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1:10

Hello everyone and welcome to the History

1:13

of Byzantium, episode 276,

1:15

Pax, War and Peace in

1:19

Rome's Golden Age, with Tom

1:22

Holland. I

1:25

imagine for many of you, Tom Holland requires

1:27

no introduction, but just in case,

1:30

he is a London-based historian who has now

1:33

written three books covering Roman

1:35

history.

1:36

He's also written books about the first

1:38

millennium, the Greco-Persian war,

1:41

as well as two particularly groundbreaking

1:43

books about religion.

1:45

The first, In the Shadow of the Sword,

1:48

was the subject of an interview on this podcast

1:50

back in 2014 when we

1:52

were covering the origins of Islam.

1:55

Recently he wrote a book called

1:57

Dominion, where he charted the influence

1:59

of Christianism. Christianity, from its capture

2:01

of the Romans all the way to modern

2:03

times. If that sounds

2:06

at all dry, believe me, it

2:08

is the opposite. It is an exhilarating

2:10

argument that essentially beginning with the Crusades,

2:13

Western Christianity set itself on the path

2:16

towards the Enlightenment, science,

2:18

atheism, and perhaps even

2:21

woe. Tom

2:23

Holland is such a fascinating writer. He

2:25

has the skill I so admire in the best

2:27

historians I've read of taking you back

2:30

into the mindset of earlier people,

2:33

stripping away or perhaps putting back

2:35

on layers of meaning which we've

2:37

missed out on. His

2:40

first Romans-only book, Rubicon,

2:42

covered the fall of the Republic, his

2:44

second, Dynasty, took the story from Julius

2:46

Caesar's death to that of Nero, and

2:49

his latest book, Pax, takes

2:51

us up to the death of Hadrian. I

2:55

imagine that, like me, you

2:57

all know the story of this period pretty well.

3:00

It's Tom's great skill to tell the story in a way

3:03

that brings out insights which you didn't realise

3:05

were there to be drawn out, and that's

3:07

what I talk to him about in today's interview.

3:11

Tom's books are available everywhere good books are

3:13

sold, but if you'd like to listen to one,

3:16

then why not try Audible? Audible's

3:19

massive collection of books and podcasts probably

3:21

needs no introduction either, but

3:23

you could listen to Pax for free if

3:26

you sign up at audibletrial.com forward

3:28

slash Byzantium. In

3:30

the past, Tom has delegated the reading

3:33

of these books to voice actors, but for Pax,

3:36

he does the talking himself, and

3:38

I know that will be a selling point to those of you who

3:40

are now hooked on Tom's podcast, The

3:43

Rest is History. I'll

3:45

repeat that Audible offer at the end of the show, but

3:47

for now, here's the interview.

4:00

are now the busiest man in history

4:02

and podcasting. We are incredibly grateful

4:05

for your time. We last spoke

4:08

in 2014 when I was covering

4:10

the origins of Islam and since

4:12

then you've written Dynasty, Rise

4:15

and Fall of the House of Caesar, covering

4:17

Caesar's death to Nero's death,

4:20

and now you've written Pax, War

4:22

and Peace in Rome's Golden Age, taking us from Nero's

4:24

death to that of Hadrian in 138 AD, and that's

4:27

obviously what we'll be talking about today. But

4:30

I wanted to start by asking about the

4:32

book you wrote in between those two, Dominion,

4:36

The Making of the Western Mind, or perhaps more

4:38

revealingly the American subtitle, How the Christian

4:40

Revolution Remade the World. I

4:43

can't recommend Dominion highly enough to

4:45

those listening. It's one of the most mind-blowing

4:48

history books I've ever read. You know,

4:51

I'm loving this already. This

4:53

is going so well. I mean

4:56

we could think of it. I could just talk about that for now, but

4:58

just keep on with the play. One

5:01

of the points you made in that book is that people,

5:04

particularly in the West today, are so saturated

5:07

in Christian ideas that it's very hard

5:09

to fathom how different the moral

5:11

universe of people in the pre-Christian

5:14

past was, and you begin Pax

5:16

by saying the Romans of that period

5:19

were compellingly different

5:21

to us. So am I right in seeing

5:23

the influence of Dominion on how you approached

5:26

this period of Roman history? Yeah,

5:28

so the

5:32

period that I'm covering, obviously Christians

5:35

are there, but as I say in the introduction,

5:37

they are like tiny shrews

5:40

scampering around a Mesozoic ecosystem,

5:43

and in the long run the mammals

5:46

will inherit the earth, but at the moment I'm

5:48

interested in the dinosaurs. Well

5:51

I wanted to get into that. How do you

5:54

approach

5:56

understanding of pre-Christian people?

5:59

Or maybe I should say

5:59

pre-secular

6:01

people because I think we

6:03

really struggle to understand how the

6:07

divine influenced

6:09

people because we've created this separation

6:12

from it. So I think that, and

6:15

this is a conclusion I've come to over many,

6:17

many years, but it's one that's always nagged

6:19

at me and it now pretty much obsesses

6:22

me, that there is

6:24

a flaw with the

6:27

methodology of academic

6:30

scholarship in the 21st century. I

6:32

mean, it's achieved so much, we couldn't look at

6:34

the past without it, and yet there are

6:36

certain costs. And one of the problems

6:39

is that in its fundamentals,

6:42

it's very, very materialist. And

6:46

the past was not a materialist world. People

6:50

did not have materialist attitudes. People

6:52

believed that the world was

6:55

full of gods, that the interface of

6:58

the supernatural and the natural was

7:00

so profound that it barely made

7:02

any sense to distinguish them. And

7:05

I think that that is true, say, of

7:10

the Christian centuries of the Middle

7:12

Ages and of late antiquity. But

7:15

at least we are very much

7:17

the heirs of that way of thinking.

