0:01It's All right, I think we're on air now. You were just saying 7 years in school after college get the PhD.
0:08>> It is too long objectively. And again, there is no job at the end of that. You do all that work, come out, you know, starry-eyed like, "Hey guy Hey world, give me a job." It's like, [laughter] "Hey, no."
0:18>> Oh my god, at what point do you realize like in that process that there is no job waiting at the end of the tunnel? Is it like a year in or 3 years in or like right at the end they're like, "Fuck you."
0:29>> It's kind of a a slow and building [ __ ] you, I would say. [laughter] You know, you realize pretty early like, "No, I won't be the one who, you know, who doesn't get the job. You know, I'm going to be different. I'm better than the rest." Like, "No, there's no job for you either."
0:40>> Well, you know what? You have figured it out, my friend, because you went out, you write your own things, you create your own things, you give these amazing tours around the world to It feels like every time I look up you're posting about some tour.
0:52>> I'm pretty desperate to get people, yeah, but >> No, no, it's No, it's [laughter] It's great because you're all over. You do tours in Egypt, you do tours in Italy. I think I've seen you >> talk about Correct me if I'm wrong, like tours in Turkey maybe at some point.
1:03>> in Turkey.
1:03>> Right? Like it's it's it's absolutely awesome and it's great to have you in here again since we did two last time.
1:10>> Yeah. Yeah, well, thanks so much for having me. I really really appreciate it.
1:12>> Of course. So, we last time that was episodes 251 and 252, you and I recorded those I think September 24th and then they came out around just before Thanksgiving 2024. But we did, you know, we had a nice meandering conversation on all different things about the Roman Empire.
1:28But you are, to be clear, and the Roman Republic, the whole thing. But you are, to be clear, an expert on Rome, you're an expert on Greece and by extension so many other places that touch those places over these thousands of years that they were around. And so, as you know, my very first question today, seeing as we are sitting here in 2026, is going to be what you think of Gladiator 2?
1:52>> I was epically disappointed. So, there's a bit of a backstory here. Um >> Please.
1:58>> I was on my honeymoon in Japan uh when the movie came out and it came out in Japan a week before it came out in the US. I dragged my wife to a theater in Osaka to watch Gladiator 2.
2:08>> Um I'm like, "The first one is one of my favorite movies ever, you know, this is going to be an epic experience. I want you to see this with me. This will be part of our love."
2:17>> [laughter] >> Um we came away and uh I was just kind of crushed and she loved me a little bit less.
2:24Um because, you know, it's just a pale imitation of the first one to be honest, you know, it it could have been really good. It's a great period of history, you know, Caracalla and Geta. Uh they could do a lot with the the dynamics of those emperors and the Senate. They didn't. It was just a missed opportunity in all kinds of ways.
2:42>> Yeah, you hear what Russell Crowe said about it recently?
2:44>> No.
2:45>> Uh I mean, Russell Crowe is not one to pull punches.
2:48>> he doesn't mince words.
2:49>> basically like, "They lost the morality, mate."
2:51>> They they they lost >> the whole morality. It's like, "All right, so this guy was great and now he he was [ __ ] another woman at the same time as his wife? Like, what the fuck?"
2:59>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:01>> I hadn't thought of that.
3:02>> They diminished Maximus a lot and it's just the same movie but worse, right?
3:06They tried to do the same plot basically. It's like, "Hey, it's his son." And now it's the same movie but, you know, in a way that's going to make you doubt everything you believed about Rome and yourself.
3:14>> That's true.
3:15>> Uh so >> Yeah, I I I agree with you. I liked it better than I thought I was going to because cuz I was scared before. And I obviously you think I'm well founded in that. I liked it better than I thought I was going to though because of how well they like depicted the beauty of the area and things like that. But I agree with you, the story was limited. The story was just basically trying to mirror image, like we said, >> Mhm.
3:41>> the old movie and it's like, "Guys, you made a top five movie of all time. It's a perfect film. Leave it there, you know?"
3:47>> Right, yeah, it's I agree with you that that even in the first one actually, that the one of some of the magic of Gladiator for me was how magical Rome seemed. Yes. You know, and that was in 2000, right? You know, and they still had pretty impressive CGI for the city of Rome itself.
4:00>> It was amazing.
4:01>> You know, Maximus went through his wheat field which is behind me here. Um it was in Spain I think they they shot that.
4:07But uh you only do so much with that kind of wizardry. You know, if the action's not there, if the plot's not there, then the movie falls apart. And no matter how much you do in these little incidental things, it just remain, you know, noise.
4:20>> Right.
4:21Now, they famously fictionalized a story there that had a lot of true points to it. Like, you know, time, era, people like Marcus Aurelius who was obviously a real character that they, you know, changed some things in the plot with to to fit it.
4:35>> But it was such a you know, when you hear historians talk, such a beautiful representation of like where Rome was at that time and what Rome was like, and that's part of why the movie really touched a lot of people. But if you could do a story that's not Gladiator, you know, it's its own thing, whether it's fictionalizing a version of Rome or actually literally doing a true story, what what movie would you want to see made?
5:01>> That's a good question.
5:03One that comes to mind as we were just talking now, there was this general named Sertorius, um who fought in the era of the civil wars to Marius and Sulla. So, this is about a generation before Caesar.
5:13>> Okay.
5:14>> Um and uh he was on the losing side, um and he ended up in Spain actually, and became this warrior, um leading all these Spanish tribes against his Roman opponents. So, Sertorius, there's never been a movie made I think, I mean, not in English anyway as far as I know, about this guy.
5:31>> Yo, that's a plot.
5:32>> He was a badass. Um he made himself seem like this like mystical warrior. He had this this this like uh sidekick deer that would follow him around that he would like whisper secrets into his ear, he claims. Like the voice of the gods, this like, you know, pet fauna of his. Am I misremembering things? But yeah, he was uh he's an interesting guy. Um like equal parts like Rambo and Merlin. Um >> [laughter] >> so I I I think that um if you gave me endless money to make a Roman movie, I'd go for Sertorius.
5:59>> And he's going across the empire, too.
6:01So you said he went to Spain.
6:03>> he stayed in Spain. He kind of he went native pretty much. Um and was like fighting the mountains of Spain. Again, this is the Rambo part. Um and uh was eventually hunted down by Pompey um in an early exploit of Pompey the Great. So uh yeah, I guess that'd be my hot take.
6:18Um Sertorius, you know, the epic movie.
6:20>> He looks hard as [ __ ] Just looking at his bust, right? Is that him?
6:23>> Well, that's Pompey actually there. That that bust. Um and I don't know if we don't I think we have a bust of him because he lost, right?
6:29>> Is it the second one, maybe?
6:31>> Uh that's Sulla. It's supposed to be Sulla.
6:33Um cuz he he's kind of caught up in this civil war.
6:35But uh yeah, there are paintings of him for sure, but they're all fictionalized.
6:39We don't know what he actually looked like.
6:40>> So he had men fighting with him out in out in the woods, basically, and then the army just descended upon them.
6:47>> Pompey he had to bribe another Spanish tribe, if I recall, to you know, he he didn't defeat him in battle. He had to he pretty much had a tribe betray him of his Spanish followers.
6:56So he's brought down by, you know, someone from the ranks of his Spanish followers.
7:00>> What was actually that's a great question.
7:03What What was spying like >> Mhm.
7:07>> in [clears throat] in Rome back then?
7:09You know, you hear so many stories about even moving way ahead in the timeline like in the American Revolution, and spies are actually like half the reason, if not like the whole reason, we ended up winning the war. You know, it's a it's a critical part. It's something that's been around forever, but you know, how did they how did like a place Rome >> Mhm.
