughout
their rise to superpower status.
has always been that they are the most moral of people.
And that everything they do is in self defence. And if it's not in self defence, then the gods won't back them. And so the fact that they have this great empire is proof that the gods have been backing them. So in a way they kind of conquer the world.
Yeah.
In self-defense.
Um and so they don't want to think that
They're bad people. They don't want to think that
the gods are against them.
You talk about them conquering the world.
But actually have they conquered the world? I mean their empire territorially, it's not enormous at this point, is it? So just give us a sense of the panorama of Roman power.
They kind of
informal hegemony, I guess, over much of the Mediterranean. But you're right that the formal empire, the sense in which they have provinces, it is at this point still relatively small. So if you think of
Rome in the centre of Italy and you go clockways round the western Mediterranean. So
Sicily, that was Rome's first province they had uh instituted as a province in two forty one BC as the result of the first great war that they'd fought against Sicily had been the kind of the the prize that they'd taken in that war.
Then um across the sea from Sicily you have what's now Tunisia, what the Romans call Africa. This is where Carthage has stood, and the Romans have annexed the hinterland of what
had had been the Carthage's territory in North Africa. Then southern and central Spain, again, the Romans had taken that from Carthage in the second war, the war that featured Hannibal.
And
at this point the Romans are advancing northwards into the kind of the northern reaches of Spain.
And then you have the southern strip of Gaul, what the Romans called the provincia, the province.
And this is the the Latin word that ultimately gives us the word provence. So it's
We know what's now southern France. And so there's no question with Carthage gone, with all these former provinces of Carthage absorbed or new territories conquered, the Rome is undisputed as the the great hegemonia.

But what is ominous, I think, for people in the eastern Mediterranean is that Rome by this point also has a couple of provinces in the eastern.
half of the of the Mediterranean Sea. And this, of course, is is these are lands that previously had been ruled by
Macedonian kings, so the heirs of Alexander the Great.
So one of these provinces had been
the former kingdom of Alexander the Great.
It's become the Roman province of Macedon.
Um, in that that fateful year one four six that had seen Corinth and Carthage destroyed as well.
And across the Aegean from Greece. So what is now
the Aegean seaboard of Turkey.
There is another province which the Romans called
Asia.
Um and this had been
The
the kind of the Greek ruled kingdom of
Pergamum.
Pergamum is a Greek city that controlled the kind of you know the western half of what's now Turkey. And in one thirty three BC
It's last king, a man called Attilus. He didn't really have an obvious successor.
He was nervous at the Romans of what the Romans might do.
And so basically he thought well
Maybe the obvious solution is just to give it to the Romans in my will.
And so that's what he does.
And it's
It's one of the most spectacular bequests in the whole of history, because Pergamum is fabulously rich, quite apart from giving the Romans a tollhold in Asia.
And it is
It offers the Romans all kinds of decadent pleasures that they had provided.
barely even realized existed until that moment. So everything from celebrity chefs to sex manuals.
They're all brought back to Rome.
Where
The elites of course think
secretly they're brilliant, but lots of them pretended to be very disapproving. And lots of Roman moralists are genuinely
Disapproving.
I think it's I s I guess the closest parallel in modern history would be Puritan American tourists in the Gilded Age going to Paris.
Right.
Yeah, the flesh pots of Europe.
the flesh pots of Europe and of course bringing them back to the east coast. Going to the Folley Bergère with Toulouse Trek or something. Yes, exactly.
Uh and say
Pliny the Elder, very much friend of the show, when he's writing about this.
He sees this whole period, from the conquest of Macedon to um the uh the granting by Atalus of his kingdom of Pergamum to the Romans as a period that is disastrous for Rome's moral character. So Pliny wrote that the Romans were becoming a people who didn't just admire foreign opulence, but had learnt to covet it.
And plainly identifies um
the appropriation of Asia as a province as having been a particularly disastrous blow to Roman morals. And it is a feature
Of the way the Romans think about
geopolitics and the functioning of their own state.
That morals are incredibly important.
Because as we've said, if they're not a moral people, then the gods won't favour them and their empire will collapse. That's a tiny bit like the British with India.
in the eighteenth century.
And the sort of anxiety that great uh wealth and expansion would bring corruption.
You know, which kind of wraps up with people like Warren Hastings.
And all these people who came back and built great palaces.
And I think it's there with Jefferson and and that kind of tradition in in America as well, isn't it? The the the anxiety about wealth and power.
um about empire. So yes, absolutely. This sense that
the very greatness that Rayme is winning.
threatens the moral foundations on which that greatness has been raised. And also, of course, the influx of enormous wealth into Rome.
contributes to um a kind of a growing sense of resentment in the slums of the city.
that the rich are getting richer and the poor is getting poorer. And again, this is something with which subsequent periods of history, I mean people will be completely familiar with it, that influxes of wealth tends to heighten
class divisions, divisions of in in in in living standards. And the poor in Rome
Yeah, they're all
citizens of a republic. They're meant to be
part of a kind of a you know a a a common project, raise publica means kind of
things that are shared in common, things that are public.
the poor in Rome are increasingly
suspicious that the aristocratic class, the nobiles, as as they're called in Latin, that they no longer care anything for the
The mass of there.
poorer fellow citizens. Metropolitan elite are out of touch. Exactly. And so this is generating a pretty febrile mood in Rome. And it's the kind of mood
again, perhaps not entirely dissimilar to the present day.
In which
An outsider
If he has luck, if he has
Talent.
If he has boldness on his side.
You know, he might be able to prosper.
He might
You know, people from
from not the obvious backgrounds and might be able to get to the top of the tree, might be able to make themselves the masters of the republic. And this brings us very neatly, doesn't it, to um
Uh protagonist.
To Gaius Marius.
So Marius is born in one five seven B C.
in Arpenham, which is about uh eighty miles outside Roman. Is there
A British town.
That would be a nice equivalent for our penum, Tom. I guess it's kind of Swindon, basically.
Wow, roundabout.
Roundabouts and warehouses. I mean having said that uh Arpenum is actually a kind of very old city, so perhaps the the parallel doesn't exactly hold. But I guess that the people in Rome would view Alpinum as
I have to know.
People in W one might view Swindon. Right.
Yeah. As being not exactly the obvious breeding ground of um
have great dominant figures.
in the state. And actually Arpinum is a classic example of how the kind of the immediate hinterland around Rome, so Latium as it's called, um, has come to be knitted into the fabric of the Republic and basically kind of turned into
th the people of Lecium have been turned into Romans. So our penum had been conquered back in three oh five
B C
And it's
people initially had been given a a slightly inferior form of
Roman citizenship. So the Romans called it Kivitas Sine Sufragio citizenship without
Well, without suffrage, without the vote. They have lots of rights, but they don't have the right to vote for magistrates.
But then in one eight eight B Calpinum finally gets the full deal, save citizenship.
with the right to vote. And that means that the parents of Marius who belong to the local aristocracy in our penum.
They basically belong to the first generation in the town.
Um who can take this for granted.
who can feel that they are part of not just the local politics of their own small town, but of the great city eighty miles.
to the west.
This of course means that the young Marius growing up in Arpenum
He
He's aware of himself as a Roman.
But he is also still very much aware of himself as a provincial, that he's in a city where people have not been able to vote for magistrates.
in Rome, let alone run as magistrates in Rome for very long. Only

