Rome and its people are arguably the most well-known well studied and most influential political entity and corresponding people in human history essentially since the Roman Empire fell regardless of when you believe that actually happened Rome has been studied and countless historians archaeologists and ethnographers have dedicated their careers to learning and documenting all they possibly can on Rome and its people its Heroes symbols Legends and history have influenced the Western World in a way that basically no other civilization has been able to do because of our deep knowledge of the subject it really shouldn't be all that surprising that some of the knowledge has fallen to the Wayside in favor of the more interesting and documented Heroes and events in Roman history today's video will attempt to bring some of those less talked about but no less interesting aspects of Roman history to your attention to facilitate that goal the format of this video will be based around the ever so popular Iceberg an internet iceberg is a collection of various pieces of information collected into a tiered system with the most popular and well-known pieces of information at the top and thus the visible part of the iceberg and the less known pieces of information further towards the bottom of the iceberg the portion which you cannot see while you will likely know most of what is contained in the first few tiers of this Iceberg it is my hope that I can introduce you to some of the more mysterious but just as interesting aspects of Roman history that you may or may not know much about so sit back grab a snack and enjoy a quick disclaimer I will not be going super in depth with many of these people events and so on if you want more in-depth videos let me know by commenting down below also there are simply too many sources for me to list them in the description if you want my sources or recommendations for further reading in any of these topics then please comment down below as well and I'll be happy to give you either this video is also a conglomeration of my own thoughts and a few of the already made icebergs out there feel free to use use it for whatever purposes you want thanks now back to the [Music] video starting with everyone's favorite Roman the man the myth the legend guas Julius Caesar Caesar is without a doubt the most famous Roman in history his name is synonymous with Rome he is to roome what men like Alexander or George Washington were to Greece and the United States respectively Caesar was born into an aristocratic Roman family called Jin in ancient Rome known as the Julia family his family had been a patrician family of Rome since the time of the Roman kings in the 7th century B.C his family was actually so influential that they were believed to be connected to the legendary founder of the Latin city states anas through his son anchus Caesar was far from the first in his family to ascend the Roman political ladder his family had produced consoles Consular tribunes dictators peders and well I think you get the point the Julia family had at one point or another occupied basically every office that was available to the patricians of Rome Caesar though would outshine them all Caesar's political career is long and storied we sadly don't have time to talk about everything the man did we would be here for hours if we tried but here are the highlights Caesar was appointed to the College of pontiffs the highest ranking assembly of Roman priest in 73 bcee upon the death of his relative gas Aurelius C Caesar used this position as a springboard to become a military Tribune in 71 bce. and then Ascend to a quer ship in 69 B.C in following with the curses honor room the blueprint for Roman patricians to ascend the political ladder Caesar was elected AAL in 65 BCE and in 63 bcee Caesar was elected pontifex Maximus the highest Roman priesthood and preder at the same time this was probably unprecedented and either points towards Caesar already showing generational amounts of promise or an impressive bribery scheme on the behalf of Caesar our ancient sources and our modern day sources are split on which Caesar would finally Ascend to Rome's highest office in 59 BCE alongside Marcus calpernius biblis Caesar would be elected to serve his first term as Consul it was during this time Caesar would create the famous first triumphant alongside Pomp and crus that would dominate Roman politics for decades to come following his term as conso Caesar was assigned to be the governor of two Roman provinces CIS Alpine go and AUM he would further be granted the province of trans Aline go upon the Unexpected death of its governor in the same year Caesar would use these new positions as a springboard to conquer all of Gaul roughly modern day France Caesar would not only conquer these lands in the name of Rome but also at least in a way in his own name he would make a massive amount of money from the various paddles campaigns secure the Loyalty of several Roman Legions and be able to Grant citizenship and political benefits to a new class of people in Gaul thus securing their loyalty in the Roman political system it was the power gained from these gulic wars that gave Caesar both the actual physical power and the confidence to start his Civil War a war that he would eventually win and with his victory Ascend to become an emperor in all but name his victory alongside his untimely assassination would put the nail in the coffin for the Roman Republic and give way to the Roman Empire Caesar's name and his actions are quite possibly the most important of any Roman in history he changed the course of Roman history for better or worse and his influence is felt even in the modern day truly Caesar is worthy of his legendary status and it is fitting that our examination started with the person many including most of History's Romans considered to be the greatest Roman to ever live the Roman Republic was Rome's form of government from about 509 BCE until augustus's rise in 27 BCE the Republic came about following the overthrow of Rome's Kings in 509 BCE and served as the period of Roman history whereby most of Rome's conquest and development happened the Roman Republic was essentially in a state of near constant war from Gaul to Spain to North Africa to Greece and Egypt Rome fought lost and won throughout this period of Roman history the Punic Wars the puck War the Macedonian Wars along with several Civil Wars all occurred during this period the Roman Republic is in many ways the foundation stone of Roman history and many of Rome's Traditions Legends and myths have their start in the Republican period Augustus born as guas Octavius and known as Octavian for most of his life was Rome's first emperor or emperator and the great nephew and eventual adopted son and heir of julus Caesar Octavian was born into the Octavia gens and his mother Atia was the niece of Caesar Octavian was a sickly Youth and he would never be quite able to shake these illnesses he was never a military mind because of this he was often dismissed by most of the Roman aristocracy however what Octavian lacked in military genius he more than made up for in his speaking ability and his masterful administrative end political mind Octavian was a genius while he may not have been able to defeat his enemy on the battlefield very few could match him in the political theater luckily for Octavian he would meet a lifelong friend during his schooling years this friend Marcus agria would serve as octavian's military genius and masterclass general together the two men would work like a well-oiled machine and we'll talk a little bit more about agria later in this video when his uncle died Octavian was shocked to find that he was was listed as Caesar's Heir in Caesar's will Octavian would inherit Caesar's name fortune and even to an extent the Loyalty of his Legions Octavian would use these newly found resources to establish himself as a leading force in Roman politics and over the course of the next couple of decades he would fight a few Civil Wars and Destroy several Rivals before being named Augustus this title and name would be passed on to Rome successive Emperors and essentially granted the holder quasi Divine status Augustus would become Rome's first and one of its greatest Emperors he would be the first emperor to be granted his own cult and his actions and use of powers would go on to set precedents that would influence the Roman emperors for centuries despite not being Caesar's true biological son Augustus lived up to the name of his adopted father and transformed Rome into his own image Roman myths are heavily influenced by Greek myth this is because the early versions of Rome the Roman Kingdom and even the Roman Republic fell under the influence of the Greeks basically from their founding Roman religion is almost a one for one copy of Greek religion just with the names changed there are some exceptions to this Rule and we'll talk about that a little later but Jupiter is Zeus Neptune is Poseidon Pluto is Hades and so on we even see this influence in Rome's founding myth the anit again something we will talk about in a little bit it's really understandable for the Romans to want to adopt Greek myth after all in Rome's infancy Greek culture was much more advanced and it was connected to this Rich history something that Rome had always valued it was probably pretty easy for a developed system of religion and myth to usurp whatever local practices the Romans first held and the rest is well history I guess byzantium's importance in Roman history is twofold firstly Byzantium was the original Greek name for Constantinople or modern day Istanbul the city itself was founded sometime in the 7th Century bcee by Greek settlers the city would never be as influential as say Sparta or Athens but it would serve as an important Regional Hub and its Geographic position had the potential to turn the city into one of the most important in the entire Mediterranean this would happen when the city was refounded as Constantinople named after the Roman Emperor EMP Constantine the Great in 324 ad Constantinople would go on to be the center of the Eastern Roman Empire sometimes known as the Byzantine Empire and would serve as a sort of successor City to Rome itself when Rome was lost to that Empire Constantinople would serve at various points in European history as the center of culture religion and the economy its position on the cross roads between the Middle East and Europe served to enrich the city and its holders beyond belief and even today it serves as one of the most important cities in the world the second part of the importance of Byzantium is in its role as the alternative name for the Eastern Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire as it was most popularly known was the eastern half of the Roman Empire and it would Outlast its Western counterpart by centuries it would last from the first division of the empire in 286 ad all the way until 1453 when Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans and while we may refer to it as separate Empire it citizens and rulers continued to call themselves the Roman Empire all the way until the fall of Constantinople and even as late as the 19th century some Greeks referred to Greece as romica reflecting the deeply held belief that the Byzantine Empire was really the Roman Empire ah one of the most asked questions in the study of Roman history and one of my favorites the date for the fall of Rome has been a topic heavily debated for centuries the first dat would be 476 ad and this year the emperor of the Western Roman Empire Romulus Augustus was forced to abdicate his throne by the German King oasser however we could even say that this date is inaccurate as it seems as though oasser actually ruled Italy in cooperation with the Roman senate and ethnic Romans were given positions of importance within the bureaucracy of his kingdom there is even some evidence that oasser attempted to serve as a subordinate King under Zeno the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire however most historians generally agree that 476 was the date that the Western half of the Roman Empire fell notice though that I only say the Western half this is because of course over in Greece Constantinople to be precise Zeno still ruled the eastern half of the Empire the eastern half had really been the more prosperous and Senior half of the empire for a few centuries now and despite being much more Greek than in the Western Roman Empire it was still technically the Roman Empire the emperor was titled as the Roman Emperor the Imperial regelia were transferred to Constantinople upon the abdication of ramulus Augustus and the people in the Empire still considered themselves Roman if we consider the Eastern Roman Empire to actually be Roman which by all accounts we should then the date shifts considerably forward to 1453 ad it was in this year that the ottoman Turks finally succeeded in conquering Constantinople and with it ended the Roman Empire or did they well if we move forward just a little bit more to the year 1461 ad then we have the surrender of gratas pilos the despot of Moria gratas was the last ruler of the House of paleos the Imperial house that had ruled over the Byzantine empire for almost 200 years from 1259 to 1453 so Technic Tech Al the despot of Moria was the last ruler from the Empire that had been the Byzantine Empire which had been the Eastern Roman Empire which had been the Roman Empire so then is this the last date for the fall of Rome well no actually mmed II the ruler of the Ottoman Turks that had conquered Constantinople actually claimed the title of Caesar following his victory mmed would actually view his Conquest not as a replacement of the great Roman Empire but a continuation and would see himself as the Roman Emperor a title he would pass to his heirs so if we follow that title then the last holder of the title of Roman Emperor would be Abdul Majid II the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire who was deposed in 1944 if we want to make this even more complicated let's turn our attention back to the West you see there was this super famous Empire called the Holy Roman Empire well the Emperor of that Empire was crowned found as the emperor of the Romans by the pope this title was first used in 800 ad by Charlemagne and would be used until 1806 when the empire was dissolved the point here is that this question is extremely complicated despite being one of the most asked questions when studying Rome in fact Mary beard who is one of the greatest Roman historians in my opinion makes a fascinating argument that Rome never actually fell it lives on in our fascination with the history our use of Latin our traditions and of course in the titles of so many monarchs in extremely recent history this is all to say that really I think this question doesn't have a clean answer yes you can say that 476 is the answer and really it's hard to argue against that claim after all the city of Rome at this point would pass out of the possession of the Emperors and it basically would never return I would certainly not fault anyone for arguing such a point however ever I think the question goes deeper than that and I think that there is no clear answer to this question Cicero is another extremely famous Roman Cicero is a Roman famous for attributes and Feats that aren't really commonly associated with great Romans Caesar pompy skipio Africanus and even Augustus to a certain extent are revered for their military capacity or at least the wars they fought Cicero on the other hand is famous for his ability to speak and his academic Pursuits yes just like any good Highborn Roman he led armies and at least had a basic understanding in military matters but cisero is one of History's Greatest orators and academics his written Latin Works represented 3ar of all Latin literature written during his lifetime his influence on oratory was so significant that most historians agree that basically all Pros written in European languages until the 19th century was a reaction to to or based on cisero Styles cisero was born into an equestrian family in 106 BCE cisero had some sort of birth defect we aren't quite sure what but it was enough to make it so that at Birth he had basically no hope of entering Roman political life because of this Cicero immersed himself in his studies he traveled the Mediterranean world going from Italy to Greece to Asia Minor all in the hopes of furthering his studies he studied under men such as quintis muus SC violo argur one of Rome's greatest legal Minds Antiochus of ascalon a great Greek philosopher and apollonius malen a great orator who was said to have laid the seeds in Cicero's mind that would Blossom to his great oratory skill upon his Coming of Age Cicero made his way into politics not through military matters but through his incredible public speaking skills and his skill and law cisero would go on to hold every office in Rome at the youngest age possible and become one of if not the most influential man in Rome at the time he would sadly be executed after speaking out against the second triumphant and Caesar one too many times Cicero is probably my favorite Roman of all time and he will almost certainly get his own series of videos looking more in depth at his [Music] life AG grippa is a figure that I wish got more love and more attention in the study of Roman history Marcus Vis pegus agria was born somewhere in Italy to a plebian family his family while decently well off was not active in Roman political life and lived a mostly Quiet Series of lifetimes in the Roman Countryside at some point AG grippa was sent off to be educated in Greek studies at abalonia a Greek city in modern day Albania the city was a center of Greek learning in the Roman world and just so happened to be the same place that a young man named God Octavius was sent to right around the same time the two boys would meet and become quick friends and with permission from Caesar himself the two would continue to study together agria complimented Octavian almost perfectly whereas Octavian barely knew what side of the sword to hold Agrippa was a natural born Commander he would go on to serve as octavian's right-hand man when Octavian needed a military Victory Agrippa was right there to lead and typically would win whatever battle was in question the Agrippa was unquestionably loyal to Octavian and this loyalty is really the reason he gets overshadowed despite Agrippa being the driving force behind the victories of octavian's armies it was octavien who received the credit after all Octavian was the emperor not Agrippa while this would make most men jealous Agrippa didn't really seem to mine all that much and despite being given several opportunities to do so agria never turned on his first friend and he was rewarded because of it Agrippa was allowed to Mary octavian's only daughter Julia and yeah I know it's it's definitely a bit weird further he was granted Imperium proconsul masas a type of Imperium that actually made him octavian's equal in all but name in fact by the time that Octavian now called Augustus became emperor agria essentially served as a sort of Junior Emperor any time that Augustus left Rome a grippa was put in charge Augustus needed someone to go negotiate with some enemy or Ally of Rome well let's send Agrippa while Augustus was without a doubt the man in charge agria was without a doubt the number two man in Rome honestly if he had outlived Augustus it may have been agria who would have been the second emperor of Rome sadly though it was not to be and agria died in 12 BCE while in Campa Augustus himself would oversee the education of agrippa's children and Agrippa would be buried in augustus's own mus aam agria was really the driving force behind Augustus and without him then Caesar's Heir would have never ascended to the heights that he did the kings of Rome refer to a total of seven different men Romulus Numa pompelio tulus hostilius Anis marcius tarquinius priscus cius tulus and tarquinius Superbus these men ruled over Rome from the foundation of the city in 753 BCE and so the last king tarquinius Superbus commonly called Tarin the proud was overthrown in 509 BCE the kings were absolute monarchs and each left behind a legacy that would influence Roman political life for centuries to come from Romulus literally founding the city to servus tus instituting the first census the kings are said to be The Originators for many of the most important Roman Traditions however many modern historians question whether or not these Kings existed at all the historical records from Rome's founding and much of its early years were destroyed in the goic sack of Rome in 387 BCE and because of that many of these kings are viewed as possibly simply Legends passed down in an oral tradition and not actually grounded in historical sources I've actually already done a whole series on each king of Rome where I go much more in depth with each so if you want to check those out I'll leave a link to them in the description Barbarian is is a term that we hear and see thrown around a lot in Roman history the word actually comes from the ancient Greeks who use the word to refer to any group of people who did not practice Greek Customs or speak Greek the popular story is that many of these non-greek languages sounded like gibberish to the ancient Greeks and were represented by the words bar bar we don't really know if this is actually true but the Greeks use the word barbarian to refer to Egyptians Persians mes and Phoenicians and well many more it seems as though that the word at least at first didn't hold a necessarily negative connotation instead it was just a word used to describe civilizations and peoples who were not Greek however over time especially after the wars with Persia Barbarian began to be used as a negative term that described someone who was lesser or at least less civilized than the Greeks the Romans again falling under the influence of the Greeks began to borrow the word as they encountered more and more peoples outside of Italy the word was used by the Romans most often as a sort of slur to describe uncivilized people the Romans used the word for a whole host of different peoples including but not limited to the berbers germanics Kelts iberians thians alyans and cians the Punic Wars were a series of three conflicts fought between the Roman Republic and the carthaginian Empire between 264 and 146 BCE these wars were f fought as the Roman Republic established its control over the Italian Mainland and eventually came to threaten the carthaginian control over the island of Sicily this tension boiled over into the first Punic War I really can't get too deep into the conflicts as each War could easily make a video on its own but here are the highlights each War resulted in a Roman Victory and each time Rome took more and more land as their spoils in the first War Rome took the islands of Sicily Sardinia and Corsica in the second Rome took all of car remaining overseas territories mostly made up of territory in Spain as well as the bolic islands Carthage was also subordinated under Rome politically the carthaginian Army was limited in size and not allowed to possess any of its famous war elephants and the carthaginian state was prohibited from Waging War outside of Africa and only within Africa with the express approval of the Roman senate it was essentially made a vassel kingdom in all but name the third Punic War was the nail on the coffin for the carthaginian Empire Carthage itself was sacked and burned to the ground and the remaining territory of the empire was put under Roman control many cities were completely destroyed however some Punic areas were allowed to continue to use their language and practice their own religion North Africa after this point would go on to become an agricultural center for the growing Roman State and would be an extremely important Province for centuries to come pompy the great born nias pompus was an important Roman general and Statesman that served during the time of Caesar pompy was born to a noble family in the region of pisum in central Italy his father nias pompus strabo had been the first member of the family to attain senatorial rank in Rome and had laid the foundations that would Propel pompy to his eventual political career poy began his career by serving with his father in the social war in 91 BCE pompy would later serve in the civil war led by Sola pompy supported Sola and so he reaped the rewards when Sola eventually managed to win the war pompy would Ascend to his first consulship in 70 bcee his Consul ship was generally uneventful pompy would then prosecute a war against the Pirates of the Mediterranean just a few years later in' 67 BCE in this war pompy would succeed in destroying every major pirate cell in the Mediterranean and it was said that because of this war organized Pirates would not trouble the sea for centuries afterwards immediately following this campaign pomy was put in charge of the Roman forces in the third mytic war pompy would quickly win the war and Rome would Annex Syria the rest of Asia Minor portions of the Caucasus Mountains and make two new vassel Kingdoms in the form of the kingdom of Armenia and the bosan Kingdom at this point pompy was likely the most famous man in the Republic and so served as a potential King maker back in Rome this would come to fruition with the creation of the first triumphant the trio of pompy Marcus crus and Caesar would essentially rule the Republic for the next few years with the only opposition being Cicero and a few other Senators eventually though this agreement would break down and a civil war would commence with pompy on one side and Caesar on the other we of course know how this would end Caesar would win and be on his way towards single man rule of the Republic however it's truly fascinating to think what might have happened if pompy had been able to overcome Caesar would pompy be the cultural figure that Caesar became would the Republic have continued on for centuries to come or would pompy and his sons have seized power and became Emperors themselves we will never know but pompy deserves his spot in Roman history as one of the last Defenders of the Republic the five good or great Emperors refer to well five Emperors of Rome namely nerva Tran hadrien anonas pasus and Marcus aelius these men collectively reigned from 96 to 180 ad a golden era for the Roman Empire these men were not hereditary rulers and were instead chosen for their good qualities these men began the process of fortifying the Roman borders as well as completing the final stages of expansion in Britain deia Mesopotamia and Arabia these Emperors also Al all undertook extensive programs of romanization among the newly conquered peoples as well as creating a uniform system of provincial management the empire was at its height under these men and they really benefited from that the empire was peaceful prosperous without serious threats and mostly free from serious disease all of this means that this period of rule is seen as a golden age before the mor serious collapse that would come in the centuries following the Golic sack of 387 BCE is one of the most important events of The Early Republic the sack came about as a result of an invasion by the senon a tribe of GS that had recently migrated into Northern Italy about a year before the sack a Roman Envoy named quintius fabus killed a gulc Ambassador during a meeting in kusum in a truscan city Allied to Rome the GS demanded that the Ambassador be handed over to face justice but the Romans refused and war broke out Rome was apparently completely unprepared and only managed to raise an army filled with untrained and raw recruits this proved to be disastrous and the Galls quickly won at the Battle of the Ayah this opened the way to Rome itself and the GS quickly took advantage of such an opportunity while I won't get too deep into the details as a full video on the sack is coming soon it was disastrous for Rome it resulted in Rome being burned and much if not all of the records of the history of Rome as a city and as a political force being destroyed it would take decades for the city to recover and because of this singular event our understanding of the history of Rome prior to it are forever stunted it is one of the