Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. It's Saturday, and so we are
Speaker 2: going into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This one originally published on July twenty first, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and it's The Fall of Valerian, Part two, continuing from
Speaker 2: last Saturday. Enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 2: of our series on the Fall of Valerian. Rob, can
Speaker 2: you cutch us up? But of course, if you haven't
Speaker 2: heard part one yet, you should go back and listen
Speaker 2: to that first. But if you, assuming you have, Rob,
Speaker 2: can you do a brief refresher?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'll refresh everybody on the basics here. So
Speaker 1: when are we well? We are during This is all
Speaker 1: taking place during the Crisis of the Third Century. This
Speaker 1: was a period between two thirty five and two eighty
Speaker 1: four CE in which the Roman Empire is facing all
Speaker 1: sorts of internal problems just about following apart lots of warfare,
Speaker 1: between different would be emperors. There's there's almost an emperor
Speaker 1: every year during this period. Meanwhile, in Persia we have
Speaker 1: the strong and united Sasanian Empire. And so in the
Speaker 1: last episode, we talked about the background, especially on the
Speaker 1: Sasanian Empire, background on how Rome reaches this state, why
Speaker 1: it's in such crisis, and who some of the major
Speaker 1: players are, and what some of the short imperial reigns
Speaker 1: consisted of. And so the key conflict though that the
Speaker 1: episode revolved around, was on one side, the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: under Emperor Valerian and then on the other side the
Speaker 1: Sasanian Empire under a Chapur the first and so we
Speaker 1: talked about the Battle of Odessa. We talked about this
Speaker 1: this enormous military disaster in which not only are Valerians'
Speaker 1: forces defeated, but Valerian himself, the Emperor of Rome, is
Speaker 1: dethroned and captured by enemy forces. He is a prisoner
Speaker 1: of war under the Sasanians. And so this is ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, what drew me into into this whole topic here,
Speaker 1: like what are the ramifications of such a defeat, Because again,
Speaker 1: while this does not compare to say, the complete taking
Speaker 1: of a kingdom or the destruction of its capital, the
Speaker 1: enslavement of a people, that sort of thing. It's still
Speaker 1: an unthinkable occurrence in many respects because the emperor is
Speaker 1: the very apex of the imperium, and now here he
Speaker 1: is in the hands of the enemy. So for starters, yes,
Speaker 1: one is no longer emperor if one is in enemy hands.
Speaker 1: So instantly, once Valerian is giscaptured, the title of Roman
Speaker 1: emperor immediately passes on to his son Galienus. Galienus was
Speaker 1: already essentially co emperor with his father, and in two
Speaker 1: sixty he becomes sole emperor, and ultimately he's going to
Speaker 1: reign till two sixty eight eight year reign. Then he
Speaker 1: is assassinated. The disaster of two sixty greatly undermined him,
Speaker 1: and he almost immediately had to deal with other usurpers
Speaker 1: within the Roman ranks. Now on the other side of things,
Speaker 1: on the Sasanian side of things, this of course is
Speaker 1: a most momentous occasion, and Chahbur the first has it
Speaker 1: commemorated in rock relief. I think in more than one
Speaker 1: spot that survives. One of the key ones is this
Speaker 1: place called Nakshi Rustam. It shows two Roman emperors subjugated
Speaker 1: by a figure mounted on horseback that is supposed to
Speaker 1: be Sapur the first. So the two emperors here are
Speaker 1: supposed to be Valerian, who of course has just been captured.
Speaker 1: Also fill up the Arab, the soldier emperor of Rome
Speaker 1: who followed the slain Gordian. This is the guy who
Speaker 1: signed a treaty with the Sasanians. And there's another rock
Speaker 1: relief elsewhere that also shows Valerian bowing before the Sasanian king. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the sources that I referred to a lot
Speaker 1: in the previous episode is Touraj Dari, who wrote this
Speaker 1: wonderful book about the Sasanians. Go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that episode for full citation on that source, and he
Speaker 1: is referring here to Shapur the first quote. No other
Speaker 1: person before could have claimed that he was able to
Speaker 1: kill a Roman emperor, make one a tributary, and capture
Speaker 1: and imprison a third. Sapor was very much aware of
Speaker 1: this feat and did not hesitate to mention it in
Speaker 1: his inscription, and ultimately he also ends up commemorating this
Speaker 1: victory in his biom graphy as well. Now you'll remember
Speaker 1: the idea that he killed a Roman emperor, that is
Speaker 1: maybe a beefed up claim. The emperor in question may
Speaker 1: have just been killed by his own soldiers, which was
Speaker 1: of course a common fate for Roman emperors during this
Speaker 1: time of great unrest. Now Here we get into another
Speaker 1: really contested aspect of all of this, perhaps the most
Speaker 1: contested aspect of the whole scenario, and that is what
Speaker 1: then exactly happens to Valerian. We know that he's not
Speaker 1: emperor anymore, he is a prisoner of war, but then
Speaker 1: what does that mean? What is going to happen to
Speaker 1: a supreme ruler in enemy hands during this time? And
Speaker 1: we have various accounts of what happened. What happened we know,
Speaker 1: for instance, Darry says that the Iranian sources say that
Speaker 1: he and some senators and soldiers were deported into Sasanian territory,
Speaker 1: but we don't really know for sure what happened. But
Speaker 1: the accounts range from the mundane to the horrific, and
Speaker 1: all told, none of it is truly out of the
Speaker 1: question during this time period, I guess one big question
Speaker 1: we might ask is, just like, what was standard treatment
Speaker 1: during the day for a captured ruler of an enemy group,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we might well look to the Romans
Speaker 1: for such an example.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure, because so the export of a defeated
Speaker 2: ruler to the victorious metropole of the rival empire would
Speaker 2: not at all have been an unheard of concept in
Speaker 2: ancient Rome. As soon as we started talking about this subject,
Speaker 2: a couple of examples came immediately to my mind. These
Speaker 2: are by no means the only examples, but these are
Speaker 2: the first ones I thought of. One is fictional and
Speaker 2: the other historical. So the fictional example is a scene
Speaker 2: in William Shakespeare's play Tied to Sandronicus, which, now, to
Speaker 2: be clear, this is not like Shakespeare's other Roman plays,
Speaker 2: like Julius Caesar, those are based on real historical at
Speaker 2: least to some extent, or events that were believed at
Speaker 2: Shakespeare's time to be real historical events. Titus Andronicus is
Speaker 2: wholly a fictional scenario, but individual elements from it and
Speaker 2: scenes in it are based on scenarios that really did happen.