7:27>> recruit people in random areas they wanted to go to that were hundreds of miles away at a time where you don't just get to these places easily and and you know, set your foundation?
7:37>> There's a lot of military espionage um Um, before a battle, especially. You're trying to figure out what the other commander is going to do, for example.
7:44And Rome recruited very heavily from peoples all over their frontiers. So, they had someone to speak the language almost always. Um, let's say you're fighting on the German frontier, you'd have people in your ranks who are auxiliaries. They're not Roman citizens, but they're fighting for you, who know German, all these dialects, and can masquerade as somebody fighting for the enemy quite easily. Um, of course it works both ways. You have people who are Roman auxiliaries who betray the Romans to the enemy since they are ethnically German, for example.
8:08Famously, um, Arminius, the guy who defeated, um, the three legions of Augustus at the Teutoburg Forest, um, the great disaster in the reign of Augustus, was a former Roman soldier, and been recruited in the Roman army, and then ended up betraying his, you know, former, well, paymasters.
8:24>> Did they catch him and and kill him?
8:26>> No. No, he They never did. Um, >> Wow.
8:29>> And he was killed by his own people, I think. He died pretty soon afterward.
8:32But, um, but there was, so again, a lot of espionage, um, in the Greek world as well. Um, so it's not just a matter of like going and spying on the enemy. You feed them false information, too.
8:40>> Mhm.
8:41>> So, like, before the Battle of Salamis, for example, that's the big victory of the Greeks over the Persians, um, you know, right right off Athens, 480 BC.
8:48>> Okay.
8:48>> Um, and Themistocles, who's the Athenian commander, um, or the Athenian kind of mastermind, um, try feeds the Persians false information that tricks them basically into putting their ships, this huge navy, into a very tight place where they can be surrounded and destroyed by the Athenians. And they win the war because of this false information.
9:07>> Mhm.
9:07>> Um, so yeah, people There There are whole books written about military subterfuge, about tricks you can play on your opponents.
9:15And, um, yeah, it's as old as warfare, I think.
9:18>> Yeah, it's also you make a great point that when you're if you're talking about Greece, or you're talking about Rome, and you are literally an empire which comprises of so many different cultures of people who are from other conquered areas that, you know, come under the umbrella, >> Right.
9:33>> then they all have a reason to be there if they're not brought in as slaves or something. They're a part of the Roman civilization, but their allegiances could very easily just takes one of them to have an allegiance elsewhere.
9:43>> Yeah, and in the later empire when they begin recruiting whole tribes of Germanic-speaking peoples into the army, and they call them allies. Foederati is the Latin term.
9:54Federates basically.
9:56These guys often have very slippery loyalties because they're under their own commanders, their own German-speaking generals. And it's one of the reasons it's often said that the late Roman army was so much less effective than its predecessor because so many of their soldiers are just, you know, German guys fighting for German generals only nominally under Roman command.
10:15It saves Romans money to do things like this, but ultimately it turns against them.
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11:39>> Yeah, you can't you can't just build a culture by sticking a uniform on it.
11:44>> No, I mean to an extent you can, but only if your guys there's more of your guys and they keep them in check.
11:49>> You know.
11:49>> Um and but it worked before this though, you know, like if you go to the Hadrian's Wall, you know, there's all those forts along it where Roman soldiers So this is in northern England near the Scottish border.
11:59>> Hadrian's Wall you said?
12:00>> Hadrian's Wall. So built by the famous emperor Hadrian and it's the northern border of the Roman frontier or the northern border of the Roman Empire.
12:05>> barbarians out or something?
12:06>> Yeah, well it's really more of like a a customs barrier. It's a way to kind of regulate people moving across the frontier. But anyway, all the guys who are stationed There it is. Yeah, and it actually never looks like this. It's always raining and sleeting so it's a terrible place. It's north of England.
12:18>> Wow, that's magnificent.
12:19>> It's really cool. I think I've been actually right there where that picture was taken.
12:22>> This is in England.
12:23>> is in northern England near the Scottish border.
12:26Um anyway, so there were there were camps all along it of Roman soldiers who were defending this giant wall and almost all of them were recruited from the frontiers. So they came from what's now like Holland, what's now like northern Germany or Belgium. Um and they would not have been native Latin speakers but they were kind of assimilated into the Roman world by becoming soldiers, learning Latin, and doing their duty.
12:46So the guys we think of as being the most archetypal Romans, the Roman soldiers of the empire with their, you know, their red cloaks and everything are often not Italian or even from anywhere near the center of the empire.
12:56They're guys from the edges who have bought in. Um and their kids will be Roman citizens. Often they are you know, the soldiers are what gets them citizenship when they leave the army.
13:05And so they become, you know, Romans. So there there's this always this kind of assimilating machine in certain empires, the Romans above all, where you can take people in um often through military service. Um slavery's another way and they become Roman in some sense. They remain something else often as well.
13:20>> How would Rome decide uh you know, cuz we we've see we should pull it up again, Joe. I always say it and I never give you the link. That's my bad, but you know the bloodline map of Rome where it looks like the arteries and and the veins coming out of it. I think I'm I guarantee you we pulled this up last time.
13:37>> I I think you did. I have a vague memory of this.
13:39>> But like it just underscores like how wide and and far it stretched across so many cultures. How did they determine when they would conquer these different places, whether it be Germanic tribes or Gaul or going up to England?
13:52What was the determination where they'd be like, "Okay, we're going to make these one slaves. We're going to bring these ones into our civilization. These ones we're going to watch over here in purgatory." Like what was the what was the deal there?
14:03>> It was kind of a crap shoot, to be honest. Like there are books about like the grand strategy of the Roman Empire, but they didn't really think that way.
14:10You know, it's much more ad hoc. Like you kind of just react to things that are happening.
14:13In the beginning, the Romans only expanded because they were threatened from the outside by Hannibal, for example, coming over the Alps from Spain.
14:20Um or by the Greeks to their east. And so they expanded kind of defensively, which seems kind of paradoxical that they would do that. Um but you conquer someone to keep them from attacking you.
14:29Right. That's their defensive, you know, that's what they say anyway.
14:33Uh later on when there are emperors, you have to decide a play if a place is worth conquering. If the people there are numerous enough, are rich enough more importantly, to reward both the money you get from sacking cities and also the money you get from taxing the place after it's incorporated into the empire. So like Scotland's a good example. They never conquered what's now Scotland because there's nothing there.
14:52It's just a bunch of rocks and lichen like, you know, two goats licking a rock. You know, you don't want to conquer Scotland because there's nothing freaking there. Um Ireland, too. Like they're aware of Ireland. It's like it's a bunch of barbarians and like, you know, a rainy rock. We don't want to deal. It's still kind of is. And so, [laughter] you know, we don't want to deal with this. Um and even Britain. They didn't want to conquer Britain. But the Emperor Claudius, you know, the guy who came um after Caligula, who was, you know, a unlikely emperor for all kinds of reasons, needed a win. It's like, "Okay,
15:21well, Britain seems pretty easy. We'll conquer Britain. It's a new province.
15:24It's a laurel that I get, you know, feather in my cap. That's why we'll do it." And then once you conquer you're kind of committed to it because you want to recoup the losses you suffered monetarily above all. But Britain never makes the Romans money probably. It costs more to garrison Britain than they get back from it from their taxes and their mines there.
15:42>> much? Just the amount of troops they >> are expensive. You know, the Romans almost no one has a standing army in the ancient world. The Romans are really unusual in paying or Mousey what a quarter million men to be under arms at all times. Um the Greeks for example all had just militias.