And so
probably as a boy he doesn't hold out much prospect for himself, you know, as as a future political star, because there is a very deep vein of snobbery.
in the Roman people.
And they may resent
the nobile, the aristocracy.
for their wealth and their s their sense of superiority. But they do simultaneously love families with strong brand recognition.
And I guess again, if you want an American parallel, it would be like you know, the way people keep voting for Clintons or Bush's or whatever. Yeah.
But unlike
Let's say Bill Clinton.
Or or indeed uh I think any of the bushes.
Marius is the recipient of an extraordinary omen. Well he's the subject of an extraordinary omen when he's a little boy.
Um, and Plutarch recorded this, didn't he? Something to do with an eagle.
Plutarch has to be said will.
always prioritize a fun story over a likely story. He'd be a very good history podcaster. Yeah, he he absolutely would. So this is Plutarch.
When Marius was still a boy and living out in the country, he caught an eagle's nest in his cloak as it fell from a tree.
This nest contained seven baby eagles.
His parents were so surprised by this freak occurrence that
that they asked a local soothsayer what it portended.
And the soothsayer replied.
That Marius would become the greatest man in the world and
and was destined to hold the consulship.
No less than seven times.
Wow, and of course
Plutarch is writing this sometime after the events, after he knew what happened to Maris. A sceptic might say that Plutarch was making this up.
But I choose to believe it. I choose to believe that this happened. Well, just to say that there is, as we will see in due course, evidence that Maris did believe
Something like this. He did believe that he was destined to have seven consulships. But seven consulships. Now
That I know that that is an absolutely extraordinary
Prediction.
And and maybe you should explain to um the listeners precisely why it's such a mad prediction. It's completely implausible.
Because of the significance that
The consul ship.
Plays.
in Rome's republic.
So
Every year

And they wield the powers of the monarchy that had been expelled from Rome back in five oh nine B C.
So the consuls.
Are the magistrates who lead Rome's armies into war?

The Senate.
and over the elections that are held in the city.
And who crucially mediate between the Roman people and the gods.
And these powers, of course, are potentially very, very intoxicating.
And this is why there are two consuls, so that each one can keep a watch on the other. And it's why their term of office is limited to a single year, so that they won't have time to entrench their power.
And for a century now.
uh say w as Maris is growing up.
It's been a no no.
For
someone to have more than one consul ship.
That hadn't always been the case.
But it's become kind of institutionalized. And whether this is an official law or whether it's just the pressure of custom is is
I think are knowable, but it's clearly the case that you're not supposed to have more than one consulship as Marius is growing up.
And what makes it even more of a challenge for Marius, you know, any prospect of of seven consuls, just having one consulship seems an almost impossible dream because he is what the Romans called a novice homo, a new man, someone
Who has
No tradition.
of holding magistracies in his
in his family, and particularly consuls. And it's obvious why this will be the case, because Marius is from Upenham and Upenham has only just been given the vote. So of course, you know, his family haven't had time to get loads of consulships. And just to emphasize how
how mad it is even to dream of having seven consulships.
No Roman in history.
has held seven consul ships. The the record is six. Seven
Just seems impossible.
All right, well we'll see whether he gets there.
But um let's kick off with Maris's first steps on the ladder. And I guess if you're an ambitious and talented
Young man.
From nowhere, from a provincial town.
The obvious way to get ahead is through proving yourself in the one thing that the Romans prize
more than in the other, which is the kind of
Yeah, the military arena.
Because yeah, this is the bedrock of Roman power, isn't it? The army, and this is where Marius is really intending to make his name.
Yeah, so if you want to make a name for yourself, what you ideally want is some desperate and hard fought war.
in which you can go off and be a hero.
Unfortunately for Marius in in one hundred three four B C
Exactly such a war is being fought in the north east reaches of Spain. So remember we said that
the Romans are pushing northwards into the Iberian Peninsula.
And they have come up against the people of a city called Numantia. And this war has been grinding on for two decades. And the Senate have got absolutely fed up with it. So the Senate is the the assembly of the noblees, the the kind of the the movers and shakers in Rome. And so accordingly
They
Say we need our
Our top man.
to go and sort this out.
And there's no question who the top man in Rome at this point is. It's a guy called Scipio Aemilianus.
And people who listen to our episode on the destruction of Carthage may remember that he is the the general who brings that war final
war against Carthage to a close and wipes the city out.
And it's a measure of how desperate
The Senate is
to have Scipio take over this command.
That they
Allow him to have a second consulship.
So we said this is very, very irregular.
They really, really need Scipio at the front though, so he they say they kind of turn a blind eye to the irregularity of it.
And so Scipio travels to Spain in command of a vast army. He has twenty thousand men, which is
roughly four legions. So a very sizable fighting force of Roman citizens.
He also has lots of Soccii, these Italian allies, um, who who fight alongside the Romans. And also he has auxiliaries and
the this the Soki and these auxiliaries come to forty thousand in all. And among the auxiliaries
There is there is some particularly glamorous
and celebrated fighters. And these are horsemen from
A region in North Africa.
Uh basically it's Algeria now called Numidia.
And the Numidians have been allies of the Romans for almost a century. The alliance had been forged in the war against Hannibal. Originally the Numidians had been on the side of Hannibal and then they had switched sides.
And when Carthage falls, the Numidians have been given a lot of um Carthaginian territory as a kind of reward.
and to cement their status as allies of the Roman people.
And the particular kint contingent of horsemen at Niamantia.
is led by a very charismatic young Numidian prince called Jagurtha.
And he has brought not only cavalry
But also
twelve war elephants.
And there is a kind of a kind of ancestral relationship between the Numidian royal family and the families of the Scipios.
Because
um Scipio Africanus, the guy who had defeated Hannibal. He'd been great mates with this
Numidian King.
So that it's it's it's
There's a kind of sense that, you know, this is a family business.
Now, when Scipio travels in
Tunymantia.
He takes with him.
As a junior officer.
The young Marius.
And Marius does.
Really, really well there.
Just a quick question about Marius. So do we have any sense of his
Appearance, personality, sort of I don't know, his bearing, his vibe at this point? I think he's he's like um
If you imagine
Channing Tatum. Wow.
He's big. Okay. He's brave. He's physically tough.
He loves fighting. He's in other words he's a natural soldier.
And he's
A soldier in the kind of traditional old school way that the Romans love.
So he he despises fancy cooking. He's not interested in celebrity chefs.
Okay.
He despises snooty manners, he doesn't have a uh you know, a kind of expensive education, he loves sleeping on hard ground with his men with only his cloak to cover him.
Yeah, it's all that kind of thing. So he's very Roman. A Roman
In the way that the Romans like to imagine themselves.
Yeah. He hasn't been spoiled by all these sneepy manners and things and by great great learning and stuff. He's not a man for a sex manual. Well, we'll we'll come maybe come to that in due course. I think at this point he's not a man for a sex manual. He is
He's rough and tough and hardy, and he loves fighting barbarians.
And this is this is everything the Romans want in a a kind of a young upwardly mobile officer. He's also a very strict disciplinarian.
And to be honest, the Romans love a strict despotarian. They love being whipped into shape. And this is what Maris is very good at. Um and he fights and kills one of the um the commanders of the Nemanteans in hand to hand combat.
And Scipio um Emilianus is watching this and thinks it's absolutely brilliant. And later that evening, um
Scipio is with all his officers.