Speaker 2: And the one I'm thinking of is the very beginning
Speaker 2: of the play. And so, in a scene in Act one, Titus,
Speaker 2: the title character is a Roman general. He's returning to
Speaker 2: Rome after a long war of conquest against the Goths,
Speaker 2: and with him he brings prisoners that he is parading
Speaker 2: through the streets, including Tamara, the queen of the Goths.
Speaker 2: And then a little bit further down, Lucius says, give
Speaker 2: us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, that we may
Speaker 2: hew his limbs, and on a pile ad manes fratum,
Speaker 2: sacrifice his flesh before this earthly prison of their bones,
Speaker 2: that so the shadows be not unappeased, nor we disturbed
Speaker 2: with prodigies on earth. And then later Tamara herself, the
Speaker 2: queen of the Goths, says, stay Roman brethren, gracious conqueror, victorious,
Speaker 2: Titus rue the tears I shed a mother's tears and
Speaker 2: passion for her son. And if thy sons were ever
Speaker 2: dear to thee, oh, think my son to be as
Speaker 2: dear to me. Sufficeth not that we are brought to
Speaker 2: Rome to beautify thy triumphs, in return captive to thee
Speaker 2: and to thy Roman yoke. But must my sons be
Speaker 2: slaughtered in the streets for valiant doings in their country's cause?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: If to fight for king and commonweal we're piety in
Speaker 2: thine it is in these Andronicus, stain not thy tomb
Speaker 2: with blood, wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods,
Speaker 2: draw near them. Then in being merciful, sweet mercy, is
Speaker 2: nobility's true badge. Thrice, noble Titus, spare my firstborn son.
Speaker 2: So the scenario is, this is the queen of the
Speaker 2: defeated enemy nation that Rome has conquered. She is brought
Speaker 2: back with her sons, and they are going to do
Speaker 2: a human sacrifice of her captive son back here in Rome,
Speaker 2: and she's pleading with Titus, don't do it, please, don't
Speaker 2: do it, but they're going to do it again.
Speaker 1: Not a story or an account directly from the time
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here, and not from the Romans.
Speaker 1: This is Shakespeare. But still it paints both a grim
Speaker 1: picture of what may have been the standard, but also,
Speaker 1: at least from in Shakespeare's voice, it's asking questions about like,
Speaker 1: is this really the way we should handle things with
Speaker 1: when it comes to captives? Is this really the way
Speaker 1: to go?
Speaker 2: Of course, as the morality of Roman practices is highly
Speaker 2: questionable to us today, I would say even so is
Speaker 2: the implied morality of the play, where I don't know
Speaker 2: so Tamara eventually becomes the villain, right or I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess it's kind of hard to say within a
Speaker 2: hyper violent tragedy and revenge story like Titus Andronicus, But
Speaker 2: she eventually becomes the wife of the Emperor Saturn Ninus
Speaker 2: and then they end up. Oh, it's a whole big battle.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of like watering sons and feeding them
Speaker 2: to people. But to bring it to real history, I
Speaker 2: think clearly this scene in Shakespeare is based on real
Speaker 2: historical events. One example that came to my mind immediately
Speaker 2: is the story of Versinjenerics, who was originally a nobleman
Speaker 2: of the Arverni tribe of the Gauls. So in the
Speaker 2: fifties BCE, Julius Caesar was engaged in a number of
Speaker 2: campaigns that came to be known as the Gallic Wars.
Speaker 2: It was a war, basically a war of conquest in Gaul,
Speaker 2: which gall is an area of western Europe that roughly
Speaker 2: corresponds to modern day France. And it's complicated, but basically
Speaker 2: the aim of these wars was to bring the various
Speaker 2: tribes of the region under Roman domination. Now this is
Speaker 2: before Caesar was an emperor at the time he was
Speaker 2: I believe he was governor of Gaul, but he was
Speaker 2: a military commander, and he was practicing a form of
Speaker 2: divide and rule, showing favor on some Gallic tribes and
Speaker 2: nobles in order to play them against the other Gallic
Speaker 2: tribes and nobles. And I think it is it's alleged
Speaker 2: that earlier in this effort Versus Generics, this one particular
Speaker 2: Gallic noble had been on relatively good terms with Rome
Speaker 2: and with Caesar. But sometime later in the campaign Versus
Speaker 2: Generics did a u turn and he ended up mounting
Speaker 2: an effort to unite the Gallic tribes in brotherhood to say, okay,
Speaker 2: let's stop squabbling with each other. We can't let them
Speaker 2: divide and rule us. We got a band together and
Speaker 2: fight back. Now I know that initially under Versus Jederics,
Speaker 2: the Gulls were actually pretty effective at resisting Roman conquest.
Speaker 2: Versus Jederics apparently employed a sort of harass and deprived strategy,
Speaker 2: so kind of having quick moving troops moving around and
Speaker 2: harassing the Roman column and then also practicing scorched earth
Speaker 2: tactics to deprive the Romans of food and other supplies.
Speaker 2: So you know, the Romans normally what they would do
Speaker 2: is they would move into an area and then they
Speaker 2: would confiscate food and other important supplies from the locals
Speaker 2: in order to feed their army. Versus Jederics said, okay, now,
Speaker 2: what we're going to do is just like burn and
Speaker 2: destroy and remove all of the food and whatever area
Speaker 2: the Romans are about to move into, so they can't
Speaker 2: feed themselves. And this actually was a very smart tactic.
Speaker 2: But ultimately the Gulls were defeated. Caesar surrounded and besieged
Speaker 2: Versus Generics and his forces at a battle called the
Speaker 2: Battle of Alicia and fifty two BCE, and facing certain defeat,
Speaker 2: Versus Generics made a bid for mercy, a bid for
Speaker 2: mercy for his troops by surrendering himself personally to Caesar.
