Speaker 1: Pushkin. Tim here with an exciting announcement about the Cautionary Club,
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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales. It's on the eighth of July at five
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Speaker 1: That's Patreon, p A, T R e O N dot
Speaker 1: com slash Cautionary Club. Britannia the farthest the leakist province
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire three ninety CE, A harsh, misty
Speaker 1: land of savages and strange mystics. Forty thousand soldiers about
Speaker 1: an eighth of the imperial army, and needed to control
Speaker 1: the unruly native tribes, protect the archipelago from pirates and
Speaker 1: push any marauder's back over Hadrian's Wall and into Scotland.
Speaker 1: Such a mighty army needs a tremendous leader, and they
Speaker 1: have one in the shape of Magnus Maximus. Maximus is
Speaker 1: a distinctuish general. As a younger man, he helped restore
Speaker 1: order after the Picts from Scotland, the Scotty from Ireland
Speaker 1: and the Saxons from the continent joined forces to attack
Speaker 1: Roman Britannia in the Great Barbarian Conspiracy of three six
Speaker 1: seven Ceve. Then he fought in successful campaigns against the
Speaker 1: Moors in North Africa and the Alamanni on the Danube River.
Speaker 1: For ten years now, Maximus has governed Britannia. He's put
Speaker 1: down raids by the Picts, built a huge church on
Speaker 1: London's Tower Hill, and forced the country to bend to
Speaker 1: his will. But he can't wait to leave this wet,
Speaker 1: windy and wild Isle, this backwater of the empire. He
Speaker 1: spies opportunity back on the mainland. A young, unpopular emperor
Speaker 1: sits on the throne in Rome. His courtiers are turning
Speaker 1: against him and rivals are carving their armies. Maximus is
Speaker 1: a great military general, and he leads the biggest, toughest
Speaker 1: army in the Empire. He instructs the entire Roman garrison
Speaker 1: of Britannia to board a fleet of ships, and they
Speaker 1: sail for the mainland and victory. If only Maximus have
Speaker 1: consulted the history books first, I'm Tim Harford, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to cautionary Tales. Magnus Maximus wasn't the first governor
Speaker 1: of Britannia with ambitions to be a Roman emperor. Here
Speaker 1: to tell us all about him and the history he
Speaker 1: should have studied is Paul Cooper, presenter of the podcast
Speaker 1: Fall of Civilizations, Stories of Greatness and Decline, and the
Speaker 1: author of a book of the same name. Paul, Welcome
Speaker 1: to caution Details.
Speaker 2: That's a great pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Paul. You're going to tell us all about Magnus Maximus.
Speaker 1: But first I wanted to know what attracted you to
Speaker 1: studying 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 spaces.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was really struck just reading your your book,
Speaker 1: really struck by this amazing Anglo Saxon poem about a
Speaker 1: ruined Roman bath house. And I've never encountered it before,
Speaker 1: but 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 is
Speaker 2: written about the Roman baths in the town of Bath.
Speaker 2: One example of many of a person in history wandering
Speaker 2: through the ruins of a society that came before, and
Speaker 2: having that amazing experience that people always seem to have
Speaker 2: in these ruined places, which is a moment of contact
Speaker 2: with the people of the past, a sudden appreciation not
Speaker 2: only of the power of time and its immense size,
Speaker 2: but also the ability of human monuments to survive the
Speaker 2: 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 mo. While you're just going yes, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate the crossovers between the podcasts.
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: These stories of societal failure are as much a part
Speaker 2: of us as those of success and triumph, So.
Speaker 1: Trying to draw out some common threads then in why
Speaker 1: civilizations do fail, one theme that comes up again and
Speaker 1: 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: 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 a uprooted and sent to a different
Speaker 2: part of the empire where they don't know the land,
Speaker 2: don't know the territory, you know, disconnected from their ability
Speaker 2: to exploit their knowledge of the land to resist empire.
Speaker 2: But in this kind of ruthless, remorseless approach, the Assyrian
Speaker 2: Empire becomes absolutely despised around the region. In the end,
Speaker 2: as the seventh century BC wears on and the last
Speaker 2: great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, dies, you get a succession
Speaker 2: of weak kings followed by a rebellion in Babylon. Suddenly
Speaker 2: are horse rearing people called the Meads who live in
Speaker 2: the Zagros mountains of Iran join in to invade Assyria.
