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

0:00And now it was, the news began to reach Rome of the Chutons and the Kimberi. Initially, the reports detailing the numbers and strength of these invaders seemed fantastical, but it soon became clear that all the rumours were in reality under estimates of the truth. Three hundred thousand warriors were on the march, accompanied by even large numbers of women and children, all of them looking for lands and cities in which to settle. Who were these people? From what distant part of the world had they emigrated? It was unclear. For prior to their descent on Gaul and Italy, no one had ever heard of them. The beskis, they were Germans and had travelled from the lands that bore to the northern ocean. This supposition derived from various clues. Firstly, their enormous size. Next,

1:08the light blue colour of their eyes. And finally, the fact that Kimberi is a word which in their language of their Germans means plundera. That was the Greek historian Plutac and he's describing a very chilling and spine tingling terms, one of the most terrifying moments in Roman history. A migration of barbarians, which by the year 113 BC had arrived at the gates of Roman Italy. And these people, the Chutons and the Kimberi, Tom and I, am I stretching a point to say that effectively they're the Danes? Yeah. Plutac says that they come from the lands that bore to the northern ocean. And the general thinking is that this was probably Jutland and the regions north of it. I mean, it's a kind of proto-viking invasion, if you like. And it would have taken them a long time to get from Jutland down to the Alps. So it could well have taken the Chutons

2:12and the Kimberi anything up to a decade to get there. And if so, for most of that decade, obviously the Romans and the people of Italy had no idea what was approaching them. And it always kind of makes me think of those kind of Hollywood dramas where there's an asteroid hurtling towards planet Earth, or there are scientists experimenting with some zombie mutation in a lab. And people are going about their everyday lives, just waiting for this kind of appalling apocalypse to hit them. Yeah. It's December 2019 and you're hearing the first reports from Wuhan. Yes. People with unusual colds. And around the breakfast table, people are discussing their summer holidays. Exactly. And so in today's episode, we are going to be looking at what is going on in Rome as this migration rear apocalypse is hurtling towards them. And just to give people a sense of where we are in the history of Rome, we are a century before the age of Augustus. So before the establishment of the rule of

3:17the Caesar's and Rome at this point is still a republic. It is not ruled by an autocrat. And the star of this episode, the star of the show is the dominant figure of this period in the kind of the one tens, the 100s BC. And he is a brilliant soldier. He is a superb political operator. And he has emerged seemingly from nowhere to become the city's great popular hero. And this is a man called Gaius Marius. And he is a man whose achievements, whose ambitions over the course of the one tens and the one hundreds have increasingly put the whole of Rome in his shadow and will continue to do so for several decades after he is a titanic figure in the history of the Roman Republic. Yeah. And we'll be tracing history, won't we? So he has a, he has this great confrontation, doesn't he, with the tutors and the Kimberley.

4:20But that's merely the beginning of his extraordinary career. I mean, spoiler alert, he is the guy who is going to see off this apocalyptic threat. He is the kind of the Bruce Willis seeing off the asteroid. Then in 91 BC, when he's considerably older, he plays an important role in one of the most desperate wars that the Romans ever fight. It's not very well known, but it brought Rome almost to the brink. And this was a war that was fought against the Sockie, they called them, their comrades in arms. And these were the Italian allies who had been by the side of the Romans for centuries by this point. And suddenly they erupted and there's this terrible war that rages across Italy. And then most faithfully of all, an escalating gradually throughout the series to an incredibly bloody climax. We have the bitter rivalry between Marius and a younger man who had once been Marius's deputy. And this is a man called Lucius Cornelius Sulla. So I've been looking forward to this since we started the rest of this history because when I was a teenager, I wrote a series of books

5:24by Colleen McCulloch. I think you wrote the Thornbirds. And she wrote this Roman sequence in which the Marius Sulla rivalry played a huge part. It was a brilliant, if you're a teenage boy interested in Rome, you know, this is absolute canip. And the great thing about them is they seem such archetypes. So Marius, the representation, this is how she portrayed it anyway. Marius was ordinary kind of rough-hune. He was sort of unpolished. He's the representative of the ordinary people. And Sulla is decadent and he's golden-haired and he's cosmopolitan, sophisticated. And he's the representative of the upper classes. And I'm looking forward to finding out if this is absolute tosh or if this is actually true. And you can tell from their names. So Gaius Marius, he just has the two names. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, if you have three, that's a giveaway you are from, a kind of a higher class background. And Sulla is actually a patrician, which is the kind of the grandest of the grand in Rome. So there is definitely a class animus there. But the two of them, in lots of ways, are not

6:28entirely dissimilar. So both of them are intensely ambitious. And both of them are kind of dazzlingly ruthless opportunists. So they are completely worthy rivals. And this rivalry as you were as you were implying between the self-made man and the patrician, the one-time commander and the one-time subordinate, the guy with the two names and the guy with the three names, this is going to end up shaking the very foundations of Rome's Republic. Because it's going to result for the first time ever in a Roman army marching on Rome itself. Then there will be a murder of civil war. Prescription lists will be posted in the heart of the city. And Rome will end up being ruled by a military dictatorship. And this is a crucial turning point in the history of Rome. And it is a massive waystep on the road that will lead to the final collapse of the Republic and the establishment of the autocracy of the Caesars.

7:31So in some ways it anticipates, doesn't it, the civil wars between, you know, I don't know, Brutus and Cassius and one hand and Anthony and Octavian on the other. And as you said, it's the first step in this process that leads to the empire. Well, I think more saliently between Pompey and Julius Caesar. And Pompey, we are going to see the young Pompey towards the end of this series. And Marius, as we see, is going to develop links with the family of Julius Caesar. And so it's a kind of preface to that great Titanic struggle. But it's more than just a story about Rome, isn't it? About Rome as a city. Because we're at a point in Rome's history where Rome is a real geopolitical player and say what happens here matters across the Mediterranean. Yes, absolutely. And this has been signaled in incredibly brutal fashion. A few decades previously in 146 BC, when the Romans had wiped out two of the oldest and most celebrated cities in the whole of the Mediterranean. And the first of these was a city called Carthage.