You know, who who do you see as being the coming man?
Who among the younger generation is someone to watch? And Scipio turns to Marius and he touches him on the shoulder very fondly.
And he says
Perhaps this is the man.
And this is a massive thing for Marius.
You know, a commendation from the great war hero.
Scipio Emilianus.
And it marks him out.
As a man.
Who
you know, deserves well of the Roman people. It's it's
It's something
That can launch a political career. He's a future England captain.
That's exactly what he is, isn't he? He's the he's the batsman who has been anointed by the team captain.
as the man who's going to carry the fortunes of the nation in the next ten years.
So in one three three B C Neumante falls.
It's all great.
Scipio goes back, and Mario goes back as well.
There is one problem.
Which is that Scipio dies very shortly afterwards. Had Scipio stuck around then he would have been the perfect
patron. So it is a bit of a blow.
Maris doesn't give up.
Because he's got his battle scars. He does have this commendation from Scipio, which is a big deal. Because all of these really matter when it comes to elections, particularly if you're an unknown. You know, you need a story to tell.
And Mario has a story to tell.
Unfortunately he does also have an alternative source of patronage.
Yeah.
And this is one of the very grandest of the noble families.
a family that has been serving as the patrons of Maris's family in Arpenham for several generations.
And these are the Kikili
Mateli.
And they are
At this period.
probably the top aristocratic dynasty in Rome. They are madly efficient as a a dynasty in hoovering up consulships, for instance. So between 123 and 98 BC.
No less than seven of them will hold the consulship.
I mean that's an unprecedented success rate for a single family.
And they have been the great rivals of
of the Scipio family.
But when Scipio Emilianus dies,
the great patriarch of the Mateli
behaves very, very well, in exactly the kind of way again that the Romans like to think that that they're great men should. So he runs out into the streets sobbing
Um, tearing his clothes, crying out The great buttress of the city has fallen, the man who was our bulwark and he orders his sons to help carry the funeral bar of Scipio.
So
In death there is reconciliation between these two great families. And how is it that uh Marius can ride both horses? How can he have the patronage of both if they're rivals, or is that not a problem? Because
Um the m the Mateli are his uh political patrons and Scipio had been his military patron.
And basically I y you know, if you're if if you're not a threat to either of them.
You c you can uh
You can you can have both of them, I think. So Maris is uh I mean, well though we've portrayed him as chanting Tatum as kind of rough hewn.
He's a smart political operator to line up both of these Yeah, and the fact that you play the simple rough human soldier.
Doesn't mean you're stupid.
I mean you may well be playing that part.
Because you know that
It appeals. I mean there's obviously uh
you can't do it unless there's a strong element of truth to it.
but it doesn't imply that there's not an element of calculation in projecting that image. And again, you know, people will be able to think of of of people in their own politics.
Perhaps who
You you you know, you can draw comparis with.
Yeah. So in in Britain we would talk about the greasy pole, wouldn't we? About climbing the greasy pole, which Maris clearly is now hoping with their backing with his war record that he can do. They don't have the same expression, do they? Obviously. What's the expression the Romans have? So they they call it the cursor sonorum. So it's literally the kind of the the the race track.
Of
honours of of magistracies and the race track is obviously derived from the Circus Maximus, which is this great public space where all the people of Rome gather.
And this racetrack leads from magistracy
to magistracy and the finishing line of course is the consulship, which is the top magistracy. But it as we've said, this for a novice homo.
Like Mario a new man. I mean
It's a big ask. That finishing tape of the consulship is a very long way. So in the immediate
present he has to focus on kind of more junior magistracies.
Unfortunately, there is one magistracy in particular.
Which really seems to suit his skill set. Because this is a magistracy
Which requires the man who holds it

