Speaker 1: Pushkin Britannia, the farthest the leakist province of the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire three ninety CE a harsh, misty land of savages
Speaker 1: and strange mystics. Forty thousand soldiers, about an eighth of
Speaker 1: the imperial army, are needed to control the unruly native tribes,
Speaker 1: protect the archipelago from pirates, and push any marauder's back
Speaker 1: over Hadrian's Wall and into Scotland. Such a mighty army
Speaker 1: needs a tremendous leader, and they have one in the
Speaker 1: shape of Magnus Maximus. Maximus is a distinguished general. As
Speaker 1: a younger man, he helped restore order after the Picts
Speaker 1: from Scotland, the Scotty from Ireland and the Saxons from
Speaker 1: the continent joined forces to attack Roman Britannia in the
Speaker 1: Great Barbarian Conspiracy of three six seven ceve. Then he
Speaker 1: fought in successful campaigns against the Moors in North Africa
Speaker 1: and the Alamanni on the Danube River. For ten years now,
Speaker 1: Maximus has governed Britannia. He's put down raids by the Picts,
Speaker 1: built a huge church on London's Tower Hill, and forced
Speaker 1: the country to bend to his will. But he can't
Speaker 1: wait to leave this wet, windy and wild isle, this
Speaker 1: backwater of the Empire. He spires opportunity back on the mainland.
Speaker 1: A young and pop popular emperor sits on the throne
Speaker 1: in Rome. His courtiers are turning against him, and rivals
Speaker 1: are carving their armies. Maximus is a great military general,
Speaker 1: and he leads the biggest, toughest army in the Empire.
Speaker 1: He instructs the entire Roman garrison of Britannia to board
Speaker 1: a fleet of ships, and they sail for the mainland
Speaker 1: and victory. If only Maximus have consulted the history books. First,
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary Tales. Magnus
Speaker 1: Maximus wasn't the first governor of Britannia with ambitions to
Speaker 1: be a Roman emperor. Here to tell us all about
Speaker 1: him and the history he should have studied is Paul Cooper,
Speaker 1: presenter of the podcast Fall of Civilizations, Stories of Greatness
Speaker 1: and Decline, and the author of a book of the
Speaker 1: same name. Paul. Welcome to caution details.
Speaker 2: That's a great pleasure to be here. Paul.
Speaker 1: You're going to tell us all about Magnus Maximus. But
Speaker 1: first I wanted to know what attracted you to studying
Speaker 1: the fall rather than the rise of civilizations.
Speaker 2: My PhD focused on the idea of the ruin in
Speaker 2: literature and film, and also how various ruins have become
Speaker 2: figures of importance for culture throughout history. So I've always
Speaker 2: been drawn to the idea of the ruin, what they
Speaker 2: mean and what they've meant for people who are creating
Speaker 2: works of art. Ruins are amazing space.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was really struck just reading your book, really
Speaker 1: struck by this amazing Anglo Saxon poem about a ruined
Speaker 1: Roman bath house. And I've never encountered it before, but
Speaker 1: it's a spellbinding.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's an old poem called the Ruin, which has
Speaker 2: found in the collection known as the Exeter Book, and
Speaker 2: it's a marvelous rendition of a person writing in Old English,
Speaker 2: a kind of Anglo Saxon, early medieval British person wandering
Speaker 2: through a ruined bath house and viewing the crumbling pillars.
Speaker 2: The bath's now overgrown with weed, with frogs, you know,
Speaker 2: jumping in and out of the pools, And as they're
Speaker 2: walking these shattered bath halls, they're imagining the place as
Speaker 2: it used to be feasts that might have gone on here,
Speaker 2: bright warriors in their armor who might have come to
Speaker 2: celebrate their victories, the kings and the great society that
Speaker 2: once built this. And it's believed that this poem has
Speaker 2: written about the Roman baths in the town of Bath,
Speaker 2: one example of many of a person in his way
Speaker 2: wandering through the ruins of a society that came before
Speaker 2: and having that amazing experience that people always seem to
Speaker 2: have in these ruined places, which is a moment of
Speaker 2: contact with the people of the past, a sudden appreciation
Speaker 2: not only of the power of time and it's you know,
Speaker 2: immense size, but also the ability of human monuments to
Speaker 2: survive the ravages of that very same force.
Speaker 1: It does raise the question of, well, how could a
Speaker 1: civilization build such remarkable monuments, achieve such heights of greatness,
Speaker 1: and yet somehow that civilization is no longer with us,
Speaker 1: which is It's something you explore in your podcast and
Speaker 1: in your book on cautionary Tales. We are scholars of
Speaker 1: failure with fascinated by disaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that we have in common.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the fall of civilizations seems it's cautionary tales.
Speaker 1: In extreme slow Moll while you're just going, yes, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate the crossovers between the pod.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean there's a human fascination with disaster,
Speaker 2: isn't there. Traditional view of history is one of monuments
Speaker 2: and great men and victorious battles. But actually the story
Speaker 2: of failure is one that's completely ingrained in the human epic.