7:20

So to go back to a world where you not

7:23

only have to smear away the kind of the materialist

7:25

assumptions, but you also have to smear

7:27

away the Christian presumptions is really

7:30

difficult, because it's

7:32

the nature of assumptions that you tend not to recognize that you

7:34

have them. I'm

7:37

sure lots of people who

7:39

write about antiquity,

7:41

and I was certainly one of them. And

7:44

this was kind of focused for me by the book that you mentioned at

7:46

the start of this, Shadow of the Sword.

7:49

I felt that I was in writing that, that I was being

7:51

objective and neutral in

7:53

looking at the various ways

7:55

that Jews and Zoroastrians

7:57

and Christians and Muslims understood the mention

8:00

of the supernatural. But of course, I wasn't at all.

8:02

And specifically with Islam, the

8:05

the assumption I brought to looking

8:08

at the life of Muhammad and the historicity

8:10

of the Quran and the origins of the Quran

8:14

were deeply materialist. So I wasn't

8:17

being neutral at all. It's perfectly

8:19

possible to explain the origins of Islam as

8:21

Muslims have always done as an intrusion of the

8:23

divine into the fabric of the

8:25

mortal and the earthly. But I wasn't going to do

8:27

that. That doesn't make me neutral. So

8:31

with the Romans, you have to try and

8:34

come to terms with their understanding of

8:36

the divine. You have to get rid of your material

8:38

assumptions, you have to get rid of your Christian assumptions. And

8:40

both of them are so, we

8:43

are so marinated in them that it's, I

8:45

think, very difficult to do that. You

8:47

have to make a conscious effort, I think.

8:50

Well,

8:51

let's talk about this unnervingly

8:54

different culture with

8:57

an example that was quite unfamiliar

8:59

to me. I had forgotten this from that

9:01

earlier period of Roman history. So I suspect some

9:03

listeners will too, which

9:06

is the tale of Sporus. Could

9:09

you remind the listeners of this? Because I think this is probably

9:11

the most unnerving story

9:14

from the book. So if any of your listeners have watched Succession,

9:19

they may have picked up on this story because Tom

9:22

Wamsgams is always citing

9:24

it to cousin Greg. And I can

9:26

claim personal responsibility for that. I was

9:28

the Julia Claudian advisor. I

9:31

went in and talked to the writers before they

9:33

began working on the script for

9:35

Succession. Fantastic. So very

9:38

proud of that. It is a terrible

9:40

story. And to be fair, it was seen as

9:42

a pretty terrible story by

9:45

the Romans themselves. It was seen as a marker of Nero's

9:47

depravity. Because of course, whenever

9:49

there's some shocking story, you can be sure that Nero

9:52

isn't far away from it. So

9:55

Nero's, the great love of Nero's

9:58

life was a woman called Papaya Sabanc. who

10:00

had amber colored hair, had her own

10:02

cosmetics range. She

10:05

was the one who bathed in acid milk, not Cleopatra.

10:09

Long before Peat Town's end, she said, I hope

10:11

I die before I get old. So she was very,

10:13

she was unbelievably sophisticated.

10:16

Nero, a daughter. The

10:18

story, the gossip

10:20

is that Nero comes home from

10:23

the races one day. Papaya

10:25

is heavily pregnant with Nero's son,

10:27

maybe son, maybe daughter we don't know,

10:29

but Nero, I think, assumed it was a son. She

10:32

snaps at him, he kicks her in the stomach and she dies, and

10:34

the baby dies as well. We

10:36

have no way of knowing if that story is true. I personally

10:39

doubt it. It's a commentary on how

10:42

the Romans saw Nero. But

10:45

certainly there's no doubt in the Titanic scale

10:47

of Nero's grief, and

10:49

he gives Papaya a sensational send-off,

10:52

full funeral in the Forum. She's

10:54

mummified, laid to rest in the Mausoleum

10:56

of Augustus. The full work

10:58

of Nero incinerates a

11:00

vast quantity of incense in her honor.

11:03

And he goes on to marry

11:05

another woman who's rather like Papaya, kind

11:08

of aristocratic, sophisticated, smart,

11:10

clearly Nero's type. But

11:13

the story goes that Nero misses

11:18

the physicality of someone who looks like

11:20

Papaya. And so he sends scouts out

11:23

across the Empire looking for someone, and

11:25

the scouts duly find someone. The

11:27

twist is that this person is not

11:30

a female but a male, very

11:32

young boy. He's castrated,

11:35

Nero christens him. It doesn't christen him, obviously,

11:38

because he's not president. Now you see the importation of

11:40

Christian prejudices. He calls

11:42

him Sporus, which is a grim,

11:45

Neronian joke, because Sporus in Greek is

11:47

spunk. And of course Sporus

11:49

no longer has any spunk. But

11:52

principally, this poor boy girl

11:56

is called Papaya, because from this

11:58

point on, he, she, is Christian. treated as

12:00

being papaya, where's the hair,

12:03

cosmetics, dress, everything

12:06

to look like papaya. And

12:10

in due course when Nero kills

12:13

himself, papaya,

12:16

Sporis, is there and

12:18

does the mourning over his body as a bereaved

12:22

wife should, gets picked

12:24

up as a trophy of war by the commander of the Praetorians

12:27

who's betrayed Nero. He gets

12:29

overambitious, gets killed

12:33

and papaya Sporis

12:35

gets picked up by Oso

12:38

who had actually been married to

12:40

the original papaya before Nero

12:43

kind of appropriated her.