15:57And they muster them up for a one year's campaign or for one summer's campaign and they go back to their farms and their shops. They're done. They don't pay them all year round. But the Romans do. They have a standing army under the empire and it's hugely expensive. It's probably more than half of the empire's budget by 2/3 they think every year.
16:13>> Well, actually that's not surprising now you say that and considering how large it was.
16:17>> Right. So many guys you got to give them grain. You got to give them wine.
16:20Getting wine to you know, northern Britain that's a whole you know, headache in itself cuz those are again they're licking the rocks and nothing else to do. Um and so it's uh Yeah, it's a massive logistical undertaking and hugely expensive. But they're kind of committed to it after Augustus because the legions are the emperor's ultimate safeguard, right?
16:38>> Yeah.
16:39>> But they think then that the legions turn against them which happens later on. But you know, the emperor needs the empire needs them. They're useful. They're on the edges of the empire and once they're there you can't really quite get rid of them.
16:49>> Like you said though it's it a lot of Rome was like it's almost like responding to blocking and tackling rather than just being a grand plan.
16:57Like they conquered people as a mean of defense even with the Punic Wars. Which we talked about that a lot last time so people can listen that podcast with with what was going on in Carthage and everything. But that was you know, violent to a to a T. It went on and went on and went on for a long time. But you know, did they even if they didn't have a plan kind where they were going to go at all times or what they were going to have to conquer, or or lay defense [clears throat] against a siege.
17:21Was there a general strategy of like, well, for every place we conquer, for every 10 people there needs to be one soldier, or something like that? Or was that also very randomized? Like, okay, these people feel like they need more guards, these people don't.
17:36>> Uh it's kind of dynamic. It varies over time. It's like in North Africa, the Roman frontier in North Africa is, I think, 3,000 mi long. Cuz it goes all the way from Morocco to Egypt.
17:45>> It goes across the whole continent.
17:46>> Yeah. But there's nobody there. It's the the Sahara south of you. Just kind of Berber tribes who come and raid the farms. So there was one legion for all of North Africa up to Egypt. So for that 2,700 mi, there's just what, you know, about 5,000 guys and their auxiliaries guarding that whole giant strip.
18:03On the northern edge though, on the Rhine and the Danube, there are, I think, 18 legions. Because there's so many more people beyond the frontier.
18:09There are real threats uh coming from from Germany, you know, from what's now Romania, from Ukraine. Um people, you know, everything from from steppe nomads to, you know, these very large confederations of Germanic tribes.
18:21Um so that they move people around. Like the Danube gets more and more people over the course of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
18:26Um the eastern frontier, the Syrian frontier, facing the Parthian and then the Persian empires, um has quite a few legions because the Persians are a big deal. They're a serious threat. But it's a much shorter frontier. It's all mountains and desert and then one little strip in Mesopotamia that needs to be defended.
18:40>> How far back does the Persian, original Persian empire go? Like what years are we talking?
18:45>> The famous one, the one that the Greeks fought, you know, like Xerxes, you know, Darius, those guys. Um that's the empire that's founded in the 6th century BC, um in the 550s BC. And lasts till it was till Alexander conquers it um in the 330s BC.
18:58And then the Greeks ruled that whole area um for about a century and a half.
19:02Then the Parthians, who have this kind of minor nomadic confederation in what's now northern Iran, show up. And they conquer the heartland of the old Persian empire, what's now Iran, basically. Iran and Afghanistan.
19:12And they become the Romans' opponents in the east for about uh 250 years. And the Romans almost always beat them. Um you know, and famously, you know, Crassus gets his head lopped off, you know, they they they win sometimes. But uh they don't really have the organization to defeat the Romans. They're it's kind of a loosely organized confederation.
19:31Um they're replaced um in the 230s AD um by the Sassanids. Um and we just call them uh the new Persian empire, or the Sassanid Persian empire.
19:40>> How do you spell that?
19:41>> A bunch of S's. Um I think [laughter] it's s a s s um i n i d. The Sas- Sassanid or Sasanian.
19:48>> some machine.
19:48>> Yeah, there it is, yeah.
19:50Um yeah, he is. Um and uh these guys lasted um from uh the the middle of the 3rd century to uh the Islamic conquest of the 7th century. And this map shows them at their greatest extent because they just >> That's a huge plot of land.
20:03>> Well, they had this massive war. They only briefly was the empire that big.
20:06They had this war with the Byzantines um in the 6th cent- in the 7th century. And they briefly conquered all of what's now uh Turkey, the Middle East, um and Egypt. But it was just for a few years.
20:17>> Yeah, it looks like they got everything but like Saudi Arabia.
20:20>> You can see like there's like the darker orange in the middle of the map. You know, that that's their heartland, um which is pretty much most of what's now Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
20:28>> Do we have any idea like ballpark I'm going to go back for a minute cuz the Sassanids are obviously way later than what it developed into, but you know, in the 3rd century BC when before the conquering, do we know how large, approximately, the civilization at that time was in Greece versus in Persia?
20:50>> Like the population?
20:51>> Yeah.
20:52>> I mean, ancient demography is a real mess. We we have no hard numbers.
20:57Uh we usually guess, or I've seen it written at least, that classical Greece I think had only one or two million people. I could be totally wrong on that. Um and maybe, you know again we can joke and hit the board and tell me.
21:09But whereas the Persians had probably something like 20 to 30 million people.
21:14>> Wait, but they got conquered by the Greeks.
21:16>> Eventually, yes.
21:17>> What?
21:18>> Yeah. Yeah, it's really really astonishing.
21:21Oh yeah, so I was more or less right.
21:22Okay, good.
21:23>> you were right. Are you surprised at this point?
21:26>> Well, you know, I mean actually I was >> You got more floa- 7 years of PhD, you got a lot floating in there.
21:30>> The amount you don't learn in a PhD is really embarrassing, honestly. So I'm glad I got that more or less right. But anyway, um it's So yeah, it's really it was a wild victory. The Greeks defeat the defeat the Persians first in the Persian Wars, you know, against you know, Xerxes and Darius. And then later Alexander of course conquering the whole kitten caboodle. It's it's a very impressive story.
21:49>> Now you do a tour I think called like following the footsteps of Alexander.
21:53>> That's right. There's so many actually.
21:55Um >> [laughter] >> Well, we don't do the whole thing, fortunately. I mean I'd love to do it someday. You know, if I can avoid getting shot by the Taliban or something. Um but we we just do the first campaign season pretty much. He crossed over into what's now Turkey, the Hellespont. And then kind of went down the west coast, the Aegean coast of Turkey, where all the resorts are now. Um they were all Greek cities that have been ruled by the Persians for you know, quite a while.
22:19Conquered those cities and then went eastward across Turkey. Um the first first big confrontation with Darius the third near what is now the Turkish-Syrian border.
22:28>> What was Darius the third's story?
22:30>> It's kind of a sad story cuz he's the guy who got his teeth kicked in by Alexander, pretty much. Um you know, he had just come to power a few years before. Um and he the empire the Persian empire is so big that it's always kind of falling to pieces. Egypt keeps rebelling. There are rebellions in Babylon as well. On the east in India.
22:49And they have just gotten things like under control again after many years of rebellions.
22:54And he's he's new king. And then Alexander shows up out of nowhere and just can't lose. You know, defeats his generals in the west in what's now Turkey, um crushes Darius in two battles at Issus and Gaugamela, and then, you know, that's the end. Uh you know, Darius flees from the battle and is killed by his own nobles. Um and he's the last Achaemenid that that's the line of Darius the First uh Achaemenid king of Persia.
23:18>> Wow.