Speaker 2: I mean, these stories of societal failure are as much
Speaker 2: a part of us as those of success and triumph.
Speaker 1: So trying to draw out some common threads then in
Speaker 1: why civilizations do fail? One theme that comes up again
Speaker 1: and again is violence. And obviously violence is needed to conquer,
Speaker 1: but it poses dangers to the aggressors too, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, Yeah, any empire is by definition a
Speaker 2: violent undertaking. But also some empires who build their power
Speaker 2: build their territory through this bellicose approach, this excessive, expansionist,
Speaker 2: aggressive violence, are actually sowing the seeds of their own
Speaker 2: destruction in doing so.
Speaker 1: Now the Assyrians bring to mind, they were quite notorious.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the Assyrian empire flourishes mostly in the first half
Speaker 2: of the last millennium of the BC period. It conquers
Speaker 2: its neighbours with extreme violence. You know, piling pyramids of
Speaker 2: heads outside cities, flaming people alive, you name it, you know.
Speaker 2: Assyrian kings have done it, and people who rebel against
Speaker 2: the empire are slaughtered executed in displays of public brutality.
Speaker 2: Often entire populations uprooted and sent to a different part
Speaker 2: of the empire where they don't know the land, don't
Speaker 2: know the territory, you know, disconnected from their ability to
Speaker 2: exploit their knowledge of the land to resist empire. But
Speaker 2: in this kind of ruthless, remorseless approach, the Assyrian Empire
Speaker 2: becomes absolutely despised around the region. In the end, as
Speaker 2: the seventh century BC wears on and the last great
Speaker 2: king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, dies, you get a succession of
Speaker 2: weak kings, followed by a rebellion in Babylon. Suddenly a
Speaker 2: horse rearing people called the Meads who live in the
Speaker 2: Zagros mountains of Iran join in to invade Assyria. You
Speaker 2: get rebellions in Egypt, and suddenly revolts happening all around
Speaker 2: the empire as outside enemies are uniting against it. The
Speaker 2: Babylonians and Meads sign a pact in the ruins of
Speaker 2: an Assyrian city called ashore and in the next year
Speaker 2: is really only a period of about three years, the
Speaker 2: Assyrian Empire, what was the most powerful empire in the world,
Speaker 2: is completely dismantled. Many of its cities never recover as
Speaker 2: centers of population.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, they didn't make any friends, because
Speaker 1: they were incredibly brutal. So when the end comes, it
Speaker 1: comes incredibly quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another theme that you pick out is taxation. And again,
Speaker 1: if you're going to have a successful civilization, you need
Speaker 1: some kind of mechanism for levying resources from the populace
Speaker 1: and deploying those resources to assemble armies and to build
Speaker 1: these great monuments and so on. But of course it's
Speaker 1: possible to overdo it. And you point to both the
Speaker 1: Hand dynasty of China and the khmerd innersity of Cambodia
Speaker 1: as the civilizations that overdid the taxation and then that
Speaker 1: was their undoing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I wouldn't describe it as excessive taxation
Speaker 2: so much as an entrenched sense of inequality, which you
Speaker 2: see in places like China are obviously built on laboring peasants.
Speaker 2: You see in Rome built on a slave class, a
Speaker 2: vast slave class. Ancient Greek cities. In Athens, you might
Speaker 2: have a slave population about equal to the free population,
Speaker 2: but in Sparta, the slave population is ten times the
Speaker 2: size of the free population, made up of entire conquered
Speaker 2: ethnicities who are forced to work in the fields, and
Speaker 2: the entirety of the agricultural sector of this city is
Speaker 2: propped up by people who hate and despise the people
Speaker 2: they're feeding. This means that the Spartan army is never
Speaker 2: able to leave the city for very long. It's never
Speaker 2: able to stop defending from these constant threatened rebellions from
Speaker 2: this hell up class. So this is one example in
Speaker 2: which inequality becomes a great weakening agent in a society,
Speaker 2: preventing them from engaging in long term planning, from feeding
Speaker 2: their population without immense resentment building. And there are many
Speaker 2: examples throughout history of this.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean some of them perhaps not very historical
Speaker 1: at all. It's very striking to draw these parallels between
Speaker 1: the modern world and these ancient civilizations. But every now
Speaker 1: and then I encountered something in the book for which
Speaker 1: I think, oh, I'm not sure we have a parallel
Speaker 1: for that one. And one of them was the hand
Speaker 1: Innessty in China. The power very much in the hands
Speaker 1: of women, which of course we do have in the
Speaker 1: modern world, and eunuchs. Not so many eunuchs in power
Speaker 1: in the modern world, So tell me about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That handynasty in China is a fascinating example. There's
Speaker 2: an increasing concentration of power in the Imperial Palace in
Speaker 2: Luo Yang, and the two great power blocks inside the
Speaker 2: palace are the eunuch attendants and the dowager empresses. The
Speaker 2: mothers of both the emperor and previous emperors, who have
Speaker 2: passed on their power and prestige depended completely on their sons,
Speaker 2: their progeny, and how close they were to the imperial throne.