Speaker 2: You get rebellions in Egypt, and suddenly revolts happening all
Speaker 2: around the empire as outside enemies are uniting against it.
Speaker 2: The Babylonians and Meads sign a pact in the ruins
Speaker 2: of an Assyrian city called Ashore, and in the next
Speaker 2: year is really only a period of about three years,
Speaker 2: the Assyrian Empire, what was the most powerful empire in
Speaker 2: the world, is completely dismantled. Many of its cities never
Speaker 2: recover as centers of population because.
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't make any friends, because they were
Speaker 1: incredibly brutal. So when the end comes, it comes incredibly quickly.
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
Speaker 1: its possible to overdo it. And you point to both
Speaker 1: the hand Innersity of China and the khmerd Innersity of
Speaker 1: Cambodia as the civilizations that overdid the taxation, and then
Speaker 1: that 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 these constant threatened rebellions from this
Speaker 2: hell up class. So this is one example in which
Speaker 2: inequality becomes a great weakening agent in a society, preventing
Speaker 2: them from engaging in long term planning, from feeding their
Speaker 2: population without immense resentment building. And there are many examples
Speaker 2: 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: innisty 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 hand dynasty in China is a fascinating example.
Speaker 2: There's an increasing concentration of power in the imperial Palace
Speaker 2: in Luo Yang, and the two great power blocks inside
Speaker 2: the palace are the eunuch attendants and the dowager empresses,
Speaker 2: the mothers of both the emperor and previous emperors, who
Speaker 2: have passed on their power and prestige depended completely on
Speaker 2: their sons, their progeny, and how close they were to
Speaker 2: the imperial throne. So this meant a constant jockeying for
Speaker 2: power among these rivals. Dowagers would poison the sons of
Speaker 2: other empresses in order to get them off the throne
Speaker 2: and get their son just one step closer to inheriting it.
Speaker 2: In this way, the Imperial Palace of China ran red
Speaker 2: with blood. Now, eunuchs served in the palace because essentially
Speaker 2: this was the place where the emperor lived with his women,
Speaker 2: and I mean a It was thought to be safer
Speaker 2: to castrate these men in order to prevent them from
Speaker 2: entangling themselves with palace women, shall we say, But it
Speaker 2: was also a way of ensuring that they would have
Speaker 2: no aspiration for the throne. It was thought that someone
Speaker 2: who was unable to have children would have less desire
Speaker 2: to topple the emperor do a palace coup. But what
Speaker 2: we see in these centuries is a power contest between
Speaker 2: the dowager empresses and the eunuchs, with the emperor being
Speaker 2: essentially a puppet, a kind of game piece that's being
Speaker 2: passed between them. And for this reason, the emperor was
Speaker 2: very often a child. The Emperor Shan was actually a
Speaker 2: six month old baby who was crowned emperor while still
Speaker 2: in his crib. This is because children were easier to control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there'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. Ronald Reagan
Speaker 2: used to joke that Soviet premiers kept dying on me.
Speaker 2: I think he said, but it was true. In the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, they had a problem with joe intocracy, with
Speaker 2: passing on power to the next generation. Power became incredibly
Speaker 2: encrusted in these men who are in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: and the society really didn't have a healthy mechanism for
Speaker 2: passing that power down. We now see that same situation
Speaker 2: developing in the United States, where the election before last
Speaker 2: saw Donald Trump and Joe Biden contesting the presidency. You know,
Speaker 2: both of them in their seventies, and it's that inability
Speaker 2: to pass on power to the next generation I think
Speaker 2: has echoes in something like the Imperial 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 guys.
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 reasons,
Speaker 1: and that kind of he knew what he was doing.
Speaker 1: One more question before we return to Roman Britain, and
Speaker 1: the teaser we began with is environmental degradation, because this
Speaker 1: is I think often associated with the fall of civilizations.
Speaker 1: I think Jared Diamond wrote a famous book Collapse. It
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 the
Speaker 2: valley of Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: It's not as famous as the Roman or the Greeks,
Speaker 1: but the Sumerians they invented accountancy, they invented writing. They
Speaker 1: I mean, they invented the city. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: 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 year twenty two hundred BC, we get a small
Speaker 2: localized climate shift that had kind of tendrils happening elsewhere
Speaker 2: in the world. But in general, this was a kind
Speaker 2: of Eurasian shift, perhaps a change in currents going over
Speaker 2: the Sahara Desert, a drying of air around the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: And it must be underlined that this was a very
Speaker 2: minor climate shift compared to what we're looking at in
Speaker 2: the coming century. But nevertheless, this caused a period of
Speaker 2: drought 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 we would hardly even notice.