The interests of the people.
against the sanatorial elites.
And this is
Yeah.
Perfectly suited.
Tamarius.
The problem is that
In one nineteen BC when Maris decides to run for it.
Even though that this office is is a very potent one.
It is also quite a dangerous one.
To hold.
And this office is

the plebs, of the plebeians, of the people.
And it comes with incredible powers. So
The Tribune has the veto.
Very famous.
a Tribune can veto um any bill.
that he thinks threatens the interests of the plebs, of the people.
He has a right to convene public assemblies.
So not the Senate, but gatherings of the general citizenship and get them to pass bills of his own, so plebiscites.
His own personal.
is absolutely inviolate.
it is completely forbidden to lay hands on him. And the reason why that's important is obviously is that that if you know, if the Tribune is passing measures or blocking legislation that is
supported by the mass of the aristocracy.
You know, he has to be respected.
But is he respected? This is the question. So this is the question. So Marius decides that he's gonna run for the tribunate in one one nine and we've said it's a very potent magistracy, but at this time
It is also a very dangerous one for anyone.

Maris has been elected tribune just
Two years.
After one of his predecessors.
had been murdered.
And this of course had been a terrible sacrilege, we've said that the you know the the the person of a tribune is is inviolate.
And the death squad that killed this tribune had been led by
A consul.
And the corpse had been
systematically insulted.
The body had been decapitated.
And
The head the skull.
had been filled with lead to serve as a trophy.
So in other words.
Class war.
As Marius is looking to make his way to

the first kind of lengths of the cursor sonorum.
Has come to Rome.
And for someone like Marius
Who is
I'm out of the people.
No real
pedigree or background.
But very ambitious.
This means that the tight rape he's gonna have to tread.
is incredibly treacherous.
And potentially.
Fatal.
Samaris is setting out on this potentially fatal tightrope.
And
The stakes are very high and we'll find out what happens after the break.
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Welcome back everybody to the Rest is History of the Year. It's a hundred and nineteen
B C
And the ambitious provincial
Self made man Gaius Marius, who is now already in his late
thirties, so he's only two years short of his fortieth birthday.
He has won.
His first
major political office, his first major magistracy.
He has become, as he intended, a tribune of the plebs, and as we were saying before the break, Tom
Although it's meant supposedly inviolate.
This is an increasingly dangero in the febre politics of Rome at this point for a man like Marius to
whole. Now why specifically at this point is this so politically feeble? What what makes this so contentious? Because
The previous decade and a half.
The tribunate had been used to foster
What?
In the opinion of
Conservatives in the Senate.
A very radical
Very dangerous.
And in the opinion of conservatives, very un Roman
reforms and policies.
And these have been pushed by two brothers. The eldest of these
Is Tiberius Gracchus.
Uh he had become tribune in one hundred three three BC.
His younger brother Gaius Gracchus, he had become tribune ten years later. And both these brothers
had used their tribunates.
To push for reforms that were very
overtly in favour of the poor. So the measures that they push for included
Having publicly held land, state held land
being divided up and given as allotments.
to those who had no land in the city.
So the bottom of the bottom, the most impoverished layers of Roman society. They had pressed for corn to be sold below the market rate.
So subsidized food.
And they pushed for the poorer citizens when they got levy into the army to be given their own clothes, their own kind of kit and equipment.
And this was seen by the Senate as
Monstrously left wing.
To be anachronistic about it. Militant class war politics. Yeah, and particularly um
Gaius Gracchus the younger.
the the Tony Ben of Republican Rome, because he had far more than his elder brother, a very self consciously revolutionary vision.
So he basically he wanted to to turn the Republic into a kind of version of
the democracy that the Athenians had.
He wanted
very deliberately to alter the balance of power between the noble, between the the the the senatorial elite.
and the mass of the people. And I suppose ultimately he wanted to enshrine
The populace.
The people.
as the arbiters of Rome, rather than the Senatus the Senate.
So it would be, I guess, the people in the Senate of Rome rather than the other way around. That's his that's his kind of ambition. And to Conservatives in the Senate, I mean this is beyond the pale.
This is monstrous.
And they see
Tiberius Gracchus and particularly Gaius Gracchus as potential tyrants. Why else would they be pushing these reforms? It could only be because they want absolute power. And something that confirms the senatorial conservatives in this opinion.
It's a very
sinister trend. So Tiberius Gracchus, when he'd finished his one year as tribune,
He'd immediately sought re election.
And Gaius Gracchus in one two two B C
He'd finished his term, stood again, and actually been elected.
And this is really sinister.
Because it is f pretty fundamental to the way that the Romans understand politics that you shouldn't hold
a magistracy for more than one year.
Because if you do, then there's you have the chance to entrench your own powers and
Uh your own support.
And so
The enemy of the Gracki.
In the Senate.
feel themselves entirely justified.
in imagining that it is an ambition for tyranny.
That is
motivating the Grackey. And that the the office of the of of the
The tribunate may be in violet.
But it's not as inviolate as maintaining the integrity of the Republic.
And so twice.
this great cry had gone up that the republic needs defending, the constitution is in peril, and twice this cry had been answered. So in one three three
Tiberius Gracchus had been clubbed to death with um the leg of a stool.
he'd been cornered and had his head smashed to pieces. And then in one two one, Gaius Gracchus, as we heard before the break.
He'd been murdered, his corpse decapitated, the skull filled with lead, and three thousand of his followers had been rounded up and executed without trial by the consuls. And these executions had been justified in terms of a national
Emergency. If people think
Well, this is probably part of the run in the mill, you know, Roman politics is very violent. That's not right at all, right? This is a massive
Rupture.
with the previous traditions of Roman politics.
Completely.
These are the first eruptions of civil violence on the streets of Rome.
since the expulsion of the monarchy.
Back in five oh nine B C
It's that big a deal.
Wow.
So for four hundred years or so. For four hundred years. And it is experienced something.
Completely shocking.
So
What's the significance of these atrocities?
I think
Both more.
And less than they seem. So more.
Because
It's a fatal precedent.
I guess if you're being florid, you would say that a fatal toxin has been injected into the body politic. And we're never florid.
If a consul can justify putting an elected tribune.
To death.
And
completely ignoring his inviolability.
simply by referencing national emergency.
Then what's the stop?
magistrates in the future doing exactly the same.
I mean it's a kind of Fimar process, isn't it? It's it's
It it it leads to bad places.
If you can kill a tribune
Then why can't you you can kill anybody? I mean one console could kill another console.
And say they're a threat to the the the survival of the republic. Because that when you break a taboo
Yeah. The taboo is never.
as strong as it had been before it was broken. Exactly. So it's very pregnant with menace for the future.
At the same time.
I think it's it's kind of less than it seems because the instincts of the Romans remain
Across the board.
Incredibly conservative.