23:19>> So, yeah.
23:20>> Tough way to go. I mean, he's remembered, but only as the guy who got his teeth kicked in by Alexander. Um he might have been an effective um you know, emperor, effective king, but he's just facing you know, one of the greatest armies and best generals in history.
23:33>> Even though he lost like that, but I he obviously it is Alexander the Great, but even though he lost that fast and and that brutally, you think he would have been a great emperor or king?
23:41>> Uh it's hard to say who would have beaten Alexander, honestly. Well, cuz you know, the it's a couple things that without getting deep into this, that you know, Greek infantry, hoplite infantry, is just has certain built-in advantages over the much lighter Persian infantry.
23:55Um you know, in in close order formation, hoplites, you know, with their shields out front, their spears, um are very tough. If they're even if they're militia, and if they're professionals, the way that the Macedonians were, um you know, they had the the Macedonian phalanx had these very long spears, the sarissas.
24:09They're about 20 ft long.
24:10>> 20 ft long?
24:11>> 20 ft. So, this is hedgehog. There are six you know, five or six of those spear points project out beyond the shield wall. So, it's just mowing at you with this giant wall of spears, and the other guys behind you um keep their shields up their their uh sarissas up high to deflect arrows and spears being thrown at you um from from beyond.
24:29>> Holy [ __ ] >> Yeah, there it is.
24:30>> Um yeah, they're they're pretty hardcore. And you can plant them in the ground, they have a spike at the bottom, you can see in the illustration.
24:35>> That's nice.
24:36>> So, what the idea is that, you know, the Persians, whoever they're fighting, they'll kind of just ground grind to a halt against that giant wall of spears, while the cavalry flanks them and delivers the knockout blow. And the cavalry, the Macedonians, always led by Alexander himself, were very, very good.
24:52So, it was a really, really good army led by a general who was just incredibly inventive. He'd would kind of reshuffling his troops to make the best advantage of them against much larger armies and a much larger empire.
25:02>> Did Alexander innovate those types of movements or did he basically like take what already existed and then just perfected it with his straight with his brilliant strategy?
25:12>> His father invented the phalanx for the Philip the second, yes. Um that that long spear, the sarissa, that was probably Philip who came up with that.
25:20>> Okay.
25:20>> Um Alexander kind of just perfected how to use it, I would say. And he got very good at using all kinds of regular forces like in Afghanistan. You know, it's hard to conquer Afghanistan as we all know.
25:31Um you know, he kind of found ways to, you know, send people up mountain strongholds, defeat skirmishers in passes. He was just very, very inventive.
25:39>> He's the last one to do it effectively.
25:41>> Yeah, I mean there are other people who, you know, sweep over Afghanistan. Like there are these nomads in the second century BC, the Kushan empire does it, but, you know, who are those guys, right?
25:49>> Yeah.
25:50>> Um [laughter] Alexander wanted to hit the narrative.
25:51>> That's right. Yeah, he does it with more with more style. That's more style. Um and uh so I think he's just a very inventive user of what he inherits from his father.
26:00>> For that tour though, going What did you call it? The first leg?
26:03>> It is the first campaign season pretty much. His his first year pretty much.
26:07>> So where he's going down to all the formerly Greek cities all across the Aegean and >> Exactly. Kind of just following the coast of Turkey, yeah.
26:13>> How long did it take him to conquer all those places ballpark?
26:17>> Oh, I mean so he he moved quite quickly.
26:19You know, his um his first he kind he crossed into Asia, you know, Asia Minor Turkey in 334 BC.
26:28Um he had his first big battle with Darius the third at at Issus the next year. Um quite soon afterward. And after that all of what happened in the Persian empire um pretty much west of what's now Syria became his, Alexander's.
26:43>> After that one battle?
26:44>> That one Well, he did win a couple of skirmishes too and a lot of sieges where he like defeated cities and local garrison commanders.
26:49>> guys did he bring with him on this campaign?
26:51>> They guess about 40,000.
26:53>> See, that's not that much.
26:54>> Well, it is a small population, but still.
26:56>> Yeah, it's not. You know, Persian armies are much bigger than this. Um at Issus, you know, that that the first big battle between Alexander and and Darius the third, um Darius probably has three times as many men is the guess. We don't really know.
27:10Many more. But Alexander's just much they're better soldiers and he makes better use of them again and again. So, really, it takes him only three years to conquer the heart of the Persian Empire.
27:19The second big battle, uh you know, Gaugamela is 331. That's it. Three years. After that, uh Darius is dead. Um but then he gets bogged down in Central Asia for a few years. Takes him a long time to conquer Afghanistan for Again, it's Afghanistan.
27:31>> Geographics, yeah.
27:32>> Um but really, you know, he dies at 32.
27:35And at that point, he's conquered, you know, not the not the known world, but, you know, the part that they thought was the richest and most worth conquering.
27:41>> Mhm.
27:41>> And had plans to conquer all the rest if he would have lasted longer.
27:45Uh so, he um yeah, he gets he gets things done pretty quickly.
27:49>> Clearly.
27:49>> Clearly, yeah.
27:50>> It's it's it's it's amazing, but this is the part that never clocks for me is like you said, a 40,000 person army back then is a is a very sizable army, to be clear, but the Persians had an even bigger army. And he wins a battle against Darius. And then, as you said, like a few more skirmishes, which we'll call Let's just benefit of the doubt say full-blown battles as well that were also big in the area, and then he just boom, has Persia.
28:18How you know, it's not like they had the internet and they're like, "Oh, we lost this battle in the west. We're under their control now. Like, we're [ __ ] They're sending drones from Palantir here." Like, how suddenly do you with an with an army that's moving and trying to conquer more places >> Mhm.
28:34>> say, [clears throat] "Congratulations, people. We're here as your liberators. We're in charge now.
28:39And by the way, you're going to follow all our rules." Like, did they leave the army behind at the you know, 20,000 of them behind like 10 at a time in all these different cities to just say hello, yeah?
28:49>> It's a good question. Um there were a lot of garrisons he left. You know, they were pretty small for the most part and left in like choke points, major cities.
28:56Uh but most people would never have seen a Macedonian. You know, if you're out in the Iranian heartlands, you would never see one of these guys. You'd You'd know about it. But um >> You would know about it.
29:05>> You would because, you know, there would be parties of skirmishers, for example, around the army. They might loot They might take your grain or something if the army came kind of close. If you were Far from the line of march though, you probably only know because um your governor would be replaced by a new governor who happened to be a Greek-speaking guy.
29:22Um and there would be just kind of a a presence, a vague but a real presence of, you know, Greeks.
29:28>> Mhm.
29:28>> But it would have been very scattered. I mean, your life wouldn't have changed very much unless you were quite close to line of march. Then it would have been probably terrible. They would have like, you know, taken your city, sacked it, taken your crops.
29:38Um for some people really rural though, am I crazy to assume it might have taken a few years for them to know something changed? You'd only know because the taxes went up pretty much. That That That was it. Um it's often said that there's a story from the late Roman Empire where, you know, one of these uh Roman gentlemen from Alexandria in Egypt, in this great cosmopolitan city, um goes to his estates in what's now Libya. And he asks the guy, "Hey, who's the emperor? Do you know?" And the the guy looks at him, it's this peasant.
30:03He's like, "Agamemnon? You know, the guy from the Iliad." So, you know, there was never an Emperor Agamemnon. He just didn't know.
30:10>> Yeah.
30:10>> Uh but you would have known the Roman world because of coins. You know, you coins circulate even in the countryside.
30:15They're around. There aren't too many of them, but they do come to these towns.