Speaker 1: This is caution detales. 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 had never really conquered before. But this provided
Speaker 2: problems of supply, problems of connection to the mainland. There
Speaker 2: would always mean that Britain sat in a slightly awkward
Speaker 2: position 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 Marcolinus 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you see, jokes about British weather and bad
Speaker 2: food have been going on for two millennia, it seems.
Speaker 2: But when Rome slowly conquered and began a process of
Speaker 2: Romanization in Britain, they would always find it arrestive province.
Speaker 2: With its long coastline, it was always prone to attack
Speaker 2: from people like the Atticotti and Scotty in Ireland. These
Speaker 2: are kind of warlike tribal peoples from Saxon's Dutes, Geets,
Speaker 2: you name it, coming 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 positions of power to become a statesman. So we
Speaker 2: get a sense that Britain's were never really considered fully Romanized.
Speaker 2: Certainly in towns like Camulodenum, Colchester, or Londinium London, there
Speaker 2: was a great Romanized population there. People were living large
Speaker 2: on olives and wine from gall red gloss pottery, all
Speaker 2: of the signs and symbols of Roman excess and luxury.
Speaker 2: People were building villas with mosaic flows. But outside in
Speaker 2: the countryside people still lived in you know, roundhouses with
Speaker 2: turf walls and thatched ceilings, living much as people had
Speaker 2: in the British iron Age. So we get the sense
Speaker 2: 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 time 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.
Speaker 1: Ikenai, famously led by Boudica or Bodhesia exactly, yes, who
Speaker 1: gave the Romans quite a quite a scare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I live in Norwich, so Boudica is a
Speaker 2: big figure for us. The Aquin I were our local
Speaker 2: tribe and they burnt Colchester to the ground, something I
Speaker 2: think 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, because he seems very
Speaker 1: I'd not heard of him before reading your book, and
Speaker 1: he's 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's you know, flown
Speaker 2: into Britain to rule over these rulely people as a Roman.
Speaker 2: He is therefore in charge of one of the largest
Speaker 2: armies in the Empire, which you know is necessary to
Speaker 2: defend Britain from all the threats it faces, but also
Speaker 2: provides an irresistible temptation to anyone who leads it.
Speaker 1: Was he militarily successful, Yeah, absolutely, he's a good governor,
Speaker 1: but the Empire is going through a period of political
Speaker 1: upheaval and turmoil.
Speaker 2: This is during the reign of the Emperor Commodace, who's
Speaker 2: memorably 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 wants
Speaker 2: cut off the head of an ostrich and when to
Speaker 2: the stands where the senators were sitting and shouted up
Speaker 2: to them, you will be next. That's not cool, No,
Speaker 2: it's certainly not. It's a larger than life character who's violent, mad, tyrannical,
Speaker 2: you name it. But Commodist dies in one ninety two AD,
Speaker 2: and suddenly the empire is up for grabs, and essentially
Speaker 2: the two contestants who emerge as the last people standing
Speaker 2: from a period of chaos that's called the Year of
Speaker 2: the Five Emperors are Clodius Albinus in Britain and the
Speaker 2: emperor Septimius Severus. These two come together at the Battle
Speaker 2: of Lugdanum in one ninety five and it's an enormous
Speaker 2: battle that takes place over two days, and Clodius Albinus
Speaker 2: is finally defeated when he realizes he's going to lose.
Speaker 2: He runs himself through with his dagger and the emperors
Speaker 2: Septimis Severus tramples him with his horse. This is tragic
Speaker 2: for Albinus personally, but for Roman Britain. His departure was
Speaker 2: 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 Atticotti from Ireland, who
Speaker 2: are rumored to eat human flesh. By the way, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't only a military threat coming from outside. It
Speaker 2: was also the collapse of the British economy. The entire
Speaker 2: economy in Britain was predicated on the situation of forty
Speaker 2: thousand armed Roman soldiers. There entire industries were built around
Speaker 2: mining metal, smelting it, forging it into useful things nails, hobnails, swords, spears, etc.
Speaker 2: And feeding 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 emperor,
Speaker 1: Septimius Severus, he could presumably take an army into Britain
Speaker 1: and pacify it again. What makes that difficult.