Speaker 2: So this meant a constant jockeying for power among these rivals.
Speaker 2: Dowagers would poison the sons of other empresses in order
Speaker 2: to get them off the throne and get their son
Speaker 2: just one step closer to inheriting it. In this way,
Speaker 2: the Imperial Palace of China ran red with blood. Now,
Speaker 2: eunuchs served in the palace because essentially this was the
Speaker 2: place where the emperor lived with his women, and I
Speaker 2: mean a it was thought to be safer to castrate
Speaker 2: these men in order to prevent them from entangling themselves
Speaker 2: with palace women, shall we say, But it was also
Speaker 2: a way of ensuring that they would have no aspiration
Speaker 2: for the throne. It was thought that someone who was
Speaker 2: unable to have children would have less desire to topple
Speaker 2: the emperor do a palace coup. But what we see
Speaker 2: in these centuries is a power contest between the dowager
Speaker 2: empresses and the eunuchs, with the emperor being essentially a puppet,
Speaker 2: a kind of game piece that's being passed between them.
Speaker 2: And for this reason, the emperor was very often a child.
Speaker 2: The emperors. Shan was actually a six month old baby
Speaker 2: who was crowned emperor while still in his crib. This
Speaker 2: is because children were easier to control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the ultimate symbolic head of state, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's a six month old baby, you
Speaker 1: can have all of the pomp and the ceremony and
Speaker 1: the genuflecting to the imperial throne and none of the
Speaker 1: difficulty of them actually having any opinions other than I
Speaker 1: need my nappy changing.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, But I would contend that that does
Speaker 2: have echoes in the modern gerontocracy. That seems to be
Speaker 2: taking over in places like the United States. You know,
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan used to joke that Soviet premiers kept dying
Speaker 2: on me. I think he said, but it was true.
Speaker 2: In the Soviet Union, they had a problem with Joe intocracy,
Speaker 2: with passing on power to the next generation. Power became
Speaker 2: incredibly encrusted in these men who are in the seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties, and the society really didn't have a healthy
Speaker 2: mechanism for passing that power down. We now see that
Speaker 2: same situation developing in the United States, where the election
Speaker 2: before last saw Donald Trump and Joe Biden contesting the presidency.
Speaker 2: You know, both of them in their seventies. And it's
Speaker 2: that inability to pass on power to the next generation
Speaker 2: that I think has echoes in something like the Imperial
Speaker 2: Court of China.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is remarkable. I think Biden was the oldest
Speaker 1: president ever, and if Trump survives to the end of
Speaker 1: this term, he will be even older than Biden was.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan was. I mean, he was thought of as
Speaker 1: an old man, but he was young compared to these
Speaker 1: He diffused the issue of his age by saying, I
Speaker 1: refused to exploit my opponent's youth and inexperience for political
Speaker 1: reasons and that kind of he knew what he was doing.
Speaker 1: One more question before we return to Rome and Britain,
Speaker 1: and the teaser we began with is environmental degradation, because
Speaker 1: this is I think often associated with the fall of civilizations.
Speaker 1: I think Jared Diamond wrote a famous book Collapse. He
Speaker 1: was very interested in this problem. Is it the case
Speaker 1: that climate change or some other environmental problem has historically
Speaker 1: often been the trigger for the fall of ancient civilizations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an undeniable resonance with today that in a
Speaker 2: very large number of the stories we've looked at, there
Speaker 2: has been some element of environmental change that has struck
Speaker 2: these societies. Some crucial examples are the Sumerian society, which
Speaker 2: flourished in the third and second millenniums BC in Valley
Speaker 2: of Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: It's not as famous as the Romans or the Greeks,
Speaker 1: but the Sumerians, you know, they invented accountancy, they invented writing,
Speaker 1: They I mean, they invented the city. I mean this
Speaker 1: is really an incredibly important early civilization.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They were one of the earliest city dwelling civilizations
Speaker 2: to really create what we would think of as an empire,
Speaker 2: multiple walled cities connected by trade networks going up and
Speaker 2: down the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. As you say, the
Speaker 2: first examples of writing in the world are found in
Speaker 2: Mesopotamia and the city of Uruk. But as we get
Speaker 2: to the end of the third millennium BC, so around
Speaker 2: the twenty two hundred BC, we get a small localized
Speaker 2: climate shift that had kind of tendrils happening elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the world. But in general this was a kind of
Speaker 2: Eurasian shift, perhaps a change in currents going over the
Speaker 2: Sahara Desert, a drying of air around the Mediterranean. And
Speaker 2: it must be underlined that this was a very minor
Speaker 2: climate shift compared to what we're looking at in the
Speaker 2: coming century. But nevertheless, this caused a period of drought
Speaker 2: and aridity in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.