There isn't actually a threat of open class warfare.
of the kind that was always tearing Greek cities apart.
And this is because as we've said, the Romans, the mass of the Romans
I I I just inherently very, very conservative.
They may feel resentful of the elite.
But they simultaneously feel very respectful of them.
Again, I think there's something of the way that maybe
I I mean American listeners may disagree with this, but
from this side of the Atlantic, people seem to really hate billionaires in America.
But also simultaneously respect them. Yeah.
And I think there's something of that in the kind of the Roman attitude to the senatorial elite.
Um
It's part of the tradition that the Senate and the people should work together.
And the people feel that tradition to be as precious as the Senate do.
So
It's not like actually Rome is going to collapse into in as I say into into class conflict. And so this for someone like Marius, you know, here is an opportunity.
Because he
He is he's perfectly suited to play the part of the people's friend.
A popularis in Latin. You could translate that perhaps.
as as a populist. People are very nervous of you know among the tribunes, they're very nervous of pushing
legislation that might offend the elite because they've seen what's happened but
Marius is bold enough to do this. So he
He passes a bill.
Um that restricts the ability of the nobility.
to influence voters in the voting pens.
It's kind of like
it's not exactly introducing a a a secret ban it, but it's kind of something along those lines. And this is the first overtly populist gesture since the death of Gaius Gracchus.
And to quote Plutarch, this won him a reputation as a person of great courage, a formidable opponent of the Conservatives in the Senate, and someone who could be relied upon to stick up.
for the common man. And Plutarch isn't exaggerating there. Marius was, I think
being brave because it is a period of massive reaction. So the h the historian Sallust writing a few decades later, he described it as um
uh a a a kinda a faction of the
Of the few.
rule by the few.
Um just as and these few consist of just the kinda you know, the the top, the grandest, the snootiest noblees. And among these nobiles are the Meteli.
So obviously for you were asking
Previous, you know, is there a risk for Marius of of running against the interests of the Mateli? There absolutely is, because the Mateli are furious with him.
for what you know, this law that he's introduced and they withdraw their patronage and this has a knock on effect.
for Marius' prospects because for several years after his tribunate
He struggles to get another magistracy.
And in fact in in one sixteen.
massive embarrassment he manages to lose two
elections in the s on the same day. You know, he's clearly not doing well.
But you know, to pursue the sports analogy
He backs himself.
Right.
not gonna be cast down by a few disappointments. Form is temporary, class is permanent.
And he's got class. He's got class, and the evidence of that class is that he's able to keep the backing of the people, but in due course he's able to win back the support of the Mateli, because the Mateli can see he is actually someone it's worth having.
on side. And so relations between them are patched up.
And so
A decade on from his tribunate.
Maris is back in the race. You know, the Cursor Sonorum is going well for him. Um he's secured
Uh admittedly by the skin of the t uh of his teeth.
But you know, he's got it.
A governorship in Spain.
And this enab what he does best.
which is to demonstrate his talents as a commander. And he promotes himself as a kind of no nonsense enthusiast for law and order.
Common sense governorship. So again to quote Plutarch, the province back then, that Spain, was still very savage and uncivilized, since the Spaniards thought banditry an honourable profession.
And Marius is uh having none of that.
Lots of crucifixions and scourgings and enslavements. As I say, common sense. So he's robust. He he's robust in Spain.
Uh, but also he now we haven't mentioned his personal life at all.
But actually his personal life has taken a very exciting turn because he is married into
Well, the most single most w well known family in all Roman history, hasn't he?
He has.
Yes, although at the time it's
It's very ancient, it's very patrician, but it's slightly down on its luck.
It it it hasn't had a a a great success in elections for
for for for centuries and more.
Um and this of course is the family of the Caesars.
So
Marius marries Julia.
Who is
The sister.
Of
the father of Julius Caesar.
So
Marius is
Going to be the young Julius Caesar's marital uncle.
I'd say
Big part in Colin McCulloch's books, all of this.
Yeah.
So Maris is being knitted into the
You know, a key aristocratic family. And he's got the Matelli back on side by this point. Yeah.
So brilliant. And this is crucial.
Because he's got the backing of one Metellus in particular, and this is a guy called Quintus Cachelius Metellus.
Who is
He is an a an absolutely instinctive oligarch.
I mean he's very much politically not Maris's
Cup of tea.
He's a person of great personal integrity, but in that kind of
Flinty
slightly off putting manner.
that is characteristic of very moral upstanding
Romans.
But crucially for Marius.
this reputation as someone who is
both very upstanding and a very effective soldier.
Has one
Matellus electionship to the consulship for the year one oh nine.
And this is great for for Marius.
because Metelis as consul has been appointed to the command of an exceedingly challenging war in Africa. And this in turn means that Metelis
is going to need a trusted
and competent legatus a number two, a deputy.