8:32We did three whole series on the terrible wars that Rome fought against the Carthaginians. It's there. It was their old enemy. It was the kind of the great rival superpower in the the Western Mediterranean. And those three wars had culminated in the complete annihilation of Carthage. And then in the same year, the Romans wipe out the Greek city of Corinth, which again, I mean, it's one of the most famous cities in Greece. It's a place rich in mythology and culture and history. Absolutely obliterated. And this obviously serves as a devastating warning to the Greeks that there's very much a new sheriff in town. You do not want to mess with the Romans. And to be honest, the destruction of these two cities is a shock that reverberates across the Mediterranean. But there are plenty of people in Rome itself that feel a bit queasy about it. That there are Romans who start saying, well, you know, are we actually the baddies here? And this worries them because the conceit of the Romans throughout their rise to superpower status has always been that they

9:34are the most moral of people. And that everything they do is in self-defense. And if it's not in self-defense, then the gods went back them. And so the fact that they have this great empire is proof that the gods have been backing them. So in the way, they kind of conquer the world in self-defense. And so they don't want to think that they're bad people. They don't want to think that the gods are against them. You took them about them conquering the world. But actually, have they conquered the world? I mean, their empire, it's territorial. It's not enormous at this point. Is it? So just give us a sense of the panorama of Roman power. They have a kind of informal hegemony, I guess, over much of the Mediterranean. But you're right that the formal empire, the sense in which they have provinces, it is at this point still relatively small. So if you think of Rome in the Central Italy and you go clockwise, ran the Western Mediterranean. So Sicily, that was Rome's first province. They had instituted as a province in 241 BC as a result of the first great war that they'd fought against Carthage. Sicily had been the kind of the prize that they'd taken in that war.

10:39Then across the sea from Sicily, you have what's now Tunisia, what the Romans call Africa. This is where Carthage had stood and the Romans have annexed the hinterland of what had been the Carthage's territory in North Africa. Then southern and central Spain, again, the Romans had taken that from Carthage in the Second War, the war that featured Hannibal. And at this point, the Romans are advancing northwards into the kind of the northern reaches of Spain. And then you have the southern strip of Gaul, what the Romans called the Provincia, the province. And this is the Latin word that ultimately gives us the word provost. So it's what's now southern France. And so there's no question with Carthage gone, with all these former provinces of Carthage absorbed or new territories conquered, the Rome is undisputed as the great Hegemon of the Western Mediterranean. But what is ominous, I think, for people in the Eastern Mediterranean is that Rome, by this point, also has a couple of provinces in the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea.

11:45And this, of course, is these are lands that previously had been ruled by Macedonian kings, so the heirs of Alexander the Great. So one of these provinces had been the former Kingdom of Alexander the Great. It's become the Roman province of Macedon in that that fateful year 146 that had seen Corridor and Carthage destroyed as well. And across the Aegean from Greece, so what is now the Aegean Seaboard of Turkey, there is another province which the Romans called Asia. And this had been the kind of the Greek ruled Kingdom of Pergamum. Pergamum is a Greek city that controlled the kind of the Western half of what's now Turkey. And in 133 BC, it's last king a man called Atalus. He didn't really have an obvious successor. He was nervous at the Romans of what the Romans might do. And so basically he thought, well, maybe the obvious solution is just to give it to the Romans in my will. And so that's what he does. And it's one of the most spectacular bequests in the whole of

12:50history, because Pergamum is fabulously rich, quite apart from giving the Romans a toll hold in Asia. And it is, it offers the Romans all kinds of decadent pleasures that they had barely even realized existed until that moment. So everything from celebrity chefs to sex manuals, they're all brought back to Rome, where the elites, of course, think secretly they're brilliant, but lots of them pretend to be very disapproving. And lots of Roman moralists are genuinely disapproving. And I think I guess the closest parallel in modern history would be Puritan American tourists in the gilded age going to Paris. Right. Yeah, the flesh pots of Europe. The flesh pots of Europe. And of course bringing them back to the East Coast. Going to the Folly Beirgette, with Toulouseau Trek or something. Yes, exactly. And so plenty of the elder, very much friend of the show, when he's writing about this, he sees this whole period from the conquest of Macedon to the the granting by Atlas of

13:57his kingdom of Pergamum to the Romans as a period that his disastrous full Rome's moral character. So plenty wrote that the Romans were becoming a people who didn't just admire foreign opulence, but had learnt to covet it and plenty identifies the appropriation of Asia as a province, as having been a particularly disastrous blow to Roman morals. And it is a feature of the way the Romans think about geopolitics and the functioning of their own state that morals are incredibly important. Because as we've said, if they're not a moral people, then the gods won't favor them and their empire will collapse. It's a tiny bit like the British with India in the 18th century and the sort of anxiety that great wealth and expansion would bring corruption, which can wrap up with people at war and hastings. And all these people who came back and built great palaces. And I think it's there with Jefferson and that kind of tradition in America as well, isn't it? The anxiety about wealth and power, about empire. So yes, absolutely. This sense that

15:02the very greatness that Rome is winning threatens the moral foundations on which that greatness has been raised. And also, of course, the influx of enormous wealth into Rome contributes to a kind of a growing sense of resentment in the slums of the city that the richer getting richer and the poor is getting poorer. And again, this is something with which subsequent periods of history, I mean, people will be completely familiar with it, that influxes of wealth tends to heighten class divisions, divisions of in living standards. And the poor in Rome, they're all citizens of a republic. They're meant to be part of a kind of a common project. Race, publicer means kind things that are shared in common, things that are public. The poor in Rome are increasingly suspicious that the aristocratic class, the Nobel aides, as they're called in Matin, that they no longer care anything for the mass of their poorer fellow citizens.

16:03Metropolitan elites are out of touch. Exactly. And so this is generating a pretty fee-brown mood in Rome. And it's the kind of mood, again, perhaps not entirely dissimilar to the present day, in which an outsider, if he has luck, if he has talent, if he has boldness on his side, he might be able to prosper. People from not the obvious backgrounds might be able to get to the top of the tree, might be able to make themselves the masters of the republic. And this brings us very neatly, doesn't it, to protagonist, to Gaius Marius. So Marius is born in 157 BC in our Penum, which is about 80 miles outside Rome. Is there a British town that would be a nice equivalent for our Penum, Tom? I guess it's kind of swindon, basically. Wow, roundabouts, roundabouts, and warehouses. I mean, having said that, our Penum is actually a kind of very old

17:03city, say, perhaps the parallel doesn't exactly hold. But I guess that the people in Rome would view our Penum as, I don't know, people in W1 might view Swindon. As being not exactly the obvious breeding ground of great dominant figures in the state. And actually, our Penum is a classic example of how the kind of the immediate hinterland around Rome, so Layshjem as it's called, has come to be knitted into the fabric of the republic and basically kind of turned into the people of Layshjem have been turned into Romans. So our Penum had been conquered back in 305 BC and its people initially had been given a slightly inferior form of Roman citizenship. So the Romans called it Kiva Tass, seen a suffrage, citizenship without, well, without suffrage, without the vote. They have lots of rights, but they don't have the right to vote for magistrates. But then in 188 BC, our Penum finally gets the full deal, so citizenship with the right to vote. And that means that the parents of Marius who belong to the local aristocracy in our Penum, they basically belong to