Speaker 2: This meant that crops that were flourishing like wheat were
Speaker 2: suddenly being replaced by hardier, more drought resistant, and salt
Speaker 2: resistant crops like barley. People began to starve in cities,
Speaker 2: and crucially, because this was affecting the whole region, the
Speaker 2: rivals of the Sumerians were struggling too. They were then
Speaker 2: driven to raid and plunder in Sumerian lands. So we
Speaker 2: see that as the environment tightens its news around a
Speaker 2: whole region, that creates conflict, that creates the desire to
Speaker 2: invade fertile, abundant areas. And this was too much for
Speaker 2: the Sumerian society to handle, and each one of the
Speaker 2: Sumerian cities is destroyed. In turn, we see that societies
Speaker 2: from the past were sometimes completely destroyed by these climate
Speaker 2: shifts that today I would hardly even notice.
Speaker 1: This is cautionary tales. I'm speaking to Paul Cooper, the
Speaker 1: broadcaster and author about his book and podcast Fall of Civilizations,
Speaker 1: and after the break we will return to Roman Britain
Speaker 1: and Paul is going to tell us what happened to
Speaker 1: Magnus Maximus. We're back. I'm Tim Harford talking to the
Speaker 1: broadcaster and author Paul Cooper about Fall of Civilizations, which
Speaker 1: is both a book and a podcast. Paul, I wanted
Speaker 1: you to take me to Roman Britain really and perhaps
Speaker 1: begin by telling me what the Romans initially thought when
Speaker 1: they arrived in Britain and how difficult did they find
Speaker 1: Britain to colonize.
Speaker 2: Britain had a unique place in the Roman Empire. It
Speaker 2: was a large island, which is a kind of territory
Speaker 2: that they never really conquered before. But this provided problems
Speaker 2: of supply, problems of connection to the mainland. That would
Speaker 2: always mean that Britain sat in a slightly awkward position
Speaker 2: within the Western Empire. When the Romans arrived in Britain,
Speaker 2: they loved playing up how wild and untamed and semi
Speaker 2: monstrous the people were. The Roman writer Amianus Marcollinus even
Speaker 2: famously describes Britain's sitting in swamp water up to their
Speaker 2: necks for days on end, living only on nuts.
Speaker 1: I mean, story checks out well, you see.
Speaker 2: Jokes about British weather and bad food have been going
Speaker 2: on for two millennia, it seems. But when Rome slowly
Speaker 2: conquered and began a process of Romanization in Britain, they
Speaker 2: would always find it arrestive province. With its long coastline,
Speaker 2: it was always prone to attack from people like the
Speaker 2: Atticotti and Scottie in Ireland. These are kind of warlike
Speaker 2: tribal peoples from Saxon's Dutes, geets you name it, come
Speaker 2: out from the east in Germany and Denmark, Norway, etc.
Speaker 2: And from people beyond Hadrian's Wall, the northern limit of
Speaker 2: the Empire, people who had become known as the Picts
Speaker 2: due to the pictures that they painted on their skins. Now,
Speaker 2: all of these threats menacing Roman Britain meant that it
Speaker 2: needed a large garrison. This was somewhere between three to
Speaker 2: four legions at various times, which is up to sixteen
Speaker 2: thousand soldiers. But these were augmented by many thousands of auxiliaries,
Speaker 2: who are usually local people who are armed and trained
Speaker 2: and so on by Rome, but who aren't necessarily citizens.
Speaker 1: Were they well integrated. Did the British kind of become
Speaker 1: citizens of the Empire in the same way that, for example,
Speaker 1: the Gauls did.
Speaker 2: It's not going question of debate, but I would say
Speaker 2: that Britain struggled to become as integrated as gaul which
Speaker 2: is what we call France today. No Britain ever was
Speaker 2: raised to the rank of equity, which was one of
Speaker 2: the highest ranks in Roman society, and was required to
Speaker 2: hold position of power of you to become a statesman.
Speaker 2: So we get a sense that Britain's were never really
Speaker 2: considered fully Romanized. Certainly in towns like Camulodenum, Colchester, or
Speaker 2: Londinium London, there was a great Romanized population there. People
Speaker 2: were living large on olives and wine from gall red
Speaker 2: gloss pottery, all of the signs and symbols of Roman
Speaker 2: excess and luxury. People were building villas with mosaic flaws.
Speaker 2: But outside in the countryside people still lived in you know,
Speaker 2: roundhouses with turf walls and thatched ceilings, living much as
Speaker 2: people had in the British Iron Age. So we get
Speaker 2: the sense of a two tier system, right.