greatest whiffs in Roman history and if it hadn't happened our entire understanding of the foundation of Rome the Roman Kingdom and The Early Republic could very well be dramatically different [Music] we start with the pitan Guard the petorian guard is traditionally associated with the Emperors of Rome but they actually have their origin in the Republican period the priorians were a specialized unit within the Roman army that exclusively served as bodyguards for high-ranking civilians mostly senators and procurators and for high ranking military officials their name probably comes from the pretorium which was the Commander's tent since the guard was typically stationed outside of the tent they were quite literally the petoran guard the first recorded use of priorians was in 275 bcee when someone in the skipio family directed a portion of troops under his command to serve as his personal bodyguard this seemingly stuck in the minds of Roman commanders and the practice was slowly adopted especially during sieges when a commander was stationary and thus more vulnerable to attack we don't quite know when the practice of assigning them to civilians came about but it was likely only when these important men visited active battle sites that a guard would be assigned the torans would go on to serve as bodyguards for the last few centuries of the Roman Republic they even hold the distinction of being the first troops permanently stationed in the pomarium the boundary of Rome itself this was done by Octavian the future Emperor Augustus in 40 bcee likely as a way of securing his hold over the city the priorians of Octavian would be kept in service upon his Ascension as emperor of Rome and it's really after this point that the priorians evolved into something more than just a unit of bodyguards after the establishment of the Empire the size of the petorian Guard would slowly increase by the end of augustus's Reign the guard consisted of nine regiments of 1,000 men each these men were the only men permitted to carry weapons within the pomarium something that I'm sure will never be abused the role of these regiments will slowly transform over time into something of a military police this unit of the Guard came to be known as the specul Tores and they would essentially act as a spy service in the emperor's name they would often disguise themselves as normal Roman citizens and use that guise to infiltrate public events to monitor and arrest anyone who might be a threat to the emperor's power I can't go too deep into the activities of the petorian Guard during the middle Empire but by this point they had grown into one of the most powerful organizations within the entire Empire they quite literally picked the emperor several times throughout the history of the Empire and were probably involved in several assassinations against various Emperors to be honest there are quite a few times throughout the history of the Empire where it seems like the priorians are the ones running the show however this would put a Target on their backs and eventually Constantine the Great had enough and forcefully disbanded the priorians around 312 ad after they revolted following an attempt by seus II and garus the heir and the emperor of the eastern half of the Roman Empire to disband them they are truly a fascinating piece of Roman history and I really wish I could go more in depth here but one day they will definitely have their own video AB kandata is the Masterwork of Livy this compendium was made up of 142 books of which 35 survive either fully or in partial fragments the book covered Rome's history from anas's arrival in Italy and the founding of the city in 753 BCE all the way to the reign of Augustus Rome's first emperor it's one of if not the most important sours we currently have on the early history of Rome in fact for some of the events in Rome's earliest history Livia is the only source we currently possess sadly for us at least Livia was writing this history sometime between 27 and 9 bcee over 700 years since the traditional founding of Rome because of this along with the fact that Livy was not a very good historian we do have to read Livy with a bit of skepticism we know for a fact that some of the history in these books are falsified or at least exaggerated by Livy but we also know that there are pieces of real history in abur kandata that we simply cannot find anywhere else so abur kandata is a bit of a mixed bag but it cannot be denied that the Masterwork of Livy is an extremely important starting point in any study of Rome's earliest history I actually have a video on Liv if you interested in more detail I'll link it in the upper right hand corner as well as in the description the crisis of the 3dr century was one of the Roman Empire's darkest periods from about 235 to 284 the Empire teetered on the brink of complete and utter collapse the period traditionally starts with the assassination of Sous Alexander but really the causes for the period of absolute crisis start centuries earlier the Roman Empire was fairly unique and that its Emperor was not chosen Bea hereditary or even legal succession instead the emperor was typically chosen based on three things his own personal ability the approval of the Senate and the people of Rome and the approval of the military the last two were certainly the most important because of this it became a standard practice to use the payment of troops as a way for wealthy Romans to secure military backing to ascend to the emperorship to add on to this by this point Rome was simply overextended the Empire stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia this me that Rome was constantly defending itself from raids Wars and other such attacks from areas like Germany Iran Scotland Etc this was an issue because Rome was a slave economy even at this point in its history it relied on plunder gained from Conquest to pay its troops increase infrastructure and to basically do anything you can think of as Rome was forced to go more and more on the defensive this source of income began to dry up this meant that there simply was less money to go around and we we all know what happens when you don't pay well-trained troops what they believe they deserve to further exaggerate this issue the emperor still had to worry about maintaining popular support as well they secured this typically through infrastructure projects and throwing lavish festivals and games to continue to pay for these projects the Emperors were forced to divert more funds from the Army and other sources along with seizing assets from various political enemies this would all come to a head in 235 when seus Alexander was assassinated this basically set off a game of musical chairs as any group with any sort of power the Senate petorian guards and even individual Legions began to nominate their own Emperors between the start of the crisis in 235 and the end of the crisis in 284 there were at least 26 different men proclaimed Emperor some of these men like maximinus thra actually had a shot at being the real Roman Emperor While others were basically just glorified commanders of individual Legions this political crisis was compounded with a simultaneous Environmental crisis sea levels Rose and droughts affected large portions of Roman lands along with this the outbreak of various diseases including the cyprian plague destroyed Roman agricultural production and you know what is really bad for internal stability famine this series of events is far too detailed for me to get into right now but here are some quick highlights the emperor valaran would be captured and later executed in 260 this was the first time a Roman Emperor had been captured and was a deeply humiliating event for for Rome and Romans alike at this point the Empire would begin to split with the GIC Empire consisting of the provinces of Gaul Britain and hispania breaking away in 260 under pumis and the pyan Empire consisting of Syria Palestine and portions of Egypt splitting off into 267 under Queen Zenobia though officially she was the Regent for her son bathus Greece and Macedonia would be invaded by the GS in 268 and all across the Roman world the borders would be plagued by invasions and raids by various tribes cities especially in the western half of the empire were completely ruined and Rome's economy was destroyed the crisis would really only start to come to an end with the coming of one of Rome's greatest Emperors aelan aelan would reunite the Empire militarily but would sadly be assassinated by his own men in 275 which kind of threw the Empire back into chaos Diocesan would come to power in 284 and Implement reforms which essentially split the empire into two separate entities known as the tetrarchy the tetrarchy consisted of four men two senior Emperors known as the augusti or Augustus and two Junior Emperors known as the cesaris or Caesars this essentially gave two halves of the Empire two different men to rule over them this allowed the two halves to focus Inward and stabilize the empire for a time however another series of Civil Wars would break out in 306 but that's a story for another time the crisis of the 3dr century may have been the most trans transformative event in the history of the Empire it ranks up there with augustus's rise to power and the overthrow of the monarchy in terms of impact on Roman history even today many historians view it as the transition between classical Antiquity and late Antiquity the two historical periods this crisis completely changed the way Rome was governed how its economy worked the power of the legions the political power of the Senate and really I can go on and on these events changed every aspect of the Roman Empire I will a link to some resources that go much more in depth than I can in this video but I really can't overstate the importance of this period in Roman history one day I will cover it more in depth but until that day check out those resources if you wish to learn more ah the great skipio Africanus quite possibly my favorite Roman of all time skipio born as puus Cornelius skipio in 236 B.C was one of Rome's greatest military commanders and quite possibly one of History's Greatest military commanders skia began his military service in 218 BCE at the outbreak of the Second Punic War his father also named puus Cornelius skipio was one of the consoles that year and was sent to stop Hannibal's March in Northern Italy of course the Roman army was mostly unsuccessful and Hannibal Rampage through Italy skia was at the disastrous Battle of K and it's said that it was him who rallied the survivors at kusum there is a story here that is likely made up by Livy as it doesn't appear in any other source on the Second Punic War but I love it so I'm going to tell it anyway a group of young nobles were discussing a plan to abandon the war after K and apparently goiz to serve as mercenaries skipio got wind of this and he stormed into their tent where he drew his sword and forced everyone in attendance to swear to Jupiter and the Capal line that they would never abandon Rome the story really captures skibo's commitment to Rome skipio would eventually be sent to hispania to continue the war against Carthage after a rough defeat of Roman forces in 211 skipio would be elected as commander of the remaining troops this was probably not really how it happened this was probably a later invention used to justify giv skipio a man who never held the consulship nor even a prador ship control of a Roman army this was a first in Roman history but it might have been one of the best decisions ever made skipio instantly took to the field I can't go into much detail if you want more details then check out my series on skipio but he swept across Spain like a plague and by 206 hispania was almost entirely Roman Carthage had been kicked out and scabo returned to Rome to stand for the consulship he was elected unanimously and assum as consulship into A5 despite the fact he was only 31 technically too young to be conso skipio demanded permission to invade Africa itself at first the Senate refused but when skipio threatened to take the issue to the people of Rome who Ador adored him the Senate bowed to his demands he was given the province of Sicily and told he could basically do whatever he wanted but that he was being given no additional soldiers Skibo though didn't care and just recruited from the local population after a few years he had trained his army into a well oiled machine and he sailed for Africa proper as much as I want to regail you with the tales of skibo's great victory in Africa you're going to have to check out my separate series on him for details but sko's campaign in Africa went extremely well well he forced Carthage to recall Hannibal and his son Mago from Italy after skipio destroyed them at the Battle of the Great Plains in 203 BCE and then he went face to face with hanle at the Battle of Z where skipio was Victorious with this final battle Rome or really skipio triumphed over Carthage Carthage was essentially made a Roman client state it needed Roman approval for any War its Navy was capped at 10 tries and Carthage was forced to return all captured goods and persons along with paying more reparations of about 10,000 talents remember that at this point in his life skipio was still only in his early 30s he received a Triumph and was given the agnum in Africanus meaning the African he was such a celebrated figure that he would eventually come to be seen as the son of Jupiter a great honor for any Roman his later life was much less interesting he served as censor in 199 and again is console in 194 he fought a few more Wars none nearly as great as the Second Punic War against the boy and the liuan in Northern Italy as well as against Antiochus the ruler of the Solus Empire in Greece skipio would die sometime around 185 bce. at his country estate in lerum I will leave off our examination with the story that while probably not real is nonetheless indicative of how well thought of skipio was as a military commander it's said that skipio encountered Hannibal during a feast later in life and skipio asked Hannibal who he thought were the greatest Generals in history Hannibal stated I would give first place to Alexander with a small Force he defeated armies whose numbers were Beyond Reckoning he overran the remotest areas as far away as India places where most men would not even dream of visiting skipio then said and who would be second in your estimation Hannibal said I would give second place to purus of epis he was the first to master the art of military encampment and no other General showed such Exquisite judgment in choosing his Battleground and disposing his troops he was also skilled at conciliating people to such a degree that the natives of Italy preferred his rule to that of Rome skipio then asked and who would be third Hannibal responded myself of course and finally skipio asked but what would you have said if you had defeated me at Zama and hanbal said then I would have placed myself not only before Alexander and pyrus but before all other commanders again this is probably a fake Story made up years after the two men had died but it does capture just how well thought of skibo's Genius was skipio Africanus was one of Rome's greatest men and without him Rome may never have made it past the great carthaginian Menace now that I'm making this video I'm not really sure why this is so low on the list but next up we have ramus and Remis these two twin brothers are the mythical found of Rome the two men were Latin men born in Alba longa their mother was rehea Sylvia a Vestal Virgin and daughter of the former king of albalonga numor it said the boy's father was the Roman God of War Mars This is a fairly common theme in Roman history many of Rome's most important figures are said to be the sons of gods and Mars is probably the most common the Twins were left on the banks of the Tyber by amilius the man who overthrew numor they were found there by a she wolf who raised the boys for a Time eventually they were adopted by fulus a Shepherd the two would go on to establish separate cities on the Seven Hills of Rome Romulus chose the Palatine while Remis chose the Aventine the two disagreed on which city should be the primary city and during this disagreement Remus was killed by his brother that of course won the argument for Romulus and Rome got its name this story is almost certainly false we don't really know the true story of of Rome's founding but it's much more likely and supported by archaeological evidence that the city developed out of much earlier settlements we know the hills of the city were inhabited by at least 1,000 BCE centuries before the traditional founding date of 753 there could have been a man named Romulus and he may very well have had a brother named Aris the truth is that we will likely never know the conflict of the orders refers to a centuries long struggle between the patricians and the plebians for political economic and social rights and privileges the conflict started during the early ages of the Republic around 494 B.C at this point in Roman history the patricians held all of the power in the state they were the only people allowed to hold political office and they held the vast majority of Rome's wealth the issue was that the patricians a group of a few hundred families descended from families specially chosen by Romulus and other Roman kings to serve in the Senate made up a very small percentage of Rome's population a percentage that was only growing smaller as the Roman State continued to expand and grow because of this fact it fell to the plebeians Rome's much larger but poorer social class to serve in Rome's military the problem was that when these men were forced to serve they had to leave their farms and Fields unattended this caused them to lose all of their income and many were forced to ask for predatory loans from the much wealthier patrici class just to survive these loans open the pans up to a vicious cycle of abuse and many were made essentially slaves this boiled over in 494 with the first secession of the plebs I don't have time to go fully in depth here but I have made a video on this so if you want a more in-depth story definitely check that out but essentially the plebians came together and quite literally left the city in Mass they walked together to the mon secure or sacred Mount and essentially set up a massive Camp there a series of negotiations followed that gave the plebians their own assembly and the ability to elect a new plean Tribune an office designed to protect plean interest in the Roman government there would be four more secessions over the course of the conflict along with numerous other events that I simply don't have time to get into but by 287 or so the playing field had leveled drastically this doesn't mean that the poor plebians were suddenly catapulted into positions of power or even that their quality of life improved instead the ultimate consequences of the conf of the orders was that money not ancestry became the ultimate source of power in Rome this SP in Advantage for wealthier Romans would become the status quo for essentially the rest of Roman history and reflected a new societal organization that was much harder to challenge than the old legal system that supported the Patrician dominance of The Early Republic the caline books were a collection of Oracle utterances sold to Rome's last king Lucius tarquinius SU purpose these collections were said to come from the appolloni Oracle at kou these were originally a collection of nine or so books that were offered to rmes King at some insane price he refused to buy them and then the person offering the books likely the Oracle herself then burned three books in front of him and again offered the remaining six books for the same price Lucius again refused to buy them the Oracle then burned three more books and offered the last three books for the same price this time Lucius consulted Rome's priest who took the opes and urged the king to purchase the remaining books Lucius did so and the books would be stored in a vault underneath the Temple of Jupiter on the Capal line hill these books would be guarded Around the Clock by at least at first two patricians over time this group would expand to around 10 to 15 individuals normally EXC consoles or ex peders the Senate could command this group to open the books the group would then search the books in hopes of discovering ing what Rome needed to do to avoid or get out of various calamities typically the answers would be some sort of religious observance or sacrifice we don't know for sure how many times the books were consulted but it does seem to be fairly regular on screen are the recorded instances we know about you will see that most of these were particularly bad instances of plague Wars that had gone bad or even just assumptions made from sayings or prophecies contained in the book my favorite is sutus telling us that it was a civil blind prediction of a king triumphing over Parthia that inspired rumors of Caesar aspiring to be a king these rumors would ironically lead to the establishment of the Empire by Augustus following Caesar's assassination and the subsequent political Fallout you really got to love vague prophecies the books are said to have been destroyed sometime around 405 ad by Stilo as they were being used to attack his government but long before that the originals were likely destroyed in a massive fire in 83 BC e and were probably replaced by a collection of various utterances collected from across the growing Republic sadly we no longer have any collection of the books and their contents have been lost to history orian born Lucius Dominus aurelianus was an emperor of Rome during the crisis of the 3rd Century he was not born to any great family nor was he even born in Italy instead he was probably from somewhere in the Balkans some say Macedon some say daia it's hard to tell for sure he was almost certainly a liyan though he enlisted in Rome's Legion at a young age somewhere around 20 I can't go too deep into his life this video is already going to be long enough but aelian was a military genius and Rose through the ranks of the Legion very quickly at this point in Roman history individual Legions were basically recognizing a new emperor every few months and aelan Legion proclaimed him Emperor after Claudius gothicus the earlier emperor of the Legion died aelan would go on to wage several Wars right in a row with the aim of reuniting the Empire he would achieve this by 272 and was granted the title restorator orbus or restorer of the world one of the best titles any Emperor has ever received in my opinion aelian would sadly be assassinated on his way to wage war in Persia by his own petorian guards in around 275 aelan really represents the start of the end of the crisis he not only reunited the Empire but he also began a series of reforms that push the Empire towards a more stable Future these included a reorganization of the distribution of food new coinage reform and a campaign to lower inflation aelan only ruled for five or so years and so sadly has missed a lot of the time in the study of the Empire's history but it was his militaristic successes that allowed the Empire to become one again and he put the Empire back on the path to glory and prosperity [Music] we start with a question that I think a lot of people ask but quite simply there isn't a clear answer to and that is who is the successor to Rome this question has been asked thousands of times and I know everyone has their own answer let me lay some groundwork before I list some of the most common answers and the reasoning behind them first of all we have to Define what exactly Rome is Rome in history is typically split into four or so portions we have the Roman Kingdom from around 753 to 509 BCE then we have the Roman Republic from 509 to 31 BCE then we have the United Roman Empire from 31 BCE to around 286 ad and finally we have the period of the split Roman Empire from 286 to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 those years are all rough estimates some sources will put the beginning and the end of various periods at different points but this is roughly the agreed upon start and indates of the various periods of Roman history it's at this point that we have to start asking who is the successor to Rome well the obvious and probably objectively correct answer at this point in history is the Eastern Roman Empire today we call it the Byzantine Empire but during its history the Empire viewed itself as the Roman Empire and really it was just with the Greek spin remember this Empire was centered in Constantinople in Greece and so Greek language culture and so on became much more influential as the Byzantine Empire aged as the byzantines controlled the East and prospered the West became a bit of a mess the ostros took over the city of Rome along with Italy and portions of AUM following the downfall of Romulus Augustus the last Western Roman Emperor but the main successor we need to look at in the west would be the hre or the Holy Roman Empire the hre gets a bit of a bad rap nowadays mostly due to the famous voler quote the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy nor Roman nor an Empire and to be fair at Volt's time this was certainly true and it was debatably true for all of the hre's history however the first emperor of the hre the great Charlamagne was crowned as emperor of all Romans this was mostly an act of securing Prestige and legitimacy for the pope and Charlamagne as the new rulers of Western Europe and Catholicism as the dominant and legitimate form of Christianity personally I would argue this is really the weakest claim to the successor of Rome firstly there already was an emperor of the Romans or well I really mean Empress her name was Irene and she was the Regent for her son Constantin I 6th this was even part of the reason the pope crowned Charlamagne the West was simply unwilling to accept Irene in truth though even by the fall of the Byzantine empire in 1453 the hre was not Roman it was a Germanic Empire through and through and that's something we'll talk about more later in this Iceberg the line of secession then follows the Byzantine Empire as I already stated the byzantines fell in 1453 so then who succeeded them as inheritors of Rome's Legacy well it was the Ottoman Turks mamed II or mmed the Conqueror claimed the title of Roman Emperor on the basis that he had conquered Constantinople the seat of the Byzantine Empire which had been the United Roman Empire and frankly this makes a lot of sense when you think about it by 1453 it had been over a millennia since Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire Constantinople had become the capital of the Roman Empire and Meed had just conquered it in fact Meed was extremely interested in actually capturing the rest of what had been the Roman Empire he even mounted an invasion of of Italy capturing the town of ononto if Meed hadn't died there's a decent chance that Christendom would have had to unite in another crusade to push the Ottomans out of Italy mid's successors would never quite have the same drive as him instead they wanted to conquer Vienna the capital of the arch duy of Austria and seat of the Von hapsburgs the emperor of the hre the thinking being that if they vanished the other claimants to the title then the title was theirs and theirs alone which to be fair does kind of make sense the Ottomans were extremely serious about their claim and it became a defining title for the Sultans it was only as the Ottomans began to shift their focus more towards Arabia and the title of caleff that the claim began to take a back seat in terms of importance there is one more claimant we should look at the Russian Empire this claim centers around the idea of Russia being the inheritors of the Orthodox religion when Byzantium fell the zard of musky which would later become Russia was the most powerful remaining Orthodox state in the world because of this an idea began to develop that painted its capital Moscow as a sort of Third Rome the idea was that Moscow would be the place where the Roman Empire would be reborn From the Ashes to further this claim Ivan II of Russia married Sophia paleos the niece of Constantine VI 11th who was the last Byzantine emperor through this marriage