18:10the first generation in the town who can take this for granted, who can feel that they are part of not just the local politics of their own small town, but of the great city 80 miles to the west. This of course means that the young Marius growing up in our Penum, he's aware of himself as a Roman, but he is also still very much aware of himself as a provincial, that he's in a city where people have not been able to vote for magistrates in Rome, let alone runners magistrates in Rome for very long, only a few decades. And so probably as a boy, he doesn't hold out much prospect for himself, you know, as a future political star, because there is a very deep vein of snobbery in the Roman people, and they may resent the nobilais, the aristocracy for their wealth and their sense of superiority, but they do simultaneously love families with strong brand recognition. And I guess again, if you want to know that American parallel, it would be like, you know, the way people

19:12keep voting for Clintons or bushes or whatever. But unlike, let's say Bill Clinton, or indeed, I'd think any of the bushes, Marius is the recipient of an extraordinary omen, well, he's a subject of an extraordinary omen when he's a little boy, and Plutuck recorded this, didn't he? Something to do with an eagle. Plutuck has to be said, will always prioritize a fun story over a likely story. It'd be a very good history podcaster. Yeah, he absolutely would. So this is Plutuck. When Marius was still a boy and living out in the country, he caught an eagle's nest in his cloak, as it fell from a tree. This nest contained seven baby eagles. His parents were so surprised by this freak of currents that they asked a local southseyer what it intended. And the southseyer replied that Marius would become the greatest man in the world and was destined to hold the consulship no less than seven times. Wow, and of course, Plutuck is writing this sometime after the events, after he knew what happened to Marius. Skeptic might say that Plutuck was making this up,

20:17but I choose to believe it. I choose to believe that this happened. Well, just to say that there is, as we will see in due course, evidence that Marius did believe something like this. He did believe that he was destined to have seven consulships. But seven consulships, now that I know that that is an absolutely extraordinary prediction. And maybe you should explain to the listeners precisely why it's such a mad prediction. It's completely implausible because of the significance that the consulship plays in Rome's Republic. So every year, two consuls are elected and they wield the powers of the monarchy that had been expelled from Rome back in 509 BC. So the consuls other magistrates who lead Rome's armies into war, who preside over the Senate and over the elections that are held in the city, and who crucially mediate between the Roman people and the gods. And these powers, of course, are potentially very, very intoxicating. And this is why there are

21:21two consuls so that each one can keep a watch on the other. And it's why their term of office is limited to a single year so that they won't have time to entrench their power. And for a century now, so as Marius is growing up, it's been a no-no for someone to have more than one consulship. That hadn't always been the case, but it's become kind of institutionalised. And whether this is an official law or whether it's just the pressure of custom is, I think, unknowable. But it's clearly the case that you're not supposed to have more than one consulship as Marius is growing up. And what makes it even more of a challenge for Marius, you know, any prospect of seven consulships, just having one consulship seems an almost impossible dream, because he is what the Romans called an office homo, a new man, someone who has no tradition of holding magistrates in his family, and particularly consulships. And it's obvious why this would be the case, because Marius is from Arpinum, and Arpinum has only just been given the vote. So of course, you know, his family haven't

22:24had time to get loads of consulships. And just to emphasise how mad it is even to dream of having seven consulships, no Roman in history has held seven consulships. The record is six, seven just seems impossible. All right, well, we'll see whether he gets there. But let's kick off with Marius' first steps on the ladder. And I guess if you're an ambitious and talented young man from nowhere, from a provincial town, the obvious way to get ahead is through proving yourself in the one thing that the Romans prize more than any other, which is the kind of, you know, the military arena, because, you know, this is the bedrock of Roman power, isn't it? The army, and this is where Marius is really intending to make his name. Yes, if you want to make a name for yourself, what you ideally want is some desperate and hard-fought war in which you can go off and be a hero. Unfortunately for Marius, in one three four BC, exactly such a war is being fought in the northeast reaches of Spain. So remember, we said that the Romans are pushing northwards into the

23:28Iberian peninsula, and they have come up against the people of a city called Numentia, and this war has been grinding on for two decades. And the Senate have got absolutely fed up with it. So the Senate is the assembly of the Novelays, the kind of the movers and shakers in Rome. And so, accordingly, they say, we need our top man to go and sort this out. And there's no question who the top man in Rome at this point is. It's a guy called Scipio Imelianos, and people who listen to our episode on the destruction of Carthage may remember that he is the general who brings that war, final war against Carthage to a close and wipes the city out. And it's a measure of how desperate the Senate is to have Scipio take over this command that they allow him to have a second consulship. So we said, this is very, very irregular. They really, really need Scipio at the front though. So they say they kind of turn a blind eye to the irregularity of it. And so Scipio travels to Spain in command of a vast army. He has 20,000 men, which is roughly four legions,

24:31so a very sizable fighting force of Roman citizens. He also has lots of Socki, these Italian allies who fight alongside the Romans. And also he has auxiliaries. And the Socki and these auxiliaries come to 40,000 in all. And among the auxiliaries, there is, there is some particularly glamorous and celebrated fighters. And these are horsemen from a region in North Africa, basically it's Algerian now called Nimidia. And the Nimidians have been allies of the Romans for almost a century. The Alliance had been forged in the war against Hannibal. Originally the Nimidians had been on the side of Hannibal and then they had switched sides. And when Carthage falls, the Nimidians have been given a lot of Carthaginian territory as a kind of reward and to cement their status as allies of the Roman people. And the particular contingent of horsemen at Niamantia is led by a very charismatic young Nimidian prince called Jagurtha. And he has brought not only cavalry but also

25:3512 war elephants. And there is a kind of a kind of ancestral relationship between the Nimidian royal family and the families of the Skipios because Skipio Afraqanus, the guy who had defeated Hannibal, he had been great mates with this Nimidian king. So it's it's it's there's a kind of sense that you know this is a family business. Now when Skipio travels to Nimantia, he takes with him as a junior officer, the young Marius. And Marius does really really well there. Just a quick question about Marius. So do we have any sense of his appearance, personality sort of I don't know his bearing, his vibe at this point? I think he's he's like if you imagine Channing Tatum. Wow he's big. Okay. He's brave. He's physically tough. He loves fighting. He's in other words, he's a natural soldier. And he's a soldier in the kind of traditional old school way that the Romans love. So he he despises fancy