Speaker 1: So the old line one of the Romans ever done
Speaker 1: for us. The answer is, well, if you live in
Speaker 1: the country, not very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, although it was subject
Speaker 2: to invasions, raids from these people outside the empire, the
Speaker 2: time of Roman Britain was a I'm of relative peace
Speaker 2: while the Empire flourished. When Roman arrived, Britain had been
Speaker 2: a patchwork of you know, tribes like the Ikenai.
Speaker 1: Famously led by Boudica or Bodhisi exactly, yes, who gave
Speaker 1: the Romans quite quite a scare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I live in Norwich, So Budica is a
Speaker 2: big figure for us. The Aquinai were our local tribe,
Speaker 2: and they burnt Colchester to the ground, something I think
Speaker 2: that they've never quite forgiven us for.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, this is an unruly place. It takes,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, a big army to keep the peace.
Speaker 1: You also need a strong man. You need a strong
Speaker 1: governor or strong generals to command that army. And we
Speaker 1: mentioned Magnus Maximus at the beginning of the conversation. But
Speaker 1: Magnus Maximus wasn't the first of these these strong men.
Speaker 1: So tell us about Clodius Albinus. He seems very I'd
Speaker 1: not heard of him before reading your book, and he's
Speaker 1: a very intriguing figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a remarkable guy who's born in North Africa
Speaker 2: and is a classic Roman statesman who flown into Britain
Speaker 2: to rule over these unruly people. As a Roman, he
Speaker 2: is therefore in charge of one of the largest armies
Speaker 2: in the Empire, which you know is necessary to defend
Speaker 2: Britain from all the threats it faces, but also provides
Speaker 2: an irresistible temptation to anyone who leads it.
Speaker 1: Was he militarily successful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, he's a good governor. But the Empire is
Speaker 2: going through a period of political upheaval and turmoil. This
Speaker 2: is during the reign of the emperor Commodace, who's memorably
Speaker 2: played by Juaquin Phoenix in the movie Gladiator.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a terrible, terrible human being in the movie,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like perhaps not much better in real life.
Speaker 2: Well, actually, if you can believe it, I think the
Speaker 2: movie had to dial down some of the insanity of Commodus.
Speaker 2: Commodus was fascinated with gladiators and with the idea of
Speaker 2: himself as a gladiator, and he would actually go into
Speaker 2: the arena himself to kill animals like ostriches and giraffes
Speaker 2: and you know, exotic animals of this kind. He once
Speaker 2: cut off the head of an ostrich and went to
Speaker 2: the stands where the senators were sitting and shouted up
Speaker 2: to them, you will be next.
Speaker 1: That's not cool, No.
Speaker 2: It's certainly not. It is a larger than life character
Speaker 2: who's violent, mad, tyrannical, you name it. But Commodist dies
Speaker 2: in one ninety two AD and suddenly the empire is
Speaker 2: up for grabs, and essentially the two contestants who emerge
Speaker 2: as the last people standing from a period of chaos
Speaker 2: that's called the year of the five emperors are Clodius
Speaker 2: Albinus in Britain and the Emperor Septimius Severus. These two
Speaker 2: come together at the Battle of Lugdanum in one ninety five,
Speaker 2: and it's an enormous battle that takes place over two days,
Speaker 2: and Clodius Albinus is finally defeated. When he realizes he's
Speaker 2: going to lose, he runs himself through with his dagger,
Speaker 2: and the Emperor Septimius Severus tramples him with his horse.
Speaker 2: This is tragic for Albinus personally, but for Roman Britain.
Speaker 2: His departure was also a disaster.
Speaker 1: Because he basically took the entire army to fight Septimius
Speaker 1: and left Britain without an army, which sounds like it
Speaker 1: might be an opportunity, but turns out that the opportunity
Speaker 1: for the wrong kind of people.
Speaker 2: Well that's right. I mean, if you're going to try
Speaker 2: and seize the imperial throne, you need every man you
Speaker 2: can take. The loss of a single unit could mean
Speaker 2: the loss of a battle, So he took every one
Speaker 2: of Britain's legions. But this leaves Britain largely defenseless. It's
Speaker 2: raided by picks from the North Atti Cotti from Ireland,
Speaker 2: who are roomored to eat human flesh. By the way,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't only a military threat coming from outside.
Speaker 2: It was also the collapse of the British economy. The
Speaker 2: entire economy in Britain was predicated on this situation of
Speaker 2: forty thousand armed Roman soldiers.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: Entire industries were built around mining metal, smelting it, forging
Speaker 2: it into useful things nails, hobnails, saw spears, etc. And
Speaker 2: feeding this vast force as well. Of course, the moment
Speaker 2: these people depart, nobody in these industries is getting paid,
Speaker 2: and you get a free fall economic collapse that affects
Speaker 2: every part of Britain.
Speaker 1: Presumably that also redounds to the harm of the Empire
Speaker 1: as a whole. This source of tiin, source of metals,
Speaker 1: source of tax revenue is in chaos. So the new
Speaker 1: emperor septimis Severus. He could presumably take an army into
Speaker 1: Britain and pacify it again. What makes that difficult, Well.