Speaker 2: And this story is told in the work of the
Speaker 2: second and third century Roman historian Cassius Dio also sometimes
Speaker 2: called Dio Cassius, and Dio Cassius writes as follows, Now,
Speaker 2: Versinjenerics might have escaped, for he had not been captured
Speaker 2: and was unwounded, but he hoped, since he had once
Speaker 2: been on friendly terms with Caesar, that he might obtain
Speaker 2: pardon from him. So he came to him without any
Speaker 2: announcement by Harold, but appeared before him suddenly as Caesar
Speaker 2: was seated on the tribunal, and threw some who were
Speaker 2: present into alarm, for he was very tall to begin with,
Speaker 2: and in his armor he made an extremely imposing figure.
Speaker 2: When quiet had been restored, he uttered not a word,
Speaker 2: but fell upon his knees with hands clasped in an
Speaker 2: attitude of supplication. This inspired many with pity at remembrance
Speaker 2: of his former fortune and the distressing state in which
Speaker 2: he now appeared. But Caesar reproached him in this very
Speaker 2: matter on which he most relied for his safety, and
Speaker 2: by setting over against his claim of former friendship, his
Speaker 2: recent eye position showed his offense to have been the
Speaker 2: more grievous. Therefore, he did not pity him even at
Speaker 2: the time, but immediately confined him in bonds, and later,
Speaker 2: after sending him to his triumph, put him to death.
Speaker 2: And then I think after this event Caesar basically slaughtered
Speaker 2: everybody that the Roman behavior in the Gallic Wars was
Speaker 2: extremely brutal. Now, coming back to what Diocassia says at
Speaker 2: the end of that passage that he was sent to
Speaker 2: Rome for Caesar's triumph and then he was eventually put
Speaker 2: to death. Apparently what happened is he was sent to Rome,
Speaker 2: where he was held in prison for about five or
Speaker 2: six years before being ritually executed after he was displayed
Speaker 2: to the public in Caesar's Four Triumphs in forty six BCE.
Speaker 2: The Four Triumphs, it was a kind of victory parade
Speaker 2: and festival celebrating the conquest of the various nations who
Speaker 2: had come under Rome's heel. To read from Dio Cassius
Speaker 2: in a different section describing the for Triumphs quote after this,
Speaker 2: he conducted the whole festival in a brilliant manner, as
Speaker 2: was fitting in honor of victories so many and so decisive.
Speaker 2: He celebrated triumphs for the Gauls, for Egypt, for Pharnaces,
Speaker 2: and for Juba in four sections on four separate days.
Speaker 2: Most of it, of course, delighted the spectators, but the
Speaker 2: site of Arseneaux of Egypt, and Arsenau was was a
Speaker 2: queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, and that dynasty
Speaker 2: was unseated by Julius Caesar around forty seven Bce. But
Speaker 2: to continue the quote saying of Arseno, whom he led
Speaker 2: among the captives, and the host of lictors, and the
Speaker 2: symbols of triumph taken from the citizens who had fallen
Speaker 2: in Africa displeased them exceedingly. The lictors, on account of
Speaker 2: their numbers, appeared to them a most offensive multitude, since
Speaker 2: never before had they beheld so many at one time.
Speaker 2: And the site of Arsenau, a woman and one considered
Speaker 2: a queen in chains, a spectacle which had never yet
Speaker 2: been seen at least in Rome, aroused very great pity,
Speaker 2: and with this as an excuse they lamented their private misfortunes. She,
Speaker 2: to be sure, was released out of consideration for her brothers.
Speaker 2: But others, including verse in Generics, were put to death.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what the source on this following
Speaker 2: detail is, but it seems like most historians agree that
Speaker 2: the way versus Generics was put to death was by garrotting,
Speaker 2: a kind of ritual strangulation. And I believe in a temple,
Speaker 2: but this seems to be a ritual well known to
Speaker 2: the Romans, that like a leader of a subjugated nation
Speaker 2: would sometimes be brought back to Rome as a kind
Speaker 2: of souvenir of the returning conqueror's power, and then put
Speaker 2: on public display in some fashion, probably sort of humiliated.
Speaker 2: And then after that it seems their fates were varied.
Speaker 2: Some were put to death, others were given a more
Speaker 2: merciful fate of some kind, maybe released or kept imprisoned.
Speaker 2: Though I believe it's interesting that in that passage Diocasta
Speaker 2: says that Arsena was released. I think other historians write
Speaker 2: that after years of being imprisoned in a temple, Arsenau
Speaker 2: was executed on orders of Mark Antony, allegedly at the
Speaker 2: behest of Cleopatra. But that again, that's one of those
Speaker 2: things that you wonder if that's historically true or if
Speaker 2: that's just somebody who's like mad at Antony and Cleopatra
Speaker 2: trying to make them look bad.
Speaker 1: Right right, there's certainly plenty of that to go around.
Speaker 1: By the way, this episode with versus Jenerics was depicted
Speaker 1: in the HBO series Rome. I'd kind of forgotten about this,
Speaker 1: but once you went through the description, I had to
Speaker 1: look it up. I was like, yes, yes, that was
Speaker 1: depicted at one point in that series.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't think I've seen that. So they what
Speaker 2: do they do to him? And like they strangle him
Speaker 2: in the temple, did they put him on parade?
Speaker 1: They either, I think they might. It's been a long
Speaker 1: time since I've seen this show, and I'm not in
Speaker 1: a big hurry to watch it again, But though it
Speaker 1: has a wonderful cast, I believe they have him depicted strangled,
Speaker 1: perhaps in a cage in the street or on the
Speaker 1: steps of a temple. But again, my memory on this
Speaker 1: is foggy.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if this is true. But it
Speaker 2: seems like a common received interpretation that Versus Generics was
Speaker 2: put to death here because he turned on Caesar and
Speaker 2: humiliated Caesar's forces in battle. That you know, because he
Speaker 2: had been very successful in stopping them early on, that
Speaker 2: this led to him being treated especially harshly. But in
Speaker 2: general Roman leaders were very cruel, very brutal, very into domination,
Speaker 2: and had a low tolerance for being embarrassed.