26:36cooking. He's not interested in celebrity chefs. Okay. He despises snooty manners. He doesn't have a you know, a kind of expensive education. He loves sleeping on hard ground with his men with only his cloak to cover him. You know, it's all that kind of thing. Right. So he's very Roman. A Roman in the way that the Romans like to imagine themselves. Yeah. He hasn't been spoiled by all these snooty manners and things and by great great learning and stuff. He's not a man for a sex manual. Well, we'll we'll come maybe come to that and do you course. I think at this point he's not a man for a sex manual. He is he's rough and tough and hardy and he loves fighting barbarians. And this is this is everything the Romans want in a kind of a young, upwardly mobile officer. He's also a very strict disciplinarian. And to be honest, the Romans love a strictest barbarian. They love being whipped into shape. And this is what Marius is very good at. And he fights and kills one of the the commanders of the Niemantians in hand to hand combat. And Scipio Amelianos is watching this

27:39and thinks it's absolutely brilliant. And later that evening Scipio is with all his officers. And one of them asks him, you know, who do you see as being the coming man? Who among the younger generation is someone to watch? And Scipio turns to Marius and he touches him on the shoulder very fondly. And he says, perhaps this is the man. And this is a massive thing for Marius. You know, a commendation from the great war hero Scipio Amelianos. And it marks him out as a man who, you know, deserves well of the Roman people. It's something that can launch a political career. He's a featuring the captain. That's exactly what he is. He's the he's the batsman who has been anointed by the team captain as the man who's going to carry the fortunes of the nation in the next 10 years. I think that's a very fair comparison. So in 133 BC Niemantian falls, it's all great. Scipio goes back and Marius goes back as well. There is one problem which is that Scipio dies very

28:44shortly afterwards. Had Scipio stuck around then he would have been the perfect patron. So it is a bit of a blow. But Marius doesn't give up because he's got his battle scars. He does have this commendation from Scipio, which is a big deal because all of these really matter when it comes to elections, particularly if you're an unknown. You know, you need a story to tell and Marius has a story to tell. And fortunately he does also have an alternative source of patronage to Scipio. And this is one of the very grandest of the noble families, a family that has been serving as the patrons of Marius's family in Arpinum for several generations. And these are the Kaikili Matteli. And they are at this period probably the top aristocratic dynasty in Rome. They are madly efficient as a dynasty in hoovering up consulships, for instance. So between 123 and 98 BC, no less than seven of them will hold the consulship. I mean, that's an unprecedented success rate for

29:47a single family. And they have been the great rivals of the Scipio family. But when Scipio Emilio honest dies, the great patriarch of the Matteli behaves very, very well in exactly the kind of way again that the Romans like to think that that their great men should. So he runs out into the streets sobbing, tearing his clothes, crying out to the great buttress of the city has fallen the man who was our bulwark. And he orders his sons to help carry the funeral buyer of Scipio. So in death, there is reconciliation between these two great families. And how is it that Marius can ride both horses? How can he have the patronage of both if they're rivals? Or is that not a problem? Because the Matteli are his political patrons and Scipio had been his military patron. And basically, if you're not a threat to either of them, you can have both of them, I think. So Marius is a, I mean, although we've portrayed him as Channing Tatum as kind of rough you, he's a smart political

30:52operator to line up both of these. Yeah. And the fact that you play the simple rough you soldier, doesn't mean you're stupid. I mean, you may well be playing that part because you know that it appeals. I mean, there's obviously you can't do it unless it's a strong element of truth to it. But it doesn't imply that there's not an element of calculation and projecting that image. And again, you know, people will be able to think of people in their own politics, perhaps who, you know, you can draw comparisons with. Yeah. So in Britain, we would talk about the Greasy Bowl, wouldn't we about climbing the Greasy Bowl, which Marius clearly is now hoping with their backing with his war record that he can do. They don't have the same expression, do they? Obviously, what's the expression the Romans have? So they call it the Cursace Sonorum. So it's literally the kind of the the race track of honors of of magistracies. And the racetrack is obviously derived from the circus maximus, which is this great public space where all the people of Rome gather.

31:52And this racetrack leads from magistracie to magistracie. And the finishing line, of course, is the consulship, which is the top magistracie. But as we've said, this for a novice homo, like Marius, a new man, I mean, it's a big ask that finishing tape of the consulship is a very long way. So in the immediate present, he has to focus on kind of more junior magistracies. Unfortunately, there is one magistracie in particular, which really seems to suit his skill set. Because this is a magistracie, which requires the man who holds it to defend the interests of the people against the sanitorial elites. And this is, you know, perfectly suited to Marius. The problem is that in 119 BC, when Marius decides to run for it, even though that this office is a very potent one, it is also quite a dangerous one to hold. And this office is the Tribune of the plebs of the plebians,

32:55of the people. And it comes with incredible powers. So the Tribune has the veto, very famous. A Tribune can veto any bill that he thinks threatens the interests of the plebs of the people. He has a right to convene public assemblies, so not the Senate, but gatherings of the general citizenship, and get them to pass bills of his own, so plebiscites. His own person is absolutely in violet. It is completely forbidden to lay hands on him. And the reason why that's important is obviously is that if the Tribune is passing measures or blocking legislation that is supported by the mass of the aristocracy, you know, he has to be respected. There is he respected. This is the question. So this is the question. So Marius decides that he's going to run for the Tribune at in 119. And we've said it's a very potent magistracy, but at this time it is also a very dangerous one for anyone to have. Marius has been elected Tribune just two years after one of his predecessors had been murdered.

33:56And this, of course, had been a terrible sacrilege. We've said that, you know, the person of a Tribune is in violet. And the death squad that killed this Tribune had been led by a consul. And the corpse of the Tribune had been systematically insulted. The body had been decapitated, and the head, the skull had been filled with lead to serve as a trophy. So in other words, class war, as Marius is looking to make his way, you know, the first kind of lengths of the cursus and aureum has come to Rome. And for someone like Marius, who is a man of the people, no real pedigree or background, but very ambitious, this means that the tightrope he's going to have to tread is incredibly treacherous and potentially fatal. So Marius is setting out on this potentially fatal tightrope. And the stakes are very high and we'll find out what happens after the break.