30:17You pay your taxes often in cash. You might be forced to in some cases.
30:22Um but besides having to pay taxes, um besides going to towns and seeing, if you're Roman again, the statue of the emperor, for example, um or, you know, some other sign of the Roman presence, yeah, your life kind of exists outside the sphere of the empire's concerns.
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32:16>> And I you know, modern nation-states care a lot about their citizens. They care about loyalty. They care about well, income above all.
32:22Uh they want to know what you're doing, what you're thinking.
32:25>> [snorts] >> Isn't it obvious can't do that? They don't have the resources. And so they're much more limited. If you don't rebel against them and you pay your taxes, okay.
32:33>> They're cool.
32:34>> You're you're you're we're fine.
32:35Um and you can get go through life paying taxes and not rebelling and have almost no interaction with the state, whether it's Alexander's empire or the ancient Rome.
32:45But in the case of Rome, where it lasts so long, where it's century after century, um, it just percolates downward. You know, you maybe you come to a city suddenly everyone's speaking Latin. It wouldn't happen all at once, but it's, you know, it's around. And if your kid's ambitious, he joins the army or he wants to make it big, you know, get educated, he'll learn Latin too now.
33:03And so that you kind of get it it's not imposed from the top, assimilation, Romanization as we would say. Um, it's often people who say, "I want to buy into this system because I get things through it I can't get from my, you know, my rock farm in Scotland or whatever."
33:18Um, yeah, and I think that's um, often underappreciated insights of the of the Roman world that we think think of the Romans as being this great conquering power, and they were.
33:26Um, but they're I think even more impressive as an assimilating power, um, a power that offered people, above all those who are rich and worth, you know, calling reaching out to, that, "Hey, this is worth becoming a part of. You know, you want to join our team." And that works for century after century. It The empire falls when it stops working in a lot of ways that it's no longer worth being the team to join.
33:45>> But Rome also got so big, and I keep getting stuck on like this Alexander thing cuz how fast he was moving and taking all of Persia. What did you say Persia had like 20 million people?
33:55>> That's a guess, yeah.
33:56>> yeah, but either way, way larger than Greece at the time.
34:00Like how do they how do you suddenly with your army of 40,000 people conquering that large swath of land that's uh, thousands of miles, I assume, put in a system of collecting taxes from everyone?
34:14You're outnumbered like crazy.
34:16>> And it's true, and it's true of every invading army, really. So, what you do is you co-opt the people on top. Um, you know, you see you you've killed the emperor you've killed the king, great.
34:24You have, you know, if his baron if his barons are rebellious, you've killed them, too.
34:28But you keep the guys on the ground, the local officials. You keep the governors in place. You just say, "Hey, you work for us now." And they're like, "Okay, that's better than death."
34:35Um so really it comes down to there being not a whole lot of reshuffling often beyond the very top layer.
34:42Um so the administration still speaks, you know, whatever language they're speaking, Aramaic probably.
34:48Um and uh they're still collecting the same taxes in many cases, but now the uppermost uppermost layer is Greek.
34:55There are colonies planted of of veterans um all over the Greek, you know, the the new empire. So there are these cities that are just Greek speakers in the beginning especially or mostly Greek speakers. There's a famous example of a place that's modern name is is Ai Khanum. It's on the border of Afghanistan and I think Uzbekistan in the far north.
35:15And uh they dug this place in the '70s before the uh Afghan-Soviet War and found what amounted to a Greek city 3,000 mi from Greece. They had a gymnasium, they had a temple of Zeus, they had Greek inscriptions.
35:28So it was Greek settlers living in, you know, the middle of freaking nowhere um from the Greek perspective.
35:34But this place um exactly, there there it is. That's the inscriptions, Ai Khanum, right?
35:39>> Wow.
35:40>> Um but this place um looked very Greek. It actually was, you know, kind of an assimilation in many ways of like the local Bactrian culture too. Like there were there were people there who weren't Greek speakers, they were part of the society.
35:51Um but Greek culture becomes over the century and a half that Alexander's empire remains more or less, you know, separate in different kingdoms, culturally intact. It becomes kind of this superculture, um almost like English in Europe today where you might not know much about America, but you speak English for convenience. People learn Greek uh to speak to either the local tax collector or to make it big in the local administration, to go places.
36:15Um so even though in the beginning there is almost no presence on the ground, Alexander and his veterans they introduce this culture that has, like Roman culture later on, um a real capacity for absorbing a whole world, which happens um if only on certain levels across this vast swath of Asia.
36:33>> But also I think it underscores the point when you can bring beauty and organization as well cuz these cities that you uncover that are integrated are amazing.
36:43It's an it's a it's a example to people and they're like oh ours isn't as good as that and you can kind of win people over I would imagine as well.
36:54>> Yeah you know cities of course are very very old and much older than the Greeks or the Romans but I think that the Greeks and Romans make cities an instrument of culture an instrument kind of a statement that no other civilization has done in a way that no other civilization has done I'm sorry.
37:10So everything from those gridiron streets called Hippodamian streets to having an agora or a forum in the center making making the city the place to live if you want to be anybody in the civilization that you know you're not living in your estate out in the country which is the default mode you know in kind of a more feudal society that the city is the place where you are Roman you are Greek where you connect with the greater power where you worship the gods where you're seen and where you see and are seen.
37:37I think they commit to the idea of urbanism in a way that no other culture had before them the Greeks and the Romans.
37:44And we see the traces of that physically in sites like like Ai Khanum which is this you know Greek looking city in the middle of Central Asia.
37:51>> Amazing that like settlers got that far away to come out there and build that.
37:55>> is and there were a lot of inducements financially like they would give them tax breaks to come from to migrate from the Greek world a lot of them were veterans they fought for these kings and end up settling in these places that are kind of faux Greek.
38:08And I should say that these aren't just Greek or just Roman these cities you know they are also Bactrian and they're also Gallic they're also British.
38:16There's a lot of these kind of cultural compromises being for being performed.
38:19>> Wait what do you mean by that? Like like that those guys had a say in how it was built or what?
38:25>> I mean, it's like like the the dominant culture, the hegemonic culture, we would say, is Greek in in Ikhonum. The people in charge speak Greek, they're culturally Greek. But probably half or more of the population is not culturally Greek, you know, they're they're locals who have moved in. And they'll learn Greek to be able to maneuver around this, you know, new city, this new civilization. They'll make their compromises with this new ruling power. They aren't just going to become Greek, you know, both they and probably their children will have this dual identity or maybe multiplex identity where they're both Greek and
38:54something else.
38:55>> Yes.
38:55>> And that's true in the Roman world, too.
38:56True in America, for that matter, right?
38:58For immigrants' kids.
38:59Um where, you know, you have this parent culture that you want to hold on to for reasons that range from religion to sentimentality, whatever it might be. Um but also there's this this master culture, this overriding hegemonic culture, that you want to be a part of because it's convenient, because you get paid through that culture. You can rise up through that culture and become something greater than your local circumstances.
39:21>> Sure.
39:21>> Um so it's a always a negotiation. And a lot of scholarship now in the classics is about this kind of negotiation, where it's not just the Romans or the Greeks or Alexander imposing a culture. It's kind of giving them a new alternative, a new menu that they can pull down from and incorporate into their own lives.
39:38So it's a it's kind of interesting.
39:40Frontiers are really cool in both the Greek and Roman world because it's this kind of negotiation being played out all over the place.
39:45>> So they feel like it's still theirs, but the Greeks know they have their stamp on it or the Romans know they have their stamp on it, if you will.