Speaker 1: All right, So that leads us back to Valerian and
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't look great for him at this point based
Speaker 1: on what we've covered thus far. For starters, he certainly
Speaker 1: died in captivity. There's no version of the history here
Speaker 1: in which he escapes that fate. I guess it should
Speaker 1: be noted. As far as I know, there's there are
Speaker 1: no surviving accounts that he escaped that fate, and I
Speaker 1: guess there's no there's no like real reason, there was
Speaker 1: no real faction that had an interest in pushing that fiction,
Speaker 1: you know, that in which that version of history served
Speaker 1: some purpose or another. Uh. But we'll get it, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll get more into that. But you might remember in
Speaker 1: our past episode we talked about how how was the
Speaker 1: defeat at the Battle of Adessa framed? How are the
Speaker 1: particulars of that defeat passed down? And you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of times it's about from the Christian perspective, it's
Speaker 1: about saying Valerian was punished by God because he was
Speaker 1: cruel to Christians back home and had a pope put
Speaker 1: to death. And then from the Roman standpoint, it's a
Speaker 1: it's about pushing the idea that well, he was weak
Speaker 1: and the Susanians were deceptive, uh, and therefore sort of
Speaker 1: excuse the loss to some extent. But as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of leeway and how we
Speaker 1: might actually interpret his death and in now the various
Speaker 1: histories have mentioned the death of Valerian in Sesanian hands.
Speaker 1: Since we're already talking about the horrific side of things,
Speaker 1: let's stick with the horrific side of things, and then
Speaker 1: we'll come back to the more mundane possibilities towards the end.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a palate cleanser, I guess so. According
Speaker 1: to early Christian writer and Christian apologist Lectantius, who lived
Speaker 1: two fifty through three twenty five, things were pretty grim
Speaker 1: for Valerian. And we have to mention, though, that the
Speaker 1: thing about Lectantius is he has a whole axe to
Speaker 1: grind here on the survival of Christianity. And he wrote
Speaker 1: an entire work titled on the Death of Persecutors, in
Speaker 1: which he writes the following about Valerian. And this is
Speaker 1: of course a translation here and presently Valerian, also in
Speaker 1: a mood alike Frantic, lifted up his impious hands to
Speaker 1: assault God, and although his time was short, shed much
Speaker 1: righteous blood. But God punished him in a new and
Speaker 1: extraordinary manner, that it might be a lesson to future
Speaker 1: ages that the adversaries of heaven always receive the just
Speaker 1: recompense of their inequities. He having been made prisoner by
Speaker 1: the Persians, lost not only that power which he had
Speaker 1: exercised without moderation, but also the liberty of which he
Speaker 1: had deprived others. And he wasted the remainder of his
Speaker 1: days in the violence condition of slavery. For suppor, the
Speaker 1: king of the Persians, who had made him prisoner, whenever
Speaker 1: he chose to get into his carriage or to mount
Speaker 1: on horseback, commanded the Roman to stoop and present his back. Then,
Speaker 1: setting his foot on the shoulders of Valerian, he said,
Speaker 1: with a smile of reproach, quote, this is true and
Speaker 1: not what the Romans delineate on board or plaster unquote.
Speaker 1: And just to pause right there, I love how in
Speaker 1: this account Lactantas has has the king of the Sasanians
Speaker 1: here basically turned to the reader and say, this is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent true. I'm not making this up. Don't
Speaker 1: believe those Romans. That's good anyway, Like conscious continues here,
Speaker 1: Valerian lived for a considerable time under the well merited
Speaker 1: insults of his conqueror, so that the Roman name remained
Speaker 1: long the scoff and derision of the barbarians, and this
Speaker 1: also was added to the severity of his punishment, that
Speaker 1: although he had an emperor for his son, he found
Speaker 1: no one to revenge his captivity and most abject and
Speaker 1: servile state. Neither indeed was he ever demanded back. Afterward,
Speaker 1: when he had finished this shameful life under so great dishonor,
Speaker 1: he was flayed, and his skin stripped from the flesh,
Speaker 1: was dyed with remilion and placed in the temple of
Speaker 1: the gods of the Barbarians, that the remembrance of a
Speaker 1: triumph so signal might be perpetuated, and that this spectacle
Speaker 1: might always be exhibited to our ambassadors as an admonition
Speaker 1: of the Romans that beholding the spoil of their captive
Speaker 1: emperor in a Persian temple, they should not place too
Speaker 1: great confidence in their own strength.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it gets very clive barker at the end here,
Speaker 2: and they say that that after his torment is in it,
Speaker 2: which again Lactantius is saying totally justified. We don't know
Speaker 2: if what he's saying here has any basis in fact,
Speaker 2: but he's claiming that this he got his comeuppance for
Speaker 2: being a persecutor of Christians, and when it was all done,
Speaker 2: his skin was removed from his body was dyed red
Speaker 2: and then was placed in the temple of the gods
Speaker 2: of the Barbarians, right.
Speaker 1: Right, pretty horrendous. And again I do love how he
Speaker 1: has Sabur basically break the fourth wall and say, hey, Christians,
Speaker 1: this is the real story. Don't believe what anyone someone
Speaker 1: else tells you, thus acknowledging that there are other accounts
Speaker 1: of what happened. So I was I was reading a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this. I found a source here.
Speaker 1: This was published in Classical Quarterly and two thousand and
Speaker 1: six from Erica Reiner, titled The red Ling of Valerian,
Speaker 1: and according to Reiner, Reiner writes that the La Tantis
Speaker 1: account is by far the most detailed and the most disputed,
Speaker 1: and she she shares and weighs in on some of
Speaker 1: the other claims that come about to in some cases
Speaker 1: add more more details to this particular account. She points
Speaker 1: out that only a single account, that of Agathias, who
Speaker 1: lived five point thirty through five eighty two, says that
Speaker 1: Valerian was flayed alive. This is the only account where
Speaker 1: that extra detail is added, almost in like a sort
Speaker 1: of like, I can't just retell that story. I've got
Speaker 1: to I got to make it a little grizzlier, and
Speaker 1: so there's an upping of the ante here. Later some commentators,
Speaker 1: including Constantine, add the detail that and then, well, this
Speaker 1: is sort of a detail. I guess that he was embalmed,
Speaker 1: that Valerian was embalmed, that there's some attempt to preserve
Speaker 1: the body.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting, I guess if we're getting info about
Speaker 2: not info it claims about this from Constantine. Is Constantine
Speaker 2: trying to add on, like jump on the bandwagon of like,
Speaker 2: here's how Valerian goalwit he deserved because Constantine was of
Speaker 2: course the first Christian Roman emperor.