Speaker 2: Well, this is what he does. Eventually, Severus travels to Britain.
Speaker 2: He campaigns north of Hadrian's War 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 Maximus one hundred and eighty years later should
Speaker 2: have learned, because it's a pattern that he repeats almost exactly.
Speaker 1: He's in a similar situation. He's he's in charge of
Speaker 1: a big army in Britain and there's an unpopular emperor
Speaker 1: back 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're like 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 something
Speaker 1: that was a real political problem for him.
Speaker 2: Well, it's sudden they barbarians become a bit of a
Speaker 2: problem in the empire. The emperor Valens is famously killed
Speaker 2: when he goes out to fighter 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 this.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. Magnus Maximus sails for the main land
Speaker 2: in three eighty three, and once again, just like Claudius Albinus,
Speaker 2: he brings every man he can to engage in a
Speaker 2: battle for the empire. Maximus is exceptionally successful. He's very popular,
Speaker 2: he's it's clearly a charismatic character, and he wins the
Speaker 2: battle unlike Albinus, so he actually becomes emperor, but the
Speaker 2: moment he does, his support begins to collapse, and it
Speaker 2: does so in part because of the anarchy that he's
Speaker 2: left behind in Britain. He's not only taxed his provinces
Speaker 2: brutally in order to fund this campaign, but just like Albinus,
Speaker 2: he's left it completely undefended. Its economy once more collapses,
Speaker 2: and Maximus is eventually left without support. He's chased out
Speaker 2: of the throne, finally defeated in battle, and he's actually
Speaker 2: condemned to the Roman punishment of Damnacio memory I, which
Speaker 2: is to have all mention of you scrubbed from the records.
Speaker 1: So that didn't go well at all. He 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: The date officially given to it is four to ten AD,
Speaker 2: when the Emperor Honorius declares that Britain should look to
Speaker 2: their own defenses. But really, I think de facto, the
Speaker 2: completely loss of Britain is the revolt of Constantinus, who
Speaker 2: is a common soldier who seems to rise to governor
Speaker 2: through some kind of military coup. He's risen from the
Speaker 2: ranks of the soldiers in Britain. He has no experience
Speaker 2: as a governor or statesman. He seems to have been
Speaker 2: elevated purely because his name reminded people of the great
Speaker 2: emperor Constantine had ruled less than a century earlier. People thought,
Speaker 2: that's a lucky name. We'll go for this guy.
Speaker 1: That 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 absolutely 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
Speaker 1: written 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 houses, which
Speaker 2: require quite a lot of maintenance, by skilled workers. And
Speaker 2: also the hypercourse systems that heated Roman houses from under
Speaker 2: the floor both fell into disrepair. The baths silted up.
Speaker 2: We get a sense of the complete falling apart of
Speaker 2: the House of cards, that is a society. You know,
Speaker 2: people stopped mining iron all they stopped smelting iron, they
Speaker 2: stopped hammering it into nails, and this meant that people
Speaker 2: now had no hobnails in their shoes, and people began
Speaker 2: to scavenge in the Romanized cities for things like nails
Speaker 2: that 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. The Romanized kitchen gardens that had grown
Speaker 2: things like parsley and coriander were no longer around, and
Speaker 2: these crops disappeared from the British.
Speaker 1: Diet, 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 that there'd
Speaker 2: been a building. Once the roof falls in, the walls collapse,
Speaker 2: brambles and ivy and elder and some take roots in
Speaker 2: those sites, leaving a layer of mulch which becomes that
Speaker 2: dark earth. So it shows that parts of the previously
Speaker 2: densely populated city were becoming overgrown, full of vegetation. It
Speaker 2: must have been quite an eerie site to walk through
Speaker 2: the streets of somewhere like London or Colchester and see,
Speaker 2: you know that it was becoming a ghost town.
Speaker 1: Real post apocalyptic vibes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, taking a step back from Rome and Britain and
Speaker 1: taking on board the sweep of your podcast in your book,
Speaker 1: all of these different civilizations that have risen and fallen
Speaker 1: in human history. Were they also looking back at the
Speaker 1: civilizations before them and discussing their own caution detales. Were
Speaker 1: they learning from the 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
Speaker 2: Mesopotamia who looked around them and saw the r 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 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 Mysonee 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 BRONZEI collapse, that is then that sees the collapse
Speaker 2: 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: elevated 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.
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