Speaker 2: This is what he does. Eventually, Severus travels to Britain.
Speaker 2: He campaigns north of Hadrian's Wall for a while. He
Speaker 2: seems to trample some poor peoples he encounters, but doesn't
Speaker 2: achieve any kind of lasting strategic success. He eventually withdraws,
Speaker 2: sickens and actually dies in York. So in some sense,
Speaker 2: Britain also ended up defeating Severus. Now, the story of
Speaker 2: British economic collapse of military failure on the mainland is
Speaker 2: one that Magnus Maximus one hundred and eighty years later
Speaker 2: should have learned, because it's a pattern that he repeats
Speaker 2: almost exactly.
Speaker 1: He's in a similar situation. He's in charge of a
Speaker 1: big army in Britain and there's an unpopular emperor back
Speaker 1: in Rome.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this emperor is one of the most colorful
Speaker 2: figures I think from Roman history, which is saying a lot.
Speaker 2: He's the Emperor Grecian, who's a young man who has
Speaker 2: a fascination for all things barbarian. He begins hanging out
Speaker 2: with a group of Scythian archers. These are men from
Speaker 2: what's now Ukraine, but at the time the Romans consider
Speaker 2: them to be barbarians. They are horse riding people, and
Speaker 2: Grecian begins dressing like a Scythian in the kind of
Speaker 2: typical pointed cap robes and so on, and this causes
Speaker 2: a lot of muttering at court.
Speaker 1: But if you're a Roman emperor, you can do what
Speaker 1: you like until you can't. So what turned this from
Speaker 1: being a kind of affectation for Grascian to being some
Speaker 1: that was a real political problem for him.
Speaker 2: Well, it's suddenly barbarians become a bit of a problem
Speaker 2: in the empire. The Emperor Valens is famously killed when
Speaker 2: he goes out to fight at an army of Goths.
Speaker 1: He's the emperor of the Eastern Empire and Gracians the
Speaker 1: emperor of the Western Empire at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Empire has been divided at this point, but
Speaker 2: it still acts in concert. They often fought together, etc.
Speaker 1: Okay, but one of them is killed by barbarians, which
Speaker 1: makes it, Yes, makes it weird that the other one
Speaker 1: is dressing like a barbarian all the time.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. Yeah, So the gration he's toppled, and
Speaker 2: once more the Empire is up for grabs.
Speaker 1: Enter Magnus Maximus. Here's our man. He's in Britain. He
Speaker 1: has this enormous army, and he's looking down at Rome
Speaker 1: and he's thinking, I fancy.
Speaker 2: This, that's right. Yeah, Magus Maximus sails for the main
Speaker 2: land in the three eighty three, and once again, just
Speaker 2: like Clodius Albinus, he brings every man he can to
Speaker 2: engage in a battle for the empire. Maximus is exceptionally successful.
Speaker 2: He's very popular, he's clearly a charismatic character, and he
Speaker 2: wins the battle unlike Albinus, so he actually becomes emperor.
Speaker 2: But the moment he does, his support begins to collapse,
Speaker 2: and it does so in part because of the anarchy
Speaker 2: that he's left behind in Britain. He's not only taxed
Speaker 2: his provinces brutally in order to fund this campaign, but
Speaker 2: just like Albinus, he's left it completely undefended. Its economy
Speaker 2: once more collapses, and Maximus is eventually left without support.
Speaker 2: He's chased out of the throne, finally defeated in battle,
Speaker 2: and he's actually condemned to the Roman punishment of damnacio memory,
Speaker 2: which is to have all mention off you scrubbed from
Speaker 2: the records.
Speaker 1: So that didn't go well at all. He's basically brought
Speaker 1: down because he abandoned Britain and the weakened empire that
Speaker 1: he was trying to rule could not cope with the
Speaker 1: chaos that that decision unleashed. At what point do the
Speaker 1: Romans just go, You know, this whole occupying Britain is
Speaker 1: just not worth it.
Speaker 2: Well, the date officially given to it is four to
Speaker 2: ten AD, when the Emperor Honorius declares that Britain should
Speaker 2: look to their own defenses. But really, I think de
Speaker 2: facto the complete loss of Britain is the revolt of
Speaker 2: constant Tinus, who is a common soldier who seems to
Speaker 2: rise to governor through some kind of military coup. He's
Speaker 2: risen from the ranks of the soldiers in Britain. He
Speaker 2: has no experience as a governor or statesman. He seems
Speaker 2: to have been elevated purely because his name reminded people
Speaker 2: of the great emperor Constantine had ruled less than a
Speaker 2: century earlier. People thought, that's a lucky name, We'll go
Speaker 2: for this guy.
Speaker 1: It feels like a pretty thin basis for giving anybody authority.
Speaker 2: But okay, yeah, certainly. He rebels in four oh seven
Speaker 2: AD and makes much the same pattern as Maximus and Albinus.