39:51>> Sure, right. They're they're they're not just one thing or the other. It's not like they're like, "Well, I'm going to stop being Bactrian now." You know, it's also like, "Well, I'm going to add this to what I do and what I believe."
39:59Um so it's a yeah, a negotiation.
40:02>> In years like this, if we're looking at like 300 BC, >> Uh-huh.
40:07>> um maybe it would be different in cities than it would be in rural places or maybe not, I'm not sure, but the local governors that the conquerors would bring under their thumb, you know, who are then in charge of continuing to run the area. How How did they collect tax? Did you come down to city hall and they wrote you down on the ledger, or did they send soldiers to your door and say, "Here's what you owe today?" Did everyone owe the same exact amount regardless of income? How did it work?
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40:39>> It varied a lot by region. So, in the Roman world, there was just a huge range of methods.
40:45Quite a few people paid their taxes in grain. It'd be a share of your crop. Um so, you'd pay a 10th or uh you know, a a fifth of what you produced in wheat to the administration. You'd bring it.
40:54You'd thresh it yourself and you'd bring that that grain to the public granary and you get a receipt from the, you know, the city hall or whatever and that was it.
41:01Um other places you paid in coin. So, you'd have to sell your crops. Everyone, 9/10 of the population is a farmer. You know, they're agricultural in this this period. So, you sell your grain your crops um for cash in the city and then you in the same city you go to the tax collector and say, "Here is my share, you know, have at it." Um there's often it varies a lot, but typically they tax the amount of land you have um with a a scale for how productive it is. So, if you have like rich agricultural land, that's taxed more than woodland would be, for example.
41:32There's also a head tax typically. So, number of people you have in your household that's also, you know, a poll tax is part of it.
41:39And there's also a lot of little taxes.
41:41Everything that from like glass to, you know, uh sacrifices to having fancy clothes. They find lots of ways to squeeze money out of people.
41:49The absolute rates are not that high because the economy's not that rich.
41:52They don't have that much surplus to, you know, squeeze.
41:56But um in Egypt, like there were some villages that pay dozens of taxes. And each one's very small, but it kind of adds up to being this pretty heavy tax burden.
42:04>> Sure.
42:05>> And people get desperate. They're like run to the desert and they need to get away from taxes sometimes. Uh >> And they get executed if they're caught.
42:11>> Yeah, or dragged back to their farms and forced to produce more cuz you know, dead men don't Right, dead men don't pay taxes.
42:17>> That's right.
42:18>> Uh but uh but yeah, so it's um it's amazing that they make systems work across thousands of miles.
42:25Um and it really is very localized. You know, that each city is kind of a little cell. That it collects the taxes from its surrounding territory. That money or wheat, whatever, you know, flows in, often stays locally um or is forwarded um off to Rome or Alexandria, whatever it might be.
42:40The Romans actually outsource this. They have uh they're called publicani.
42:44They're these like uh entrepreneurs who are tax farmers. So they So they'll bid for the right to pay to uh collect taxes for given region or given amount of time. Then they go out and make a profit. So they'll collect the tax and they'll collect additional tax.
42:57>> Oh my god.
42:58>> So they're not popular uh for all kinds of reasons.
43:00>> I'm surprised they're not tarred and feathered.
43:02>> And often they have Well, they have an entourage of thugs who come with them.
43:04>> Yeah.
43:05>> And it's like, "Hey, pay up." And they'll have like four guys, you know, cracking their knuckles behind them.
43:08>> [laughter] >> And uh so they actually have >> It's the original Vinnie and Louie.
43:12>> Exactly. And there's actually um a few like papyri from Egypt that's like, "Yeah, they just beat me until I paid.
43:18[laughter] They wouldn't stop."
43:20Um so yeah, they're not gentle. Um but they they want their money and that's that's what it comes down to.
43:25>> Yeah, I I whenever we think about the organization of these places and then think about the lack of speed of communication they had, that just blows my mind. You know, you could have a What was the name of that place they dug up 3,000 mi away from Greece?
43:40>> Uh Ai Khanoum.
43:41>> Ai Khanoum. So you got a place like Ai Khanoum.
43:44If something if like an emergency goes down there and they need to ask permission from central command in Greece, like what's going on? How many days until they hear it like 2 years later? You know, there's a fire. 2 years later, all right, you're allowed to put it out. Like, [laughter] >> Well, and that's the thing. Like if you're if you're a governor, you kind of have to take initiative. There's a wonderful set of letters. There's this guy named Pliny the Younger, who governs part of what's now Turkey. And he living he's living in the reign of Trajan.
44:12>> Okay.
44:12>> have his This is I think he's like 115, give or take, is when he's governing.
44:17>> BC or AD?
44:18>> AD.
44:18>> AD.
44:19>> Anyway, so he we have his letters to the emperor. You know, he's like, "Hey, you know, there is like, you know, the aqueduct's falling to pieces, you know, here in this city. Hey, we got a slave here who's pretending not to be a slave.
44:29You know, what should I do?"
44:31And he sends dozens of letters to Trajan. And eventually the emperor says like, "Dude, just take care of this yourself." [laughter] And it's kind of a polite testy reply like, "Well, Pliny, you should have kind of done this on your own initiative."
44:42Cuz it's probably a matter of a month, give or take, to get to Rome and then a month back, longer during winter when they're not sailing.
44:49The usual idea is that it's if you're riding along, galloping on a horse, you cover maybe 50 or 60 miles a day on decent roads.
44:57If you're on foot, you know, 15 or 20.
45:00And that's it, you know, unless you're sailing a ship. If you if if it's summer and you're it's two coastal cities, okay, great. You know, you can get from Rome to Alexandria in two weeks. But during winter, that's, you know, a whole lot longer cuz you're going around the coast, just galloping along, galloping along, and it's months.
45:14>> Game of Thrones had this figured out with the whole raven thing.
45:17>> The ravens are cool. Or or you have fire beacons, like Lord of the Rings. That's a real thing.
45:21But it's pretty rare. It's like for in certain kinds of invasions, the frontiers have these things.
45:25>> Yeah, the fire beacons Lord of the Rings.
45:27>> Right. Which are hardcore.
45:29And that is based on actual history.
45:31>> Right.
45:32>> Yeah, for for 13-year-old Garrett, it's like, "Yes, I'm going to history now."
45:35>> [laughter] >> What's that? So that's based on something real?
45:39>> That there were frontiers that had in the Byzantine world. So the if I remember correctly, it was the Eastern Byzantine frontier facing the the Arabs.
45:48So there was always these raids that come across the desert there, you know, from the the caliphates. And there were, I believe, a series of fire signals that went off towards Constantinople to warn people of the oncoming raid.
46:01>> Can you imagine like seeing that like laid up and you're like, "Oh [ __ ] Super Bowl's here. Let's >> It's going down, yeah.
46:07>> Let's go." And you know within 10 minutes cuz they just go like however many miles it was apart where you can see it. You can move stuff like >> Yeah, and I forget how far they were spaced, but um but yeah, it just it's very hard to uh move anything in the ancient world. Um and the sea helps a lot, but you know, it there are storms, there are shoals, there are leaky little ships.
46:28And yes, it's not >> Yeah, and and I back then obviously the like you said, the ship technology was nowhere near where it was even in the 15, 16, 1700s obviously way later when they were sailing across to America where they still lost a lot of ships.
46:41>> Right, right. They're they're little ships.
46:42>> come across, yeah. So like, you know, >> people have talked before about like the Antikythera mechanism which was found I guess like not that long ago, a few decades ago or something and it was it was believed to be a 2,000-year-old computer that was I believe I want to say from Roman Roman time Roman or Greek, one of them. You know, and that's obviously like an amazing finding, but do do we have like a record of other major shipwrecks that happened that you know, ships just never made it back with really important stuff on it that we've never found in our oceans?