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36:11Welcome back everybody to the Restless History of the Year. It's 119 BC and the ambitious provincial self-made man, Gaius Marius, who is now already in his late 30s, so he's only two years short of his 40th birthday. He has won his first major political office, his first major majesty. He has become, as he intended, a tribune of the plebs and as we were saying before the break, Tom, although it's meant supposedly in violet. This is an increasingly dangerous role in the febrile politics of Rome at this point for a man like Marius to hold. Now why specifically at this point is this so politically febrile? What makes this so contentious? Because the previous decade and a half, the tribunate had been used to foster what in the opinion of conservatives in the senate, a very radical, very dangerous and in the opinion of conservatives, very un-Roman

37:16reforms and policies. And these have been pushed by two brothers. The elders of these is Tiberius Gracas. He had become tribune in 133 BC. His younger brother Gaius Gracas, he had become tribune 10 years later. And both these brothers had used their tribunates to push for reforms that were very overtly in favour of the poor. So the measures that they pushed for included. Having publicly held land, state held land, being divided up and given as allotments to those who had no land in the city. So the bottom of the bottom, the most impoverished layers of Roman society. They had pressed for corn to be sold below the market rate. So subsidised food. And they pushed for the poorest citizens when they got levied into the army to be given their own clothes, their own kind of kit and equipment. And this was seen by the senate as monstrously left wing to be an acronistic about it. Milletant class war politics. Yeah. And particularly

38:22Gaius Gracas, the younger, the Tony Ben of Republican Rome. Because he had far more than his elder brother, a very self-consciously revolutionary vision. So he basically wanted to turn the republic into a kind of version of the democracy that the Athenians had. He wanted very deliberately to alter the balance of power between the noblets, between the senatorial elite and the mass of the people. And I suppose ultimately he wanted to enshrine the populace, the people, as the arbiters of Rome, rather than the sonatas, the senate. So it would be, I guess, the people in the senate of Rome, rather than the other way around. That's his kind of ambition. And to conserve it as a senate, I mean, this is beyond the pale. This is monstrous. And they see Tiberius Gracas and particularly Gaius Gracas as potential tyrants. Why else would they be pushing these reforms? It could only be because they want absolute power. And something that confirms the senatorial conservatives in this opinion is a very sinister trend. So Tiberius Gracas,

39:27when he'd finished his one year as Tribune, he'd immediately sought re-election. And Gaius Gracas in one, two, two BC, he'd finished his term stood again and actually been elected. And this is really sinister because it is pretty fundamental to the way that the Romans understand politics that you shouldn't hold a majesty see for more than one year. Because if you do, then you have the chance to entrench your own powers, your own support. And so the enemy of the Gracchi in the senate feel themselves entirely justified in imagining that it is an ambition for tyranny that is motivating the Gracchi. And that the office of the Tribune, it may be in violet, but it's not as in violet as maintaining the integrity of the Republic. And so twice this great cry had gone up that the Republic needs defending the Constitution is in peril. And twice this cry had been answered. So in 133, Tiberius Gracas had been clubbed to death with the leg of a stool.

40:34He'd been cornered and had his head smashed to pieces. And then in one, two, one, Gaius Gracas, as we heard before the break, he'd been murdered, his corpse to capitated, the skull filled with lead, and 3,000 of his followers had been rounded up and executed without trial by the consuls. And these executions had been justified in terms of a national emergency. To stress, if people think, well, this is probably part of the run of the mill, you know, Roman politics is very violent. That's not right at all right. This is a massive rupture with the previous traditions of Roman politics. Completely. These are the first eruptions of civil violence on the streets of Rome since the expulsion of the monarchy back in 509 BC. It's that big a deal. Well, so for 400 years or so. For 400 years. And it is experienced to something completely shocking. So what's the significance of these atrocities? I think both more and less than they seem. So more because it's a fatal precedent. I guess if you're being

41:40florid, you would say that a fatal toxin has been injected into the body politic. And we're never florid. If a consul can justify putting an elected tribune to death and completely ignoring his inviolability, simply by referencing a national emergency, then what's the stop? Magistrates in the future doing exactly the same. I mean, it's a kind of Vimar process, isn't it? It leads to bad places. If you can kill a tribune, then why can't you kill anybody? I mean, one consul could kill another consul and say there are threats to the survival of the Republic. Because when you break a taboo, yeah, the taboo is never as strong as it had been before. It was broken, I would say. So it's very pregnant with menace for the future. At the same time, I think it's kind of less than it seems because the instincts of the Romans remain across the board incredibly conservative. The reason actually a threat of open-class warfare of the kind that was always

42:44tearing Greek cities apart. And this is because as we've said, the Romans, the mass of the Romans, are just inherently very, very conservative. They may feel resentful of the elites, but they simultaneously feel very respectful of them. Again, I think there's something of the way that maybe, I mean, American listeners may disagree with this, but from this side of the Atlantic, people seem to really hate billionaires in America, but also simultaneously respect them. I think there's something of that in the kind of the Roman attitude to the senatorial elite. It's part of the tradition that the Senate and the people should work together, and the people feel that tradition to be as precious as the Senate do. So it's not like actually Rome is going to collapse into, as I say, into class conflict. And so this for someone like Marius, you know, here is an opportunity because he is perfectly suited to play the part of the people's friend, a popularis in Latin. You could translate that perhaps as a populist. People are very nervous,

43:44you know, among the tribunes, they're very nervous of pushing legislation that might offend the elites because they've seen what's happened, but Marius is bold enough to do this. So he, he passes a bill that restricts the ability of the Nobel A's to influence voters in the voting pens. It's kind of like, it's not exactly introducing a secret ban it, but it's kind of something along those lines. And this is the first overtly populist gesture since the death of Gaius Gracus. And to quote Plutarch, this one, him a reputation as a person of great courage, a formidable opponent of the conservatives in the Senate, and someone who could be relied upon to stick up for the common man. And Plutarch isn't exaggerating there. Marius was, I think, being brave because it is a period of massive reaction. So the historian Salas writing a few decades later, he described it as a kind of affection of the, of the few, ruled by the few. And these few consist of just the, you know,

44:44the top, the grandest, the snootiest Nobel A's. And among these Nobel A's are the Matelle. So obviously, you were asking previously, you know, is there a risk for Marius of running against the interests of the Matelle? There absolutely is because the Matelle are furious with him for, you know, this law that he's introduced. And they withdraw their patronage. And this has a knock-on effect for Marius' prospects because for several years after his tribunate, he struggles to get another majestycy. And in fact, in, in 116, massive embarrassment, he manages to lose two elections in the, on the same day. Oh my god. You know, he's clearly not doing well. But, you know, to pursue the sports analogy, he backs himself. Right. He's not going to, he's not going to be cast down by a few disappointments. Form is temporary. Class is permanent. And he's got class. He's got class. And the evidence of that class is that he's able to keep the backing of the people, but in due course, he's able to win back the support of the Matelle. Because the Matelle can see

