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

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We're prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. Crown coins casino. And now it was. The news began to reach Rome of the Chutons and the Kimberi. Initially, the reports detailing the numbers and strength of these invaders seemed fantastical. But it soon became clear that all the rumours were in reality under estimates of the truth. 300,000 warriors were on the march, accompanied by even large numbers of women and children. All of them looking for lands and cities in which to settle. Who were these people? From what distant part of the world had they emigrated? It was unclear. For prior to their descent on Gaul and Italy, no one had ever heard of them. The beskis, they were Germans, and had travelled from the lands that border the northern ocean. This supposition derived from various clues. Firstly, their enormous size. Next, the light blue colour of their eyes. And finally, the fact that Kimberi is a word which in their language of the Germans means plunderer. That was the Greek historian Plutarch, and he's describing a very chilling and spine tingling terms. One of the most terrifying moments in Roman history, a migration of barbarians which by the year 113 BC had arrived at the gates of Roman Italy. And these people, the Chutons and the Kimberi, Tom and I, am I stretching a point to say that effectively they're the Danes? Yeah, Plutarch says that they come from the lands that border the northern ocean. And the general thinking is that this was probably Jutland and the regions north of it. I mean, it's a kind of proto-viking invasion, if you like. And it would have taken them a long time to get from Jutland down to the Alps. So it could well have taken the Chutons and the Kimberi anything up to a decade to get there. And if so, for most of that decade, obviously the Romans and the people of Italy had no idea what was approaching them. And it always kind of makes me think of those kind of Hollywood dramas where there's an asteroid hurtling towards planet Earth. Or there are scientists experimenting with some zombie mutation in a lab and people are going about their everyday lives, just waiting for this kind of appalling apocalypse to hit them. It's December 2019 and you're hearing the first reports from Wuhan. Yes, of people with unusual colds. And around the breakfast table, people are discussing their summer holidays. Exactly. And so in today's episode, we are going to be looking at what is going on in Rome as this migration re-apocalypse is hurtling towards them. And just to give people a sense of where we are in the history of Rome, we are a century before the age of Augustus, so before the establishment of the rule of the Caesars, and Rome at this point is still a republic. It is not ruled by an autocrat. And the star of this episode, the star of the show, is the dominant figure of this period in the kind of the 110s, the 100s BC. And he is a brilliant soldier. He is a superb political operator. And he has emerged seemingly from nowhere to become the city's great popular hero. And this is a man called Gaius Marius. And he is a man whose achievements, whose ambitions over the course of the 110s and the 100s have increasingly put the whole of Rome in his shadow and will continue to do so for several decades after he is a titanic figure in the history of the Roman Republic. Yeah, and we'll be tracing his story, won't we? So he has this great confrontation, doesn't he, with the tutons and the Kimberley. But that's merely the beginning of his extraordinary career. I mean, spoiler alert, he is the guy who is going to see off this apocalyptic threat. He is the kind of the Bruce Willis seeing off the asteroid. And in 91 BC, when he is considerably older, he plays an important role in one of the most desperate wars that the Romans ever fight. It's not very well known, but it brought Rome almost to the brink. And this was a war that was fought against the Sockie, they called them, their comrades in arms. And these were the Italian allies who had been by the side of the Romans for centuries by this point. And suddenly they erupt and there's this terrible war that rages across Italy. And then most faithfully of all, an escalating gradually throughout the series to an incredibly bloody climax. We have the bitter rivalry between Marius and a younger man who had once been Marius' deputy. And this is a man called Lucius Cornelius Sulla. So I've been looking forward to this since we started the rest of history, because when I was a teenager, I wrote a series of books by Colleen McCulloch, I think you wrote the Thornbirds and she wrote this Roman sequence in which the Marius Sulla rivalry played a huge part. It was a brilliant, if you're a teenage boy interested in Rome, you know, this is absolute catnip. And the great thing about them is they seem such archetypes. So Marius, the representation, this is how she portrayed it anyway. Marius was ordinary kind of rough-hune. He was sort of unpolished. He's the representative of the ordinary people. And Sulla is decadent, and he's golden-haired, and he's cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and he's the representative of the upper classes. And I'm looking forward to finding out if this is absolute tosh or if this is actually true. And you can tell from their names. So Guyus Marius, he just has the two names. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, if you have three, that's a give away you are from a kind of a higher class background, and Sulla is actually a patrician, which is the kind of the grandest of the grand in Rome. So there is definitely a class animus there. But the two of them, in lots of ways, are not entirely dissimilar. So both of them are intensely ambitious, and both of them are kind of dazzlingly ruthless opportunists, so they are completely worthy rivals. And this rivalry as you were as you were implying between the self-made man and the patrician, the one time commander and the one time subordinate the guy with the two names and the guy with the three names. This is going to end up shaking the very foundations of Rome's Republic, because it's going to result for the first time ever in a Roman army marching on Rome itself. Then there will be a murderous civil war. He is Ryan C. It's $10 off when you spend $25 or more on participating items. Just look for participating item tags to earn on eligible items from brands like Bubbler, Ghost Energy, Lindor, Halo Top, Vital Farms, Kellogg's, Campbell's and Hines. Restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions. Visit crowncoins.com Sign up in seconds, enter code crown and get a free lucky will bonus. You may win at the 10,000 sweeps coins. Crowncoins.com That's C-R-O-W-N coins.com, no purchase needed. Code Val for new users on void were prohibited by law. Transcription lists will be posted in the heart of the city and Rome will end up being ruled by a military dictatorship. And this is a crucial turning point in the history of Rome and it is a massive waystep on the road that will lead to the final collapse of the republic and the establishment of the autocracy of the Caesars. So in some ways, it anticipates, doesn't it, the civil wars between, you know, British and Cassius and one hand and Anthony and Octavian on the other end, as you said, is the first step in this process that leads to the empire. Well, I think more saliently between Pompey and Julius Caesar and Pompey, we are going to see the young Pompey towards the end of this series. And Marius, as we see, is going to develop links with the family of Julius Caesar. And so it's a kind of preface to that great Titanic strategy. But it's more than just a story about Rome, isn't it? About Rome as a city, because we were at a point in Rome's history where Rome is a real geopolitical player and so what happens here matters across the Mediterranean. Yes, absolutely, and this has been signaled in incredibly brutal fashion, a few decades previously in 146 BC, when the Romans had wiped out two of the oldest and most celebrated cities in the whole of the Mediterranean. And the first of these was a city called Carthage. We did three whole series on the terrible wars that Rome fought against the Carthage Indians. It was their old enemy, it was the kind of the great rival superpower in the Western Mediterranean. And those three wars had culminated in the complete annihilation of Carthage, and then in the same year, the Romans wiped out the Greek city of Corinth, which again, I mean, it's one of the most famous cities in Greece. It's a place rich in mythology and culture and history, absolutely obliterated. And this obviously serves as a devastating warning to the Greeks that there's very much a new sheriff in town you do not want to mess with the Romans. And to be honest, the destruction of these two cities is a shock that reverberates across the Mediterranean. But there are plenty of people in Rome itself that feel a bit queasy about it. But there are Romans who start saying, well, you know, are we actually the baddies here? And this worries them because the conceit of the Romans throughout their rise to superpower status has always been that they are the most moral of people. And that everything they do is in self-defense. And if it's not in self-defense, then the gods went back them. And so the fact that they have this great empire is proof that the gods have been backing them. So in the way, they kind of conquer the world in self-defense. And so they don't want to think that they're bad people. They don't want to think that the gods are against them. You talk about them conquering the world. But actually, have they conquered the world? I mean, their empire, it's territorial, really. It's not enormous at this point, is it? So just give us a sense of the panorama of Roman power. They have a kind of informal hegemony, I guess, over much of the Mediterranean. But you're right that the formal empire, the sense in which they have provinces, it is at this point still relatively small. So if you think of Rome in the Central Italy and you go clockwise around the Western Mediterranean. So Sicily, that was Rome's first province. They had instituted as a province in 241 BC as the result of the First Great War that they'd fought against Carthage. Sicily had been the kind of the prize that they'd taken in that war. Then across the sea from Sicily, you have what's now Tunisia, what the Romans call Africa. This is where Carthage had stood, and the Romans have annexed the hinterland of what had had been the Carthage's territory in North Africa. Then southern and central Spain, again, the Romans had taken that from Carthage in the Second War, the war that featured Hannibal. And at this point, the Romans are advancing northwards into the kind of the northern reaches of Spain. And then you have the southern strip of Gaul, what the Romans call the Provincia, the Provinces. And this is the Latin word that ultimately gives us the word 'province'. So it's what's now southern France. And so there's no question with Carthage gone, with all these former provinces of Carthage absorbed or new territories conquered, the Rome is undisputed as the great Hegemon of the Western Mediterranean. But what is ominous, I think, for people in the Eastern Mediterranean, is that Rome by this point also has a couple of provinces in the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. And this, of course, is these are lands that previously had been ruled by Macedonian kings. So the heirs of Alexander the Great. So one of these provinces had been the former kingdom of Alexander the Great. It's become the Roman province of Macedon in that fateful year 146 that had seen Carthage destroyed as well. And across the Aegean from Greece, so what is now the