12:47

So for Oso it must have been very

12:49

odd, you know suddenly sleeping

12:52

with someone who looks like his dead wife. Oso

12:55

of course then succumbs

12:58

in his legions defeated,

13:00

he commits suicide rather nobly rather

13:02

than carry on a civil war and

13:04

so Sporis becomes the property of Vitellius,

13:07

the pie-loving

13:11

commander of the German legions who becomes

13:14

the third of the three emperors in the year of the four

13:16

emperors. So Vitellius

13:18

thinks that by this point Sporis

13:20

is clearly soiled goods, doesn't want him,

13:23

her. So decides that

13:25

he will show

13:27

the Roman people what a great guy he is by staging

13:30

an incredible entertainment which

13:32

involves dressing Sporis

13:35

up as a plesipina and

13:38

dressing up a load of gadiators as

13:42

Pluto and having Sporis

13:45

gang-raped to death in the arena and

13:47

at this point unsurprisingly the poor boy kills

13:49

himself and the

13:51

thing I think that

13:55

is most startling about

13:58

that is that

13:59

Thalleus thought this was a way to show what a great

14:02

guy he was. I mean, there's a chasm

14:04

of difference from us than that.

14:10

Nero, what Nero is doing

14:13

by

14:14

creating this similar acrum of a woman,

14:17

to the degree that he offers large amounts of money

14:19

to doctors who could implant

14:21

a womb in Sporas's body,

14:25

is that he is pushing to the limits a

14:28

sexual trend among the Roman elite

14:31

and pushing

14:34

it to excess, as Nero does with

14:36

almost everything. Because the

14:38

great craze among the

14:40

Roman elite is for boys who look like

14:43

girls. And delicati

14:45

they're called, pretty boys. And their

14:48

hair is conferred and teased

14:50

and crimped and permed and they

14:52

wear cosmetics and silks and all this kind

14:55

of thing. And the

14:59

more of a delicatus the slave

15:01

boy is, the more valuable

15:03

he is. And

15:06

Nero is just pushing this trend to an absolute

15:08

limit that no one will ever rival. And

15:10

it's very, very, in that way, very Nero behaviour.

15:14

I was going to say, and I think people

15:16

have to read the book to see the way you manfully

15:20

explain what

15:23

we would see as Peter

15:26

Phillip behaviour or what have you. Well it is Peter

15:28

Phillip behaviour. And

15:31

to our way of thinking it's entirely shocking. It's

15:33

child abuse, it involves

15:37

slavery, it's

15:39

shocking by our standards. But

15:43

you can acknowledge the shock that you feel as someone

15:46

in the 21st century. But

15:49

that of course, provokes the question,

15:51

well why do I feel this sense of shock? Where has this sense

15:53

of shock come from? Where has the process of cultural

15:55

dislocation happened? Because clearly to

15:57

the Romans it was more than acceptable.

15:59

And

16:00

why do you think Vitellius thinks people

16:03

will enjoy

16:05

that spectacle?

16:07

Because it's the job of Caesar

16:10

to entertain the people with

16:12

edifying spectacles. And

16:16

Vitellius, although he had been a friend of Nero's,

16:18

is concerned,

16:21

I think, to, to

16:24

market himself as a

16:26

rough, tough, bluff military man,

16:29

because he's very much a person of size.

16:32

And I think he wants to market him his size

16:34

as being military bulk, rather

16:36

than the kind of epicine folds

16:39

of fat, which is in the long

16:41

run, how he'll come to be interpreted. And

16:44

I think that by

16:47

by having

16:53

this eunuch who had gone

16:55

to bed with Othe who he has displaced,

16:58

saying, no, you know, this is, this is

17:02

grotesque behavior, this, you know, this is a

17:04

grotesque who is stained

17:06

by the attentions of all the

17:08

men who have gone before. And it's disgusting

17:11

that Othe would have slept with someone who'd also slept with a

17:13

praetorian in Nero. He

17:15

is trying to cast himself as a

17:17

kind of arbiter of morality. And,

17:20

you know, the Romans

17:22

obviously didn't think that inflicting

17:26

atrocities on people in

17:28

the arena was in any way immoral. Quite

17:30

the contrary, they thought it was very moral. And

17:33

they tended to have the assumption that

17:36

the spectacles that were staged

17:38

in the in the arena were

17:41

an illustration of how the Romans were absolutely

17:44

the most moral people on the face of

17:46

the earth. And unless you get that,

17:49

you don't you can't possibly begin

17:51

to see the world through Roman eyes and understand

17:54

the world that they're inhabiting. Absolutely.