is the obvious candidate.
He's a man of proven courage.
of provenability.
And he is also a long term
client of the Metalli.
And so Maris says yes, doesn't he? And he says yes, both because he's obviously
He's he's obviously very good at
fighting wars, so it'd be mad for him to say no.
But also
Yeah, th n the military sphere and the political sphere are are
Yeah, they're interconnected, aren't they, in in Rome in this period.
And Marius is thinking that
Yeah,
uh proving himself on the battlefield is the perfect way
to reboot his stalled political career. Well, I think more specifically
It might give him a chance to have a crack at the ultimate.
And going for the consulship.
I Maris hasn't told Metellus this. It's like a kind of dream that he's hugging to himself.
But his his plan, I think, is to go to Africa.
to win a few dashing victories, to make a name for himself in Rome, to have his backers in Rome, of which he has quite a lot by this point, to kind of really hype him up.
And then to go back, run for election and, you know, he might be in with a chance.
But obviously this does
require him to make a good fist of things in Africa.
And
Things there have not been going well for the Romans at all.
So it's not gonna be easy.
Save.
Reason for this is because they are up against an enemy
Who knows them very, very well.
And this is none other than an old comrade of arms.
Of Marius.
They'd serve together at Neumantia.
And this is the Numidian prince Jagurtha.
the guy who had brought the cavalry and the twelve elephants to
Nimantia.
And I say prince.
But in fact, by this point, he's killed his two cousins who are the legitimate heirs to the Numidian throne, the legitimate princes, and made himself the king.
Auf nie mit dir.
So he's a usurper.
Sitting on the throne.
And to oil the wheels of his rise to power.
Um
to get the approval of the powers that be in
Rome. He has lavished massive bribes. He's just been spraying them around. And even to Gertha.
had been surprised by
the level of corruption.
that this had revealed in a city supposedly made up of stern, flinty, unyielding moralists. Right. And he made a very v famous comment on Rome, which Sallas recorded. He described this described it as a city for sale and bound for imminent destruction.
Should a buyer be found.
And on top of this
The other reason that Jugurtha has really been pushing things too far.
is that he he hasn't been behaving as the Romans think a kind of tame client king should. So in one one two, in direct contravention of Roman instructions, he had attacked and killed the second of his two cousins, who'd kind of retreated and he's holed up in a town called Cirta. And in the course of this attack
Which the Romans had had told Jugertha anyway not to do. Jugertha's men had killed a number of Romans.
Um and this
It's too much really for the Senate back in Rome, no matter how many bribes
Gerther is shoveling their way.
And so
They think, okay, this has gone too far. We need to topple him.
This, however, proves easier said than done. And the reasons for this are numerous. Firstly, Numidia is kind of
flat and open, so it's perfect cavalry.
Country.
And the strength of the Romans, of course, is their legions, their heavy infantry.
Also, the Roman forces in Africa are very flabby and out of shape.
So they need a strict disciplinarian to turn up and whip them into shape. And the consul who had been sent out to fight Jugertha had shown himself to be absolutely useless. Um and you know, it resulted in a series of embarrassing defeats. So again, to pursue the sporting analogy.
You know.
The England manager has lost to Andorra.
Um Yeah, to Iceland.
Or Iceland, yes.
And Matellus is the guy who's been appointed to go and whip them into shape. Yeah, basically.
They've been messing around with wags.
Yeah, exactly. They're barely training. And you've got um a new manager who's a disciplinary and and uh and he's bringing in Marius, who is the number two the set piece coach or whatever exactly. Grim faced set piece coach who will make them like train six times a day.
Yes.
And so Sallus describes Metallus as a formidable and unrelenting man, and so he is.
He goes in, gets them onto the training ground.
You know, practicing their corners, whatever. And whips them into shape.
And then he he's he he gets them ready, they go on the offensive.
They defeat Jagertha in a pitched battle. All Jugurtha's war elephants are wiped out.
And Mattel is very
cleverly then start subborning Jugurtha's inner circle so that Jugurtha doesn't know who he can um who he can trust. Jugurtha inevitably opts for a guerrilla war.
This is the classic thing. I mean that you know, this is where Numidia is the place where the French will end up fighting their war in Algeria centuries and centuries later. And Matellus, rather like the French do, uh, he responds by ravaging the countryside
um taking vast numbers of prisoners, capturing settlements one by one, burning them if they resist, kind of calculated series of of um atrocities. And the Senate think this is brilliant, to quote Salas. They decreed supplications to the immortal gods in return for the successful deeds of Metellus. And really the only fly in the ointment as
Metellus' year as consul draws to a close, is the fact that Jagertha is still on the loose. But Metelis is assuming that's not really an issue. He's done so well that even though he's no longer consular.
Yeah, he's presuming that he will continue to to to be in charge of this
War.
And it is at this point.
That Marius.
makes his move.
So in the summer of 108, he goes to Metellus.
And he says that
He wants to head back.
To Rome?
And he wants to run for the consulship.
A metellus is.
Stunned by this.
Um you know, he responds with complete astonishment, then with contempt, and then he makes a joke of it.
But Marius is absolutely obdurate.
And Mattelis who thinks he hasn't got a hope I mean he's just a novice homie, what hope does he possibly have?
He says fine, okay, you can go back.
But very pointedly, he keeps Marius with him in the field until the very last moment.
So that Marius only gets back to Rome in the very nick of time to register himself for the consular
Election.
Um and I think that Metellus is doing this to ensure that Marius won't have time to do any of the campaigning that, you know, is essential if you're going to be
Console.
But Matellus has
badly underestimated Marius. Because we said that um Marius has lots of agents.
Back in Rome.
And unknown to Metellus, these have been doing a lot of campaigning while Maris has been away in Africa.
And they have been playing the popularis card.
They've been saying look.
Metellus.
Um is
stiff, arrogant, chill, haughty.
This isn't the kind of person that we want. What we want is a man of the people.
A man like
A man like you.
That's pretty um
Sneaky.
Of Maris is turning on his own patron.
He completely is.
That's poor.
That has slightly messed with my sense of Gaius Marius, who I always thought was uh Rupert Lowe turning on Nigel Farage. Well that's not the that is absolutely not the uh the analogy that I would have picked. So I always thought that Marius was would never have stooped to that, but I was wrong. What we said, he he he gives the impression of being
I think a bit of a meathead. Yeah.
But that's a show.
Marius is a very shrewd calculating commander, but also a politician. He's very, very effective. And he knows that, you know, in politics as in war, you have to prepare for success.
And that's what he's been doing. And he knows that there is a huge constituency, and not just among the mass of the people in the Senate as well, who are fed up with this kind of faction of the few.
These guys who've been in control and hogging the consulship for year after year after year and want them out of the way.
And so he is the guy who dares to put his head above the parapet.
And he duly reaps the reward.
So not only is he elected consul for one hundred seven BC, he gets Metellus's
African command.
My God, if you're Metellus, you are absolutely raging at this point. He's absolutely livid.
He's the guy who's
basically defeated Gertha.
And he's closing in on the kill, and just as he's doing that, suddenly he gets a message saying you've got to hand over your command to your former deputy. But it is what it is.
You know.
Metellus has gotta do what the Senate tells him. And so he goes back to Raymond a massive strop.
and his mates in the Senate there try to make things up for him by g voting him a splendid title, Numidicus, you know, the guy who's defeated the Numidians. And we've said how the number of names that you have in Rome is a marker of your status.
Um he now has a fourth name.
So that's some consolation, I guess. Meanwhile
Maris is in Africa, he takes control of the war against Jugurtha, and within a year he has brought it to a successful conclusion.
Um, Jagertha himself is driven out of Numidia and goes to Mauritania, the neighbouring kingdom, what's now Morocco, but Marius is not going to leave him there to um
continue to stir up trouble. He wants a line drawn under the whole war with
And so accordingly.
He has an eye for talent.
Um, he's got this general staff and he picks out the shrewdest, the cleverest, the most diplomatically able
the bravest of all his lieutenants, sends this officer
to um
the King of Mauritania to negotiate the surrender of Jagertha, and this officer
Yeah, he proves himself.
to be everything that Marius had hoped, incredibly subtle, incredibly fearless, he pulls the diplomatic mission off.
Jagurtha falls into Raymond hands.
This Lieutenant takes Jugurtha back to Marius, and Marius then heads back to Rome with Jugurtha.
In chains.
Do you know I've been massively looking forward to this. Well actually dreading it.
Because I remember having to translate this.
Like some passage about Jagurthus in chains. Yeah, in Celeste.
It's it was Celest? Yeah, we had to do this at school. I mean
I don't want to
Mate listeners switch off, but the act of translating this was soul destroying.
It was so dull. But you're gonna make it exciting, aren't you? I thought from your enthusiasm for Colin McCullough that you were going to say that you remember this moment as a a particularly grim and terrifying moment. So
Maris has gone back.
And um it's the first of January one oh four. So it's the new year, the Roman new year. And he's been given a triumph.
Yeah, this great kind of celebrated procession through the streets of Rome that gets given to victorious generals. And he's celebrating it on the n on New Year's Day. His triumph involves him riding in a chariot
Um dressed.
uh in the robes of uh a triumphal general.
Three ram.
With his legions.
All the loot that he's taken in the media.
and his legions following him.
And Jagertha is led in chains.
before the cheering mass of the Roman people are being booed and spat at and people are throwing eggs and
Whatever at him. I mean kinda moderately interesting and fun, I think. No, it's it's genuine interesting. I just don't I think the key thing looking at your notes is that it probably didn't know the word for earlobes.
And that and that that was that was what threw me. Because'cause at the end of the um
Triumph. Jagurtha is taken to one side and taken to this hideous prison.
And there his
His earr are pulled off.
And they yanked off so brutally that his entire earlobe.
comes away with the earrings. Surely any
Young Sanbrook would have enjoyed that if he'd got to translate it.
And then he's thrown into this freezing cold dungeon.
And I'll quote Plutarch.
Jagurtha's wits unsettled by this.
And grinning horribly.
He cried out.
By Hercules.
What cold baths you have here in Rome.
Great answer.
I don't think it's banter.
I think he's gone mad by this point already. Really? And so he's chained up.