Ivan claimed that he inherited the title upon Constantine's death however it should really be noted that Roman Traditions even as far back as a United Roman Empire never recognized any sort of automatic inheritance in fact 90% of the time the conflicts of the empire were over who would inherit and it was kind of a tradition to argue about it for a while all in all the claim here is mostly centered around Russia being the inheritors of the Orthodox religion and by extension the Byzantine Empire so those are the main cases personally I really think that when Constantinople fell so did the Roman Empire the inheritance of Rome is not about the title of emperor of the Romans instead it's about what we find in our culture the use of Latin AR Ural designs the Western system of law and all the other many influences in our modern world are the inheritance of the Empire that being said all hell me the Conqueror Kaiser AUM the sulen of two lands and the con of two Seas conqueror of Constantinople and the true heir of Rome I don't think I need to tell you who I think has the best claim one day I will get way deeper into this history as it's actually pretty interesting but until then this does flow pretty well into our next question who would be the Roman Emperor today well if we follow the path of succession in the Ottoman Empire then we come to this guy harun Osman osanu and I apologize if that is incorrectly pronounced the current head of the House of Osman and the man who would be caleff but amidst the fall of the byzantines one man managed to escape from the downfall a man named Andreas paleos he was the son of Thomas paleos the famous Duke of Mora who was the brother of Constantine I 12th the last Byzantine emperor Andreas claimed the Imperial title following the downfall of his house in 1483 it should be noted here that his father never claimed the title and just as with Ivan and Russia his claim is dubious at best Andreas though fell into poverty following the downfall of his family and desperate for money sold his titles to Charles VII King of France there was one small condition however Charles must after his conquest of the Ottomans return the duy of Moria to Andreas the same Dy title his father had held Charles died before he could act on his new title and Andreas reclaimed his Imperial titles once again Andreas would go on to die in poverty in Rome in 1502 his will left his titles to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella the of Castile the two would never act on them but if we assume Andreas actually legitimately claimed the title then it passed to them the Realms of the two monarchs would be United upon their death and the kingdom of Spain would be formed if we follow the line of secession then we come to this man Felipe v 6 the current king of Spain although to be fair the kingdom of Spain has changed hands many times so it's tough to say who would actually have the best claim if you decide to follow the line of the hre then you come to this man Carl Von hapsburg his ancestor Francis II was the last Holy Roman Emperor before Napoleon ruined all that so if the title of Holy Roman Emperor was to somehow reemerge then it would be Carl who would be the main claim in the end it doesn't really matter but if I had to throw my hat in the ring I would lean towards Haru Osman as the main successor to the title of Roman Emperor frankly Conquest triumphs most things when it comes to Rome and titles aren't really any different in the end of course it doesn't matter as Rome being reestablished is about as likely as me becoming King of England so it's really a moot point Livia born Livia Drilla was the wife of the Roman Emperor Augustus and is painted as the source of damn near everything bad that ever happened to Augustus his family or his Empire well that might be going a bit too far but historians of the time such as tacitus and saton love to paint Livy as the scheming Mastermind behind Augustus who among other things was responsible for the deaths of augustus's nephew marcelus and even the deaths of a gria pumis the adopted son of Augustus this was all done so that Tiberius would gain the throne tiberias was apparently easily influenced by Leva and she did all this as a way to G influence blah blah blah blah blah Thea was certainly influential I mean she was the wife of the emperor after all Augustus even called her his chief confa and the two apparently discussed the situation of the Empire and what to do pretty often but I seriously doubt she was this evil woman who was only out for power as she's painted as in many of the histories of the period I mean seriously basically anyone in the extended Julio claudian Dynasty dies and somehow Livia had a hand in it one day I will make a video examining the history born death but until that day all I have to say is that Livia was probably mostly innocent solo was one of the most important Romans in history and he's someone who gets overshadowed by men like Caesar who was just about three decades younger than solah Sola got his start in basically the same way every important Roman did through his military experience he fought in Africa gerania Anatolia and even in Italy itself he would go on to serve as console in 88 BC it was during this time that he would march on Rome in protest of laws made by his enemy gas Marius I can't get too deep into it as frankly this video would be hours long if I did but it eventually spiraled into what was Rome's first large scale Civil War a war solo would win assuming the mantle of dictator solo proceeded to enact Swift and vicious Revenge along with fixing what he saw as flaws in the Republic he likely ordered the death of over 9,000 people and even ordered Caesar to be put to death but Caesar was able to escape with the help of his relatives solo would go on to basically completely rewrite the Roman code of law and conduct in his own image he would expand the Senate create a new jury to hold Senators to the letter of the law take away much of the power of the plebeian tribunes along with many other changes however sadly for him much of his changes would be overturned by two of his lieutenants and successors the famous pompan Cris Sol's Legacy is one of ruthlessness and bloodshed and frankly it can even be argued that it was Sola who laid the groundwork for the Republic to fall Constantine the Great was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity and his rule represented the beginning of the shift of Rome from a polytheistic state to a Christian monotheistic State we aren't quite sure when Constantine was born but we know it was after 280 ad in naus modern day niche in Serbia he was the son of a very successful military officer glavius Valerius constantius his father was would eventually be raised to the rank of Caesar or Junior emperor of the Western Roman Empire Constantine was left in the East and raised in the court of Diocesan the senior emperor of the East he was something of a hostage as none of the Emperors junior or senior quite trusted the others this didn't stop Constantine from firstly attaining the highest levels of Education available and secondly enrolling in the Roman army he fought across the eastern half of the Empire and was seemingly fairly good at War being promoted to Tribune during his service in 305 both Diocesan and maximan the emperor of the West would step down garius would succeed Diocesan while constantius Constantine's father would succeed maximan who believed by many of the time that Constantine and maxentius maximian son would both be chosen to be junior Emperors instead both were skipped over and replaced by flavus valus seus in the west and garius valerus maximinus in the East Constantine was now in more danger than ever and both his father and himself knew it luckily for Constantine his father still held quite a bit of power constantius requested his son join him on his campaigns in Britain in some stories garus simply agreed with no strings attached in others it was only after garius got massively drunk that he gave permission it's frankly hard to say what the truth is but in any case Constantine joined his father in Britain it was during this campaign that constantius fell ill and eventually died before his death he proclaimed his full support for raising Constantine to the rank of Augustus senior Emperor the troops loyal to constantius quickly pledged their loyalty to Constantine and the armies and provinces of Gaul and Britain followed shortly after hispania notably rejected this appointment Constantine then sent notice of his father's death along with the notice of his Ascension to garas in the East garius was infuriated and at first seemed to be leaning towards declaring war on Constantine but he was talked down and the two developed a sort of compromise Constantine would be granted the rank of Caesar while flavius valerus Severus would become Augustus Constantine probably knowing he could not win a civil war accept it and garus personally sent him the traditional purple Robes of the emperor Constantine was granted the provinces of Gaul Britain and hispania kind of funny when you consider they were about to rebel against him just a little bit ago but whatever during this period he fought back the PS in Britain and the Franks in Gaul there is a great story there there whereby the two kings of the Franks aceric and Mario gas were captured and fed to Beast inside of trier's Amphitheater but that's a story for another time Trier seemed to be Constantine's favored City and a great expansion of the city took place under his Reign this was also the time where we see his image as a Christian sympathizer began to develop he outlawed persecutions of Christians within his realm and ordered most of the property and other Goods seized from them in centuries past returned back in Rome trouble was Brewing maxentius the son of maximan who had been skipped over had been plotting he took the appointment of Constantine as Caesar as a grave insult and it seemed to accelerate his plans he rebelled claiming the title of Emperor garius told flavus valerious seus to deal with the Rebellion sadly for seus though the troops used by him were the same troops that maximan had been in charge of and they almost instantly defected to maxentius his side seus was imprisoned and Maxim who was in retirement at this point in the Italian Countryside journeyed to Trier to speak to Constantine maximian offered Constantine the hand of his daughter in marriage along with the promise of being raised to the rank of Augustus in exchange for his support of maxentius rebellion Constantine accepted but instead of charging in head first into the conflict he remained in Gaul and then Britain along with the vast majority of his troops in the meantime maximan apparently had a falling out with his son and after failing to usurp the title of Emperor returned to Constantine a council then occurred in 308 where garus Dian and maximan basically argued over who should be Augustus and who should be Caesars they decided that valious linius lenus would become Augustus of the West with Constantine serving as his Caesar this basically did nothing as Constantine refused to accept the demotion maxentius was still mad and had an army now and maximan was now mad because because he had apparently been in the running to be Augustus once again in the west yeah the situation was a bit complicated in 310 maximan LED his own Rebellion against Constantine sadly for him though the Army he had mostly remained loyal to Constantine and he was forced to flee eventually Constantine caught up to him he pardoned the man but apparently strongly encouraged him to well I can't actually say this word on YouTube but let's just say maximan ended up dead maxentius used this opportunity to paint himself as a devoted son looking to avenge his father and gained quite a bit of public sympathy in the meantime over in the East emper garius died in 311 and this was when the whole system basically fell apart maxentius seized Anatolia and began to fortify his position against Constantine sadly for maxentius though his popularity was beginning to WAN and rebellions and riots began to pop up all over the place including in Roman Carthage it was at this time that Constantine crossed the Alps and began his war against maxentius I won't get too deep into this as this episode is already long enough but Constantine managed to win despite being numerically outnumbered after this Constantine slowly asserted himself as the most powerful man in the Empire he was able to push for the Edict of Milan to be issued in 313 which ended Christian persecution in the entire Empire after a series of wars and political Intrigue Constantine became the sole emperor in 326 and he was now the Undisputed ruler of Rome it was around this time that Constantine began his plans to build a new Capal capital in the East Constantinople the rest of his Reign was mostly focused on the frankly more boring aspects of Empire monetary reforms and so on Constantine would die in 337 it said he was baptized just before he died but some sources dispute this Constantine would be succeeded by his three sons Constantine II constantius II and constant not very creative in the whole naming convention he likely intended for something similar to the old system of the tetrarchy to make a return something that didn't quite happen but that's a story for another time Constantine was the first emperor to embrace or at least tolerate Christianity and it was his Reign that started the Empire on the path towards full conversion to the new religion his legacy would live on for Millennia afterwards not only for a stance towards Christianity but also in his new city Constantinople the senate in the Empire refers to the power dynamic between the Senate and the Empire during Rome's later years the Senate was in a bit of an odd place when Augustus came into his power as Emperor it was an arguably Democratic body within what was essentially a totalitarian dictatorship where power was concentrated in the hands of one man the emperor because of this the Senate was in a sort of limbo state it was too ingrained into Roman society to Simply get rid of but it also simply didn't hold any sort of real power instead it became essentially a rubber stamp for the Emperors if the Senate tried to stop or go against the emperor they would either be ignored or simply dissolved with new Senators replacing them and yet many Emperors especially the earlier ones still went out of their way to ensure their influence over the body was at least somewhat hidden so why was that well I think it has to do a lot with Rome's extreme aversion to anything even approaching a king the Roman people would be upset if an individual was seen as obviously controlling a body such as the Senate that was what those Old Kings did and they were bad after all so the emperor had to walk a bit of a tight RPP they couldn't and wouldn't allow the Senate to have any actual power over themselves or the state but they had to be discreet enough in their challenges to the Senate to ensure that it looked like they were working with the body to govern the Empire because of this the Senate remained The Entity that elected Emperors it was even the Senate that technically gave the emperor his Imperium it was really only in the late Imperial period post about 180 ad that the Senate really began to be obviously Rel relegated and by 300 ad it was made clear that the emperor answered to No One not even the Senate but for the early Roman emperors it was a tight line they walked and if one of them had been just a little more open in their now blindingly obvious power plays over the Senate it may very well have spelled Doom for the Roman Empire and we may have seen a Resurgence of the [Music] Republic we start with the HR the hre or Holy Roman Empire was essentially Western Europe's replacement for the Western Roman Empire or at least that's what they build it as so to speak the empire was created in 800 when Pope Leo III crowned the great Charlamagne as emperor of all Romans this was more than 300 years on since the fall of the Western Empire and was done during a time where Byzantium in the East was still thriving to begin with the empire was simply referred to as the Roman Empire it wouldn't had the holy part until the reign of fedric Barbarosa in 1157 at first the empire was basically just a copy of Charlemagne's carolingian empire but over the course of its multiple centuries of existence the Empire would include lands from all across Western Europe from britainy in the west to Holstein in the north to Naples in the South and to Coco in the East not all at the same time mind you the hre is a very odd political entity and it really deserves its own video to explain all the intricacies of its political situation but here's a quick rundown the first thing to know is that the empire was very decentralized for most of its history basically from the death of Charlamagne the power of the Holy Roman Emperor was subject to how much lip service the various kingdoms duchies and other political entities in the quote unquote empire were willing to give to the emperor the Empire would be centered in Germany following Charlemagne's death and it became a sort of elective monarchy eventually the H came to have hundreds of distinct political entities in its borders some were quite powerful such as the kingdom of bohemia or the archd of Austria others such as the Imperial City of olum or the Imperial City of uber lingan were literally just independent cities it basically held no political power the Emperors were elected by typically seven Prince electors these Prince electors were individual states who either through personal power or through their relationship with the Pope were granted the right to choose who should be Emperor at some points in history this was an actual election where two or more rulers genuinely competed for votes with the electors at other points in history this was more of a rubber stamp process where everyone really knew who was going to be elected before the election even happened as any good eu4 player knows the original electors were the Archbishop brick of Mines the Archbishop brick of cologne the Archbishop brick of Trier the kingdom of bohemia the county palatinate of the rine later the duy of Bavaria before the palatinate would come back in 1648 the dut of sax Wittenberg and the margarate of Brandenburg there were a few other states that eventually gained the title of Prince elector most were either added or gained the title through succession the amount of power in Emperor held depended on a lot of factors some such as federick Barbarosa were able to exert quite a lot of influence and power through their own Prestige Land and personal power While others only really held power of their personal lands and were essentially figureheads for the Empire The Empire would come to an end in 180 when Napoleon replaced it with the confederation of the R by this point the empire was without a doubt fully German and it had essentially been operating as a German Empire for the past few centuries I know that was a very basic overview but I can't get super deep into the hre in this one video one day I probably will do a whole HR Series where I really dig into its history but until then I will leave a few recommended readings for the history of the hre in the description sexus tar quinis was one of the sons of Rome's last king luus tarquinius Superbus or tarwin the proud it's said that it was his rape of lucrecia the daughter of spus lucretius a leading man of Rome that kickstarted the overthrow of the Roman kings after the horrific crime lucrecia committed suicide after telling her father and husband following this a sort of committee was formed led by some of Rome's Leading Men and relatives of the king including Lucius Junius bruus Lucius tarquinius colonis lucus husband and spirous lucretius tripanis these men began to gather support among Rome's nobility and while the King was away campaigning in Arda the men let a coup the gates were shut upon the king's return to Rome and the coup leaders even convinced the Army at Arda to join them Brutus and katanas became the first consoles and the history of the Republic goes on from there before we get into the theory let's get something straight this event was probably totally legendary we know for instance that the story Bears striking resemblance to Greek myths and when you add the fact that sexual violence against innocent women is an extremely common Trope to use against tyrannical kings in ancient history you start to see a picture developed that paints these events as simply later Creations to make the coming of the Republic a much more Grand and moral Affair the truth is that we will never be sure if these events actually happened or not but it's likely they didn't the main part of this theory is that if these events did happen as Livy and other historians of the period tell us then sexus may have been framed for the event and simp used as the scapegoat to instigate an aristocratic coup there is some evidence for this or at least for the coup we know from the archaeological record that around 500 bcee there is evidence of some sort of mass scale destruction around the centium the original public meeting place in Rome this was the area where basically all political and judicial activity happened within the city it would make sense then that some sort of Destruction would happen here during a coup either due to fighting or simply destroying the old symbols of the previous rulers further a building that we are pretty sure was originally a royal home was destroyed around this time at the base of the Capal line giving further Evidence towards some sort of coup or large scale dissatisfaction towards the monarchy it would be pretty easy to understand why the plotters would look for something as morally wrong as the crimes of sexus to Kickstart their own plans it's so much easier to convince the aristocrats the people and the Army to rebel against a king if that King is seen as endorsing or at least staying silent towards such a horrid crime in the end we will never know we know that much of early Roman history is likely made up or at least based on questionable sourcing at best even the Romans themselves knew this with Cicero describing the early Roman history as quote a forgery so is it possible that sexus was framed as a catalyst to push for a coup sure is it possible that none of this ever happened and it was simply a later invention sure we will likely never know heraclius was the Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641 he was born to heraclius the Elder in around 575 his father was the exarc basically governor of Africa a realm that stretched from the edge of Egypt all the way to hispania in 608 heraclius the Elder would lead a rebellion against focas an extremely unpopular Emperor who himself had rebelled against the emperor Maurice in 602 the younger heraclius captured Sicily and Cyprus before marching on the capital City Constantinople luckily for heraclius the aristocrats along with the personal guard of the emperor defected to him and basically opened the gates for him in his army focas was beheaded and heraclius the younger was crowned as emperor in 610 heraclius is mainly known for his successes on the battlefield heraclius was able to defeat the assassinat and even managed to claim the ancient Persian title King of Kings this was after the Assassins had captured Egypt Mesopotamia most of Anatolia Syria and Palestine the situation had been so dire that heraclius had seriously considered abandoning Constantinople and retreating to Carthage and there was even a point in 6:15 where some sources say that heraclius very nearly ordered the surrender of the Empire to the Assassins but apparently the Assassins refused the offer this is all to say that his campaign against the Assassins was incredible and for many at the time was likely viewed as a genuine miracle heraclius was gearing up to take the fight to the newly United Arab tribe in 641 when he died of some sort of illness his legacy was one of success however he brought the Empire back from the brink and if he hadn't been able to defeat the Persians then the Empire would have likely Fallen some 800 years before 1453 Roman propaganda mostly refers to the Augustine period whereby for possibly the first time in Rome's history a true well-funded and well-organized program of propaganda was employed by the government this was all with the goal to strengthen augustus's grip on power this isn't to say that Rome never had propaganda before Augustus because they certainly did just look at Ko's famous quote Carthage must be destroyed and Caesar's books on his conquest of Gaul but it was really with Augustus that propaganda began to be used as a weapon for the state the centerpiece to that propaganda was the cultural and historical writings of the period the most commonly cited writing is the Reay Gest de aost or the Deeds of the Divine August written shortly before his death by the main man himself this book basically details every good thing that he had ever done for the state from heroically avenging his adopted father Caesar to the buildings he ordered constructed in the city itself again notice the name of this book The Deeds of the Divine Augustus it's fairly obvious what Augustus wanted to achieve here painting himself as a Divine or at least connected to the Divine entity to add on to this the anid quite possibly the most famous piece of Roman literature was written in augustus's time and guess whose patronage the author of The anad Virgil was under that's right Augustus Augustus also used physical Works to further his propaganda he ordered a widespread building program in the city of Rome and by the end of his Reign very nearly every structure in the city had something to do with Augustus this served two purposes firstly it ingrained his name in the populace and secondly it demonstrated that the empire was Pros prous otherwise how could all these buildings be built Augustus used this propaganda to paint himself as the greatest man in Rome and as the guarantee of the Pax Romana sometimes even called the Pax Augusta he targeted every aspect of Roman society from its art and architecture to its very history the altar of victory was a famous altar located in the Roman senate house it contained a gold statue of the godess Victory who was literally the embodiment of victory victory herself represented Rome's right to rule and their triumph over their enemies most famously the carthaginians and the Greeks the altar itself was created by Octavian before he was Augustus in 29 BCE the statue within was said to come from Greece where it was a depiction of Nike the Greek goddess of Victory Rome had captured the statue during the pic war in 272 B.C the statue was made of gilded Bron winged and dressed in a flowing robe the goddess stood at top of globe and a laurel wreath a symbol of military victory was held in her right hand the statue had likely been in the Roman senate house since its capture but the altar had been created some 200 years later the altar became the area where the Senators of Rome offered their prayers for the well-being of the Empire and took their OES of loyalty upon the Ascension of a new emperor the altar remained in the Senate house until 357 when constantius II had it removed Julian the apostate The Last Emperor following the traditional religion had it replaced sometime during his Reign but it was again removed in 382 by graan various Roman Senators petitioned the emperor to replace the altar not as a religious object but as a reminder of the history and the greatness of Rome but each request was denied some of our sources say that the statue itself was still present in the Senate house in 403 this leads to a bit of confusion some say that the statute itself may have remained in the Senate house while the altar was removed but others say this was actually a restoration of the altar at this point in history we just don't know for sure in any case by 408 an edict was passed against Heathen statues at this point the Altar and the statue fall out of history and they are completely lost it's possible that it was simply melted by the vizos when they stacked Rome in 410 or perhaps it was simply stashed away by some Pagan sympathizers in