17:56

Well, I, you know, this is why

17:58

I encourage people to read the book. because it's

18:01

peeling back layers or putting layers back on

18:03

perhaps. Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah,

18:06

so I mean listeners will be

18:08

pretty familiar with the outline of the narrative,

18:11

the year of the four emperors, the rise of Vespasian,

18:16

followed by after his dynasty, the

18:18

so-called five good emperors taking

18:21

power. This is obviously Pax,

18:24

this is the golden age of the Roman Empire as

18:27

Edward Given has framed it. And

18:29

we might think that the Romans

18:31

of this period would be saying things like

18:34

it was 1990. This is the end

18:36

of history, this is an empire on

18:39

which the sun will never set. But actually throughout

18:42

the book, you sense

18:45

anxiety, fear, a lot of

18:47

worry about this

18:49

situation from Roman thinkers. Well,

18:52

in the year of the four emperors,

18:54

there is fighting on the streets of Rome.

18:56

The Tepotelius ultimately is toppled

18:59

by the troops of Vespasian, Vespasian's

19:01

dynasty, the Flavian, so Flavian troops. And

19:04

he ends up sliced to pieces on

19:06

the Gomonian steps. And

19:10

the spectacle

19:13

of this year, when the peace that

19:15

people assumed had been

19:18

secured by the

19:20

divine Augustus, dissolved

19:22

away, and

19:26

it seemed like provinces would collapse and crumble

19:29

away and the entire order of the Roman

19:31

world melt away. And since the

19:34

order of the Roman world had been blessed by the gods, it

19:36

suggested that the gods were angry with the

19:38

whole of humanity and who knew what would

19:40

happen. These

19:42

are very vivid fears that

19:45

people across the empire feel. And

19:48

the great spectacle of

19:50

reconstruction is something that Vespasian

19:53

takes incredibly seriously. But

19:55

there are markers

19:58

that particularly

20:00

Buffett the Roman world in

20:02

the wake of Vespasian's death in 79 so

20:06

the rule of his elder son Titus that

20:10

seemed palpably

20:12

to signal the anger of the gods

20:15

so the holiest

20:17

building in Rome, the

20:19

Temple of Jupiter on the capital burns

20:21

down for the second time in a decade there's

20:25

a terrible plague and of course

20:27

most notoriously there's the eruption of Vesuvius

20:30

and Vesuvius entombed the cities

20:33

of Pompeii and Herculaneum which means that

20:35

the funeral rites can't be performed for

20:37

all the dead in those two cities so

20:40

their ghosts have to be assumed to be wandering

20:43

the Bay of Naples the ash

20:46

that is spewed out by Vesuvius it

20:50

lingers along in the air causing

20:53

weird celestial phenomena

20:57

strange sunsets as far as Syria so

21:00

it absolutely seems like the gods

21:04

are angry with the Roman people and

21:06

a religio

21:09

to a Roman I mean

21:13

it's the Latin word from which our

21:15

word religion derives but it should not absolutely

21:18

not be translated as religion a religio is

21:21

a bond that joins humanity

21:24

to the gods and it's a kind of obligation

21:27

that is paid say whether it's a priesthood or

21:29

a festival or some form of celebration

21:32

and it's a kind of down payment, it's a kind of insurance

21:35

so if things are going wrong you know that you

21:37

haven't your

21:39

insurance is running down and you need to start

21:42

re-establishing those religio-nes and

21:44

I think that that is what Titus is doing with

21:47

the Colosseum the inauguration

21:49

of the Colosseum is an attempt

21:54

to offer up morally

21:56

edifying lessons to the Roman people

21:58

who are now the Colosseum should be

22:00

understood as a great census in stone, an

22:04

ordering of the Roman people as they should be properly

22:07

ordered, but also something

22:09

that will be pleasing to the gods. But

22:12

the person who really takes this mission on board,

22:14

I think, is Titus' younger brother, Domitian, who

22:16

succeeds in Titus' dying after

22:18

a very short reign. And Domitian is,

22:22

he has a terrible reputation,

22:25

he was clearly a very charmless man. He is

22:27

the first emperor to unapologetically

22:29

refer to himself as Dominus' Lord

22:32

Master, which was a title that Augustus

22:34

had very pointedly refused. But

22:36

Domitian embraces it, and I think he embraces

22:39

it because he feels that

22:41

that's exactly what it is, that he has been entrusted

22:44

by the gods with the great mission

22:46

of restoring the Roman people

22:49

to their favour, and he does it in all kinds

22:51

of ways. So he

22:54

attempts to stabilise the currency,

22:56

he attempts to stabilise the frontier,

22:59

he attempts to reform morals, he

23:02

is micromanaging every

23:04

expression of obligation

23:06

to the gods, and he feels

23:09

that, I think, he

23:11

is the deputy

23:15

of the heavens. And this is

23:18

a podcast about Byzantium, not about pre-Christian

23:22

Rome. But I do, the

23:24

thing that Domitian reminds

23:26

me of is a particularly

23:28

autocratic Christian emperor, an

23:31

emperor who has the utmost conviction

23:34

that he is responsible for the heavens,

23:36

for the moral guidance of the

23:38

Roman world. But of course

23:41

Domitian lacks the theological

23:45

heft that Christianity will come

23:47

to provide the Byzantine

23:50

emperors. And the irony, of course,

23:52

is that he is remembered by Christians as a man

23:54

who actually martyrs Christians,

23:57

who launches a persecution, even though I don't think he does.