47:20>> You know, often it's so common it's not even reported that things happen. But it's like the Antikythera mechanism, which is really cool. Um that was found about 100 years ago, but was not understood for much longer cuz there's just a bunch of, you know, rusty bits of bronze.
47:33>> Yeah.
47:33>> Uh it's thought to be an astronomical calculator where they would kind of um you know, kind of figure out what the heavens were doing. Probably made on Rhodes, they think um by a workshop of people who did like nautical instruments, but we aren't totally sure.
47:45Um about 100 BC is the usual guess.
47:48And it's sort of yeah, an analog computer basically.
47:50>> It's amazing.
47:51>> But it kind of a one-off. It was not not never done again as far as we know.
47:55Uh we have uh a fun thing. It's like in the Pantheon in Rome.
47:58>> Um you know, wonderful >> there.
47:59>> Right. Wonderful building, you know, awesome.
48:02If you look at it from a distance, the columns of the porch, the portico, are a little bit too short. Um it's kind of an odd proportion. So, if you look at the building from a distance, from like where there used to be a McDonald's in the back of the square, from like back there, um there's like a a cornice line above the actual roof of the porch that's about 10 ft higher.
48:20The thought is that there were originally taller columns that would have been lost at sea.
48:23>> Wait, a cornice line?
48:25>> It's like the the ridge line of the roof. It's like the a bit of decoration you would have along where the roof would come to the top. So, if you if you if you if you if you pull up the a picture of the Pantheon from the front, um it's kind of hard to see unless you're way off. Um yeah, so here, if you look kind of there's the portico out front. See above the the top of the roof is a secondary like line of decoration up there? It's higher.
48:45It's thought that it was supposed to be that tall, the porch, but the columns that came from Egypt, they're from either granite that come from southern Egypt, um were lost at sea, is one theory. So, they kind of talking about shipwrecks that had a a consequence on history. That's one possibility.
48:59They were they were diverted to Yeah, exactly. There we go.
49:02Um they were they were diverted to a different project. We aren't sure. But, it's quite possible that the ship bearing all those gigantic, you know, bits of granite from Mons Claudianus or whatever, just hit a rock and sank.
49:13>> And then they figured it out on the fly and so >> It's like, "Well, we've got some other columns, and you know, Trajan or Hadrian says, 'Well, stick them in.'" >> Yeah, Joe Joe, we were cuz Joe and I went to Paris and Rome last month for for 10 days. I hadn't been back to Rome since I lived there 11 years ago, so it was cool to be back, but obviously hadn't been in the Pantheon since then, but we went in to tour it. How many columns did we count? Like 27?
49:36Something like that around the >> Yeah, I think it was something like that.
49:40>> It But, we were like you go up and you touch the column and you're just like, "How did How did men move this so perfectly, build this into here, construct this beautiful artwork within the walls as well, perfectly proportioned. You got the the the top of this.
50:00>> Yeah, the the the oculus, yeah.
50:02>> You got the top of the oculus there with which I'm kind of blocking that picture, sorry. You know, that the rain falls in in a certain way like >> Mhm.
50:11>> It's breathtaking. It's breathtaking that they can pull this off.
50:14>> And that it's preserved so well there.
50:16You see what it what the whole city was like in some way, so at least it's monuments were like.
50:20Um, each of those columns, you know, those big granite columns there weighs about 40 tons, I believe it is. Um >> 40 tons.
50:26>> But those are by no means the biggest, you know, there are obelisks um from Egypt that are moved thousands of years before this that, you know, weigh 300 tons or more.
50:37>> Is the obelisk in the middle of St.
50:39Peter's Square one of those?
50:40>> It is. Yeah, it's a that one came um I'm trying to remember where that one came from originally. Heliopolis or something. But uh it was moved by Caligula, that obelisk. Um, there's an even bigger one next to uh St. John Lateran. It's the biggest one actually that we still have.
50:54And um >> St. John Lateran?
50:56>> Yeah, it's one of the big basilicas on the edge of the city. Um, it's called it's called um I think it's called the Lateran obelisk. Um, that that's the biggest one that we still have. That's right. And they got that from Egypt to there. Yeah, it's from Karnak, I think, uh if I remember correctly. On a ship, yeah. So, we actually um they they built these very long ships by their standards. Um, maybe 300-ton ships and they would kind of ballast it with lots of grain for example to keep this the ship more or less level.
51:22A lot of grain.
51:23And haul it across. And the hard part is actually not getting on the ship or getting it, you know, off the ship. It's bringing across Rome, this busy, you know, megalopolis uh with this giant shaft of granite.
51:33But, you know, labor's not expensive in ancient in ancient Rome, so >> Drug smugglers could have had a field day with that.
51:40>> They would have had a lot of fun with that.
51:41>> Was were were there any like OG drug smugglers back then?
51:44>> Well, there were outright smugglers of all kinds of things, you know, cuz there are uh all kinds of like local customs barriers in the ancient world. Uh pirates are really, you know, kind of the OG smugglers in a lot of ways. Um and they're they also attack ships, but they're moving goods, too.
51:58>> They had pirates over there back then?
52:00Referred to as pirates?
52:01>> Oh, yeah. Yeah, a gigantic gigantic problem for the Romans. Um because >> Real fast, Tony. Are you familiar with Colin Woodard? Have you ever seen his work?
52:10>> The name is familiar. You might um >> So, he was one of the main experts like the main expert on it's escaping me, but the Netflix documentary about the Golden Age of Pirates.
52:20>> That's yes, okay.
52:21>> Right. So, I had him in here.
52:23>> Really?
52:23>> Like almost 2 years ago.
52:25>> Oh, very cool.
52:25>> And I think I got it [ __ ] up in my head where I'll have to go roll the tape cuz I had food poisoning while we were recording that. So, >> That's tough to remember all of that.
52:33That's unfortunate. Okay.
52:34>> But he was amazing. [laughter] >> You know, you got muscle through around here.
52:38>> Uh yeah, okay. I was under the impression like thinking back on it when I was thinking about this podcast a few weeks ago that like pirates themselves were kind of like that term and that idea was born in the Americas back then. But you're talking about it.
52:53>> Oh, yeah. I mean, it's it's different in a lot of ways, but it's the same idea.
52:56You're you're attacking shipping and either ransoming people or stealing their stuff. And it became an epidemic in the first century BC. So, like you know, the Romans conquer the Greek East.
53:07They don't bother to replace the navies of these people that they attack in the Greek world. So, all over the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, there are huge pirate squadrons that attack whole cities. Um like there's this famous sanctuary of Delos, for example. It's an island in the It's an island in the Aegean. It's a very big sanctuary of Apollo. And they sack it cuz there are so many pirates. They they they they had to fend themselves. They had these people. Um they sack cities all over the Eastern Mediterranean, even in Italy, too. Cuz there are there are squadrons of thousands of men um rolling in cuz
53:35the Romans don't have a navy to oppose them.
53:37Eventually, Pompey, you know, Caesar's great opponent, is deputized to attack the pirates to take care of this problem. He sends squadrons across the whole Mediterranean Sea just kind of sweeping the coast going west to east and destroys the pirate fleets.
53:51>> Woah.
53:52>> But yeah, it was a massive problem.
53:53Yeah, this this Lician pirates.
53:55>> Here we go. Lician pirates dominated the Mediterranean Sea from the 2nd century BC until their suppression by Pompey in 67 to 66 BC because there were notorious pirate strongholds in Sicilia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. The term Cilician Is that pronounced >> Cilician.