the Senate and was forgotten about in some vaults somewhere we will likely never know the Historia Augusta is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors heirs usurpers and even Junior Roman emperors The Collection was based on suetonius the 12 Caesars and was written during the Reigns of Diocesan and Constantine the Great the book itself presents six different authors known as the scriitor Historia austa but many historians today say it was likely written by a single person person the books we still have consist of 30 biographies they start with hadrien and end with kinus and numaran hadrien ruled in 117 while kinus ruled in 283 just to give you an idea of the scope of these collections we have lost portions of the biographies on Philip the Arab desius tribon as gallus amelon and most of valerians further some argue that the original Historia Augusta also contained biographies of nerva and Tran the two Emperors before hadrien while the collection was originally viewed as widely reliable today most modern historians doubt much of its work in many ways it's actually very similar to Livy's abata most historians know or strongly guess that much of its information is false or at least inaccurate but it's the only Latin work we have for over a century of Roman history so it cannot be simply discarded instead much like Livy the Historia Augusta must be read with Extreme Caution and should not be blindly belied believed for instance many of the quote unquote historical records entered into the Historia Augusta including letters speeches and senatorial decrees are known to be forgeries we know this either through stylistic grounds for instance the way the supposed senorial decrees were structured or because the military or administrative titles used in the letters were not recorded anywhere else until centuries after the supposed record in question further The Collection cites many historians letter writers and other sources that are simply unrecorded anywhere else a bad sign when dealing with historiography there are also several errors in birth dates the locations of various Emperors at various points in time and the terms of office for several important figures the Historia Augusta is much like abber kandata a bit of a mixed bag we know that many portions of it are likely very false but we simply cannot ignore it as in some cases it's the only extant Source we have because of this we are forced to use the source with Extreme Caution and try and pick out the truth from in between the [Music] lies first up the anad the anad is an epic poem by Virgil the poem tells the legendary story of anas and the eventual founding of the city of Rome the poem is made up of 12 different books the first six start with anas's journey to Italy following the Trojan War and the last six deal with his and his group's Wars in Italy I can't get too deep into the story of the anad as we would literally be here all day but here are the quick Cliff Notes book one starts off with anas who is an actual character in The Iliad who has just fled the downfall of Troy anas is the subject of a prophecy for telling that he will journey to Italy where he will give rise to a quote Noble and courageous race that will be known to the whole world anas sets off from Troy following the Greek Coast to Sicily and then eventually Carthage book two and three are mostly a retelling of the story of the Trojan War which anas is relaying to Dao the queen of Carthage it is essentially the story of Troy that we're all familiar with just with the added bonus of the slain Prince Hector and the goddess Venus anas's mother appearing to anas and telling him to flee the city before it can fall book three finishes with the tales of anas's Journey to Carthage they initially build a city on cre but are forced to leave it following a plague they find a harpy who tells them to continue to Italy they encounter andromachi the Widow of Hector and elus one of prim's sons and both tell anas of his ultimate Destiny and finally they Journey Through the land of the cyclopses yeah real fun times book four picks up back in Carthage Queen Dao has fallen in love with anas and attempts to get him to marry her at first anas is very receptive to her love and it seems like the two will marry however anas is reminded of his duty by the god Mercury this leaves anas with no choice and he and his companions leave in the dead of night Dao is thrown into grief and she commits suicide but declares that her people will forever be set against anas and his people predicting the Punic Wars book five details anas's time in Sicily here the men participate in a variety of games as well as military parades two things that would eventually become Central to Roman identity towards the end of the book he is told to Journey to the underworld to receive a vision of his and his people's future book six Chronicles that journey in the Underworld here he meets Cerberus and the shade of Dao who remains irreconcilable finally he is brought to the fields of elesium where he has shown a vision of the destiny of Rome he sees the greatest men of Rome men like Romulus Marcus Camus and the Caesars book Seven starts with the Trojans settling in Lum he marries the daughter of a Latin King latinus the daughter whose name was Lavinia was supposed to marry a king of the ruli turnus turnus in his anger declares war upon anas and his men the war carries over to book eight where anas is now seeking help from the various tribes around Lum he first turns to the tuscans who are enemies of turnus this journey brings him to the Future sight of Rome where he meets King Evander of Arcadia a region in the pelones evander's son even joins anas anas is given weapons by Vulcan after his mother Venus begs Vulcan to arm anas and his men book nine starts with an attack by turnus on the Trojan Camp he is repelled and forced to jump into the Tyber book 10 has anas return to the camp with his new allies and a battle ensues which anas wins book 11 really only deals with the funeral of Palace the son of King Evander and finally Book 12 deals with anas's final victory over turnus anas and turnus fight in single combat and anas finally kills him and really that's it after that anas starts a line of kings that would eventually culminate in Romulus and then the story of Rome as we we know it plays out now I'm sure we can realize that a lot of this is obviously not true like anas's journey into the Underworld the encounter with the king of the pelones at the future s of Rome and of course the intervention of various Gods throughout the story I haven't seen many claims that those things are true but what I do see a lot of people claim to be true is the flight of some of Troy's survivors to Rome or at least Tatum frankly there's no evidence for this firstly we know for a fact that the anad was primarily written as I discussed in the last episode as a form of propaganda its goal was to increase Roman pride in their state this would naturally increase social cohesion which was at an all-time low what with the constant state of Civil War and all that and that social cohesion would lead to a more stable state or at least that was the hope secondly we have no evidence of anything like this in either the archaeological record or in Greek writings Rome and the surrounding area are one of if not the most excavated sites in the world the careers of some of the best archaeologists and historians the world has to offer have been dedicated to Rome and there has never been anything even remotely suggesting a large influx of Greek refugees at any point in Rome's history we should have found something if it existed be it letters other writings new building techniques new religious artifacts I mean just think about how different the cultures of Latium and the cultures of Troy would have been it's it's impossible to have a merging of those cultures without both leaving some sort of imprint on the historical record okay look the point is that we have never found any solid evidence of Trojans coming to Italy despite the fact that the area they were supposed to have colonized being the most studied area in the entire world but to play Devil's Advocate just a little bit is it possible for the Trojans to have made it to Italy sure is it likely well no the Ania is a legend and a myth it was written to legitimize Roman rule over the Mediterranean to give Rome a link to the great history of the Greeks to emphasize good Roman characteristics and to bring the Roman populace of the time closer together to hopefully prevent another series of terrible Civil Wars it's not history and frankly it never will be history the truth is that Rome developed out of the local Italian population the Latins and likely with a little bit of help or or possibly domination from the at trusant a people to their immediate North it was not a sudden influx of Trojan Heroes that pushed Rome to become a great City it was the result of thousands of years of habitation and the gradual but steady crawl towards city state status we're doing this a little bit out of order but it fits pretty well here so I'm going to go ahead and cover it the founding of Rome has been a hotly debated topic for a very long time the Romans themselves claimed their city was founded by Romulus the exact date is a little bit Up For Debate but most of the time 753 BCE is generally accepted as the most common but 800 750 720 among others were also recorded by various Roman authors today with the advantage of archaeology and access to far more historical records than contemporary Romans we know that Rome or at least the hills that would make up Rome had been inhabited for much longer we know for a fact that Rome was occupied by the middle of the Bron age Circa 17700 BCE and we suspect that it was at least partially inhabited even before that this evidence mostly comes from Pottery shards and a few burial structures the Capal line was probably the first to be inhabited in about 1700 BCE the Palatine was probably next around 1350 or so by 900 we are fairly positive that all the Hills of Rome had at least some sort of habitation Terraces have been discovered on both the Palatine and the capitaline that indicate the local population were likely Latin farmers who slowly spread to the other Hills in the area it was around the 8th Century BCE that activity in Rome began to really pick up at this point the largest settlement was probably on the Palatine but the Capal line and the coronal Hills both held a decently sized population as well it was around this time that the Forum began to develop burials in the area were stopped and portions of it were paved over we see the first evidence of a wall in about about 730 or 720 on the Palatine it seems that at this point the city of Rome had developed a true boundary there were Gates and streets and overall we see an increasing level of centralization something you would expect with the developing city state by 600 BC Rome was almost certainly United the Clans that had occupied the hills in earlier centuries were now all intermingling and the development of the Forum as a central meeting area along with designated Civic structures points towards a system of government so we can certainly say that by 600 bce. Rome had been founded is it possible that the city had become what we would call Rome before that sure the truth of the founding of Rome is that it's complicated it was not a sudden process it was a long drawn out process over multiple centuries because of that you could say that Rome was founded in 1700 bce. with the first evidence of habitation on its Hills or you could say it wasn't until about 600 B.C when all the hills seem to have united into one political entity that Rome was truly founded frankly we will likely never know for sure when Rome became Rome instead of just a loose collection of villages but it did happen and we will likely have to be content with just knowing that the legio 9 hispania or more commonly known as the ninth Spanish Legion was a legion in the Roman army that has been lost to history it's become something of a cultural icon with novels movies and endless theories about what may have happened to the legion but first I should give you a quick overview of the known history of the Legion as it may help us try to figure out what exactly happened to bring about The Disappearance of an entire Legion the legion likely got its start in 90 BCE during the social war but it's most famous for being assigned to Julius Caesar when he became governor of CIS Alpine Gul when he became Governor he inherited the lead of four Legions the seventh 8th 9th and 10th it seems that the legion was at first ordered to remain in aquelia a town on the border of cisap pangal to guard against a possible Invasion by the alyans but we know the legion served under Caesar during his famous gaylik Wars the legion continued to support Caesar during his Civil Wars and following his victory the legion was disbanded and the veterans were settled in Italy specifically around the city of panum those veterans would be recalled by Octavian Caesar's adopted son during the war with the boat King seus pompus the legion would then be sent to Macedonia before fighting with octavus being at the Battle of aium against Mark Anthony their nickname hpia would be gained following octavian's rise to Soul ruler of Rome they would be sent to hispania otherwise known as Spain to campaign against local tribes and to Garrison the area this seems like a good time to mention that tracking individual Legions is something that is difficult to do at the best of times firstly before Augustus standardized the legions numbering system there were multiple Legions who were named with a single number because of this the early actions of Legions are sometimes mixed up with other Legions that held the same number we are also missing some of the documents that would tell us where Legions were sent during the Imperial period and sometimes Legions were simply ordered to move with no real record of the order being recorded this especially happened when it was the emperor himself who ordered the legion to move so we are mostly guessing where the legion went following their time in hispania it's likely they were ordered to the Rind an area that needed far more Legions than Spain did at at the time they were probably relocated after the battle of the tberg forest in 9 ad and sent to the province of panonia modern-day Western Hungary at this point the ninth falls off the radar until 43 ad when they appear in Britain as a provincial Garrison they likely served during the invasion of the area under Claudius at this point the ninth became a leading Legion in Britain they fought against various native tribes and even fought the famous icini under budaka it was during the war with budaa that the legion suffered their first serious defeat in Britain they lost most if not all of their foot soldiers attempting to relieve a Siege at modern day Colchester only the Cavalry managed to escape this took the legion out of commission for a time but eventually they were reinforced with men from Germania we know that the ninth participated in the invasion of calonia or Scotland in 82 to 83 ad and that they reconstructed a legionary fortress in York in 108 ad but after that they seem to disappear from the historical record modern archaeology has found some evidence of further activity of the Legion in the Netherlands several tile stamps and some jewelry have all been found containing some sort of inscription mentioning the ninth Spanish Legion further a shrine to Apollo was found near aen in Germany that was said to be erected by Lucius latinus meser who described himself as the chief Centurion and prefect of the camp of the ninth Spanish Legion so it seems as though the legion left Britain following their activities at York and journey to the Ryme where they were seemingly based between 104 to about 120 so what happened after that well we know that by 197 the legion seemingly no longer existed we know this because of a column inscribed with the list of the legions from 197 along with a list provided by Dias the two lists are identical and list the same 33 Legions with no sign of the ninth Spanish Legion or even anything near it so we can assume that whatever happened to the legion happened between our archaeological evidence in or around 120 and the compiling of the lists in 197 the traditional theory before the archaeological findings was that the legion was wiped out in the north of Britain sometime around 108 this is of course seemingly disproven with the archaeological evidence those findings indicate that the legion was not only still intact but seemingly fairly successful as the officers who had in descriptions at the area in the Netherlands went on to have fairly successful public careers something that obviously would have been impossible if they had been in charge of or died with an annihilated Legion this has led to the development of two main theories to explain the loss the first has to do with the second Jewish Revolt in 132 well within our time frame we know that in the early stages of the War Rome suffered heavy casualties it would make sense then that the legions would be summoned from across the Empire to deal with the Rebellion perhaps the n was one of those Legions called in to complicate this though another Legion the legio 22 diot tarania I'm probably pronouncing that wrong or dias's 22nd Legion is generally agreed upon as suffering such heavy losses during this Rebellion that it was either completely destroyed or simply disbanded if we assume that both were lost during this war then that would mean it was the worst Roman military disaster since the battle of the tberg forest which lost three Legions if that is true then we would expect there to be some sort of historical record with the event after all the battle of the tberg forest was engraved into Roman society its impact was so large in the Roman character that it would be remembered for generations and every Roman historian who was worth their salt recorded the legion numbers of the Lost Legions 17 18 and 19 by the way the other theory is that during Marcus aurelius's war in Parthia from 161 to 166 the legion was ordered to take part cassus Doo accounts that a parthan army surrounded and completely annihilated a Roman legion in Armenia during this war this defeat was enough to cause the governor of capid doia to commit suicide as the legion was supposed to be under his command the two Legions that were supposed to be attached to capid dohia at the time were the Thunderbolt 12th Legion and Apollo's 15th Legion both of these Legions were operational and us it in war well beyond the war in Parthia so it couldn't have been either of those iions that were destroyed so the theory is that the ninth was transferred to the command of capadia for the duration of the war and was destroyed during that Ambush again the issue here is that there is no record of such a transfer nor have we found anything in the archaeological record and yet still other Scholars still believe the legion met its ultimate destruction in Britain this mostly relies on the fact that no record of the legions in the East has ever been found and that the dating of the archaeological finds could be incorrect so in the end we again have no idea what really happened to the ninth Legion we know that they were there in 108 and likely in 120 but by 197 they were gone we likely will never know what exactly happened to them but personally I would probably put my stock in the parthan theory the archaeological findings in the Netherlands seems to prove that the Army left Britain I don't think the Jewish Theory could be accurate as losing two whole Legions would have left a serious impact on Roman history and would have been something something that would be well attested to but we will probably never know for sure the battle of the tberg forest or as it is less often known the Varian disaster is one of Rome's most humiliating defeats in fact you could probably say this is the most influential defeat the Romans ever faced and it marks the transformation of the Empire from a successful expanding state to a more introspective State focused on its own Survival before we can talk about the Battle itself we should first set the scene just a little bit Rome had been dealing with the various Germanic tribes since Caesar had pushed the Roman border to the Rind during his famous GIC Wars The Border proved to be one of the most active in the world with various incursions by both sides happening basically every year and most of the time multiple times a year our story really starts with a Roman named Varys Varys was a very successful Roman despite his family having falling on hard times when he was born Varys was a very strong supporter of Octavian the future Emperor August he served alongside him during his campaigns in the East and even seemed to have gained the attention of Octavian himself when agria died in 12bc it was Varys along with the future Emperor Tiberius who delivered the eulogy this was a position of supreme honor agria had been the closest friend of Augustus the two were essentially brothers and for Augustus to allow Varys to give his eulogy was a great honor this boosted his career and just a year later he was elected Consul once again alongside the future emperor tiberious for a few years varises shifted around the Empire governing various provinces including Africa Syria and Judea he even put down the Jewish Revolt in the area in 4 BCE while all this was going on tiberias had been waging several military campaigns in Germania with the aim of Conquering the region and pacifying the local tribes by the year 6 ad all of Germany up to the river El was seemingly occupied and now Rome needed to exert control over the region in the year 7 ver was appointed as The Unofficial governor of the region and was told to ensure it was added to the Roman fold this appointment really made a lot of sense as Varys was an experienced military and administrative man he also had dealt with local rebellions and so seemingly had some experience in controlling an unruly local population vys was given command of three Legions these were the 17th 18th and 19th while encamped for the summer at Veta modern day xanthon Varys received reports of a large Revolt of various dramatic Tri tribes in the west of the province the man who came with this morning was arminius almost certainly not his name by the way way too Latin arminius was a German Noble who had been born to a Chieftain allied with Rome because of this he was raised in a manner similar to that of Roman nobility he learned Latin was well versed in the classics and even joined the Roman military he was educated in all Roman military Theory over the course of about 5 years and even managed to earn Roman citizenship and the equestrian rank no small feat however some of the other German Nobles in varys's retinue didn't quite trust arminius we don't know for sure why but we do know that several Nobles warned Varys not to trust him Varys though ignored their advice and marched at once to put down the Rebellion the Army marched at Daybreak and all seemed to be going well arminius was with the Army for the first few days but at some point he told Varys that he would be leaving with most of his forces to move ahead and finish mustering Rome's German allies with hindsight with we know this was suspicious but at the time it really wasn't arminius was seemingly committed to the Roman cause and his status being the son of the local Chieftain meant that he was the go between for the Roman army and the local auxiliaries so Varys let the man go arminius left behind only a few of his men these men were supposedly guides but in reality they served as spies you see arminus had already betrayed feris there was indeed a rebellion but it was a rebellion spearheaded by minus on September 8th in the year 9 the Roman army was marching through a thick forest this forced the Army to do two things firstly they were marching at a snail's pace and secondly they were strung out into a long thin line in fact from the head of the army to the tail end of the force the distance was likely over 10 Mi long perfect Ambush territory early in the morning the Germans struck this first assault was actually pretty light and was mainly just an attempt to Tire the Romans out and pulled a few remaining rebellious Germans out of the Roman army the engagement was brief but it accomplished its goals following this we were told that a downpour swamped the area the Army was now essentially stationary the wagons carrying the supplies already having a tough time in the dense forest were now essentially immobile Varys ordered the Army to make Camp here Varys met with his commanders and received reports on the earlier Ambush casualties were light but the baggage trains and the scout calry two extremely important aspects of the Roman legion were both hit the hardest Varys and his generals decided a night March was needed to attempt to get out of the danger zone they were sitting ducks and they knew it this proved to be a mistake as armenius had anticipated the move and set up another Ambush just a little bit further ahead the Germans made excellent use of the terrain and chose a spot whereby the Romans only had a few hundred feet on either side to march in to add to this the road had been blocked and a massive earthern wall had been constructed along one side of the road the Germans attacked as soon as the Romans were within eyesight the Romans attempted to storm the wall but failed pneumonia Vala the highest ranking officer after Varys attempted to retreat but died in the process and at that point Roman defeat was essentially sealed the Romans panicked and the Germans charged from all sides many of the Roman commanders including Varys committed suicide rather than face capture while thousands of legionnaires died all three Legions were completely destroyed and the Germans did not stop there with the main Roman forces in the region destroyed they swept across this new Imperial Province destroying Roman Forts and garrisons all across the area it was only due to a bit of luck along with the arrival of Tiberius with reinforcements that the Germans were unable to cross the rine the Romans would have the Revenge just a few years later when germanicus julus Caesar the son of drusus led a successful retaliatory campaign destroying arminius and his armies however the damage had been done the impact of this battle is still a hotly debated topic among historians but it did seem to seriously temper Roman Ambitions to conquer gerania in fact it seemed to temper Roman Ambitions to conquer most everything after this battle the Roman Spirit of Conquest died down heavily the Rind was reinforced and it would serve as the border between Rome and the dramatic tribes for centuries to follow while the Romans did lead several campaigns into the region in the centuries following the battle none were as extensive nor as committed to conquering as the campaign by tiberias some historians will simply say that Rome had reached its Zenith in terms of ability to control territory and that it was simply that realization that stopped the Conquering and to be fair they certainly have a point but the defeat at the tberg forest should not be underestimated as a strong factor in urging Roman restraint when it came to conquering Germania losing three Legions was a humiliation for Rome something really only matched by the Battle of Kum centuries earlier and it would leave a mark on the Roman spirit for the rest of the Empire conspiracy theories are sometimes great I really do believe that sure the ones about pedophiles controlling everything or every election that doesn't go your way being stolen are stains on our society that shouldn't be seriously entertained but conspiracy theories also have a way of pulling people into something that they may have not even considered looking into I'm not talking about the crazy 45-year-old Southern man who believes that aliens or the Democrats are going to harvest his brain I can say that as a southern man who has actually heard someone say that before I'm talking about the person who sees some outrageous claim and decides to actually do their own research into the topic where they frankly normally find that outrageous