Speaker 2: He marches on Rome. He actually manages to force Honorius
Speaker 2: into sharing the throne with him for a while, so
Speaker 2: he does actually rule as co emperor. This common soldier.
Speaker 2: But soon an alliance of challengers, disgusted at this guy
Speaker 2: forcing his way into imperial power, eventually chase him out
Speaker 2: of the capitol. Most of the soldiers he brings with
Speaker 2: him will never return to Britain. Essentially, I think four
Speaker 2: oh seven is the time when Rome really has no
Speaker 2: administrative power over Britain anymore. And after this point, the
Speaker 2: entire Romanized economy that we talked about really begins its
Speaker 2: terminal decline.
Speaker 1: After the break, we are going to find out what
Speaker 1: happened to Britain after the Romans left, why it affected
Speaker 1: everything from British riding to the British dinner table. Stay
Speaker 1: with us, we'll be back with Paul Cooper after the break.
Speaker 1: We're back. I'm talking to Paul Cooper about his book
Speaker 1: and his podcast of the same name, Fall of Civilizations. So, Paul,
Speaker 1: the Roman emperor Honorius has basically washed his hands of Britain.
Speaker 1: Forget it, it's too much trouble. The Romans have left.
Speaker 1: So then, was that a cause for celebration for the
Speaker 1: native population.
Speaker 2: Well, undoubtedly there were people who might have celebrated the
Speaker 2: departure of Rome, but the entire Romanized economy that we
Speaker 2: talked about earlier now began its terminal decline. Romanized cities
Speaker 2: slowly fell into disrepair, their populations slowly left. Great monuments
Speaker 2: like Hadrian's Wall were also abandoned. Left to overgrow, people
Speaker 2: began to rob them of stone in order to build houses,
Speaker 2: build walls, things like that. The Roman bath, which require
Speaker 2: quite a lot of maintenance by skilled workers, and also
Speaker 2: the hypercourse systems that heated Roman houses from under the
Speaker 2: floor both fell into disrepair. The baths silted up. We
Speaker 2: get a sense of the complete falling apart of the
Speaker 2: House of Cards, that is a society. You know, people
Speaker 2: stopped mining iron are they stopped smarting iron. They stopped
Speaker 2: hammering it into nails, And this meant that people now
Speaker 2: had no hobnails in their shoes, and people began to
Speaker 2: scavenge in the Romanized cities for things like nails that
Speaker 2: were left.
Speaker 1: Behind and horseshoes. They lost the ability to make horseshoes,
Speaker 1: or at least to you know, they became too expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and no horseshoes means you don't want to ride
Speaker 2: your horse on the stone roads that the Romans had built.
Speaker 2: So the roads slowly begin to overgrow, as well. People
Speaker 2: go back to using paths and tracks, so people stopped
Speaker 2: making the large pots that you would use to cook
Speaker 2: a stew, which meant that people began eating roasted meat
Speaker 2: rather than stews. Romanized kitchen gardens that had grown things
Speaker 2: like parsley and coriander were no longer around, and these
Speaker 2: crops disappeared from the British diet.
Speaker 1: No more olive oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, for a while, in romanized cities
Speaker 2: like London, you get a kind of enclave of Romanized
Speaker 2: citizens still almost going through the motions of living this
Speaker 2: romanized life, but around them the city is depopulating. We
Speaker 2: get a fascinating layer of something called dark earth appearing
Speaker 2: in the archaeological record, which historians believe is the remains
Speaker 2: of kind of like wasteland sites where previously there'd been
Speaker 2: a building. Once the roof falls in, the walls collapse,
Speaker 2: brambles and ivy and elder and take roots in those sites,
Speaker 2: leaving a layer of mulch which becomes that dark earth.
Speaker 2: So it shows that parts of the previously densely populated
Speaker 2: city were becoming overgrown full of vegetation. It must have
Speaker 2: been quite an eerie site to walk through the streets
Speaker 2: of somewhere like London or Colchester and see you know
Speaker 2: that it was becoming a ghost town.
Speaker 1: Real post apocalyptic vibes. Yeah, So, taking a step back
Speaker 1: from Rome and Britain and taking on board the sweep
Speaker 1: of your podcast in your book, all of these different
Speaker 1: civilizations that have risen and fallen in human history, were
Speaker 1: they also looking back at the civilizations before them and
Speaker 1: discussing their own cautionary tales. Were they learning from the
Speaker 1: mistakes of their history?
Speaker 2: I think learning from mistakes would be taking it too far.