Speaker 1: I mean it basically falls. Yeah, it basically has to
Speaker 1: do with this, with the whole role that Valerian has
Speaker 1: after his fall in Christian power in the view of
Speaker 1: Christian oppression in the past. So yeah, like he remains
Speaker 1: a coin that may be cashed in from time to
Speaker 1: time and speeches and so forth. Now another account, this
Speaker 1: was from Peter the Patrician, who live five hundred through
Speaker 1: five sixty five. This kind of backs up the whole
Speaker 1: idea of the skin having been preserved. Peter writes, quote,
Speaker 1: even after death, with loathsome art, you kept his skin
Speaker 1: and inflicted an undying insult on his dead body. But
Speaker 1: then Reiner gets into questioning this whole thing about the
Speaker 1: red dying of the skin, because this instantly stands out
Speaker 1: like it's one thing. Okay, we can understand flaying, you know, horrific,
Speaker 1: but there are other accounts in history of things like
Speaker 1: this occurring, and it continues to echo through our fantastic
Speaker 1: fiction and our grizzly entertainments. But then the dying of
Speaker 1: it red, what does that mean? Like, what is there
Speaker 1: something lost in translation? Is there some sort of a
Speaker 1: something you know, strange picked up in the telling of
Speaker 1: this tale. Hiner mentions that there is at least one
Speaker 1: theory that this account of red dyed hides refers to
Speaker 1: Valerian having to set aside his purple robes and where
Speaker 1: the hide of a mere beast like a donkey or
Speaker 1: something in captivity, and this might have been dyed purple
Speaker 1: and mockery, But then again, we're talking about purple in
Speaker 1: this case, and it seems like all these other accounts
Speaker 1: we're looking at, we're definitely talking about the color red. So, however,
Speaker 1: Reiner does point out that as outrageous and fabricated as
Speaker 1: these accounts of the flame may very well be. They're
Speaker 1: also not altogether out of keeping with the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Sargon the second of Assyria, who reigned
Speaker 1: seven twenty one through seven oh five BCE, is said
Speaker 1: to have inflicted such a fate on his enemies. By
Speaker 1: his own recorded word. He boasted of having defeated king's
Speaker 1: flayed and their skins dyed red as red wool, and
Speaker 1: Reiner discusses this for a bit and asking questions about
Speaker 1: those sort of the linguistics of the matter. You know,
Speaker 1: red as blood, red as sunset, read as the horizon.
Speaker 1: And it has remained a mystery.
Speaker 2: It is such a strange claim, this idea that the
Speaker 2: flayed hide was dyed red. But Rob, you found an
Speaker 2: interesting little letter to a classics journal called Nimo sign
Speaker 2: that's a journal published by Brill, which addresses this question
Speaker 2: of what this could be a reference to. If it's
Speaker 2: not just literally the skin being dyed red, could this
Speaker 2: have another meaning? And I thought this was so interesting.
Speaker 2: So the letter was by a classics professor based in
Speaker 2: Ireland named David Woods, and the letter was called Lactantius
Speaker 2: Valerian and halophilic Bacteria.
Speaker 1: Here's that science angle that we've been mentioning.
Speaker 2: So Wood says, you know, there's really no clear explanation
Speaker 2: why Schebor would have dyed the skin of Valerian red.
Speaker 2: He acknowledges Reiner's thoughts regarding the flaying tradition, but then says,
Speaker 2: there's another possible explanation, and it goes like this, if
Speaker 2: Shabour actually wanted to keep the skin of the emperor
Speaker 2: as a permanent trophy of his victory, rather than something
Speaker 2: that would just sort of rot away, he would of
Speaker 2: course have to preserve it somehow, and the standard way
Speaker 2: of preserving a hide at that time would be by curing.
Speaker 2: This assumption is given weight by a statement of again
Speaker 2: the later Roman emperor Constantine, who mentions that Shabur had
Speaker 2: ordered Valerian skin to be not only flayed, but preserved.
Speaker 2: I think this comes back to what you said earlier
Speaker 2: about Constantine making a claim that he was embalmed. Woods
Speaker 2: writes that the verb Constantine uses here for preserve in
Speaker 2: this context is the same word used for the preservation
Speaker 2: of fish at the time, which could refer to preservation
Speaker 2: by salting, pickling, or smoking, and generally, if you were
Speaker 2: going to cure a hide. In the ancient world, this
Speaker 2: would have involved salt. You'd use lots of salt now.
Speaker 2: Woods cites a couple of scholars named Rieland and Hochstein
Speaker 2: to point out that sometimes the salt curing of a
Speaker 2: hide would be compromised if the product was contaminated with
Speaker 2: a halophelic bacteria hallophilic, meaning salt loving, that can survive
Speaker 2: in extremely salty environments. Apparently, these bacteria are well known
Speaker 2: pests in the leather industry, and they produce a side
Speaker 2: effect called red heat, just like the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Speaker 2: And it's called that because the by product of the
Speaker 2: presence of these microorganisms is the reddening of surfaces that
Speaker 2: they colonize. In fact, if you've ever seen a salt
Speaker 2: lake turn red, this is caused by the same strains
Speaker 2: of hollophilic microorganisms. Rabbi attached one picture for you to
Speaker 2: look at in their outline here. This is a photo
Speaker 2: I found of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, taken
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine, and it's taken at a place
Speaker 2: where the lake is divided by a railroad causeway. On
Speaker 2: one half of the causeway, the water looks like normal water,
Speaker 2: it's kind of blue green, and then on the other
Speaker 2: half the water is bright red.
Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, bright red almost almost leaning a little bit
Speaker 1: towards purple almost. Definitely, you get this reddish vibe from it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I went to double check this. I was looking, okay,
Speaker 2: leather industry sources. I wanted to see about halophilic bacterial
Speaker 2: contamination there, and it looks like, yes, this absolutely is
Speaker 2: in fact a problem in the leather industry. I found
Speaker 2: an article on how to prevent it, or at least
Speaker 2: addressing the signs of it, on a trade website called
Speaker 2: Leather International. I think this is some kind of leather
Speaker 2: trade magazine. I don't know, but the article is just
Speaker 2: called putrefaction. To read from it here, they write quote,
Speaker 2: sometimes even when hides have been well salted or brined,
Speaker 2: bacteria can still grow. These are a particular type of
Speaker 2: bacteria which are halophilic or salt loving, and are commonly
Speaker 2: colored red or purple, affecting hides that are said to
Speaker 2: have red heat under normal storage conditions. For raw hides
Speaker 2: or skins, red and purple heat bacteria take a relatively
Speaker 2: long time to grow, around two to three months. Therefore,
Speaker 2: their presence is an indication that the hides or skins
Speaker 2: have been in storage for some time. However, at higher
Speaker 2: temperatures around thirty to forty degrees celsius, growth will be
Speaker 2: more rapid. The warm humid conditions favored by red heat
Speaker 2: bacteria are also favored by other non colored spoilage bacteria,
Speaker 2: so if salt levels are not high enough, putrefactive bacteria
Speaker 2: may also be present. It was once thought that red
Speaker 2: heat bacteria caused no harm to the hide, but it
Speaker 2: is now known that some types of bacteria do produce
Speaker 2: proteolytic enzymes, which are capable of damaging collagen. Proteolytic enzymes
Speaker 2: I think would be enzymes that dissolve proteins. Now this
Speaker 2: article also offers preventative measures to keep away putrefactive bacteria,
Speaker 2: the kind of bacteria that would cause leather to actually rot.
Speaker 2: But they say for red heat there are not really
Speaker 2: as many things you can do. I guess maybe it's
Speaker 2: harder to keep out, but anyway, I kept looking more
Speaker 2: into the idea of these red halo files the salt
Speaker 2: loving bacteria. Interesting thing I found is that while many
Speaker 2: older sources, including the ones I was just looking at,
Speaker 2: refer to red halophiles as bacteria. It seems that most
Speaker 2: of the prominent examples of red colored halophiles are actually
Speaker 2: now classified as archaea. Now, archia are very similar to
Speaker 2: bacteria in many ways. They're both lineages of single celled
Speaker 2: organisms without a true nuclear membrane, but they're distinct from
Speaker 2: each other. They split off from one another extremely early
Speaker 2: in the history of life on Earth, probably something like
Speaker 2: four billion years ago, and there are some common structural
Speaker 2: differences between them, even though they're both single celled organisms.
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways, Archia are just sometimes referred
Speaker 2: to as a type of bacteria, But yeah, they're these
Speaker 2: different clades, and some of the structural differences that are
Speaker 2: found between them have to do with things like cell
Speaker 2: walls and membranes, like the chemical characteristics of the lipids
Speaker 2: in their cell memora brains are different. But another common
Speaker 2: feature relevant to this discussion is that Arkia are most
Speaker 2: often found in extreme environments that are less friendly to
Speaker 2: other Earth life. So arkia are abundant in extremely hot environments,
Speaker 2: such as around deep sea vents or hot springs, or
Speaker 2: deep underground in low oxygen, high pressure geological deposits like
Speaker 2: around fossil fuel deposits or in extremely chemically unfriendly environments
Speaker 2: such as the various salt hells of the world. Now,
Speaker 2: I was curious why there would be a tendency for
Speaker 2: the microbes that battle for life in these salt hells
Speaker 2: to be read in color, and I found a paper
Speaker 2: that at least identifies a common biochemical factor. So this
Speaker 2: paper was by Ajaran Orn and Francisco Rodriguez Valera published
Speaker 2: in FEMS Microbiology Ecology in two thousand and one, called
Speaker 2: the contra of halophilic Bacteria to the red coloration of
Speaker 2: saltern crystallizer ponds. So in this article, the authors start
Speaker 2: by looking at natural hypersaline environments like salt lakes, but
Speaker 2: also at human constructed environments like these saltern crystallizer pools.
Speaker 2: A salturn is essentially a factory for harvesting sea salt,
Speaker 2: and in the old school process, what you do is
Speaker 2: you leave a bunch of sea water out in these
Speaker 2: pools and you leave it under the hot sun, so
Speaker 2: the water content can evaporate, leaving crystallized sodium chloride behind
Speaker 2: and you can harvest it. Rob Again, I attached some
Speaker 2: pictures for you to look at. These pools are often
Speaker 2: kind of arranged in these big reflective rectangles out by
Speaker 2: the ocean side. And an interesting thing is that if
Speaker 2: you look up pictures of saltern pools, occasionally you will
Speaker 2: find that they are red in color. And I was
Speaker 2: reading another paper that claimed that testing of the microbial
Speaker 2: communities in soil or saltern pools usually reveals that there's
Speaker 2: very little microbial diversity. They tend to be dominated almost
Speaker 2: entirely by halophilic archaea, like we're just talking about. But
Speaker 2: halophilic archaia are not the only things in there. So
Speaker 2: to read from a section of or in at all
Speaker 2: the paper I referenced a minute ago quote, two types
Speaker 2: of carotenoid rich microorganisms have generally been implicated in causing
Speaker 2: the red coloration. You've got halophilic archaea of the family
Speaker 2: hallow Bacteriacee and the unicellular green alga Dunaleela selina. The
Speaker 2: main pigments of the Halobacteriacee are C fifty carotenoids, mainly
Speaker 2: alpha bacteria ruberin and derivatives, while Dunaliella accumulates massive amounts
Speaker 2: of beta keratine under suitable conditions. The relative contributions of
Speaker 2: red Archaea and beta carotene rich Dunaliella cells to the
Speaker 2: color duration of saltine crystallizer ponds have been studied in
Speaker 2: the past, beta keratine was often found in quantities greatly
Speaker 2: exceeding the archael bacteria ruberns. In spite of this, the
Speaker 2: optical properties of the salterenbrines were determined primarily by the
Speaker 2: Archel community. This apparent discrepancy was explained by the extremely
Speaker 2: small in vivo optical cross section of the beta keratine
Speaker 2: in Dunaliella cells. As the carotenoid is densely packed in
Speaker 2: granules within the algal chloroplast, the presence of even large
Speaker 2: amounts of this pigment may contribute much less to the
Speaker 2: overall red color than the archel pigments, which are distributed
Speaker 2: evenly on the cell membrane. And The study also did
Speaker 2: find a small presence of halophilic bacteria in some salturns,
Speaker 2: but not others. Like it found actual halophilic bacteria of
Speaker 2: a type called Salinibacter that was present in the cryst
Speaker 2: in the crystallizer ponds that were sampled from California, but
Speaker 2: not the ones that were sampled from Israel, So it
Speaker 2: seems there's some geographic variation there, but ultimately they say
Speaker 2: yes to create this red color, the most important components
Speaker 2: are these extremophile archaea, the salt loving archaea. And I
Speaker 2: thought it was interesting that what's causing the red color
Speaker 2: here are these carotenoids, which are present, of course throughout
Speaker 2: all different kinds of life. If you eat red or
Speaker 2: orange colored vegetables or fruits, those red and orange colors
Speaker 2: are generally going to be a result of carotenoid pigments.