24:01

But

24:04

that sense that

24:07

the laboring

24:11

that an emperor has to undertake, the tireless

24:13

work of communicating his ambitions

24:20

for the empire to all the many apparatchiks

24:22

who are scattered across the empire, I mean,

24:25

in enormous labour, I think Domitian

24:27

absolutely sees this as a kind of divinely

24:30

appointed task. That's

24:32

why I particularly enjoyed that

24:35

change of perspective. Again

24:39

we tend to see Roman

24:42

emperors as dictators, as power

24:46

hungry, as we've got this vast

24:48

empire now we can live high on the hog

24:50

and the arena is bread

24:52

and circus, it's just there to keep the people happy,

24:55

it's a very modern way of looking at it. And

24:57

I think you bring out the idea that actually

25:00

you might go, I'm in charge

25:02

of the known world, that's a great responsibility. Well

25:05

it clearly is and you can see this through Trajan's

25:08

letters to Pliny very

25:11

effectively that Pliny is out, he's

25:14

having his engagement to sort out drains and

25:16

dodgy aqueducts and all kinds of things and

25:19

he's endlessly writing to Trajan and Trajan's writing

25:21

matched him with great patience telling

25:23

him what he should do. And Trajan

25:26

is remembered

25:28

by the Romans as the best of emperors because he's a great

25:30

conqueror, but clearly he's not spending all his time conquering,

25:34

he's spending a lot of his time answering

25:36

inquiries from governors

25:40

out in obscure provinces. I mean I think that

25:42

there is a lot of blotter

25:46

doxing that an emperor has

25:48

to do. Yeah, absolutely.

25:50

So another area where I feel you offer a corrective

25:53

to the sort of Wikipedia

25:55

narrative that's out there is with

25:58

the Judean revolts. Or

26:00

as I think people would say, the Jewish revolt. Right.

26:04

It's difficult because in English we have both words,

26:07

Jewish and Judean. One

26:09

of them, of course, is associated with the Roman

26:11

province of Judea, and one of them isn't. One

26:13

of them is a word that can be applied to the

26:19

descendants of the Judeans right their way up to the present

26:21

day. And I think that the

26:24

word Jew in English has

26:28

the wrong signification.

26:31

Um,

26:34

it conjures up images of certainly

26:36

of rabbinical Judaism, which is simply

26:38

not around at this point, because

26:40

the focus of Judean occultic

26:45

practice is focused on the temple and

26:47

the temple is destroyed by Titus. I mean, this is

26:49

the key development

26:52

which sets Judeans

26:56

on the path to becoming, if you like, Jews and

27:00

sets the cultic practices of

27:02

the Judeans towards the road

27:05

where they can come to be called in the second

27:07

century by Christians Judaism. And

27:10

again, this is a very Christian

27:12

word. So again, there's the threat of importing

27:14

Christian as well as kind of modern

27:17

prejudices. But

27:20

I think that if you call them Judeans, then they come

27:22

to seem less, less

27:25

strange in the context of the Romans, because I think

27:27

we very much have a sense that the

27:30

Jews were destined

27:33

to engage in a kind of religious war

27:35

with the polytheistic Romans, that there was

27:37

something unique about the Jews

27:40

that made them unable to endure rule

27:42

by idol worshipers. But this isn't

27:44

true at all. The Judeans have been subject

27:47

to pagan

27:49

empires for centuries and centuries, the Romans,

27:51

the Greeks, the Persians, they've all done it. And sure, you

27:53

know, there's the Maccabean revolt,

27:56

but that's the exception that proves the rule for most of this period. period.

28:00

The Judeans have knuckled down, they paid their taxes,

28:03

they flourished and they flourished

28:06

under Rome. The Judeans are greeted with

28:08

great favour by the Roman provincial

28:11

authorities. The Romans side

28:13

with the Judeans

28:16

by and large against the Samaritans

28:18

for instance, against

28:21

other peoples who are the neighbours

28:23

of the Judeans. And

28:25

the Judeans have a cultic

28:29

temple, they have a metropolis, they have a homeland,

28:31

just like every other people. And although

28:34

of course the Romans do find

28:36

the Judeans weird, they have this single

28:39

god, they don't have statues

28:41

in their temples, all this kind of thing, I mean

28:43

they do find them weird, but they find everybody weird.

28:46

This is the whole point. Romans

28:51

are absolutely convinced that they have the proper

28:53

understanding of Roligio, that

28:55

their bonds with the gods are the only effective

28:58

ones and the proof of that is that they're the masters of the

29:00

world. And everyone else is

29:02

old, so the Judeans

29:03

only worship one god, but the

29:06

Egyptians worship gods with animal heads, the

29:09

Britons are busy sacrificing people in

29:11

bogs and oak glades and

29:13

Syrians are castrating themselves and roaming round,

29:16

dressing up as women. I mean very weird

29:18

behaviour by Roman standards, but they're,

29:21

you know, whatever. As long as

29:23

they pay their taxes, they

29:25

can do what they like. And really

29:27

what triggers the Judean Revolt is the fact that Judeans

29:30

don't want to pay their taxes because they're being

29:33

royally screwed by Nero, who

29:35

wants to fund the rebuilding of Rome after the Great

29:37

Fire. And there's a cascade

29:39

effect of contingent

29:42

accidents and episodes that

29:44

sees a kind of tax revolt get out of

29:46

hand, a Roman

29:48

garrison massacred, a legion destroyed.