claim is batshit insane this next entry is exactly my point I first saw this on Twitter and no I won't call it X where all good Conspiracy Theory start I'll see if I can find the original tweet I saw and Flash it up here but essentially it was this woman claiming that the Roman Empire was not real and Rome actually left no mark on history at first I just laughed and went on about my day but I eventually saw another tweet on the topic this time with a link to a Tik Tok from there I discovered that there are actually people or at least seemingly people who genuinely claimed that Rome did not exist some claimed that it just didn't exist and that all The Monuments archaeological evidence and so on was simply one large scop for what purpose I'm not really sure I another one claimed that the Spanish Inquisition invented Rome to unify Roman Catholics Andor give legitimacy to the church my favorite of that person's points was why did Rome not write in Roman why did they write in Latin which is frankly just is hilarious there's also some theories about Roman architecture being Greek and something about the alphabet blah blah blah blah blah to be honest it's so extremely stupid that it's actually funny and let me be the first to say that Rome was real I don't quite know how the of Rome could exist if the Roman Empire didn't but anyway also if the Empire didn't exist did the republic or the kingdom for that matter where did the Coliseum come from what about the Roman forum and what about the fact that historians outside of the Roman Empire recorded it is existing and further what is the side of Pompei I can really go on and on but I do want to take a moment here to genuinely be serious it is dangerous for our society for someone to try and warp a view of ancient history in this way while we can joke and laugh at the obviously crazy person online this sort of lying and manipulation is a problem these people talk with such Authority that it's easy for someone to be like well okay maybe they are actually on to something and that's dangerous it is dangerous for people who are not educated to speak on things that they have frankly no qualification to speak on it's the type of intellectual dishonesty that can lead to more serious consequences while I doubt any violence will spawn from some random person on Tik Tok claiming that Rome didn't exist this type of conspiracy theory can serve as a Gateway into much more serious and much more dangerous conspiracies or this Theory could easily spiral out of control and become that much more dangerous conspiracy after all if they I guess meaning the government or whatever all powerful all- knowing organization is continuing to claim that the Roman Empire existed can make up something so influential on society then that naturally leads to a question of well what else is fake what other aspects of culture society and government are simply constructs made to advance some secret agenda it's that type of thinking that leads to the more dangerous territory I'll leave a link to a great video on this subject by a great YouTuber the lady of the library down in the description she is much more articulate than myself and she does a great job of really ripping apart many of the claims by this Tik tocker or whatever you call them damn I'm getting old so I want to leave this section off with this do not believe everything you hear on the Internet it's so incredibly easy to Simply pick up a phone record some stupid conspiracy theory and gain a following on Tik Tok YouTube or any other social media app you should never take one person's word as gospel not even your resident idiot look at other sources pick up a book look in other corners of the internet just do something to find other viewpoints and to find other their evidence the internet is one of if not the greatest invention in the history of humankind it has increased the overall level of human knowledge in a way that nothing else ever has you have the sum of human knowledge at your fingertips don't waste that opportunity on crazy people on Tik Tok now to my favorite and apparently fake if we are to believe that last entury Roman emperor Julian the apostate flavus Claudius julianus more famously known as Julian the apostate due to his rejection of the Christian religion was born in Constantinople he was the half nephew of Constantine the Great Julian was probably raised as a Christian he very nearly met his end at a young age when his cousin constantius II LED a massacre of most of the living male descendants of Constantine he did this to secure his power and by the end of the massacre only constantius his brothers Constantine II and constant Julian and jul 's half brother constantius gallus were left standing Julian and his half brother were probably only spared because they were simply too young to be a threat Julian was around 6 years old and constantius was about 11 both were kept under strict guard and mostly kept from public view after the massacre Julian would be raised in Asia Minor in a sort of semi Exile he was educated by various Bishops and seems to have truly been a Christian it was only when he turned 20 that he began to embrace the old Roman religion we don't really have much sourcing for this time in his life but whatever happened he himself states that quote he had spent 20 years in the way of Christianity and 12 in the true way meaning traditional Roman religion in 354 Julian was recalled to the court of constantius II the last remaining emperor Constantine II had died in 340 constant in 350 and constantius gallis had been executed in 354 after very briefly ruling as Caesar of the East constantius his court was in mediolanum modern day Milan and for 2 years Julian was kept underwatch to ensure that he was loyal and not going to rebel against constantius Julian would be cleared and in 354 constantius appointed him Caesar of the West and he was even married to constantius his sister Helena it seems as though constantius really wanted Julian to be more of a figurehead rather than an actual Caesar but unluckily for Constantia Julian embraced his new role Julian then LED several campaigns against the Germans before being hailed as Augustus in Paris in 360 this was mostly due to the fact that constantius had ordered many of Julian's troops to leave Gaul and join him in the East this was likely an attempt to stem Julian's growing influence Julian's actions in the next few years are a little strange at times he seems to be in true revolt and even uses the title of Augustus while at others he seems to be doing what he was doing before this whole mess and mostly just fighting various native peoples that threatened Rome security whatever the case by June of 361 Julian was well and truly in Revolt and the two sides seemed to have been gearing up for a final confrontation somewhere in AUM this would only be avoided when constantius died in November of 361 at this point Julian was the last remaining male heir to constantius and his claim was now unopposed he entered Constantinople in 361 won and was crowned as sole Emperor Julian wished to return to the days of hadrien and Marcus aelius and so did not attempt to set up any sort of government resembling the triarchy but he also didn't want to rule as an absolute monarch he even went so far as to say that the ideal ruler was a Primus inter parus or first among equals you can see him hearkening back to the days of Augustus with this title Julian even debated laws and policies in the Senate of Constantinople and even set among the Senate during these sessions Julian also believed the Empire needed to be decentralized he gave more powers to cities by returning the control of city land to local authorities instituting new city councils who held Civic Authority and made tribute given to the state voluntary yet Julian did retain some Authority and most new laws taxes and related items had to be personally cleared by him to take effect Julian's ideal Roman government was odd for the time to say the least he really believed that it should be individual cities and towns that make the Civic decisions across the Empire the Imperial government should really only be focused on enforcing laws and defending the Empire from external threats I I guess you could call him kind of like a Proto Federalist he also started on a path towards reintroducing traditional Roman religion he required School teachers to be approved by him this allowed him to influence what was being taught in Roman schools he also reopened many of the Pagan temples in the Empire as well as restored much of the property taken from those temples many of the Privileges that had been granted to Christians by the previous Emperors were rescinded including the stiens given to some Bishops and churches from the state coffers but Julian was unable to fully complete his reforms as his attention was needed elsewhere his position was still a little shaky while he could rely on the western Army after all they had been supporting him against constantius the Eastern Army was a bit of an unknown Julian determined he needed to lead the Eastern Army on a campaign against assassinates to try and woo them so to speak the goal was to secure a quick Victory and use the glory Prestige and most importantly New Wealth from the victory to secure the Loyalty of the Eastern army with that done there couldn't really be any serious challenges to his rule this didn't happen the invasion was a disaster and the Romans were in full Retreat basically from the moment of Engagement Julian would be seriously wounded by a spear during one such confrontation and this wound would eventually cause his death only a few days later juliia never really got much of an opportunity to leave behind the Legacy in fact if it wasn't for the simple fact that he was public about his conversion to Roman paganism he probably wouldn't be remembered for all that much but for Me Julian represents a turning point in Rome's history I see him as a sort of last hurah for traditional Roman religion and culture after him the the Empire becomes much more christianized and while Rome was still Rome it was different if he had only succeeded in Persia who knows what would have happened perhaps we would have seen a Resurgence in traditional Roman religion or perhaps the Empire would have been torn apart by a series of new Civil Wars but this time instead of competition for political power it would be for the cultural and religious character of the Empire we will never know but I truly believe that Julian is one of the empire 's greatest what [Music] ifs The Cult of mithraism also known as the mithraic Mysteries was a Roman mystery religion that makes it sound so Grand but really it just means that the inner workings of the religion were only taught to inductees or initiates imagine if today's Christianity only allowed those who had been inducted into the religion to read the Bible it's a pretty similar concept to this cult the cult was centered around the deity known as mithas The Cult was pretty popular among the Roman military in the first few centuries ad in fact it seems as though the cult competed with Christianity to become the dominant Faith within the Imperial Army and perhaps even Roman society as a whole the origins of the cult are still a pretty hotly debated topic among historians and archaeologists for a long time really only until the last couple of decades the agreed upon origin was Persian Mithra as the God would be known in Persia was a god of some importance in Zoroastrianism while not as important as say ahura Mazda the Creator God and chief deity in zor asianism Mithra was still important mythra's Origins can be traced back to much earlier native Iranian religions in fact in the 15th century BCE tablet made to record a treaty between the Hittites and the matani Mithra is invoked in his power as God of Oaths Mithra was absorbed into the zor asran religion early in its history as a compromise to unite those that still follow the traditional faiths and the new zor asrian Mithra is traditionally associated with light Oaths Justice the sun contracts and really all sorts of interpersonal relationships think friendships family bonds Etc that sort of thing it's difficult to tell just how important or how much influence Mithra held in zor asianism but we do know that he was accepted as being a deity in the religion I should note here that I'm talking specifically about ancient zor asianism today's Zoroastrianism is a much different religion with today's version being much more monotheistic when compared to the ancient version today though that theory is viewed with more skepticism I can't get too deep into the debate but it mostly centers around the fact that the two Gods as we know them are obviously different in terms of values domains and cult actions the other main issue is that our archaeological findings seem to indicate that the cult spread from Italy out into the wider Empire if we believe that then it seems kind of odd that Persian religion could have SP on such a cult whatever the case it seems that some Romans began to worship Mithra sometime around the turn of the Millennium while the worship of the God would become popular in the Army around the 1st Century ad plutar tells us that in' 67 bce. some worship of the God was already in full swing in the region of cicia which is in the southeast of modern day Turkey however this is really just based on plutarch's word and has not yet been fully backed up by archaeology just a few centuries after this cult locations would spring up all across the Empire from Britain in the west to Juda in the East now because the religion was a secret one that is a religion that requires initiation we are missing a lot of information on the inner workings of the cult we know that one of the most important aspects of the religion was the killing of a bull this is something we see near universally in the surviving artwork descriptions and so on pertaining to the cult of mithas while we don't know for sure what exactly it was meant to represent most historians tend to agree that it probably has something to do with rebirth Bulls were seen as symbols of strength and ility in Rome really since the time of Romulus and many historians postulate that the death of the bull was meant to represent some form of new life being given to either the initiate or simply the world as a whole the cult had seven degrees of membership with each tier seemingly being connected to an original Roman deity these will be on the screen in front of you we're not totally positive what these degrees of membership really represented we aren't sure for instance if every initiate received a rank or if just a priest class did and further we are unsure what exactly each grade conferred onto a person in terms of privileges rights and that sort of thing we do know that each initiate into a grade seemingly had to pass some sort of test that involved some kind of peril we also know that in many ceremonies the activities of various deities would be reenacted with members of different grades serving as the god in question for instance if a ceremony called for reenactment of some sort of event between the God's soul and Saturn then a person from The Helio dros grade would play Soul while someone from the Potter grade would play Saturn and that's really about all that we know we don't know much for instance on who would be allowed into the cult the membership lists that remain intact only include male names but it's certainly possible that women were allowed into the cult as some artwork does show women as being involved further we know that the cult was very popular among the Roman military and it seems as though basically anyone could join provided they received an invite fight this would make sense with the Roman military as many auxiliaries weren't quite Roman and we also don't really know what the ethics or morals of the cult were either we do know that the cult began to seriously decline in membership and importance in the fourth or fifth century ad Christianity simply won out in the end and the cult of mithras was suppressed and finally ended during the reign of theodosius in the last years of the 4th Century the cult was seemingly one of the last two Ras for paganism in the EMP Empire but in the end it was eventually defeated by the rising tide of Christianity the calarian conspiracy was an attempted coup by Lucius sergus Catalina against the consoles for the year Marcus tus Cicero and gas Antonius hiberia in 63 bce. Catalina had lost in the Consular elections and probably embittered about his defeat put together a fairly large Coalition of malc contant this included other Aristocrats who had some bone to pick with siss or hiberia Veterans of Sola that have been ignored or even persecuted by the Roman government since his death and weirdly dispossessed Farmers Cicero would apparently uncover the plot in November of 63 and accus Catalina of plotting to seize the consul ship catalino would flee with a fairly decent sized Army to aturia Cicero would further discover another nine co-conspirators and would put them to death without a trial something that would forever tarnish His Image and eventually be used against the Republican government by julus Caesar Catalina would be defeated by hiberia in the next year and the conspiracy would officially be put to rest the main Theory we want to look at today is that this whole event was fabricated the first issue here is that both of our sources for the event Salo mograph bellium Catalin and Cicero's calinar and orations are both extremely biased accounts it's argued that cisero exaggerated the threat of the calinar conspiracy as a way to gain some sort of political advantage this does seem to track as even later ancient sources acknowledge that ciso used the event for his own political Advantage by painting himself as a defender of Rome and its Republic but I think the key here is the word used I don't think the conspiracy was fake or even orchestrated by ciso or his allies instead I think Cicero used the conspiracy as a way to enhance his own personal reputation and political power there probably was a plot against the consoles but it probably wasn't all that much of a threat I personally believe that cisero simply sees the moment and used the conspiracy to his own benefit although this doesn't really explain his move to execute the nine co-conspirators without a trial something that cisero should have been able to realize would have been unpopular perhaps he just assume the public would be so grateful for ensuring the Republic remained standing that they would Overlook a bit of extrajudicial killing I don't know and we probably never will but the conspiracy was almost certainly real however it's quite possible that Cicero shall we say fan the Flames just a little bit The Druids are in my opinion one of the most interesting aspects of Celtic Society while not technically Roman The Druids were important in Roman history and we're seemingly the leading class of the GS our main source of information on The Druids is Julia Caesar so take all of this with a bit of salt The Druids were seemingly a high ranking class mostly made up of learned men and Priests they filled many roles in Celtic Society including priests judges Librarians historians and even political advisers The Druids were seemingly exempt from Wars and were more concerned with the social advancement of their people they studied everything from philosophy and astronomy to medicine and to the lore about their Celtic gods they were seemingly a sort of Proto academic class for the Kelts we don't know a whole lot of particulars about The Druids as the later Roman emperors tiberious and Claudius particular worked hard to ensure that the class was systematically oppressed and then with the rising tide of Christianity Druids were essentially driven to Extinction to add to this many of the surviving sources that we do have are obviously biased Against The Druids and their way of life Caesar used them as evidence that Rome needed to conquer Gaul painting them as Savages that sacrificed humans other sources simply viewed them as Primitives who needed to be enlightened so to speak because of this we have to be careful careful in examining these sources as some information is likely made up or influenced by the author's personal views on The Druids but we do know that The Druids were the chief Priests of the GS and likely most of the Kelts they were the overseers of sacrifices rituals and festivales and they were the intermediaries between the Divine world and the mundane world because of this they often acted as important advisers to Kings and important men who used them to perform a similar function to the augers in Rome that is determining How the Gods felt about a certain issue but The Druids also held some civil roles as well Caesar says that along with the equites of Gaul likely meaning the nobleman The Druids were the other respected class that they were given the power to judge disputes The Druids were apparently led by a single Druid who would serve until his death the successor would most of the time be chosen by a vote among a council of the most senior Druids this all apparently occurred somewhere within the territory of the carut tribe within G an area in the center of Gaul it seems that The Druids of Britain had a similar system but it was separate from the gulic system and Caesar states that even The Druids of Gaul recognize Britain as the center of druidic culture there are some issues with Caesar's account as The Druids are not mentioned during his Gish Conquest something that shouldn't be possible if The Druids were as influential as he makes them out to be in later sources because of this the account is sort of in limbo and we don't really know if The Druids were influ infuential of Caesar claims or if that influence was created as a tool for propaganda by Caesar later in his life while the political influence of The Druids may have been exaggerated their social and cultural influence likely wasn't they probably were leaders in the Celtic religion and likely were leaders in the academics among the Kelts sadly for The Druids the Roman Empire would come down hard on the class and a brutal campaign of repression would begin under Tiberius this campaign would be continued by later Emperors and by the time the Chris ization of Britain in the 7th Century The Druids were almost certainly gone and likely had been for some time it's sad to think what history was lost because of The Disappearance of The Druids and their disappearance will likely always remain a tragedy of the Empire Agricola born nias Julius Agricola was a Roman general and governor of Britain who led the conquest of Wales Northern England and even some portions of Scotland in the 1st Century ad we basically have have no details about his early life but we do know that he was born in Gallia narbon incus which was basically the southern part of Gaul while his family was gllc nobility back in Rome his family was considered plebian or at least very close to it he began his military career as an officer serving in gas suetonius poist general staff coincidentally gonus not only led the campaign against budaa in ' 61 something that Agricola almost certainly participated in but he also led the Roman conquest of Angeli known as Mana then prior to the Roman conquest of Angeli and the smaller holy Island to its West they both seemingly served as the druidic strongholds in Britain the island was even chosen for its initial Conquest with the specific purpose of breaking the power of the Druid class in Britain it didn't quite work then for gas suetonius but that's a story for another time back to Agricola Agricola would go on to serve in Anatolia before being elected tribute of the plebs in ' 66 and then preder in ' 68 Agricola luckily for himself chose the right side during the year of the four Emperors in ' 69 and was rewarded by Vespasian the eventual Victor with the command of the 20th Legion the legion known as the 20th Victorious Valeria Legion had participated in a brief Rebellion or at least a small Uprising against the former Governor of the province of Britain and agria was sent to regain control control over the legion Agricola did just that and led the Legion in several successful campaigns against several British tribes by this point agria was a very well-thought of figure back in Rome and because of this he was even enrolled as a patrician and appointed governor of Galia aquitania we don't know a whole lot about his time in G but he must have been fairly good at his job as he was allowed to stay at his post for 3 years in 76 he was appointed suffi Consul and frankly the reason we know so much about him was because of another of event that happened around this time you see we don't know a whole lot about his children but he did have at least one daughter as around the same time he was appointed suffet Consul he betroth his daughter to the famous Roman historian tacitus tacitus would go on to write extensively about Agricola and it's really his work that is our main source for his life and finally in 77 or 78 we aren't totally sure Agricola would be appointed governor of Britain and it was here that he would really begin to establish his legacy upon his Ascension he discovered that most of the Roman Cavalry stationed in Wales had been destroyed in some sort of plot by a local tribe the order of V's Agricola could not allow this to stand not only did this result in a decent amount of Roman troops being wiped out but if the Romans didn't respond it would only encourage the other local British tribes to attack Rome so Agricola resolved to lead a campaign and this campaign was fairly successful he quite easily subjugated the Welsh although they technically weren't Welsh yet but that's a story for another time it was during this campaign that he actually finally conquered the island of Angel SE and with that finally destroyed what remained of the druidic dominance of Britain Agricola though was not content to Simply rest and he kept pushing his army further north in 79 he began his push into modern-day Scotland but 81 is when the story really gets interesting here we are told that Agricola quote crossed the clota and subdued in a series of victories tribes hitherto unknown end quote now that is interesting so what is the clota and what were the tribes hither to unknown well we don't really know for sure but cloa is the name associated with a river goddess in bronic mythology she was said to be the patron goddess of the river Clyde the river Clyde is the second largest in Scotland and today runs through Glasgow the largest city in Scotland this River would later go on to be the Western end of the anti wall the wall intended to replace Hadrian's Wall so most historians are fairly confident that the river Clyde was the uncrossed river if we assume that that is true then it was likely the dam nanii which were subjugated by Agricola at the same time Agricola apparently began to turn his vision towards Ireland known then as hiberia and I'm sorry if I offend any Irish people in the audience but hiberia is so much cooler than Ireland tacitus who was agricola's father-in-law so likely got the story straight from the man himself tells us that Agricola received an exiled Irish King sometime during his Conquest the king hoped that Agricola and by extension Rome would invade hiberia and return his kingdom to him and actually it seems like Agricola was pretty interested in such an option and he apparently told tacitus that it would only take a single Legion to conquer the island a pretty bold claim so why didn't he do it well we don't know and sadly I can't speculate too much or this video would be hours long but we have no historical record as of now that definitively confirms Agricola ever leading an invasion into Ireland back in Scotland though Agricola was not done just yet but it would be the native caledonians that struck first apparently they were a little concerned with the new Roman army that had just for the first time mind you crossed into inner Scotland we don't quite know how many tribes United together but we do know that it was at least enough to threaten the Roman Advance the natives would strike the ninth Spanish Legion and hey that should sound pretty familiar at nightfall the Army was caught completely