Speaker 2: You know, the people of the past didn't have a
Speaker 2: sense of history as we do, as a body of
Speaker 2: knowledge that can be debated and analyzed. They viewed history
Speaker 2: as the exploits of great men and great stories, societies
Speaker 2: contending for victory in great contests. But that isn't to
Speaker 2: say they didn't have an awareness of the societies that
Speaker 2: had passed before. One example is the Sumerians and Assyrians
Speaker 2: and all these people who lived in the plains of Mesopotamia,
Speaker 2: who who looked around them and saw the ruins of
Speaker 2: even more ancient civilizations crumbling around them. You know that
Speaker 2: part of the world has been occupied for at least
Speaker 2: ten thousand years with some kind of food city building societies,
Speaker 2: and they came up with stories like the Great Flood,
Speaker 2: which you know survives in the Bible in Genesis, and
Speaker 2: to explain how these societies had been destroyed, you know,
Speaker 2: for their pride, stories like the Tower of Bible, which
Speaker 2: is probably written in response to the site of the
Speaker 2: ruin of the Zigarat of or all of these are
Speaker 2: ways that people have responded to the ruins of the past.
Speaker 2: And you know, things like Homer's Iliad, which is the
Speaker 2: story really of a war that probably did take place
Speaker 2: in some way, a clash between the Mycenae and Greeks
Speaker 2: in the Late Bronze Age with the Trojans, who are
Speaker 2: kind of a peripheral subject of the Hittite Empire. And
Speaker 2: there seems to have been some kind of war in
Speaker 2: which the city of Troy was burned. But there's a
Speaker 2: period that follows it called the Bronze Age Collapse, the
Speaker 2: Late Bronze Age collapse, that is then that sees the
Speaker 2: collapse near simultaneously of multiple powerful civilizations around the Near East,
Speaker 2: and it is followed by a period called the Greek
Speaker 2: Dark Ages, which is contested term but basically means that
Speaker 2: there's no written sources about this period of history, and
Speaker 2: this story is kind of repeated again and again by poets, singers,
Speaker 2: you know, passed on by word of mouth, and it's
Speaker 2: elevating the level of this apocalyptic clash between civilizations full
Speaker 2: of great heroes and marvelous duels of single combat and
Speaker 2: so on, that we know today. And it's when the
Speaker 2: Roman general Scipio Amilianus, many centuries later, is looking at
Speaker 2: the besieged city of Carthage as his own Roman forces
Speaker 2: sweep into it, burning it and sacking it. Scipio is
Speaker 2: said to quote a line from the Iliad about how
Speaker 2: he fears that one day Troy will be destroyed, to
Speaker 2: have shed a tear and begun weeping because he has
Speaker 2: this moment of historical realization that his great city of
Speaker 2: Rome will one day face the same fate. That history
Speaker 2: is this cyclical series of patterns, and indeed, five centuries later,
Speaker 2: Rome is sacked during its own catastrophic decline.
Speaker 1: Paul, you've studied the rise and fall of so many
Speaker 1: different civilizations. Is there a single lesson that you think
Speaker 1: it's important that we learn?
Speaker 2: I think when I started this series I believed that
Speaker 2: I would come away with advice, a list of things
Speaker 2: not to do. If you don't want your civilization to collapse,
Speaker 2: here's how to prevent it. But I think as time's
Speaker 2: gone on, I've become something of a cynic about the
Speaker 2: human ability ever to learn from history. Like Albinus and
Speaker 2: Maximus and Constantinus, we seem to always pass again and
Speaker 2: again through the same patterns, the same mistakes, tyrannies and dictatorships,
Speaker 2: economic collapse, environmental degradation. I think the lesson I'd really
Speaker 2: like people to take from this is that if you
Speaker 2: ever feel despair, if you ever feel alone with that feeling,
Speaker 2: actually that feeling is extremely ancient. People have been feeling
Speaker 2: that since the dawn of time, and that it's one
Speaker 2: of the most fundamental human feelings. Perhaps at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, societies collapse and they are replaced by
Speaker 2: a more sustainable one. A society that's unable to survive
Speaker 2: ends up being replaced by one that can. And wherever
Speaker 2: we see collapse, we also see the green shoots of
Speaker 2: recovery coming through the ash, like the new growth after
Speaker 2: a forest fire. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: it's about building connections with people around you that will
Speaker 2: survive times of upheaval, times of degradation, and even poverty.
Speaker 2: It's about building things in your life that will survive history.
Speaker 1: I've been talking to Paul Cooper. Paul's book and podcast
Speaker 1: are The Fall of Civilizations. Paul, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on for your
Speaker 2: thoughtful questions. It's been great to be here.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is presented by me Tim Harford. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and
Speaker 1: original music are the work of Pascal Wise. The show
Speaker 1: also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Greta Cohene, Coryin Gilliard, Fisher Bender, Da f Haffrey, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, great and review. It really does
Speaker 1: make a difference to us and if you want to
Speaker 1: hear it, add free and receive a bonus audio episode,
Speaker 1: video episode, and members only newsletter every month. Why not
Speaker 1: join the Cautionary Club. To sign up, head to Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com Slash Cautionary Club. That's Patreon, p A t
Speaker 1: R e o N dot com Slash Cautionary clubs
Speaker 2: Assass