29:51

And the further

29:54

the Judeans go into revolt,

29:56

the more devastating they know the reprisals

29:58

are going to be. And the more they

30:00

think, well, we might as well just, you know, just

30:03

carry on and hope that God is on our side.

30:07

And, you know, if

30:09

there are echoes of events

30:12

in the Middle East

30:14

at the moment in that. Well,

30:19

it's a reminder of the way in which the

30:23

events of

30:25

the first Judean Revolt, and then again, a second

30:28

a second revolt under Hadrian do,

30:31

of course, have cataclysmic

30:34

long term consequences for

30:38

the condition of the Middle East today, because

30:40

it's Titus

30:44

who destroys Jerusalem, wipes out the temple, but

30:47

it's Hadrian who there's

30:50

a Judean's rise

30:52

in revolt again. It's incredibly

30:55

brutal war and it's Hadrian who erases

30:57

the very name of Judea from the map and calls

31:00

it Palestine. And

31:04

so there's sort of been three revolts

31:07

during this period that you're covering.

31:10

And so by the end of it, Judean

31:12

communities are sort of scattered and their

31:15

homeland is sort of scourged. At

31:17

the same time, you detect

31:20

Hadrian beginning

31:22

a search for some kind

31:24

of unifying deity. Well,

31:28

I mean, Hadrian,

31:30

the Flavians, they're

31:32

spacing the Titus, never let anyone forget

31:34

about their success in suppressing the Judean Revolt.

31:37

And they cast it not as a revolt, but as a conquest. I

31:39

mean, absolutely shameless propaganda, because it was everyone

31:41

that days that Judea was

31:43

a province in rebellion rather than a kingdom that is

31:45

being conquered. But that's

31:48

Bayesian and Titus have to say that because

31:50

they want to celebrate a triumph and you can't celebrate

31:53

a triumph

31:55

if you're simply pacifying a rebellion.

31:58

And so they just go on and on.

31:59

on about it. They pretend

32:02

that the Coliseum is being funded by loot

32:04

taken from Jerusalem, whereas in fact it's being

32:06

paid for by Greek taxes, and

32:09

they're endlessly issuing coins boosting

32:11

about their conquest of Judea.

32:15

With Hadrian, I think it's powerfully

32:17

different because

32:21

he sees himself as both

32:25

the man who keeps

32:28

unwanted beggars from

32:31

the great garden of the world, so

32:34

hence Hadrian's Wall, hence wooden

32:36

palisades and dirt ramparts

32:39

that are built in other corners of the Empire.

32:42

But he also sees himself as responsible

32:45

for tending the

32:48

great garden that he sees as

32:51

his ruling. And so the Judean

32:53

Revolt, I think he does see as a kind of

32:55

failure. He's taken by surprise.

32:57

There'd been this low-level grumbling,

33:00

this insurgency that

33:02

had broken out under

33:05

Trajan into open warfare. Hadrian

33:08

had pacified it, and they were definitely

33:10

Judean leaders who thought that he might well

33:15

give them

33:16

the temple back and give them Jerusalem back.

33:18

Hadrian chooses not to do that, and this then

33:20

precipitates a kind of despairing,

33:23

desperate rebellion again

33:25

that involves deliberate self-conscious

33:28

atrocities against Roman rule, which then

33:31

of course just incites the Romans

33:33

to be even more brutal in their response. And

33:38

by the end of it, the

33:41

very name of Judea has been wiped out. Now

33:45

the Romans,

33:47

I think, assume that

33:49

the Judeans will go the way, say, of the Carthaginians.

33:52

The Carthaginian, you know, Carthage, likewise,

33:55

had been wiped from the face of the earth.

33:57

Carthaginian, Culphin?

33:59

practices had been shown no respect

34:02

whatsoever. And although

34:04

of course people continue to speak Punic in North

34:06

Africa, a Carthaginian

34:09

identity such as Hamelkar and

34:11

Hannibal had known it is indeed erased.

34:13

And I think the Romans assume that this is what will happen with

34:15

the Judeans. Of course it doesn't. And

34:18

this is what makes the Judeans in

34:20

the long run so distinctive

34:22

is that they have an alternative

34:25

focus for their identity

34:28

to the temple and to Jerusalem which

34:30

is the scriptures. And so this is where the

34:34

rabbis, the teachers, are

34:38

able to reconsecrate

34:41

Torah and the

34:43

practice of studying scripture

34:47

as an alternative focus of

34:49

piety. And they're able to do that because

34:52

there are teachers in Babylon who are beyond

34:54

the reach of Rome. But also

34:56

because there are teachers and Jewish

34:58

settlements in Galilee which

35:01

under Hadrian does not rise in rebellion so

35:03

the Romans leave them. And so it's

35:05

in Galilee in

35:07

Babylon that you have the progress

35:10

towards what will become the Talmud

35:13

which is defining

35:17

for Judaism as it will emerge over the course

35:19

of late antiquity.