unawares but managed to Rally just enough to hold the line within their Fort word was sent to Agricola who quickly ordered his Calvary to make with all haste to the Fort when the caledonians saw the standards of the relief Force they began to waver while the ninth Spanish Legion were emboldened the fight quickly went sideways for the Caledonian and they retreated back into the forest an area where they knew the Romans would not follow them this war would culminate in the Battle of monopus we don't know where exactly this battle took place but tacitus tells us that at this point the caledonians had mustered as many men as they could and had decided they were either going to be wiped out or kick the Romans out of Scotland dramatic I know to be quite honest this account is probably not real for instance he states that the Caledonian Army was 30,000 strong while the size of the Roman army was 8,000 Allied auxiliaries 3,000 Cavalry while the Roman Legions remained in reserve now surely an army of just over 10,000 couldn't take on an army of 30,000 right or even if they did they would suffer horrific casualties right well tacitus tells us that over 10,000 caloni died while only 360 auxiliaries died now now just take a moment to think about those numbers that is a ratio of 28:1 to put that in another way every time a Roman died 28 caloni would have had to die to keep those numbers that high and further those 20,000 remaining caloni apparently just fled into the woods and were never seen again that's interesting when you consider the fact that just a little bit ago tacitus told us that the caledonians had decided to either kick the Romans out of Scotland or die trying so then why would the bulk of this Force just decide to give up after one defeat I don't know this all sounds a little bit fishy to me I won't contest that Agricola certainly did win some sort of Victory after all he was awarded a triump by the emperor himself and seemingly well thought of even years after this battle something that would have been difficult to do if he had made up the battle or the war in any case Agricola was said to have subdued all the tribes of Britain and it seemed as though Rome would finally assert itself over the entire Island however he was recalled in the year 855 and the command of the province and the legions would go over to salus lucilas following this the Empire needed those British troops elsewhere and when the troops left so to did any hope of truly controlling all of Britain tacitus blames this on the emperor do Mission essentially saying that magola had outshone him and the mission allowed Britain to slip away as a way to credit agricola's accomplishments on the one hand this kind of makes sense we know that Agricola would never be granted another civil or military post despite being one of the most qualified Romans on the planet but at the same time he did receive a Triumph and a statue which was at the time just below the honor of a Triumph two things that the mission certainly could have stopped from happening frankly it's pretty difficult to say with any certainty just how the two felt about each other agria would die in Galia narbonensis in 93 tacitus tells us that he was just 53 he had conquered Britain ascended to the Senate and rubbed shoulders with the most powerful men in Rome he was a hero to the public and his legacy would be immortalized by his son-in-law all in all pretty good life if you ask me gordian iiii was a little known Emperor who reigned from 238 to 244 his mother ananiah Gordana was the daughter of the emperor gordian the and the younger sister of gordian II gordian the first and the second were proclaimed joint Emperors in Africa in 238 the two would die in just 22 days notably though the two were supported by the Roman senate you see at the time the Senate was in conflict with maximinus thra and they looked to the two Gardians as a way to overthrow him but it didn't work out gordian II would die in the Battle of Carthage while gordian the first would commit suicide just a short time later so gordian theii at the time a young child was in a bit of a bad position luckily or maybe unluckily for him the Senate would appoint him as Caesar shortly after the death of the previous two Gardians two men would be appointed to serve as co-emperors while gordian III would eventually succeed one of them these two men have quite possibly the most unfortunate names for any Roman emperors they were panus and balbinus I'm not kidding rather unfortunate if you ask me and frankly I would have used the opportunity to change my name but they probably didn't really consider what we would think about their name some 2,000 years later Maxim in its THS the Roman Emperor before the Senate and the Gardians decided to Rebel was not happy with this Arrangement and began a march to Rome to put down the Revolt he would never make it and would be assassinated by his own troops at Noelia but but sadly for our two unfortunately named Emperors this wouldn't make them the Undisputed Emperors and they would both be killed by the petorian guard the month after Max Amin's Death gordian III would then be proclaimed emperor in 238 there was one small problem though gordian was 13 yes 13 years old I could barely be trusted to go to the store by myself at 13 much less rule the country so gordian who was the youngest person never to be proclaimed sole emperor of the empire was essentially made a figurehead the Senate along with the aristocratic families of Rome and the petorian guard really ruled the state for a while gordian was actually doing surprisingly well there were a few revolts but nothing too serious and they were put down he would go on to marry the daughter of his petorian prefect time cus in 241 a pretty smart move for any Emperor and really the worst thing that happened during his early Reign was a series of earthquakes in Rome these earthquakes were apparently so bad that gordian consulted the caline books this changed in 241 when gordian who was now about 16 opened the doors to the Temple of Janice and declared Rome to be at War his war was in the East against the assassinate empire under shapur I shapur had invaded Mesopotamia and had seemingly overran the Roman Garrison in the province the war waged on for about 2 years until the Romans finally defeated the sassin at the Battle of renia in 24 43 the assassinates were driven back over the Euphrates and gordian celebrated his own Triumph it's unknown just how much or how little gordian was involved in the actual War but he is recorded as taking part in several of the battles at some point either just after the battle of renia or possibly even during it gordian's pretorian prefi and father-in-law would die and this left the young emperor in a vulnerable position and may have even been what actually ended the war with assassinates in any case a man by the name of Marcus Julius philippus would step into the role shortly thereafter you probably don't recognize that name and I don't blame you as he's more well known as Philip the Arab if you know who Philip the Arab is then you probably know where this story is going in 244 gordian would start a second campaign against assassinates this campaign did not go nearly as well as the first and the Romans would be completely stopped at copon the capital of the assassinates here are told that the soldiers proclaimed Philip the Arab as Emperor following the Army's defeat and that he was forced to make peace with shaur on quote shameful terms apparently on the way back West gordian somehow died or at least that's the official story an inscription made by shapur claims that the two sides participated in a battle which the assassinates won and that gordian died during that battle and that Phil the Arab paid some 500,000 Dinars a unit of currency to shapur in exchange for peace another source claims that gordian was murdered by his troops and Philip was proclaimed Emperor afterwards but in any case the second campaign ended with gordian theii dead and Philip as Emperor gordian is mostly simply known for being the youngest Emperor but beyond that he was really just a kid who got caught up in the political schemes of Rome and was frankly in over his head the uian Mysteries similar to The Cult of Mithra was another mystery religion this one though had its origins in ancient Greece the exact origin is debated some studies claim An Origin in the Myan period others claim origin from a Bronze Age agrarian cult and others claim minoan Origins whatever the case the cult likely predated the Greek Dark Ages a period from around 1,100 BCE and 750 BC the cult was based around Deer and her daughter pranie both of which were considered Earth goddesses the cult came to Rome sometime during the Republic and we know that it was thriving under Augustus and there is even some evidence that Augustus himself was inducted into the cult other great Romans who participated in the cult include Plutarch Hadrian and even Marcus aelius the last recorded Roman Emperor to participate in the cult was Julian the apostate although it's a little unclear just how involved Julian was in the cult and how similar that cult was to the original Greek cult the cult was centered around the kidnapping of panie by Hades and the journey of deer Pan's mother to find her daughter in the Underworld to be honest this mystery cult has pretty much succeeded in keeping hidden what their rituals and activities actually were we know that most initiates marched in A procession from Athens to uus seemingly the center of the cult in Greece we aren't quite sure if that tradition remained for all of the Cults history but there is some evidence to suggest that it did we do know from sure that the initiation became a state activity sometime around 300 BCE and two Greek families the yopi and the kakes were given a sort of stewardship over the cult we know that at this point an initiate had to have never committed murder and they had to have been able to speak Greek it seems like men women and possibly even slaves were allowed into the cult assuming they fulfilled those requirements and they swore an oath of secrecy we also know the names of a few different priesthoods and the names of the groups of participants you can see those on the screen in front of you further we know that there were two different main festivals the greater Mysteries and the Lesser Mysteries we aren't 100% positive but it seems like the Lesser Mysteries were more focused on the miseries and the issues of Life while the greater Mysteries were more focused on the purification of the soul and a great Rebirth of life as you can imagine then the Lesser Mysteries took place in the middle of winter while the greater Mysteries took place in late summer and frankly that's about all we know for sure there are more speculations and I'll leave a link to a great video on the subject by one of my favorite YouTubers let's talk religion down in the comments if you want more [Music] information Roman Expeditions refer to several different Expeditions and Explorations into subsaharan Africa undertaken by various Roman emperors private citizens and Commercial interests by the 1 Century bcee Romans had been present in North Africa for centuries Carthage had been conquered in the previous Century while the kingdoms of numidia and sanica were either full vassel kingdoms of Rome or falling further and further under Rome's influence however Rome's influence had been contained by one of earth's greatest natural barriers the Sahara Desert the Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world it stretches from one end of Africa to the other and there is a reason the Sahara has served as The Unofficial dividing line in Africa for centuries it's nearly completely inhospitable with temperatures regularly reaching 100° Fahrenheit and the sand itself reaching temperatures over 170° F even today with all the great technological Marvels the world has developed the Sahara is estimated to only contain roughly 2.5 million people which is about 0.4 people per square mile to give you a little bit of perspective the Sahara is roughly 3.5 million square miles that's about 400,000 square mil larger than the contiguous United States but the population of the contiguous United States is 328 million a density of 111 people per square mile if we add in Alaska and Hawaii the size of the United States jumps to about 3.7 million square miles which is slightly larger than the Sahara and the population jumps from 328 million to about 331 million which is a density of 96 people per square mile I say all this in the hope of showing you just how inhospitable and uninhabited the desert is today in the time of the Romans those numbers would have been even lower I will quickly note here that this does not contrary to popular belief mean that the Sahara was without a population or even great civilizations during history far from it cultures such as the keans and the tarians all survived and even thrived in the Sahara to be honest there is a rich history here that one day I would love to examine in more detail but it is important to counter the modern-day notion of subsaharan Africa and Saharan Africa as an area without great civilizations cultures social organizations and so on I will leave some resources that talk a bit more about some of the cultures in the description but I think it's important to realize that there were people in the Sahara and there were even civilizations in the Sahara at the time of the Romans they were simply few and far in between the Romans likely first learned about the a area south of the Sahara from men like Hano the Navigator a carthaginian who SED around the western coast of Africa Hano certainly made it to Southern Morocco but many historians claim he may have even reached modern day gaban plenty of the Elder and Arian two Roman historians of the period both mention Hano in their works this indicates that the Romans at least believe that something was beyond the Great Sea of sand further we know that Rome traded with the kingdoms of Eritrea Northern Africa and Ethiopia all of which we know traded with King OMS deeper into Africa's interior it's likely then that stories of gold and spices easily reach Roman ears from their traitors in kingdoms like axum and Ethiopia this all eventually motivated the Romans to seek out those kingdoms there are five main Explorations that we know of some of these are near universally agreed upon to have taken place While others are shall we say doubted or at least viewed with more skepticism so let's quickly take a look at each Expedition the first expedition we have a record of is one led by corn IUS balbus in 20 or 19 BCE we are told by plenty the Elder that balbus planned to conquer he took with him a force of infantry and swapped the normal horses and mules for camels probably a smart move considering just where he was looking to go bbus seems to have been inspired to invade by various Roman merchants in the area around modern day Libya it was an area in which a local group had established a fairly influential Kingdom these people called the ganes had settled in the area of Libya by at least 1,000 BCE and had established themselves as a kingdom on the edge of the Sahara we know that they engaged in raids on Roman coastal towns and we know that some Roman trade routes were either raided by the ganes or were extorted for protection as the Caravans made their way to their destinations this is seemingly the reason given by plenty to motivate balbus to launch his expedition but there is some evidence that the ganes also acted as a sort of intermediary between the Romans and subsaharan Africa something that would have almost certainly attracted Roman attention I would venture to Guess that the real reason for bis's Expedition is likely a mixture of the two in any case bbus first marched to the gaman capital of gamara here he easily conquered the city and forced the ganes to agree to stop extorting Roman trade and we are told that he occupied some Mercantile routes for the advantage of the Romans it's a little unclear what exactly this means but it probably means that the Romans took over or at least were guaranteed access to local trade roots that the ganes had excluded them from from here the Expedition is a little harder to follow we know that bbus likely of his own accord since some of his men to explore the quote land of lions which probably referred to the land beyond the hoger mountains in modern-day Algeria these men apparently followed the Caravans on their trade routes and returned with maps guides and likely firsthand accounts of the region we know that bbus came to the city of kadamus known today as gadamus which at the time was a large Oasis and likely served as a checkpoint for various trade routes in and out of the Sahara plenty tells us that he continued on and apparently even reached a quote large body of water which was probably the ner River there is evidence of Roman coins in the region however it's frankly hard to say how accurate this telling by clenty is we can be fairly certain that bbas didn't move against the ganes but did he Journey all the way to the ner River well despite the evidence of Roman coins it's kind of a tossup among modern historians it is certainly possible that balbus could make it to the ner river groups in the Sahara had been making that trip for centuries at this point but bbus was also only a pro console for a year and upon him leaving office his authority to conduct such an expedition would have been gone and his men would have been Duty bound to either stay in place or return to Rome to receive a new Commander it's really hard to say how true this account is so for now let's count this one as possible but not unquestionable the second Expedition occurred just a few decades later in 41 ad this expedition was led by sutus pinus yes you might recognize that name if you watch the last episode as this guy was the guy who fought budika back in Britain he really gets around doesn't he in any case in 40 ad suoni was appointed as governor of morania an area roughly equating to modern-day Northern Morocco at around the same time a man named adamon launched a revolt against Roman occupation adamon was likely a Berber the people people's native to the region he had been a loyal slave to the king tmy of morania tmy was a client of the Roman state but had been murdered under strange circumstances while in Rome likely on the orders of the Roman Emperor Caligula Adon likely launched this Rebellion as a response we don't know how many locals joined him but it was seemingly a decent portion as it required the attention of suetonius a noted Roman general of the time and nias hdus Gada again a noted Roman general General the two led a apparently brutal campaign that destroyed a number of the cities in the region and resulted in the deaths of a quote large number of barbers in any case the war is not really what we're here to talk about instead we are here to talk about Sutton's route during the war during the war suetonius was the first Roman to lead an army across the Atlas Mountains a range that had served as the Roman Frontier since they came into control of the area in around 33 BCE plenty actually gives does his firsthand account in his book The Natural History here he says that suetonius not only summited the mountains but also crossed to the foot of the mountains on the other side I'll put the full quote up on the screen but what we really want to focus on is the last sentence of the quote where plny tells us quote he proceeded some distance Beyond it as far as a river which Bears the name of G we don't know what the river gar is although the two most popular candidates are the Niger River or the Sagal River although some historians actually suggest that sutus visited both in that he at first came to the G River and then to the Sagal River there is some evidence that it would be the ner River though because in Berber there is actually a phrase called the G in G meaning River of rivers so perhaps G in G was translated to the river G meaning the naer river but frankly we just don't know for sure again Roman coin and artifacts have been discovered in both regions especially in the area of actr which I probably butchered that which is a small City in Western morania and only a few hundred miles from the Sagal River and of course we've already mentioned some areas along the ner River this Expedition does seem to be more accepted among modern historians firstly it's almost certainly true that the man crossed the Atlas Mountains the war probably forced him to do so as Adam inmon and the locals would have simply retreated into the mountains if/ win they face defeat his expedition past the mountains is probably more accepted simply due to the fact that he was a contemporary of plen the Elder in fact plen literally quotes the man this combined with the fact that the artifacts found in Azu are seemingly from the correct time period it seems almost certain that suetonius at least made it to the area around aut and likely to the synagog river I would fairly safely say that we can consider this Expedition likely true our next expedition was was led by a name named Septimus flakus we know comparatively much less about this Expedition or really Expeditions when you compare them to our previous two but we do know that Septimus was a Roman general who sometime in the 1st Century ad apparently led a Roman expedition to the lake of hippopotamus this was the name given by tmy one of the main geographers of the time to Lake Chad this Expedition almost certainly occurred before 90 ad as it was then that tmy would name the lake as such which we'll talk about more in just a moment Septimus journeyed through the lands of and was likely led by the ganes it apparently took 3 months to travel to the lake but one Journey wasn't enough for Septimus as tmy tells us that he journeyed to the region again in 50 ad at this time Septimus was leading a campaign against some unnamed nomatic Raiders who had attacked the Roman city of lepus Magna I'm not even going to try to pronounce the name of these Rivers as quite frankly I will almost certainly butcher them but I'll list them on the screen in front of you each of these Rivers fed into Lake Chad and Lake Chad was likely the final destination of this second Expedition tmy also tells us that just a few decades later another Roman named Julius maternus would also lead an expedition into the same region Julius would apparently travel with the king of the ganes and eventually come to these two rivers which I again won't try to pronounce as I will easily butcher them it was said that Julius returned to Rome with a rhinoceros with two horns this actually lines up with some other historical evidence that we have as it was under demission who would have been ruling at the time that the Coliseum first displayed a rhino which may have been the one that Julius brought back to Rome some historians postulate that Julius was actually a Roman Diplomat that was sent to the king of the ganes to improve trading relations and followed the king while he campaigned against rebellious subjects or against other native peoples and that's really all that we have on these two Expeditions I think it's pretty likely the Journey of Julius was at least partly accurate the appearance of a rhino in the Coliseum is simply too much of a coincidence and likely points towards at least some sort of expedition by Julius the expedition of Septimus is one of these where I think we simply lack enough evidence to really say one way or the other so we'll chalk these up to true on behalf of Julius and uh maybe on behalf of Septimus our next Expedition comes from a man named valious fesus plenty tells us that in 70 AD fesus LED an expedition to follow the route that balus had followed nearly 90 years earlier we are told that Festus made it to the air mountains and even as far as the gaduwa Plaine and eventually even made it to the famous city of timbuk 2 and the Nera River and that's really about it again think that this one is a maybe as we simply lack the information to decide one way or the other so what does this all mean in the grand scheme of things well I think it's pretty clear that Rome tried and likely even succeeded in crossing the Sahara Desert of course they likely never established any sort of permanent or even semi-permanent Outpost or even a Trading Post in the area the natural challenge of the Sahara simply meant that such an outpost couldn't be secured supplied or even constantly replenished by the Romans without significant investment and effort two things that Rome needed in much more pressing regions like Germania and Britain for instance instead it's much more likely that these Expeditions were an attempt to find new sources of gold and other important trade goods something that the Romans likely did find however the cost and effort needed to secure those goods was simply too much and so Rome never crossed the Sahara in force instead they continued to rely on groups like The ganes to be a sort of middleman something we can see in the continued existence of that Kingdom into later centuries but I don't think it's crazy to say that multiple Romans at least stepped foot in the areas around the ner and Sagal rivers and even Lake Chad these Expeditions likely further trading relations with the ganes and probably explains why we find Roman coins and artifacts in these regions I think we could certainly debate the significance and the depth of these interactions but I don't think we can debate that they actually happened and just that fact alone is important it shows that not only Rome knew more about the world than we thought just a few centuries ago but also that that civilizations of subsaharan Africa were not only thriving but rich and interesting enough for what was arguably the most powerful civilization in the world at the time to interact with something which I think challenges the conventional view on the area this area of scholarship is rapidly developing and I think we'll be in for some interesting discoveries over the next few decades this one is pretty simple essentially this comes from some historical evidence that shows that mhmed II after conquering Constantinople journeyed to the ruins of Troy and boasted that he had Avenged the City by Conquering the Greeks the idea being that the Turks and Anatolian peoples Avenge the Trojans and another Anatolian peoples by throwing the Greeks the byzantines out of the region and to be fair he kind of has a bit of a point the byzantines were certainly Greek by this point and the Turks were technically an Anatolian people so I guess in a roundabout way they did Avenge the Trojans of course in actuality it's still debated just who the Trojans were some say they were Greek some say hittite and some say a completely separate people add to this the fact that the Turks originated in Central Asia and had only been inhabiting Anatolia for roughly 400 years now and you get a bit of a different picture but it's still pretty interesting to think of mmed proudly proclaiming that he had Avenged Troy and it really makes me wonder just how different history would be if his successors had carried the same interest in Troy and recreating Rome that mamed had the quote I have made but one mistake refers to the alleged last words of the Roman Emperor Titus who ruled from 79 to 81 ad Titus was the heir to Vespasian his father who had emerged as the Victor during the year of the four Emperors and he was actually the first Roman Emperor to succeed his biological father on the throne he died during a journey to Sabine territories where he was said to have uttered his famous last words it's also said that he was going to continue the sentence before he well you know died first let me just say that most of the time say for some extreme circumstances last words are almost never some glorious statement or some incredible reflection on a life well- lived instead they normally range from something fairly mundane like man my chest kind of hurts to various screams or even a slight whimper to get serious and kind of morbid death is normally not pretty and this was especially true for the period it's likely that Titus didn't actually say I have made but one mistake right before he died instead it's much more likely that those around him made it