45:47he is actually someone it's worth having on side. And so, relations between them are patched up. And so a decade on from his tribunate, Marius is back in the race, you know, the Cursor Sonorum is going well for him. He's secured admittedly by the skin of the, of his teeth. But, you know, he's got it, a governorship in Spain. And this enables him to do what he does best, which is to demonstrate his talents as a commander. And he promotes himself as a kind of no nonsense, enthusiast for law and order. Common sense governorship. So again, to quote Plutarch, the province back then, that Spain was still very savage and uncivilized since the Spaniards thought banditry and honorable profession. And Marius is having none of that. Lots of crucifixions and scourgings and enslavements, as I say, common sense. So he's robust, he's robust in Spain. But also he, you know, we haven't mentioned his personal life at all. But actually, his personal life has taken a very exciting turn because he is married into, well, the most single, most

46:51well-known family in all Roman history, hasn't he? He has. Yes, although at the time, it's, it's very ancient, it's very patrician, but it's slightly down on its luck. It hasn't had a great success in elections for centuries and more. And this of course is the family of the Caesars. So Marius marries Julia, who is the sister of the father of Julius Caesar. So Marius is going to be the young Julius Caesar's marital uncle. And so big part in Colin McCulloch's books, all of this. Yeah. So Marius is being knitted into the, you know, a key aristocratic family. And he's got the Matelli back on side, by this point. Yeah. So brilliant. And this is crucial because he's got the backing of one Matelli's in particular. And this is a guy called Quinter's Cachelius Matelli's who is, he is an absolutely instinctive oligarch. I mean, he's very much

47:52politically not Marius's cup of tea. He's a person of great personal integrity, but in that kind of flinty, slightly off-putting manner that is characteristic of very moral, upstanding Romans. But crucially for Marius, this reputation as someone who is both very upstanding and a very effective soldier has one Matelli's, a relationship to the consulship for the year 109. And this is great for Marius because Matelli's as consul has been appointed to the command of an exceedingly challenging war in Africa. And this in turn means that Matelli's is going to need a trusted and competent legatus, a number two, a deputy. And Marius is the obvious candidate. He's a man of proven courage, of proven ability. And he is also a long-term client of the Matelli. And so Marius says yes, doesn't he? And he says yes, both because he's obviously, he's obviously

48:55very good at fighting wars. So he mad for him to say no. But also, you know, the military sphere and the political sphere, they're interconnected, aren't they, in Rome in this period. And Marius is thinking that, you know, proving himself on the battlefield as the perfect way to reboot his stalled political career. Well, I think more specifically, it might give him a chance to have a crack at the ultimate and go for the consulship. And Marius hasn't told Matelli's this. It's like a kind of dream that he's hugging to himself. But his plan, I think, is to go to Africa to win a few dashing victories to make a name for himself in Rome to have his back as in Rome of which he has quite a lot by this point to kind of really hype him up. And then to go back, run for election, and you know, he might be in with a chance. But obviously this does require him to make a good fist of things in Africa. And things there have not been going well for the Romans at all. So it's

49:56not going to be easy. So reason for this is because they are up against an enemy who knows them very, very well. And this is none other than an old Conrad of Arms of Marius. They'd serve together at Niemantia. And this is the Niemidian prince Jagurtha, the guy who had brought the cavalry and the 12 elephants to Niemantia. And I say prince, but in fact, by this point, he's killed his two cousins who are the legitimate heirs to the Niemidian throne, the legitimate princes, and made himself the king of Niemidia. So he's a usurper sitting on the throne. And to oil the wheels of his rise to power, to get the approval of the powers that be in Rome, he has lavished massive bribes. He's just been spraying them around. And even Jagurtha had been surprised by the level of corruption that this had revealed in a city supposedly made up of stern flinty, unyielding

50:56moralists. And he made a very famous comment on Rome, which Salas recorded. He described the scribes as a city for sale and bound for imminent destruction should a buyer be found. And on top of this, the other reason that Jagurtha has really been pushing things too far is that he hasn't been behaving as the Romans think a kind of tame client king should. So in 112 in direct contravention of Roman instructions, he had attacked and killed the second of his two cousins who'd kind of retreated and he's hold up in a town called Keirta. And in the course of this attack, which the Romans had told Jagurtha anyway not to do, Jagurtha's men had killed a number of Romans. And this is too much really for the senate back in Rome, no matter how many bribes Jagurtha is shoveling their way. And so they think, okay, this has gone too far, we need to topple him. This however proves easier said than done. And the reasons for this are numerous. Firstly, New Midia is kind of

52:00flat and open so it's perfect cavalry country. And the strength of the Romans of course is their legions, their heavy infantry. Also, the Roman forces in Africa are very flabby and out of shape, so they need a strict disciplinarian to turn up and whip them into shape. And a console who had been sent out to fight Jagurtha had shown himself to be absolutely useless and resulted in a series of embarrassing defeats. So again, to pursue the sporting analogy, the England manager has lost to Andora. Yeah, to Iceland. Or Iceland, yes. And Matelis is the guy who's been appointed to go and whip them into shape. Yeah, basically they've been messing around with wags. Yeah, exactly. They're barely training and you've got a new manager who's a disciplinarian and and bringing in Marius who is the number two. Yeah, who's the set piece coach or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Grimm faced set piece coach who will make them like train six times a day. Yes. So Salis describes Matelis as a formidable and unrelenting man and so he is. He goes in,

53:03gets them onto the training ground, you know, practicing their callers, whatever, and whips them into shape. And then he gets them ready. They go on the offensive. They defeat Jagurtha in a pitch battle. All Jagurtha's war elephants are wiped out. And Matelis very cleverly then starts subordinate Jagurtha's in a circle so that Jagurtha doesn't know who he can trust. Jagurtha inevitably opts for a guerrilla war. This is the classic thing. I mean, this is where New Media is the place where the French will end up fighting their war in Algeria centuries and centuries later. And Matelis, rather like the French do, he responds by ravaging the countryside, taking vast numbers of prisoners, capturing settlements one by one, burning them if they resist, kind of calculated series of atrocities. And the Senate think this is brilliant to quote Salis. They decreed supplications to the immortal gods in return for the successful deeds of Matelis. And really, the only flying the oipment as Matelis's year as console draws to a close is the fact