And six days later he he dies of
the cold and malnutrition. And that's the end of Jagurtha.
And say for Marius, everything's turned out brilliantly.
So he's got his consulship, he's gone to Africa, he's won his war, he's got a brilliant name for himself as Rome's greatest general.
There are just two
Slight clouds.
on the horizon.
And the first of these is that
Beyond the Alps.
The Teutons and the Kimbury.

To be moving on Italy.
The asteroid is heading towards Earth. The zombie apocalypse is breaking out. Do you know what they are? They're the white walkers. They're the white walkers from Westeros.
Yeah, and so
In Rome, all eyes are fixed on Marius. He is the hero of the hour, he is Rome's greatest soldier.
And so it's not surprising that it's on his shoulders.
that responsibility for saving the city.
is laid by a desperate and terrified people.
Then there is a second cloud.
And this is
less obvious. It's more private. I'd say that at this stage it's just a a kind of
A little niggle.
But it is one that threatens a good deal of trouble in the future.
To put it mildly.
So just as
Matellus had been upstage.
By Marius.
So does Marius feel
Just a little bit upstaged by his own lieutenant, and this is, of course, the guy who had successfully negotiated
The surrender.
Of
Jagertha. And this Lieutenant Light Marius himself.
Is it
A naturally ambitious man.
A man with
a hyper keen sense of his own worth.
And a man with
All kinds of military and
political talents. And there are are some in Rome Maris' enemies in the Senate.
prominent among them.
Who have begun to attribute the defeat of Jagurtha.
Not to Marius, but to this lieutenant.
They're saying
Oh, Maris is just shape.
The guy who who really ended the war.
Is this person.
And th this person, this lieutenant.
You know, he doesn't disavow this perspective.
And in fact he's had a signet ring made for himself.
Which
Shows him.
negotiating the surrender of Jagurtha.
And so he kind of flashes it around. And to quote Plutarch, by insisting on wearing this ring all the time, he greatly irritated Marius, who was incredibly sensitive when it came to his own honour, scorned to share his glory with anyone else, and was always ready to take offence.
Dominic, the name of
This
Lieutenant.
We are going to be hearing a lot about him.
in the episodes to come, it is.
Lucius.
Cornelius.
Salah.
In our next episode we are going to be finding out
Who he is, what's his background, his upbringing, all of that.
Um
And we will also, of course
Be following Marius.
to war.
With the two tons.
And the Kimbury.
Crikey. So exciting. So if you'd like to hear that episode right now, and you'd like if you'd like to hear the final two episodes of this absolutely thrilling swashbuckling Roman series.
Uh and if you're not already a member of the Restis History Club, because of course if you're in the club you can listen to the next episode. Well, if you want to hear it, join our own band of marauding barbarian cannibals, uh, the rest is history club at therestishistory.com. And you can, of course, always find out more
about this series and about what's coming next on The Restors History by subscribing to our newsletter. Now if you don't want to join the Restors History Club, first of all, you're
Insane.
So I
You know, I have no time for you.
Um, I I don't I don't care what you do, frankly, because you've made poor life choices. However, you can actually because we're kind, you can actually hear the first five minutes of the next episode right now. We are going to be playing the first five minutes of that episode now. So after that you probably will want to join the club.
Um, now we're only doing it because we like you. We're not doing it to entice you to join the club. Anyway, here are the next five minutes. Goodbye, everybody. Enjoy them.
Avec.