up or that he either instructed them to say so or he wrote the words down shortly before his death but for the sake of the video Let's just assume he did actually say those words first of all seriously impressive to only have one mistake and secondly what did he mean and what was the mistake well there are some Grant historical theories ranging from affairs with doidia longia the wife of his younger brother demission to him not killing demission when he had the chance this last Theory mostly came about from the rumors that demission had been plotting the overthrow of Titus for years and that demission even had some hand in his death we do know that the two did not have much love for each other and demission showed little reaction to titus's death and actually hurriedly returned to Rome to claim the emperorship but truly this could have referred to any event during titus's life maybe he regretted not being able to stop the fire in Rome during the year 80 this fire would go on to burn for three days and nights and massive parts of the city were destroyed while many Romans died in the capital maybe he regretted being Emperor at all perhaps he wished he had become co-emperor with his brother or maybe even remained as a top military commander and relinquished political power to someone else the point here is that everyone has regrets and I would imagine a Roman Emperor likely had more than the average person so in the end we will never be able to know just what Titus was referring to but if you ask me those are some pretty awesome last words for history to ascribe to you maybe I should start working on my last words before I end up with something stupid like hey does anyone else think it smells like burnt toast in here Romans and Ireland refers to the idea that Rome had some sort of presence in Ireland or hiberia as they called it this of course is most heavily associated with Acra Cola someone we talked about last time but the relations between the people of Ireland and Rome go back much further it's almost certain that Rome and Ireland were trading with one another by the time of claudius's invasion of Southern Britain in 43 tmy was also able to correctly identify the locations of coastal sediments and even the lands of some native Irish peoples something that would have only been possible with either fairly extensive trading relations or some sort of Roman expedition to the Island we also find many Roman archaeological objects all across Ireland including coins jewelry and other such items but truthfully this is probably the extent of Roman presence in Ireland there is no archaeological evidence that Agricola actually invaded the area and no evidence that any other Roman did either there is some literary evidence that Rome might have at least stepped foot on the island with henel a Roman poet claiming that quote arms had been taken beyond the shores of hiberia end quote but it's also unclear what exactly this means it could mean that Rome had conducted a military Expedition or maybe Rome had simply supplied some Irish army with arms to conduct their own campaign or maybe he simply misidentified Ireland and the arms actually went to calonia or somewhere similar we will probably never know for sure for now though our evidence Point towards the Romans maintaining a healthy trade relationship with the Irish but not much else Marcus amelus lepidus was a Roman general and Statesman who was sadly overshadowed in history by the frankly greater men around him our lepidus was the son of another Marcus amelus lepidus yeah they weren't all that creative with names lepidus senior had been a vocal opponent of Sola and the optimates faction within the Roman government even briefly leading a failed Rebellion against them and the Roman government in 78 bcee this didn't seem to affect lepidus Jr all that much though he joined the College of pontiffs at a young age and eventually became one of julus Caesar's most fervent supporters he was the last interrex of the Republic in 52 B.C.E he was then appointed preder in 49 bcee and was even left in charge of Rome while Caesar went to defeat pompy in Greece lepidus was instrumental in securing the appointment of Caesar to the post of dictator and was rewarded with an appointment to proor of hispania cior during his time in Spain lepidus crushed a Revolt of the neighbor governor of hispania ulterior and was even granted a Triumph for his victory in 46 he was rewarded with a consulship and was even made Magister equitum or Master of the horse to Caesar himself essentially making him second in command in Rome this would actually be the last time that the master of the horse would hold military command and really the last time that the office would be used in its original form apparently lepidus had done a good enough job as he was again appointed Master of the horse in 44 when the Senate declared Caesar dictator for life of course this would end just a month later with the assassination of Caesar on March 15th 44 BCE lepidus was actually one of the first members of the Roman government to respond to the assassination he ordered troops to the Campus Martius and at first intended to use those troops to punish Caesar's Killers however he was talked out of it by Mark Anthony but it seemed that lepidus was truly calling the shots at this moment the troops responded to his command and if he wished it then they would have painted the Senate house red with blood okay maybe that's a bit dramatic but lepidus certainly stepped into the vacuum left by Caesar's death which was his right as Master of the horse after all lepidus and Anthony would both speak to the Senate the next day where they would agree to amnesty for the senators in exchange for the two men keeping their offices and the reforms of Caesar staying in place with no new dictator lepidus position as Master of the horse was basically useless and so lepidus was appointed ponteix Maximus the last person to hold the title under the Republic you can probably see a theme Here lepidus was really the last person to hold quite a few positions under the Republic following this lepidus would be sent to negotiate an agreement with the boat King sexus pompy the last surviving son of pompy the great following an agreement the Senate would vote to give him his own Thanksgiving festival for the year and actually give him the command of hispania and Galia narbonensis lepidus would later enter into a political alliance with Anthony after the latter pissed the Roman senate off by attempting to take command of Gaul from Decimus bruus one of Caesar's Killers who had been sort of exiled from Rome itself it would be around the same time that Octavian entered the picture three men would come to an agreement and together form the second triumphant with this agreement the Republic was well and truly dying the consoles were put to the side in favor of direct rule by the three men I'm not going to go too deep into the Civil War that would follow as quite simply lepidus didn't play all that much of a role but he agreed to hand control of several of his Legions over to Anthony and Octavian and in exchange he was confirmed as the ruler of hispania and Galia ninus and confirmed as ponteix Maximus he would also be given the position of conso and would be the person to remain in Rome while Octavian and Anthony continued the war in the East frankly it was this move that doomed lepidus to be a subsidiary in the triumphant not only did he give up military power in the form of several Legions but he also gave up the public relations boost that being the Conquering hero gave Anthony and Octavian following their victories Anthony and Octavian were given all the glory while lepidus remained back in Rome lepidus would see Octavian usurp his provinces of hispania and Galan narbonensis just a few years later with the Treaty of brisum in 40 BCE in this treaty lepidus was given Africa and numidia yeah a bit of a downfall eventually lepidus would come to be more of a hindrance than a help to Octavian and lepidus would eventually see his Legions defect to Octavian on the island of Sicily after a dispute over the island Octavian would strip him of all his offices save for that of pontifex Maximus and really after this lepidus faded from the public eye his son would actually be executed for conspiring to assassinate Octavian but he himself would be left alone in fact really the only thing he did in the last few years of his life was periodically return to Rome to vote in the Senate it said that Octavian now Augustus would always Force lepidus to vote last an act that was seen as belittling lepidus would die in 13 BCE and Augustus would finally take his last position pontifex Maximus from him well I think a lot of contemporary Romans viewed lepidus as weak or incompetent I really think that lepidus was simply dealt a bad hand in life and made a few bad decisions he was surrounded by men who were simply destined to be greater than him Julius Caesar Octavian Mark Anthony Cicero the list goes on and on these men were simply Titans of Roman history they were all supremely gifted and simply outclassed lepidus in most regards and yet lepidus still did very well for himself let us not forget that for a moment it was lepidus who held much of the power in Rome after Caesar's death it was lepidus who was second in command of Rome during Caesar's Reign and it was lepidus who supplied much of the Manpower needed for Anthony and Octavian to Triumph in the end though lepidus made two main mistakes first he gave into the Senate during the time after Caesar's death and second he gave up too much military power to Octavian and Anthony one wonders how differently history would look upon lepidus if he had punished those that assassinated Caesar that night what if it had been lepidus who led the Roman armies against Caesar's assassins in the Civil War we will never be able to say but I think that lepidus is often overshadowed by those around him and it's really a shame as lepidus was a great Roman and a man who deserves to be remembered 12 tables were the first written form of Roman law they were pregated in 449 BCE and displayed in the Roman Forum the tables laid out the rights and duties of a Roman citizen and formed the basis of Roman law for centuries I've already made a video examining the tables in more detail but I'll quickly go over them here but check out that video if you want more information each table dealt with a specific aspect of Roman Life you can see each table in their relevant area on the screen in front of you the tables touched on everything from trials and courts to judgments to the rights of men and women and even to the sacred laws of the Gods themselves I cannot possibly go over each table here as quite simply we would be here for far too long instead I will say that the 12 tables might be the most influential pieces of writing in Rome's history today we really fail to understand just how big of a deal it is that we can find written law with just a simple Google search or a simple trip to the library at this point in history law was almost exclusively known and understood by an upper class in the case of Rome it was typically the priest or perhaps the Senate that opens up an easy Lane for corruption and unequal treatment under the law the 12 tables though completely changed all of that for the first time in Roman history a citizen could simply walk to the Forum and read exactly what rights they held how they would be treated in a court their rights in that court and what punishment they might receive it was frankly revolutionary the tables would also go on to influence later law codes the laws of Justinian for example were heavily influenced by the 12 tables even today's system of law in the United States was influenced by the tables James Madison used it as a resource in crafting the Bill of Rights hell basically all of common or civil law can trace its Origins back to the 12 tables the 12 tables were one of Rome's most important writings they greatly influenced Roman history and frankly history as a whole for Millennia afterwards they revolutionized how Romans interacted with their state and even today their influence can still be felt all across the Western world [Music] albalonga was an important Latin City located in the Alban Hills the Romans tell us that the city was the founder and leader of the Latin League the city was said to be founded by anisus a son of the legendary anas the city's Royal Line would eventually result in the births of ramulus and Remis thus the city was often looked at as a sort of primogenitor of the early city of Rome liby further tells us that several important Roman families including the Julia and the Cilia were all originally from the city of albalonga according to Roman tradition the city was the leader of the Latin league and the most powerful Latin City during the rule of the first few Roman kings toas hostilius Rome's Third King would go to war with the Albin this war described by Livy as a sort of Civil War would eventually result in a duel to the death among two sets of three brothers the Kura and the hura we aren't quite sure which side represented which but Livy prefers The View that the hura were Romans while the kurate were Albin this duel was done to avoid large scale Bloodshed as both sides recognize that if the Latin sufficiently weakened themselves the atrans or another italic group could pounce on that weakness and Conquer or subjugate the Latins and the Romans in the end the Roman set of Brothers won the duel and the alpins became a sort of vassal state to Rome a short time after the conflict V Rome's Eternal enemy would attack the Roman State as per the treaty Rome called upon albalonga to help repel the attack at first it seemed that the Albin would indeed help their Roman Brethren however the dictator of albalonga a man named medus Furious had secretly made a pact with v and when the battle began medius LED his troops away leaving the Romans alone however Rome managed to win the battle and tus executed medius following this betrayal tus ordered the city of albalonga destroyed with only only the temples left standing the population of the city was forcibly moved to Rome more specifically the Cen Hill tus allowed the leading families of albalonga to become patricians and inducted them into the Senate and really that's about all we hear of albalonga In traditional Roman stories our modern archaeology does paint a bit of a different picture it had been long debated if the city actually existed as quite simply even by the time of the Republic the exact location of the city had been lost to history with modern techniques we have been able to extensively search the Alban Hills for any evidence of cities the size of what albalonga was and so far we've found nothing we have found that there were a string of villages in the Alban Hills these Villages date from around 900 to 700 BCE right in line to have been conquered or destroyed by the Roman Kingdom interestingly it seems as though the Alban Hills were actually a religiously important site for the Latins and by extension Rome that was shall we say embellished by Roman authors for instance we know that every year a large Festival was held on Mount Albano modern day Mount calvo the mountain is the second highest mountain in the Alban Hills and is the remains of an old volcano this Festival was held in honor of Jupiter and the temple built on the mountain was one of if not the most important pilgrimages a Latin could make further we are also fairly certain that the worship of vestia may very well have come from the Alban Hills in some way linium the mother city of albalonga is the city with the oldest evidence of worship of Vesta and was even into the Republic often times the sight of pilgrimages by the Roman Elite to sacrifice offerings to the goddess and other household Gods as well so the history of the city is a bit of a mixed bag according to the traditional Roman view the city was one of the most important Latin cities and was frankly the mother city of Rome but archaeological evidence seems to counter that narrative in any case bonga or maybe just the Albin Hills were extremely important and influential cultural sites that had a large part in shaping early Roman society this is a bit of a repeat and not something I'll get too deep into however this refers to a surprisingly popular Theory or conspiracy that Rome was somehow fake I did a bit of a deeper dive into this into a previous episode which I will link in the upper right hand corner and in the description but yes Rome the kingdom the Republic and the empire were all indeed real the storan war was a Civil War fought between 80 and 72 bcee between two factions the sorians and the Solin the sorians were led by a Roman general named quintus satorius while the Solin were led by everyone's favorite PRI cesarian dictator Lucius Cornelius Sola the war was sort of a continuation of the admittedly much more famous civil war between Sola and gas Marius quintis satorius had been a supporter of guas Marius and had actually served under the man himself during the war against Sola however he had a sort of falling out with gas Marius the younger the son of gas Marius the younger gas had been appointed Consul despite not being old enough and not having held any other offices this was done by nias papirus cowbo the new leader of the marians after both guys Mars The Elder and Lucius Cornelius CNA the original leaders of the faction had died carbo hoped to drum up support by hearkening back to the original leaders of the faction this actually did work and many of the veterans of the previous conflicts flocked to the banner of the younger gas Marius however sertorius felt slighted as he was a much more qualified choice not only had he supported the Marian since the beginning of the conflict but he had followed the curses honorum carbo though did not see it that way and ordered satorius to journey to hispania where he would become the proor of the province satorius had some sort of army at his back and managed to actually gain control of both hispania alterior and hispania cior from gas valerus flakus the previously appointed governor of both provinces sadly though for satorius back in Italy Sola won the ensuing Civil War and set out to mop up any Marian resistance satorius attempted to fortify the passes in the Pines but before he was able to solo with a much larger Army and with the help of a betrayal by a leading officer in satori's Army managed to break through his blockades satorius attempted to convince the Spanish tribes to fight for him but was ultimately unsuccessful with no other options he abandoned hispania and with a group of about 3,000 or so men fled into morania modern day Morocco he would eventually join up with a gang of pirates which yeah that's a pretty serious fall from grace these Pirates though as pirates typically do eventually moved on and helped to install a man named AAS luskus who was a supporter of Sola as king of Tanger an important city in morania that controlled the African side of the straight of jalter satorius followed them into Tangier but recognized that the locals were unhappy with luskus who was viewed as a bit of a tyrant capitalizing on this satorius led a local Rebellion that deposed lus by this point satorius was starting to make a bit of a name for himself and those back in his spot were beginning to rethink their support for him this boiled over when in ad BCE the lucanians a local Spanish tribe asked storus to lead them in war against the suan governor of hispania We aren't quite sure what caused this act of rebellion but it was likely over the amount of tribute that the lucanians needed to pay to the Romans or some other similar issue satorius LED his remaining men across the straight and landed at bileo Claudia a town right beside the famous pillars of Hercules here he began to gather the lucanians and the local Spanish tribes into his army he fought a battle at the bades river which we know next to nothing about the specifics but we do know this marked the beginning of the storan war this battle allowed satorius to establish control over most of hispania alterior while the Solen forces fell back to hispania cior at this point Sola and the Senate back in Rome heard about the situation and decided to send reinforcements these reinforcements were led by a man named quintis cilus mattelius pasus the Consular partner of Sola in the meantime Lucius heras the second in command for satorius began his push into hispania interior Marcus Dominus calvinus led the Solan response the two armies met at conura modern day Kira again the details are a little light but we know that heras likely bolstered by the fact that his army was mostly made up of locals used Guerilla Warfare to Hound calvinus all the way to the anas river here calvinus was either killed in battle or killed by his own troops but in any case the remaining Romans defected to satorius and most of hispania was now his for the taking at this point mattelius pasus finally landed in hispania this time satorius himself came out into the field of battle satorius continued in herius footsteps and relied on the knowledge of his local Warriors to conduct devastating hit and run and other gorilla tactics on matius and his army matius tried to to ignore the attacks and went about securing the Loyalty of the remaining local tribes eventually though he was forced to recognize that the situation was spaling out of control and he was forced to call for further aid from Rome Lucius manelis the governor of neighboring transalpine Gaul attempted to come to his aid but was defeated by heras and was eventually forced to return to Gaul due to an attack by the aquatan in 78 two disasters struck matius firstly he attempted to lay Siege to Lango bergia a town that Allied to satorius he did this in the hopes of showing the tribes of hispania that satorius was unable to defend them and that even with his victories in the field he would not triumph over Rome satorius though had some sort of informants inside matias's Army and was for warned of the upcoming Siege he quickly fortified the city and stockpiled all the food in the surrounding Countryside within the city walls matius was unprepared for this he had expected to be able to raid the surrounding area and use the supplies gained from raiding to to feed his men with no hope of feeding his men matius was forced to give up The Siege and retreated back to the coastline the second disaster was that back in Rome good old Sola finally died the solian faction was instantly thrown into chaos there was no clear leader and while the men back in Rome fought to decide who would step into Sol's shoes mattius was left to his own devices no help would be coming for at least the next year and matius was forced to take up defensive positions near the Bayes River luckily for him though satorius either not seeing the golden opportunity before him or simply being forced to focused on subduing the remaining Spanish tribes this distraction allowed mattius to survive until 76 BCE back in Rome the Senate finally recognized that something serious needed to be done to put this Rebellion down they appointed nias pompus Magnus better known as pompy as the new proconsular governor of hispania cior pompy was given a sizable Army made up of roughly 30,000 infantry and about 1,000 Cavalry and given basically free reign to put down the rebellion in the meantime satorius received his own reinforcement in the form of Marcus peria who led the remaining Army of Marcus amelus lepidus another rebel against Sola pompy first started along the coast with the goal of linking up with mattelius who was still stranded further Inland the two armies met at laan pompy was overconfident he believed that his numerical superiority would win the day and thus rushed in his preparations to give battle satorius hounded pompy's foraging parties with each attack the party strayed further and further from the two camps eventually the parties were far enough away that they could be comfortably attacked without alerting the main camp this was what satorius had been waiting for he sent his most well equipped troops to attack the foraging parties it was a massacre and an embarrassing defeat for pompy who was now forced to flee it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for satorius though as at around the same time mattelius made a move of his own and managed to defeat the Army meant to hold him in place capitalizing on this mattelius managed to make his way to pompy and the two armies United together I can't get too deep into the remaining action during the war as frankly it deserves its own video but the two sides continued to fight and the balance of power swung back and forth several times over the next 2 years eventually in 74 bce. pompy wrote to the Senate these letters preserved by solos are actually quite fascinating and I'll leave a link in the description to their full contents but he essentially tells the Senate to either send him more troops and more supplies or he will take matters into his own hands he literally ends the letters with this quote so I'm out of options money and credit it is up to you either you save the situation or my Army will come to Italy and bring the war with it it's not what I want but you have been warned this frightened the hell out of Rome's Elite and they apparently funded the response themselves not only did pompy receive reinforcement and new supplies but a bounty was even offered by matius any Roman who would betray satorius was to be given 100 silver talents and 20,000 acres of land quite the reward rather quickly satorius became quite paranoid and began to shut his Romans out of decisionmaking he even appointed local Spanish troops as his own own bodyguards replacing the Romans who had held the post previously this all caused the Romans under him to begin to waver and Plutarch tells us that they began to plot his downfall the Romans also took this out on the local Spanish troops with punishments and general treatment of the local troops becoming harsher and harsher it's at this point we are told that satorius began to break down he had become a paranoid erratic mess who could no longer be trusted to throw a party much less lead an army so pereria that General from early invited satorius to a party which she claimed was to celebrate the upcoming victory that they were sure to achieve however this was all just a ruse and pereria along with a few other Romans assassinated satorius at this point the entire Rebellion began to break down several local tribes either sued for peace with pompy or just simply went home some of the Romans that remained attempted to carry on the Rebellion under pereria but were quickly destroyed by pompy in the end pompy would execute pereria and all the men that had murdered satorius the local tribes would resume their Alliance and tribute with Rome and pompy would continue his meteoric rise in Roman political life this war was really the end of the suan wars and represented the last breath of the Marian faction the palene empire was a breakaway State formed in 260 during the infamous crisis of the 3r century the Empire first started when odenathus the ruler of the city of Palmyra was declared King by the local population in 260 this was after shapur the first had managed to attack the Empire and actually captured the emperor valaran odenathus was nominally loyal to galenus the son of valaran but in actuality ruled as basically an independent King odino managed to push back chapur and was given the title governor of the east in recognition of this feat however odino proc claimed himself king of kings and was seemingly set to rule as an independent ruler however he was assassinated along with his son aarian in 267 he was succeeded by his youngest son vaves who was only 10 years old at the time vavala's mother Zenobia would be declared Regent Zenobia would work to solidify her hold on power over the next few years finally in 270 she threw off the veil of loyalty and marched on bosra an important local Roman city and home to the Roman governor of Arabia petria she continued the March South and invaded Egypt with an army of 70,000 she quickly conquered the province and was declared Queen of Egypt the Roman general tagano Probus attempted to fend off The Invasion and even managed