54:05that Jagurtha is still on the loose. But Matelis is assuming that's not really an issue. He's done so well that even though he's no longer console, he's presuming that he will continue to be in charge of this war. And it is at this point that Marius makes his move. So in the summer of 108, he goes to Matelis and he says that he wants the head back to Rome and he wants to run for the console ship. And Matelis is stunned by this. He responds with complete astonishment, then with contempt, and then he makes a joke of it. But Marius is absolutely objuret. And Matelis who thinks he hasn't got a hope, I mean, he's just an office home. What hope does he possibly have? He says fine, okay, you can go back. But very pointedly, he keeps Marius with him in the field until the very last moment so that Marius only gets back to Rome in the very nick of time to register himself for the consular election. And I think that Matelis is doing this to ensure that Marius won't have time to do any of the campaigning that, you know, it's essentially if you're going to be console. But Matelis

55:09has badly underestimated Marius because we said that Marius has lots of agents back in Rome. And unknown to Matelis, these have been doing a lot of campaigning while Marius has been away in Africa. And they have been playing the popularist card. They've been saying, look, Matelis is stiff, arrogant, chilly, haughty. This isn't the kind of person that we want. What we want is a man of the people, a man like you. That's pretty sneaky of Marius is turning on his own patron. He completely is. That's poor. That has slightly messed with my sense of guy as Marius who I always thought was like Rupert Lowe turning on Nightleaf for Rose. That's absolutely not the analogy that I would have picked. So I always thought that Marius would never have stooped to that, but I was wrong. Well, we said he gives the impression of being, I think, a bit of a meathead. Yeah. But that's a show. Marius is a very shrewd, calculating commander, but also a politician. He's very, very effective.

56:13And he knows that, you know, in politics as in war, you have to prepare for success. And that's what he's been doing. And he knows that there is a huge constituency and not just among the mass of the people in the Senate as well, who are fed up with this kind of faction of the few. These guys who've been in control and hogging the consulship for a year after year, and want them out of the way. And so he is the guy who dares to put his head above the parapet and he duly reaps the reward. So not only is he elected consul for 107 BC, he gets Mattelis's African command. My God, if you're Mattelis, you are absolutely raging at this point. Oh, he's furious. He's absolutely livid. He's the guy who's basically defeated to GERFER. And he's closing in on the kill. And justice is doing that. Suddenly, he gets a message saying, you got a hand over your command to your former deputy. But it is what it is. You know, Mattelis has got to do what the Senate tells him. And so he goes back to Roman a massive straw. And his mates in the Senate there try to make things up for him by boating him a splendid

57:15title, Numidikus, you know, the guy who's defeated the Numidians. And we've said how the number of names that you have in Rome is a marker of your status. He now has a fourth name. So that's some consolation, I guess. Meanwhile, Marius is in Africa. He takes control of the war against GERFER. And within a year, he has brought it to a successful conclusion. GERFER himself is driven out of Numidia and goes to Mauritania, the neighboring kingdom, what's now Morocco. But Marius is not going to leave him there to continue to stir up trouble. He wants a line drawn under the whole war with GERFER. And so accordingly, he has an eye for talent. He's got this general staff and he picks out the shrewdest, the cleverest, the most diplomatically able, the bravest of all his left-tenants. Sends this officer to the king of Mauritania to negotiate the surrender of GERFER. And this officer, you know, proves himself to be everything that Marius had

58:16hoped, incredibly subtle, incredibly fearless. He pulls the diplomatic mission off. GERFER falls into Roman hands. This left-tenant takes GERFER back to Marius and Marius then heads back to Rome with GERFER in chains. Do you know I've been massively looking forward to this? Well, that's you dreading it because I remember having to translate this, like some passage about GERFER's in chains. Yeah, in Salas. As it was Salas, yeah, we had to do this at school. I mean, I don't want to make this switch off, but the act of translating this was sold destroying. It was so dull. But you're going to make it exciting, aren't you? I thought from your enthusiasm for Conny McCulloch that you were going to say that you remember this moment as a particularly grim and terrifying moment. So Marius has gone back and it's the first of January 104. So it's the new year, the Roman New Year. And he's been given a triumph. It's great kind of celebrated procession through the streets of Rome that gets given to victorious generals. And he's celebrating it on New Year's day. His triumph involves him riding in a chariot, dressed in the robes of a triumphal general through Rome,

59:23with his legions, all the loot that he's taken in New Midia and his legions following him. And GERFER is led in chains before the cheering mass of the Roman people being booed and spat out and people throwing eggs and whatever at him. I mean, kind of moderately interesting and fun, I think. No, it's a genuine interesting. I just think the key thing, looking at your notes, is they probably didn't know the word for earlobes. And that was what threw me. Because at the end of the triumph, GERFER is taken to one side and taken to this hideous prism. And their, his earrings are pulled off and they yanked off so brutally that his entire earlobe comes away with the earrings. Surely any young Sambrick would have enjoyed it if he'd got to translate it. And then he's thrown into this freezing cold dungeon and I'll quote Plutarch, Gigertha's wits unsettled by this and grinning horribly. He cried out by Hercules, what cold baths you have here in Rome. Great banter. I don't think it's banter. I think he's

1:00:30gone mad by this point already. Really? And so he's chained up down in the bottom of this hideous cell and six days later he dies of the cold and malintrition. And that's the end of Gigertha. And so for Marius, everything's turned out brilliantly. So he's got his consulship. He's gone to Africa, he's won his war. He's got a brilliant name for himself as Rome's greatest general. There are just two slight clouds on the horizon. And the first of these is that beyond the Alps, the two tons and the Kimberi are reported to be moving on Italy. The asteroid is heading towards the zombie apocalypse. He's breaking out. Do you know what they are? They're the white walkers. They're the white walkers from Westeros. Yeah. And so in Rome, all eyes are fixed on Marius. He is the hero of the hour. He is Rome's greatest soldier. And so it's not surprising that it's on his shoulders that responsibility for saving the city is laid by a desperate and terrified people.