Even as Marius is riding through the streets of Rome,
And being cheered by the watching crowds. There is a mood
Of panic, maybe even desperation.
in the city.
Because Jagertha may have been defeated.
The dignity of the Roman name.
may have been upheld.
In Africa.
But to the north.
Beyond the Alps.
There is a much more terrifying
threat than some African king.
Massing.
On the frontiers.
Of
Rames.
Empire.
And again, we mentioned this in
the previous episode.
Yeah. It's an immense migration of Germans.
The Tutans and the Kimbury.
From Jutland to the frontiers of the Roman world. So it's almost you might a kind of proto Viking.
Invasion. Yeah. So in the last episode to please people who online like to count how often we refer to either the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.
I compared them with the uh the White Walkers, the people who in the Game of Thrones TV series you see right at the beginning, they're massing all the time.
You know, all the internal politics of Westeros is nothing compared with the existential apocalyptic threat that these blokes represent
And actually
I'm gonna congratulate myself on my own comparison. I think it's an absolute superb comparison. Yeah. Because I mean these people, the Tutons and the Kimbury, they're massive.
They're terrifying. They look weird.
They they are an existential threat.
They're reputed to be cannibals. Right. This is Plutarch on them. He said they were impervious to cold because they've been brought up in ice bound countries full of forests. I mean, Tom, the parallels are stacking up. Absolutely right. And also I I think
Isn't this also the case with the White Walkers? The Tutrons and the Kimbury accompanied by women and children.
Yeah,'cause some of them are women and children, yeah. And in fact, actually in Game of Thrones, the the the children are the most frightening. There's always something terrifying about a murderous sinister child. And frankly, if you've ever met a German child
You know? It's the same story. Well they're Danes really, aren't they? Yeah, are they worst.
Yeah.
And the women also are very frightening because they're said to fight alongs alongside the men. Uh and it's an entire people on the move. So there are tens of thousands of them, according to the the Roman sources. I mean we don't know how accurate they are, but that basically there are loads and loads of them. And
they are experienced by the Romans less as an army than as some kind of force of nature. Um, you know, a great flood, a tide, a tsunami, whatever you want to
to reach for.
You know, the news had been brought to them that that this monstrous tide of people is advancing towards you. And so they sent an army under a consul.
um into a a region called Noricum, which is basically Austria.
today in uh one one three B C
And the consul had set an ambush for these um these barbarians and the barbarians had rumbled it.
Um and had
outsmarted the consul and given him a serious mauling, and so he'd withdrawn.
And he had assumed that the barbarians would pursue him and invade Italy. In fact, they don't. They swing westwards into Gaul, which is a big relief to the Romans. But I think it's also a little bit unsettling.
Because it's clear that the Kimbury and the Tutans
are unlike any enemy that they've come up against before. There's no predict what they'll do. When you're fighting
Carthaginians or Greeks.
Or even goals.
There's a sense in which the Romans understand what makes these people tick.
But with these barbarians from the far north.
And again, this is maybe the kind of White Walker comparison.
The Romans don't understand what they want. They don't understand
What's going to motivate them. They don't understand how they're going to behave. And so that means it's very difficult, I think, for the Romans to devise a strategy.
to cope with this onslaught.
And this becomes manifest in
A succession of disastrous Roman attempts.

And be proactive.
and meet the Tutans and Kimbury and wipe them out beyond the limits of Roman power.
Because the barbarians, they're just roaming around Gaul, kind of looting and pillaging and killing and all that kind of stuff.
And the Romans keep going and trying to to to to to attack them.
And they keep being defeated.
So first in one oh nine B C and then two years later near what t what today is um Bordeaux.
And one consul in that battle is killed.
And the other one is cornered.
And the only way that he can extract himself is to agree that he and his army will go beneath the yoke. Oh my God.
Yeah, ultimate humiliation. You put up t you know, two spears and put another spear across it, and everyone has to symbolically
bend and crawl under well not symbolically, I mean you you literally do it, but it's obviously a symbol of of of humiliation. So that's very bad.
And then
I I had forgotten the full details of this defeat. So it happens in one oh five.
And it's a culminating disaster.
In the Roman attempts to stop
The barbarians.
It happens outside Arrausio, which is the town in southern Gaul which gives its name to Orange.
So ultimately to the orange order. I mean that's the basic thought. Um and in this battle, the Romans, it said, lose over
A hundred thousand men.
Which is more than they lose in at Canai.
Is that plausible, really, that they lost that many? I mean, these figures are all made up, aren't they, really? But I don't think they're made up. It's clearly a massive defeat.
And yet it's barely remembered. And you think how much it's written about Cali and the impact that it had on the Romans. At the time, it must have just seemed overwhelming. It must have seemed a disaster.
on par with that.
And when the news of it is brought to Rome.
There is this
in a terrible mood of panic.
So thank you very much for listening to that.
Um and if you liked it.
And you would like to hear more?
Then you can find the full episode.
at the rest is history.
Dot com.