35:21

And is there, am I mistaken, is there

35:23

any connection to Christianity there

35:26

then ending up becoming the Roman

35:28

religion? Because

35:30

I know there are sort of threads that Judeans

35:35

spreading out across the empire, some are

35:38

drawn to Christianity because it sort of has this connection

35:41

to... Well people,

35:44

the Romans, there are lots of Romans

35:46

who are drawn to Judean

35:49

teachings. And

35:52

I think you can see why because the

35:55

god of the Judeans is

35:59

a god for or a universal human

36:01

order because he has created all

36:04

of humanity in his own image. And so

36:06

that endows people who

36:08

come to believe in this God with

36:11

a dignity that they wouldn't otherwise have. And

36:15

Perpere Sabina herself is celebrated

36:19

as

36:20

someone who admires and respects the

36:22

Judean God. And we know this from Josephus who

36:25

reports it.

36:26

You know,

36:27

he had dealings with her when he came to Rome before the great

36:29

rebellion.

36:31

But obviously there's a problem, particularly

36:33

if you're a man, a Roman man, and

36:35

you want to identify with

36:38

Judean practice, which is that it

36:40

involves circumcision. And there are a lot of ways

36:43

to do that. But

36:45

Christianity kind of offers

36:47

a shortcut. You can have the Judean scriptures

36:49

and the universal God without having to be

36:52

circumcised. And I think that what happens

36:55

over the course of

36:57

the second

36:58

and third centuries,

37:00

particularly

37:04

after the Judean rebellions,

37:07

is that if

37:09

you like, the Judeans,

37:13

the Jews become the heirs of

37:16

the notion that

37:20

the God of Israel is specifically the God

37:22

of Israel. Whereas the Christians become the

37:25

heir of the idea that the God of Israel is also the God who

37:27

has created every man and woman.

37:30

And that is the process ultimately

37:32

of bifurcation.

37:35

But the key thing is that they are basically

37:38

siblings.

37:40

You know, they

37:42

are Esau and Jacob,

37:45

Romulus and Remus. I mean, this is how they're often compared in

37:49

late antiquity. In the long run, the idea

37:52

comes to be embedded that

37:54

Judaism is the mother and Christianity

37:57

is the daughter. But that's the process.

37:59

flattering to the conceit of both

38:02

because it enables Jews to cast

38:04

themselves as the primal

38:08

original way of understanding

38:10

God and Christians as kind of aberrant

38:13

whereas it enables Christians to cast themselves

38:15

as the guardians of a new covenant

38:18

that they superseded the

38:21

Jewish way of doing things so it's very flattering to both

38:23

but it's not true. I mean they are

38:25

siblings. Absolutely

38:28

and the book ends with

38:30

Hadrian's death and some

38:32

people might think

38:34

Pax, why not go on

38:36

into

38:37

Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius and

38:39

so on but I think you sort of identify

38:43

in Hadrian the sort of the glint in

38:45

the eye of what will become Byzantium that the

38:47

world will become Roman rather

38:49

than these provincial differences.

38:52

Well it's partly because I'm trying to

38:54

do it in the kind of the lifespan, a human

38:57

lifespan, a cyclum.

39:01

So you

39:03

know that someone born in

39:05

Nero's reign could live to see the death

39:07

of Hadrian.

39:11

It's also because I want

39:14

to keep stuff for the next one. Yes absolutely.

39:17

I didn't want to use it all up

39:20

but you're right I mean I think that Nero

39:23

and Hadrian are very complementary figures.

39:26

You know you have Judean revolts in the reigns

39:28

of both and both of course are obsessed

39:30

by Greece and

39:34

Hadrian does this much more successfully than Nero.

39:36

Nero pushes things too far, he kind of

39:38

poses as a tragic hero, he

39:43

gives total tax freedom, tax

39:45

exemption to the Greeks which just annoys everybody

39:47

else and his relationship

39:50

to Greece is something that definitely

39:52

precipitates the rebellion because it's while

39:54

he is away in Greece kind of

39:56

touring the festivals and racing the Olympic Games

39:59

that the rebellion start that in the long run

40:02

will topple him. Hadrian is much,

40:04

much more successful at this because

40:06

he institutes a

40:08

kind of Hellenic equivalent of the

40:11

European Union centered on Athens, but

40:13

he also very much favours Sparta and it's

40:15

this idea that Athens and Sparta and other

40:18

ancient rivals can be reconciled

40:21

into a single pan-Hellenion,

40:24

a Hellenic union. And

40:27

that the existence of this Hellenic

40:30

union will therefore redound to the

40:32

greater glory of Rome and of Hadrian because

40:34

he's the guy who's achieved it. And

40:39

I think that this

40:41

is obviously a development that

40:44

is pregnant with significance for

40:47

the future as you know. Your listeners

40:52

of all people will appreciate

40:55

that the Romans will

40:58

become the Romeoi, that they will be, they

41:01

will still think of themselves as Roman, but they will think

41:03

of themselves as Roman in Greek. And

41:06

in the, under Hadrian

41:09

you can see the kind of acorn

41:11

from which this will grow. Absolutely.

41:15

Fantastic. Let me ask you two non-Pax

41:17

questions before we

41:19

wrap up. Some listeners,

41:22

maybe one or two, may not realise you have your own

41:24

podcast now. The rest is history,

41:26

which you co-host with Dominic Sandbroek.