1:01:37Then there is a second cloud. And this is less obvious. It's more private. I'd say that at this stage it's just a kind of a little niggle. But it is one that threatens a good deal of trouble in the future to put it mildly. So just as Mattellas had been upstaged by Marius, so does Marius feel just a little bit upstaged by his own left-handed. And this is the course the guy who had successfully negotiated the surrender of Jagertha. And this lieutenant like Marius himself is a naturally ambitious man, a man with a hyper keen sense of his own worth, and a man with all kinds of military and political talents. And there are a some in Rome Marius's enemies in the Senate prominent among them who have begun to attribute the defeat of Jagertha, not to Marius but to this left

1:02:37tenant. They're saying, oh Marius is just a show-boating. The guy who really ended the war is this person. And this person, this lieutenant, you know, he doesn't disavow this perspective. And in fact, he's had a signate ring made for himself, which shows him negotiating the surrender of Jagertha. And so he kind of flashes it around. And to quite pollute up, by insisting on wearing this ring all the time, he greatly irritated Marius, who was incredibly sensitive when it came to his own honour, scorned to share his glory with anyone else and was always ready to take offense. And Dominic, the name of this left-handed, we are going to be hearing a lot about him in episodes to come. It is Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In our next episode, we are going to be finding out who he is, what's his background, his upbringing, all of that. And we will also, of course, be following Marius to war with the two tons and the Kimberley. Grike, so exciting. So if you'd like to hear that

1:03:41episode right now, and if you'd like to hear the final two episodes of this absolutely thrilling swashbuckling Roman series, and if you're not already a member of the Rest is History Club, because of course if you're in the club, you can listen to the next episode. Well, if you want to hear it, join our own band of Marauding, Barbarian Cannibals, the Rest is History Club, at therestishistory.com. And you can of course always find out more about this series and about what's coming next on the Rest is History by subscribing to our newsletter. Now, if you don't want to join the Rest is History Club, first of all, you're insane. So I, you know, I have no time for you. I don't care what you do, frankly, because you've made poor life choices. However, you can actually, because we're kind, you can actually hear the first five minutes of the next episode right now. We are going to be playing the first five minutes of that episode now. So after that, you probably will want to join the club. Now, we're only doing it because we like you. We're not doing it to

1:04:41entice you to join the club. Anyway, here are the next five minutes. Goodbye, everybody. Enjoy them. Are they? At Kovelle. Even as Marius is riding through the streets of Rome and being cheered by the watching crowds, there is a mood of panic, maybe even desperation in the city, because Jagertha may have been defeated. The dignity of the Roman name may have been upheld in Africa, but to the north, beyond the Alps, there is a much more terrifying threat than some African king, massing on the frontiers of Rome's empire. And again, we mentioned this in the previous episode. It's an immense migration of Germans, the tutors and the Kimberi from Jutland to the frontiers of the Roman world. So it's almost a kind of proto-viking invasion. Yeah. So in the last episode, please, people who online like to count down, often we refer to either

1:05:46the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. I compared them with the the White Walkers, the people who in the Game of Thrones TV series you see right at the beginning, they're massing all the time. You know, all the internal politics of Westeros is nothing compared with the existential apocalyptic threat that these blokes represent. And actually, I'm going to congratulate myself on my own comparison. I think it's an absolutely superb comparison. Yeah. Because, I mean, these people, the tutors and the Kimberi, they're massive, they're terrifying, they look weird, they are an existential threat. They're reputed to be cannibals. Right. This is Kluzak on them. He said they were impervious to cold because they'd been brought up in ice-bound countries full of forests. I mean, Tom, the parallels are stacking up. Yeah, absolutely right. And also, I think, isn't this also the case with the White Walkers, the tutors and the Kimberi accompanied by women and children? Yeah, some of them are women and children, yeah. In fact, actually, in Game of Thrones, the children are the most frightening. There's always something terrifying about a murderous

1:06:47sinister child. And frankly, if you've ever met a German child, you know, it's the same story. Well, their day is really on there. Yeah, it's the worst. And the women also are very frightening because they're said to fight alongside the men. And it's an entire people on the move. So there are tens of thousands of them, according to the Roman sources. I mean, we don't know how accurate they are. But basically, there are loads and loads of them. And they are experienced by the Romans less as an army than a some kind of force of nature, you know, a great flood, a tide, a tsunami, whatever you want to reach for. You know, the news have been brought to them that this monstrous tide of people isn't bouncing towards you. And so they sent an army under a console into a region called Norrican, which is basically Austria today in 113 BC. And the console had set an ambush for these barbarians. And the barbarians had rumbled it and had outsmarted the console and given him a serious mulling. And so he'd withdrawn.

1:07:48And he had assumed that the barbarians would pursue him and invade Italy. In fact, they don't. They swing westwards into Gaul, which is a big relief to the Romans. But I think it's also a little bit unsettling because it's clear that the Kimberian, the tutors are unlike any enemy that they've come up against before. There's no predicting what they'll do when you're fighting Carthaginians or Greeks or even Gauls. There's a sense in which the Romans understand what makes these people tick. But with these barbarians from the far north, and again, this is maybe the kind of like Walker comparison. The Romans don't understand what they want. They don't understand what's going to motivate them. They don't understand how they're going to behave. And so that means it's very difficult, I think, for the Romans to defy a strategy to cope with this onslaught. And this becomes manifest in a succession of disastrous Roman attempts to go and be proactive and meet the Tutors in Kimberi and wipe them out beyond the limits of Roman power. Because the barbarians,

1:08:54they're just roaming around Gaul, kind of looting and pillaging and killing and all that kind of stuff. And the Romans keep going and trying to attack them and they keep being defeated. So first in 109 BC, and then two years later near what today is Bordeaux. And one console in that battle is killed. And the other one is cornered. And the only way that he can extract himself is to agree that he and his army will go beneath the yoke. Oh my god. Yeah, ultimate humiliation. You put up two spears and put another spear across it. And everyone has to symbolically bend and crawl. And well, not symbolically. I mean, you literally do it. But it's obviously a symbol of humiliation. So that's very bad. And then I had forgotten the full details of this defeat. So it happens in 105. And it's a culminating disaster in the Roman attempts to stop the barbarians. It happens outside a rouseo, which is the town in southern Gaul, which gives its name to Arange. So ultimately to the

1:09:56orange order, I mean, that's the basic thought. And in this battle, the Romans, it said, lose over 100,000 men, which is more than they lose in at can I? Is that plausible? Really, that they lost that many? I mean, these figures are all made up, aren't they? Really? But I don't think they made it. It's clearly a massive defeat. And yet it's barely remembered. And you think how much it's written about can I? And the impact that had on the Romans at the time, it must have just seemed overwhelming. It must have seemed a disaster on par with that. And when the news of it is brought to Rome, there is this terrible mood of panic. So thank you very much for listening to that. And if you liked it and you would like to hear more, then you can find the full episode at therestershistory.com.