to regain Alexandria after its conquest by Zenobia but eventually he was besieged in Babylon where he committed suicide after being captured by Zenobia after this Zenobia turned her attention North northward and invaded Asia Minor conquering as far as modern day ankora in 271 vavalas and Zenobia both assumed the title of Augustus and were seemingly set to control the eastern half of the Empire sadly for Zenobia and her son the emperor aurelian had come to power and managed to calm the various crisis that the Empire had been torn apart by he invaded through the bosor and conquered city after City aelan would defeat Zenobia at the Battle of eme and then at the Battle of imisa finally in the summer of 272 at the city of Palmyra itself Zenobia was besieged Zenobia was defiant and refused to surrender Palmyra though was a fortress and aelan and his Romans failed again and again to take the city eventually Zenobia was forced to take drastic actions she fled the city under Nightfall and headed to the east to ask shapur and the Persians for help but before she could make it she was captured by aelian for forces she was brought back to the emperor and the sight of Zenobia and chains convinced the city to capitulate most of the high-ranking officers and leaders of Palmyra were executed but the fate of Zenobia and her son are left vague we are unsure if they were likewise executed or sent into some form of Exile whatever the case the short-lived Empire was reabsorbed into the Roman Empire today we mostly focus on the city of Palmyra itself which still stands as one of the best preserved Roman cities of the period but the Empire which centered itself on the city represents a trying time in Roman history a time where the Empire very nearly fell apart if it hadn't been for aelian genius the palyan Empire may very well have become an important player in a post Roman World The Great Fire of Rome is a fairly popular historical event the fire itself took place on the 18th of June in the year 64 it began near the circus Maximus but would quickly spread to somewhere around 70% of the city at the time Roma split into 14 districts three were completely decimated by the fire a further seven were in various states of Destruction while the other four managed to stay safe from The Blaze some of Rome's most important buildings including the house of the Vestal virgins Nero's Palace Temple of Jupiter Satur and much of the Forum were all completely destroyed the fire has been subject to quite bit of speculation throughout history however before I get into some of the speculation let me just say that the cause of the fire was almost certainly an accidental fire near the shops around the circus Maximus that Blaze was exacerbated by a strong wind that came during the night that blew Embers all across the city remember that at the time much of Rome was not the great temples of marble or stone that we think of today it was instead a maze of tightly packed wooden buildings these buildings proved to be easy kindling for the fire the fire burned continuously for 6 days before dying down and then reigniting for a further three now let's quickly talk about the speculation and conspiracies around the fire Nero who was Emperor at the time is one of Rome's worst and most insane Emperors he was tyrannical corrupt and impulsive that being said he was also not in the city of Rome when the fire occurred in fact Nero actually quickly returned to the city upon being informed of the fire and facilitated food shipments and and open public buildings to house those who had lost their homes in the fire he also started a fairly decent rebuilding plan in the aftermath of the fire his Urban plan is actually still visible in the city today however Nero was so unpopular that many Roman authors and even Romans at the time spread and recorded various rumors about the fire and Nero's involvement or lack thereof most of these rumors center around Nero starting the fire and then either singing or playing the Lear while the city burned typically some sort of aspiration to rebuild the city in His image is included to give some sort of motive to his actions but really the truth is that Rome was basically destined to burn in just the few decades previous no less than six different fires had occurred in the city with one starting in 36 in the exact same area that the great fire would start in my point is that Rome at this point in time was not a well-planned city it was an overcrowded poorly built and poorly maintained City it was not a matter of if a fire would start but a matter of when and it just so happened that Nero was the emperor when the great fire started this isn't to say that Nero wasn't a terrible ruler he certainly was but in this case the great fire of Rome was not caused by his incompetence instead it was caused by centuries of mismanagement and short-sightedness the foreign gods of Rome refer to the fascinating practice in Roman history of adopting local and foreign Gods into the Roman State religion to give just a few examples the God mithr was likely adopted from Persian religion Vesta was adopted from linium cbel was adopted from Anatolia and Iona was adopted from the Kelts these gods and goddesses were typically adopted in one of two ways the first and oldest method was through IAC caso in this ual the Roman conso or some other high-ranking official would journey to a conquered City where they would beseech and welcome the main deity of the city to follow them back to Rome typically this would involve carrying the statues and other ceremonial Goods of the god or goddess back to Rome where they would be placed in a new Temple this method was much more common in the early history of Rome especially during the conquest of the various italic tribes the second method by which these Gods could be brought into Roman religion was essentially cultural assimilation the Romans were actually fairly open to other religions often times the Romans would associate local deities with their own for instance Solus was a Celtic goddess of healing and water the Romans Associated her with manura and a local cult called The Cult of soless minurva was established and flourished around the area of modern-day baath in England sometimes such as in the cases of Sabel these gods and goddesses would be accepted almost in there entirely there were outliers of course most L The Druids but on the whole we actually see the Romans adopt quite a few local deities into the Roman religion albeit as a sort of aspect of a native Roman [Music] deity majorian was born sometime around the year 420 his family was heavily involved in the military aristocracy of the Western Roman Empire his grandfather had been in charge of the Roman troops present in Alyria while his father was the personal accountant and Senior officer under Aus Aus was quite possibly the most powerful General in the Western Roman Empire he was the man tasked with holding off the barbarians and because of that he was afforded quite a bit of autonomy and resources in fact AAS would actually go on to be remembered as one of the last great Romans of the Western Empire it was under athus that majorian would start his military career majorian would follow Aus to G where he would distinguish himself in several battles and he became a noted Cavalry commander under Aus during this time so much so that the emperor of the time valentinian III considered marrying his daughter to majorian something that normally would not be so important but in this case valentinian had no Sons only two daughters because of this Madan would have likely become his Heir however Aus had his own plans and wanted valentinian's daughters married to his own Sons thus securing the throne for A's line majoran was thus expelled from matias's staff and for several years he was out of the public eye and tired but in 454 majorian was called back into service by valentinian himself AAS had been executed by valentinian and valentinian hoped that majoran would be able to calm the troops that were previously under A's command this didn't really work and just a year later valentinian was murdered by several former officers that had served under Aus because there was no direct male Heir a secession fight followed Maan was a candidate for the office of Emperor but would be outmaneuvered by a man named petronus Maximus a senator who had been involved in murdering valentinian despite being beaten to the post of Emperor majorian would be married to linia udia the Widow of valentinian and promoted to commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard he was essentially made the second in command of the Western Empire petronus would die just a few weeks into his Reign when the Vandal sacked Rome itself at first a man named avitus was appointed as Emperor avitus was a g Roman Noble who held the support of several of the powerful Gothic groups of the Empire at first majorian seemingly accepted the new emperor but in just a few months avitus would be dead at the hands of majorian and the empire was once again without an emperor this time the Western Empire looked to the east to name a successor this was halted though with the death of the Eastern Emperor Martian in 457 his successor Leo the seemingly wanted to rule the Empire on his own and so did not appoint a Western Roman Emperor instead majoran was appointed to his old post and the two empires settled into a odd stalemate majoran was obviously the most popular person in the west but Leo had his mind set on ruling the Empire as a United entity and thus was reluctant to appoint majorian as Emperor the stalemate would be broken just a few months later when a small troop of alaman invaded Northern Italy majoran dispatched some soldiers to deal with the group and upon their victory majorian was held as Emperor by the Army this story is a little bit suspect as it all seems just a bit too convenient but whatever the case by December of 457 majorian was clearly declared the emperor and assumed full command of the West interestingly though Leo the first apparently never recognized his rule as all of the Eastern sources from the time refer to Leo as the sole console and ruler of the Empire but this was really just on paper as in practice it was clear that majorian was the ruler of the West the first thing majorian had to deal with was the invasion of Italy by a group of vandals the group landed in Campania sometime during the summer of 457 and began to pillage the surrounding Countryside the details are pretty light but we know that majorian engaged the vandals somewhere near the coast and apparently followed the group all the way to their ships before killing the commander personally and retaking all the loot that the vandals had managed to pillage in Campa after this majorian turned to strengthening the Roman presence in Italy first he passed a law seemingly giving Romans the right to have their own weapons this was something that valentinian had already started and was done in the hopes that Royal Romans would have some sort of defense against future Vandal raids secondly he undertook a massive recruitment Drive among the Barbarian mercenary groups in fact the list of groups he recruited from is practically a who's who of famous Barbarian groups you have the Huns the cians the allons the Oster Goths and many more they were all recruited to serve as border guards for Italy lastly he also began the restoration of at least two different fleets that had fallen into disrepair over the past few centuries after Italy was secured majorian turned his attention to Gaul Gaul had refused to recognize majorian as Emperor ever since the news of vitus's death had reached the province remember avius was of goic nobility and seemingly quite popular in the province it's a little unclear just what the province was doing in response while we know they did not recognize majorian it seems like they didn't know appoint a direct competitor either instead it seems they appealed to Leo over in the Eastern Empire this was probably an attempt to provoke a Civil War which would have certainly resulted in the defeat of majorian the East at this point was far and I mean far more powerful than the West however we have no record of Leo ever really responding so these attempts were seemingly unsuccessful in the latter half of 458 majorian personally LED an army out of Italy seemingly made up of mostly Barbarian units in duall he defeated the vizos at the Battle of our lady so bad that they were forced to agree to humiliating treaty the vizos would give up all their conquest and claims to hispania and would return to fotoa status essentially a vassel kingdom majorian then moved to the north of Gaul and using both his Barbarian mercenaries and the newly vassalized Visigoths reestablished control over the region majorian knew that he needed to be careful in the region if he was too heavy-handed he risked another Rebellion as soon as his own Army left so majorian chose the path of reconciliation instead of punishment he appointed the son in- law of Vitus as his representative for the province and apparently granted several tax remissions to the larger cities in the area this seemingly calmed The Province enough that majorian felt confident in leaving the immediate area he turned his attention South towards hispania hispania had been conquered by the previously mentioned vizigo following the Vandal sack of Rome in 455 the Visigoths claimed this was in the name of avitus but in actuality it was the Visigoths who controlled the land and the Romans were shut out of the area this changed of course with the defeat of the vizos by majorian majorian hoped to use the area as a spring board for his eventual conquest of Africa a province that had been in the past extremely important in feeding the Western Empire but had been out of Roman control for a few decades at this point the details are again relatively light but we know that majorian himself led a quick campaign across espia conquering most of the old province in about a year although he likely didn't face much in the way of resistance remember that hispania had been core territory of Rome for centuries at this point so they likely were pretty okay with Rome coming back into the picture the vandals who controlled Africa were extremely nervous at the prospect of a Roman Invasion and sent several emissaries to majorian but they were all rejected however just as Madan Was preparing to launch his invasion his Fleet was destroyed at anchor by a force of traitors it's not made clear just who these traitors were but it's fairly likely they were one of the Barbarian groups I mean mercenaries aren't really all that loyal with no ships or at least not enough ships majoran was forced to abandon his planned conquest and he returned to Italy sadly though for majorian he would never reach Rome again he was intercepted by rir a Germanic Roman general who had served his Magister militum or Master of the soldiers for both majori and avitus ramir had gathered the old Roman aristocracy around him while majorian was away on campaign to understand this we should quickly discuss majorian domestic policy majorian was at heart a reformer but he was also cognizant of the fact that he could only remain in power with the support of the influential Roman Elite trying to balance the two things was an act of near impossibility for instance in one of his laws majorian forgave the past due taxes of all land owners something that likely would have been popular with all the aristocracy but at the same time he forbade public administrators from collecting taxes thems something that had been abused by the wealthy and Powerful for quite literally centuries instead it was now up to the governors to collect taxes and who appointed those governors but the emperor majorian was playing a tight RPP and he had seemingly pulled too far towards reform as on the 2nd of August in 461 majorian was deposed and arrested by Ara with the support of the Italian aristocracy after being arrested he would be beaten and tortured for 5 days before he was beheaded most sources say that he never received a proper burial at the same time ryer spread a rumor that he had died from natural causes and after a morning period of 3 months ryer facilitated the appointment of libus serverus a senator of no real importance however majorian Generals in Gaul Sicily Alyria and hispania refused to recognize the new EMP Emperor and a new series of Civil Wars would follow majoran represents something of a bright spot in the late history of the Western Empire at the time of his birth the empire was crumbling Nobles fought over power in Italy while barbarians invaded both the provinces and even Italy itself when it came to power the Western Empire was essentially just Italy and honestly you could probably even really say that the empire was just Northern Italy from about Rome and Campania to around aqualia and Milan in the north yet by his death majorian had managed to not only fortify Italy but regain at least in name control over Gaul hispania Sicily and Alyria something that would have been unimaginable at the time of his birth one can only wonder what would have happened to the West if majorian had lived but it certainly would have been a whole lot better than what happened under erisir perhaps we would have seen a Renaissance of sort in the west and majorian would have been remembered as a second coming of aelan a second restituto orbit but we will never know this is probably the first question that many of you ever thought about in Roman history why did Rome fall so it probably seems a bit odd for the question to be this low on the iceberg but really the reason this question is so low is the simple fact that there is no correct answer or at least there is not a single correct answer what caused the fall of the Empire is probably the most complicated question you can ask in Roman history in front of you is a non-exhaustive list of possible causes and the truth is that all of these things caused the fall of the Empire it was not one simple factor or one decision or even a series of decisions that led the Empire to fall instead it was a combination of years of mismanagement overextension natural disasters infighting plagues and frankly any other thing you want to mention that slowly but surely sucked the life out of one of the greatest empires in world history it's a fascinating fall and something that we will certainly cover in future episodes but in my humble and fairly quick opinion I think there are really three or maybe four things we can look at as the leading causes of the collapse firstly the antonine and the cyprian plagues have to be considered anytime you look at the fall of the Empire the anonine in particular was extremely destructive not only did 5 to 10 million people or about 10% of Rome's population die during the plague but it was also particularly devastating among the Roman army in fact it was so devastating that many contemporary historians note that the plague nearly destroyed the standing Roman army it was so deadly that Marcus aelius was forced to recruit Gladiators and slaves into his army something that practically destroyed the vaunted Roman discipline this would also be the start of Rome's Reliance on Mercenaries something that would prove to be a decisive factor in the fall of Rome the plague also destroyed the economy of the Empire and resulted in Mass starvation among much of the irid populations of the Empire secondly we must look at the crisises of the 3rd Century I am cheating a little bit here as this includes quite a few events but I think it's fairly obvious I mean basically an entire Century of Civil War disease famine and economic collapse would ruin just about any polity I talked more extensively about this in a previous episode but it really cannot be overstated just how debilitating this century was for the empire in fact I I would argue this was really the point where the Empire began its final decline thirdly the mass migration of Barbarian groups into the empire in the 3D and fourth centuries certainly strained an already fragile political and economic system these peoples not only wared with Rome but also sought to carve out their own kingdoms within traditionally Roman provinces one needs only look at the Visigoths or the vandals to realize the impact these groups had on an already struggling Western Roman Empire lastly we should really remember the time span we're talking about here remember the traditional founding of Rome is said to be 753 BCE the Roman Kingdom lasted until 509 BCE and then the Roman Republic lasted until 27 bcee that alone is a span of some 700 years the Empire then lasted from 27 until the fall of the West in 476 ad but even after that the East continued to exist until 1453 we're talking about a period of about about a th000 years and over 2,000 if you include the eastern half I say all this to point out that Rome held on for a long [ __ ] time to put that into perspective the United States has existed as an independent nation for about 247 years we're not talking about a drop in the bucket I think a lot of the time we lose sight of just how long Rome actually existed and frankly how long it dominated Europe Northern Africa and even the Middle East Rome was a Powerhouse for A Thousand Years its fall was virtually guaranteed by that fact alone the sacred chickens of Rome mainly refer to the roost of chickens kept by the augers of Rome it was said that the chickens eating behaviors could be used to predict the future because of this many prominent Roman Statesmen would and I think this is frankly hilarious consult the chickens for insight into future events one of the most famous accounts of the chicken being used concerns puus Claudius pure a Roman Commander during the fresh Punic War it was said that pure consulted the chickens for approval for his plan to launch a surprise attack on the carthaginian fleet the chickens were apparently not eating and this was an extremely bad Omen pure responded by saying quote since they do not want to eat let them drink he would then toss the chickens into the sea which is actually one of the best ways to respond to a bad Omen that that I can think of he would go on to launch his surprise attack which was a complete disaster and resulted in the near annihilation of the entire Roman Fleet pure was humiliated and most sources suggest he was exiled for his actions there are several more stories about the chickens scattered throughout Roman history but it is clear that they held a level of respect and reverence among not only the Priestly class of Rome but also the normal people and the aristocracy we don't know exactly what happened to this tradition nor when it died out but it is an interesting aspect of Roman history that I think a lot of people probably know next to nothing about it's also particularly amusing to think about something like this happening in the modern day just imagine Joe Biden or Donald Trump Consulting a group of chickens to try and guide American foreign policy although to be honest it would probably work out quite a bit better than what's currently happening so if anyone watching has an inside link to the White House maybe drop a few suggestions I would happily serve as the auger and I'm sure I can get us some chickens just name the time and the place C Roman relations refer to the contact and trade of goods between the Roman Empire and the various Chinese dynasties of the time primarily the Han Dynasty these were mostly indirect contacts that started around the 2 Century BC by this time in Roman history the existence of China was known at least vaguely China was often confused with India and it was mostly just known as the place where silk came from most of this knowledge came from Merchants as they were really the only people who made the long Journeys it seems that the first real attempt at contact between the two governments occurred in 166 when an Envoy from Rome reached China before I talk about it I should note here that it's pretty heavily debated if this was an actual Envoy sent by the emperor either antoninus pasus or Marcus aelius or simply a group of merchants but it certainly represents the start of a more in-depth contact between the two empires the contact would increase as the centuries passed and by the time of the Byzantine Empire the two empires were certainly fully aware of each other and really that's the extent of provable contact between the two countries mostly it was just a trade relationship however one interesting and hotly debated theory is that of the men of lequan the theory mainly comes from the Roman prisoners of the battle of Kerry a battle fought by Marcus linius crus and a battle that Rome would decisively lose following the Battle about 10,000 prisoners were taken by the parthians to marinia a province in modern day Turkmenistan these prisoners were apparently told to man the frontier and then just completely disappear from the historical record the theory here goes that these men would eventually enter into the service of a man named xishi and eventually settle down at a village that would come to be known as liquan but this theory is highly speculative and requires several assumptions that that do not have any archaeological or concrete evidence and so it is mostly rejected by modern historians so in the end Rome and China were really only indirectly in contact and mostly this was a simple trading relationship this theory is mostly based around the simple fact that much of the sourcing for the early history of Rome is based around men like Livy these historians in air quotes were not only writing about a period of history that happened hundreds of years before they were even born but were also deeply biased in Rome's favor something that demonstrably led to Livy shall we say exaggerating certain events in Rome's history further many of these sources are supposedly based on works that we simply have no record of because of this we cannot properly investigate or critique these sources I really have a hard time with this issue primary sources or at least contemporary second AR sources are vital in documenting history but the truth is that we simply do not have these sources for the early history of Rome it is really only after the first Punic War that we start to have any sort of contemporary writings and even those are fragmented I think my thoughts on the subject are really that Livy and others like him must be read with a careful eye we cannot take his account at face value we must look for archaeological evidence cross check what sources we do have with each other and try to look past the obvious Roman bias to try and find the real history I feel like I am being a bit harsh here so let me just say that I am a fan of Livy I find his Works to be immensely fascinating and his writings are some of the most important that we have on early Rome in fact in a lot of cases they are all we have so we certainly cannot dismiss these writings out of hand and nor should we there is real history in Livy's work but there is also some shall we say Fabrications we really must be careful when reading works like Livy's AB kandata as simply believing the book at face value can lead to our understanding of History being flawed but what do you all think let me know in the comments well that's it and for all one or two of you still watching thanks for making it this far this series started on the day this channel hit 1,000 Subs something I thought would never happen it was supposed to be about a month long and instead it evolved into a month long journey that saw me learn a lot about video making but also kind of made me discouraged I love Roman history I've dedicated most of my life to reading and learning about it and it's incredible to me that any of you would listen to me talk about it but I also discovered on this series that I really like digging deep into Roman history I don't really like this surface level stuff if you can call what I just did surface level after all it's over 4 hours long but I digress so in the future I'm going to stick to one subject videos I like them more I think they're more entertaining and it is easier for me to make them plus it's a whole hell of a lot more motivating I thank you all for watching it really means the world to me so thank you all and here's to more videos in the future peace