41:29

We could have talked about that for 40 minutes as well,

41:31

but why don't you just tease the listeners

41:34

with one topic you've covered on the show which surprised

41:37

you with how enjoyable it was to

41:40

research and learn about. I think the

41:43

Battle of Cofalga. I had a massive

41:45

animus against naval history because

41:47

I know nothing about the terms

41:50

and I'm very bored by, we always

41:52

used to go, I grew up in Salisbury and so we

41:54

always used to go on school trips to HMS Victory and

41:56

I found it terminally dull. I just

41:59

rode. Misson's, Mars, Sails,

42:02

whatever, I couldn't care less. And

42:07

we reached the stage where I thought we really should do something Napoleonic.

42:10

We hadn't done anything Napoleonic and the

42:12

anniversary of Trafalgar was coming up and I thought we

42:14

could just do a bit. I mean, how can it be? Just

42:17

tell the story in a bit. And I

42:20

had two weeks off and it was meant to be a

42:22

holiday from reading up on

42:24

subjects for the podcast. And I

42:26

read a book on Trafalgar and found it utterly gripping.

42:30

And I then became completely obsessed and

42:33

did nothing all holiday except read up about the

42:35

deep history of the Royal Navy. And

42:38

I

42:39

found it fascinating because, partly

42:41

because the battle itself is

42:44

an extraordinary, I mean, to

42:47

understand why it is, why

42:49

Nelson's tactics are so stunning, it's

42:52

really eye-opening. Nelson

42:55

himself is such a fascinating character. But

42:57

ultimately, I think I found it

42:59

eye-opening because

43:02

Nelson's victory at Trafalgar is rooted

43:04

in decades and indeed a century and a half

43:07

of British initiatives

43:16

that essentially are, in

43:18

the words of one historian, creating 19th

43:21

century islands in an 18th century

43:23

sea with the naval dockyards. These

43:26

are incubators of the Industrial Revolution, that

43:30

frameworks for resupplying ships are being developed

43:33

in the 1790s that will last right their way up

43:35

to the Falklands War. I mean, this is incredible.

43:38

And simultaneously, that to be on

43:40

a Royal Navy ship, it's

43:43

probably the healthiest place on the whole planet because

43:46

people are so concerned, not that

43:48

the crew don't succumb to disease, that

43:50

they're pushing initiatives in public health that

43:53

will, in the 19th century, apply

43:56

to cities, lead to the great revolution of which

43:58

we the beneficiaries in the 20th century. and 21st centuries.

44:01

So the sense that Trafalgar

44:05

is a battle in which the future is being displayed,

44:08

I found absolutely eye-opening and thrilling.

44:11

And I, not a naval history person,

44:13

but your description of the battle was

44:16

absolutely visceral. So that's incredible.

44:18

Yeah, I mean, the thing, you know, because the thing is that

44:21

normally in a

44:24

kind of Napoleonic era battle, and

44:27

long before ships just line up and kind of

44:29

fire at each other. And that's

44:31

it pretty much. Nelson's strategy is that you

44:33

have two prongs with a

44:35

ship at the tip of each prong, one of which is

44:38

his ship, Victory, and the other one is commanded by

44:40

Admiral Collingwood, who has a dog called Bounce,

44:43

Geordie, who goes around planting oaks when he's

44:45

not commanding ships, tremendous man. And

44:48

these guys, you know, the ships are getting

44:51

pulverised, and the officers

44:53

have to stand on the deck, and they're

44:56

not allowed to duck. I

44:58

cannot contemplate the courage that

45:01

would be required to do that. And

45:03

Nelson standing there and a cannonball screams

45:05

past and, you know, it's just a pair of

45:07

legs from the guy he's talking to, and they kind of

45:09

slowly keel over, and you know, the top

45:12

half is just vanished in a kind

45:14

of great smear of blood

45:16

and gunpowder. I mean, it's just

45:18

astonishing jaw-dropping stuff.

45:21

Do check out the rest of this history for more

45:24

audio. Final question just for me. Should

45:27

England have batted more sensibly in the first

45:29

Ashes test with Australia, or am I

45:31

a dinosaur who hasn't had my conversion

45:34

to Basbul yet? No, I think

45:36

that Basbul is tremendous.

45:38

I'm all in favour of it. It, I

45:41

mean, it's for me nothing to people, nothing about cricket. But

45:44

I think States' declaration while

45:47

tactically wrong was strategically correct.

45:49

Brilliant. Pax War

45:51

and Peace in Rome's Golden Age is out now

45:54

in the US and the UK and beyond,

45:56

I'm sure, in all good bookshops. Check

45:59

out the rest of history. read Dominion. Tom

46:01

Holland, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.

46:03

Thank you very much for having me.

46:08

Just a reminder that if you'd like to listen to Pax

46:10

or any of Tom's other books, why not

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show, I'm excited to bring you conversations

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with startup innovators, business leaders,

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policymakers, and everyday people

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doing their best to solve the biggest challenge

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of our time. We're trying to make hydrogen

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commercial aviation a near-term reality.

47:41

If you eat a vegan diet, if you

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reduce your green gas emissions

47:46

to 75% with every

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meal. The whole reason why I started

47:50

Nest was because of climate change. Join

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me every week for inspiring stories, practical

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advice, and a healthy dose of optimism.

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So come on in.

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water's fine. Acast

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