Speaker 2: And of course you know when you eat a red carrot.
Speaker 2: People talk about carrots being a good source of vitamin A,
Speaker 2: which they are, But what's actually happening metabolically there is
Speaker 2: you're eating them and they contain these red orange pigments,
Speaker 2: the carotenoids, which then through your metabolism, are turned into
Speaker 2: vitamin A. So if woods idea is correct, that actually
Speaker 2: what this you know, dying red of the of the
Speaker 2: hide of Emperor Valerian, If that is actually some ancient
Speaker 2: commentator looking at the skin seeing its red and then
Speaker 2: mistaking it being colonized by halophilic archaea, for it being
Speaker 2: dyed red on purpose, then what's causing that red color
Speaker 2: is probably part of the same family of pigment compounds,
Speaker 2: the carotenoids that make your carrots red or orange.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. So yeah, it seems very biologically possible that you
Speaker 1: could have an attempt to preserve the hide like this
Speaker 1: a flayed skin of human being, and then lo and behold,
Speaker 1: it ends up taking on this red color, which ultimately
Speaker 1: makes me really potentially feel for this hyde worker. It's
Speaker 1: suddenly called in one day to the palace and you
Speaker 1: find out you have a particular task ahead of you
Speaker 1: you need to preserve of the skin, and then it
Speaker 1: ends up turning red, Like how do you How do
Speaker 1: you spin that? How do you sell that? I meant
Speaker 1: to do that? Yes, or your majesty, might this look
Speaker 1: better if it were red? Think about it? They think
Speaker 1: about all the connotations of the color. Really get him
Speaker 1: on board with this, make it think it was his
Speaker 1: idea before presenting him with this hide that ended up
Speaker 1: turning this color on you. Right.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that's what wood Woods argues in this letter
Speaker 2: that maybe the ancient reports are mistaken. It was not
Speaker 2: actually dyed red. Schubert didn't do that on purpose. Instead,
Speaker 2: somehow tried to cure it with salt, and then it
Speaker 2: was colonized by halophilic bacteria or actually, more likely halophilic archaea,
Speaker 2: causing the red heat phenomenon that's been known to the
Speaker 2: leather industry actually since ancient times. Woods writes, quote, the
Speaker 2: importance of this discovery is that it confirms that the
Speaker 2: ultimate source of Lactantious information in this matter must have
Speaker 2: seen Valerian's skin firsthand. He then made the understandable but
Speaker 2: erroneous assumption that Schuber had ordered the skin to be
Speaker 2: dyed red. A humble leather producer would not have made
Speaker 2: such a mistake, but few diplomats, ancient or modern, have
Speaker 2: a background in the leather industry. Now, I think that's
Speaker 2: all pretty well put, except I don't think I agree
Speaker 2: that it confirms Lactantius's source would have seen it firsthand,
Speaker 2: but I'd agree that makes it more likely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, on one hand, we have,
Speaker 1: of course the older account from Sargon that reminds us
Speaker 1: that such horrendous things did occur in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: And and then this is something that Reiner gets into
Speaker 1: a little bit as well, and pointing out that, okay,
Speaker 1: we have these two alleged incidents of flaying and the
Speaker 1: reddening of a skin. They occur about a thousand years apart.
Speaker 1: But Reiner contends that either perhaps there is some truth
Speaker 1: to the conscious account, or perhaps there's this kind of
Speaker 1: cultural memory of Sargon's deeds. Ultimately, I think you could
Speaker 1: spin this. See this is kind of a trope about
Speaker 1: the evil things that Eastern kings do to defeated emperors.
Speaker 1: There's some memory of Sargon did this, and then it
Speaker 1: gets sort of wrapped into the account. If you need
Speaker 1: perhaps something horrible to happen to Valerian in your history
Speaker 1: to again prop up the idea that God has punished Valerian,
Speaker 1: then perhaps you draw in this historical detail and it
Speaker 1: becomes part of your story. Now, on the more mundane
Speaker 1: side of things, we do have some other accounts. There's
Speaker 1: the writer Eutropius, who was writing between three sixty four
Speaker 1: and three seventy eight, and he contended that quote Valerian,
Speaker 1: while he was occupied in a war in Mesopotamia, was
Speaker 1: overthrown by Shapur, king of Persia, and being soon after
Speaker 1: made prisoner, grew old in ignominious slavery among the Parthians.
Speaker 1: So in that account, it's like, basically, well, they took
Speaker 1: him away, they locked him up, and yeah, he died there.
Speaker 1: He was already, by many accounts, an older man, he
Speaker 1: was in his sixties, and how long is he going
Speaker 1: to live in captivity? In enemy captivity? Now to Raj
Speaker 1: Dhari also gets in on this and seems to side
Speaker 1: with this interpretation as well, that he the Valerian and
Speaker 1: some of his men were sent back into Sasanian territory,
Speaker 1: into Bishophur in modern Iran, where one of the carved
Speaker 1: reliefs there show him kneeling before the mounted king. In
Speaker 1: this area would become known as Valerian's prison. And I
Speaker 1: also can't help but wonder, this is just me here,
Speaker 1: This isn't anything any of these authors were discussing. But again,
Speaker 1: we have these rock reliefs showing Valerian bowing in Roman
Speaker 1: emperor's bowing the king of the Sasanians who has mounted
Speaker 1: on horseback. I wonder if it's possible you could have
Speaker 1: a situation where it's like some sort of misunderstanding of
Speaker 1: the visuals here that lead to the idea of him
Speaker 1: being a footstool to mount a horse. I don't know, anyway,
Speaker 1: there's not really any consensus on when Valerian dies in captivity.