54:14>> Right. So I'm sorry. Cilician. Yeah, I was here I'm like Sicilian.
54:17>> Yeah, different guys.
54:18>> was long used to generically refer to any pirates in the Mediterranean.
54:23>> And fun fact, so he he he takes all their ships, burns their ships, doesn't kill them all. He actually settles them in cities in what's now southeastern Turkey. He builds cities for >> He does. It's a place called Pompeiopolis in like the what's now southeastern Turkey. I went there actually once and >> you did.
54:39>> Yeah, you know as one does.
54:41And yeah, they actually like you know, given gainful employment. Like all right, pirates this is like your work release.
54:46>> It's like the original Australia.
54:47>> It is, exactly, you know, but cuz no one wants to live there. It was like a giant swamp. Yeah, there it is. So Soli Pompeiopolis.
54:53>> So they're like just build a city for us.
54:55>> And you know, they probably did build build do the work to build the city, but yeah, yeah, he just settled them there in their own community.
55:00Like all right, now you've got to work for a living.
55:02>> That's [ __ ] nuts, man.
55:04>> Yeah, so there we go. Work release. But uh Yeah, so so fun stuff. Pirates are are ancient.
55:09>> But you know, you were talking about like the the boats that would bring something as large as an obelisk over.
55:15They had to use like oh, let's let's get grain just to balance this out because you're dealing with very very old sea technology.
55:23Are the pirates operating on boats that are like a similar size or is it like the dinghy boat Somalian pirate kind of thing?
55:28>> It's probably a lot like the Somalian pirates in the beginning where it's like small squadrons of men who foray out from the coast from coastal bases to attack ships that are cuz ships in the ancient world never want to sail right across the Mediterranean. Storms are too dangerous. They want to hug the coast whenever they can, stay within sight of shore.
55:44So, that means they're always targets for pirates who are based on shore, waiting for ship to come into sight.
55:49They go out from their base and attack.
55:52Um so, these guys were based in what's now southeastern Turkey and in Cilicia, where where it's their name.
55:56But, um >> So, they would never go straight across?
55:58>> Almost never. Sometimes they would.
56:00They'd have to in some cases, but it was preferred to stay close to shore. So, if a storm comes up, you can get out of the your harm's way.
56:06>> From a safety perspective, of course, that makes it minus the pirates, that makes a ton of sense, but like from a time perspective >> It slows it down.
56:14>> Yeah, you're going to I mean >> But, but it also helps that the the winds in the Mediterranean, um at least in the east, kind of blow in a way that if you're coming from Alexandria, if I remember quickly, it makes sense to go along the coast. They kind of go first first north and then west. Um so, you kind of can hug the coast with the wind and then kind of follow the wind as it curls around the coast, um off towards Italy if you're coming from Egypt, for example.
56:33>> Interesting.
56:34>> Then you're fighting on the way back, but um so, there are ways to use the wind patterns where it's not just a matter of safety.
56:39Though, it's mostly a matter of safety.
56:40Cuz ships are so small and so crude.
56:43Um but, we were talking about the obelisk ships, which are huge. Um the other giant ships are the grain barges.
56:49So, they bring grain from Egypt. Um the Roman, you know, Egypt Egyptian grain feeds Rome. There it comes from other places, too. It comes from what's now Tunisia, for example, from Sicily. But, yeah, um >> tell me the Egyptians invented pasta?
57:01>> Well, you know, they contributed to the wonderful mix that >> Okay, yeah. They did not invent pasta.
57:07>> They did not invent pasta, though.
57:08>> Um but, anyway, uh >> [laughter] >> yeah, hardcore no. But, um but, no. So, that there was tons of grain in Egypt.
57:14It was very, you know, they had the Nile flood every year. Um so, it's reliably fertile. They have huge yields from their crops. And so, they send um massive amounts of grain to Italy to Rome itself every year. And there's a fleet that these huge barges, the oil tankers of the ancient world, pretty much, um with, you know, dozens of ships in a giant fleet. You wouldn't attack that if you're a pirate. That's too many people. They didn't have like outriders who would have like, you know, a you know, defense defended ships.
57:38>> people we talking? Like hundreds?
57:40>> A single ship might have hundreds of people on it.
57:43Um, you know, these are really big ships.
57:44>> Oh, Joe's got it. Is that what you're looking for? Maybe that first one? That first image shows what >> It says here like St. Paul. St. Paul was on a grain barge coming from Egypt. Um, and I think he there were hundreds of people on his ship.
57:57Uh, the other other Josephus, I think too, was involved in a shipwreck in large ship. There were hundreds of people on it.
58:02>> Josephus?
58:03>> Yeah, he's a Jewish author of the first century, um, who wrote this famous work on Jewish antiquities and also on the Jewish war, Rome's Rome's the Roman-Jewish War. And he was involved in a shipwreck, too, and has an account of it, if I remember right.
58:15>> I might totally be mixing up things here, but the Roman-Jewish War >> This is when they burned the temple.
58:20This is in the 70s.
58:21>> In Rome?
58:22>> No, so this >> Like in the ghettos?
58:24>> Well, I mean, there there were synagogues in Rome, too. But no, this is the war they fought against This is a generation after Jesus. This is between 67 and 70 AD.
58:33>> Okay, so this is down in the Holy Land you're talking about.
58:35>> Yes, yes. In in Judea, it's >> We're not localized, got it.
58:37>> No, no, so there was a revolt there and this guy was one of the leaders, Josephus, but he survived the war. Um, and he wrote an account of, including, I believe, a shipwreck, which I hopefully not misremembering.
58:47>> So, he lived through a shipwreck.
58:49>> That's like kind of back then That was like living through a plane crash or >> means a guarantee. Yeah, that was exactly. That's probably a good analogy.
58:56>> Can we see that first image, Joe, where it shows the inside?
59:00>> Yeah, this is a cutaway. Well, you some of the the coolest ships we've ever found in the ancient world, um, so that there were Caligula, you know, everyone's favorite deranged emperor.
59:09>> Yeah.
59:10>> Um, also an awful movie, by the way, in case you were ever tempted. But anyway, I >> There's a movie called Caligula?
59:15>> Caligula. Oh, yeah, it's a the famous pornographic So, it was a the guy who runs a Hustler magazine essentially was was in charge of making this movie, basically, and it shows.
59:26>> I'm shocked Joe doesn't know that right away.
59:28>> one of these movies that could have been really, really good. It's supposed to be like, you know, an X-rated look at the depravity and debauchery of ancient Rome, how power corrupts. It just became really, really bad porn. Really, really bad. Don't recommend.
59:41But anyway, >> 18% on Rotten Tomatoes is not great.
59:45>> bit too high, honestly.
59:47>> the 18% that voted 18% was jerking off the whole time, so that doesn't even count.
59:51>> Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't even feel good. Anyway, so it's one of these things >> [laughter] >> where Caligula built these giant barges on Lake Nemi, kind of near Rome, like the suburbs of Rome. And these barges were enormous. They're pleasure They were yachts, pretty much. And they probably They probably have pictures of these things. They found them. They're these giant ships.
60:10>> Is this what you're looking for?
60:11>> Exactly. And Mussolini decided he wanted to recover these ships. That everyone knew they'd sunk after Caligula's reign.
60:17They were on the bottom of this lake. So he drains the whole lake to recover these two giant ships. And they drag them out. They're these huge barges.
60:24They had flowing hot water. They had like a boilers on the ship. They had marble floors. It was really a palace on under sail.
60:32>> Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge, huge help.
60:38And if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or right here. And finally, you can follow me on Instagram and X by using the links in my description below.
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