Speaker 1: It may have been the same year. So sometimes you
Speaker 1: see him listed as having lived till two sixty he
Speaker 1: might have been executed more or less immediately or within
Speaker 1: that year. Other times you see a date of two
Speaker 1: sixty four mentioned, saying that he lived about four years
Speaker 1: in enemy captivity before he either dies of some natural causes,
Speaker 1: is just sort of removed, or some more extravagant means
Speaker 1: of execution. Either way, yeah, you tend to see sixty
Speaker 1: or two sixty four. So, yeah, he might have just
Speaker 1: lived out the rest of his life in prison. He
Speaker 1: may have been made a mockery of. He may have
Speaker 1: been tortured to death or flayed following a quicker execution.
Speaker 1: And of course the different versions of the tale again
Speaker 1: they kind of fulfill different needs, both in the turbulent
Speaker 1: years following the Battle of Edessa but also for years
Speaker 1: to follow. So we almost end up in this kind
Speaker 1: of quantum state where anything any of these accounts seem possible,
Speaker 1: you know, and ultimately we'll never know what actually became
Speaker 1: of Emperor Valarian.
Speaker 2: Now here's a possibility you probably haven't considered. What if
Speaker 2: he was fully externally colonized by hallophilic Archia before he died.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, so he was already read.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's just rubbing salt on his skin all day
Speaker 2: long and I don't know it's getting in there.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Or here's another possibility. Maybe Valerian removes
Speaker 1: his own skin, then escapes and has someone else wear
Speaker 1: that skin after he has left, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: does a little Hannibal electter thing there or reverse Hannibal lecter.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like face off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be like face stuff, except
Speaker 1: it's like whole skin off.
Speaker 2: Next Nicholas Cage role playing Valerium.
Speaker 1: You know, in thinking about these accounts of rulers being
Speaker 1: treated in some cases horrifically or in other cases perhaps
Speaker 1: you know, more politely but generally horrifically by these various rulers,
Speaker 1: I was reminded of I kept being reminded of this
Speaker 1: line in Dune. In the novel, this is a depicting
Speaker 1: a scene that is in the recent Part one film
Speaker 1: that came out, though this exact line of dialogue I
Speaker 1: don't think is present, but basically, the Harconins have moved
Speaker 1: against the atreades. And we have that scene where the
Speaker 1: baron has Leto Treades captive, and in the book there's
Speaker 1: this bit of dialogue it goes like this quote, this
Speaker 1: is not a child's game we play. The baron rumbled.
Speaker 1: You must know that he leaned toward Leto, studying the face.
Speaker 1: It pained the baron that this could not be handled privately,
Speaker 1: just between the two of them. To have others see
Speaker 1: loyalty in such straits, it sets a bad example. And
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about that because so many, especially on
Speaker 1: the Roman side, I mean, you have these these emperors,
Speaker 1: these absolute rulers whose position is actually rather precarious, and
Speaker 1: death is never that far away, and the shadow of
Speaker 1: uprising and dethronement, you know, is always present in the
Speaker 1: mind of any ruler, even one who enjoys a rather
Speaker 1: secure reign. You know. It's a take Autasher the first.
Speaker 1: You know, he was able to retire and die a
Speaker 1: natural death, but he didn't do that by not keeping
Speaker 1: an eye out for all those who tried to rise
Speaker 1: up against him. And so it makes me think about that,
Speaker 1: Like I guess you get into some of that Shakespearean
Speaker 1: morality as well, like the mistreatment of other rulers, like
Speaker 1: there has to be this moment where you realize, like this,
Speaker 1: this could easily be me, and what kind of example
Speaker 1: do we continue to set for these around us who
Speaker 1: may one day be the ones to rise up against us.
Speaker 1: And it's an interesting moment in Herbert's Dune as well,
Speaker 1: because you know, obviously the Baron Harcone or hearkening to
Speaker 1: be more authentic here, you know, he's not. He doesn't
Speaker 1: feel any actual mercy towards Letto. But it's the idea
Speaker 1: that well, the lesser people, the commoners, the soldiers, they
Speaker 1: shouldn't see this between us, like there's this, And of
Speaker 1: course in the world of Dune, you know, these great
Speaker 1: houses are connected in various ways as well. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we're going to go and close this out here.
Speaker 1: But I've greatly enjoyed this examination of history and histories
Speaker 1: concerning the fall of Emperor Valerian. I apologize if I
Speaker 1: messed up any pronunciations in this. We had to to
Speaker 1: juggle two different tongues here, and I hope that I
Speaker 1: didn't get anything wrong. I tried to try to make
Speaker 1: sure he hit the unciations correctly. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of names today. I think you did good well. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, that Turaj Dhari. That book
Speaker 1: is Susanian Iran two twenty four through six point fifty
Speaker 1: one AD, Portrait of a Late Antique Empire from Mazda
Speaker 1: Publishers that came out in two thousand and eight. It's
Speaker 1: a really good read. I recommend it for anyone who's
Speaker 1: interested in this time period, in this particular dynastic rule.
Speaker 1: It's not not a very thick book, very readable, has
Speaker 1: some nice illustrations and maps in it. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna go and close the book
Speaker 1: here on old Emperor Valeria. But we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everybody out there if you have any thoughts on
Speaker 1: the histories at play here, If perhaps we have some
Speaker 1: folks out there who have some experience preserving hides and
Speaker 1: leather and so forth, and perhaps you can weigh in
Speaker 1: on this reddening that we've discussed. And hey, let us
Speaker 1: know if there are other episodes in history you'd like
Speaker 1: us to. However, I don't know. Maybe there's some other
Speaker 1: dethroned nimbers of note in the history books that would
Speaker 1: make for a good episode. Let us know. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you'll find core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail,
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays we do short form artifact or monster fact episodes,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and just focus
Speaker 1: on a weird film. And you'll find all of this
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
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