Aegean seaboard of Turkey, there is another province which the Romans call Asia. And this had been the kind of the Greek ruled kingdom of Pergamum. Pergamum is a Greek city that controlled the kind of the Western half of what's now Turkey. And in 133 BC, its last king, a man called Atalus. He didn't really have an obvious successor. He was nervous at the Romans of what the Romans might do. And so basically he thought, well, maybe the obvious solution is just to give it to the Romans in my will. And so that's what he does. And it's one of the most spectacular bequests in the whole of history. Because Pergamum is fabulously rich, quite apart from giving the Romans a toll hold in Asia. And it is, it offers the Romans all kinds of decadent pleasures that they had barely even realised existed until that moment. So everything from celebrity chefs to sex manuals, they're all brought back to Rome where the elites, of course, think secretly they're brilliant, but lots of them pretend to be very disapproving. And lots of Roman moralists are genuinely disapproving. And I think it's, I guess the closest parallel in modern history would be Puritan American tourists in the gilded age going to Paris. Yeah, the flesh pots of Europe. The flesh pots of Europe. And of course, bringing them back to the east coast. Going to the Folly Bergeau with Toulouseau Trek or something. Yes, exactly. And so, plenty of the elder, very much friend of the show, when he's writing about this, he sees this whole period from the conquest of Macedon to the granting by Atlas of his kingdom of Pergamum to the Romans as a period that is disastrous for Rome's moral character. So plenty wrote that the Romans were becoming a people who didn't just admire foreign opulence, but had learnt to covet it and plenty identifies the appropriation of Asia as a province as having been a particularly disastrous blow to Roman morals. And it is a feature of the way the Romans think about geopolitics and the functioning of their own state that morals are incredibly important. As we've said, if they're not a moral people, then the gods won't favour them and their empire will collapse. It's a tiny bit like the British with India in the 18th century and the sort of anxiety that great wealth and expansion would bring corruption, you know, which came wrapped up with people at Warren Hastings and all these people who came back and built great palaces. And I think it's there with Jefferson and that kind of tradition in America as well, isn't it? The anxiety about wealth and power, about empire. So yeah, it's absolutely this sense that the very greatness that Rome is winning threatens the moral foundations on which that greatness has been raised and also, of course, the influx of enormous wealth into Rome contributes to a kind of a growing sense of resentment in the slums of the city that the richer getting richer and the poor is getting poorer. And again, this is something with which subsequent periods of history, I mean, people will be completely familiar with it, that influx is of wealth tends to heighten class divisions, divisions in living standards. And the poor in Rome, you know, they're all citizens of a republic. They're meant to be part of a kind of a common project. Raise public means kind of things that are shared in common, things that are public. The poor in Rome are increasingly suspicious that the aristocratic class, the Nobel aides, as they're called in Matin, that they no longer care anything for the mass of their poorer fellow citizens. Metropolitan elites are out of touch. Exactly. And so this is generating a pretty february mood in Rome. And it's the kind of mood, again, perhaps not entirely dissimilar to the present day, in which an outsider, if he has luck, if he has talent, if he has boldness on his side, you know, he might be able to prosper. He might, you know, people from, from not the obvious backgrounds might be able to get to the top of the tree, might be able to make themselves the masters of the republic. He is Ryan C. It's time to start up and save now through October 27th. At $10 off when you spend $25 or more on participating items. Restrictions apply. Meaning never sound it so good, what would you do if you won big, add Crown Coins Casino, real people win real prizes every single day? Hi, this is Chelsea from Dallas, I just hit the jackpot, 1 over 1,500 K. Visit CrownCoins.com, sign up in seconds, intercode Crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus. You may win up to 10,000 sweepscoins. CrownCoins.com, that's C-R-O-W and Coins.com, no purchase needed. Code ballot for new users on void were prohibited by law. Crown Coins Casino! And this brings us very neatly, doesn't it, to protagonist, to Gaius Marius. So Marius is born in 157 BC in our Penum, which is about 80 miles outside Rome. Is there a British town that would be a nice equivalent for our Penum Tom? I guess it's kind of swindon, basically. Wow, roundabout. Roundabout. and warehouses. I mean, having said that, our peanut is actually a kind of very old city, so perhaps the the parallel doesn't exactly hold. But I guess that the people in Rome would view our peanut as, I don't know, people in W1 might view Swindon as being not exactly the obvious breeding ground of great dominant figures in the state. And actually, our peanut is a classic example of how the kind of the immediate hinterland around Rome, so Laceum, as it's called, has come to be knitted into the fabric of the republic and basically kind of turned into the people of Laceum have been turned into Romans. So Appenium had been conquered back in 305 BC and its people initially had been given a slightly inferior form of Roman citizenship. So the Romans called it KivaTas, seen a suffragio citizenship without, well without suffrage, without the vote. They have lots of rights, but they don't have the right to vote for magistrates. But then in 188 BC, Appenium finally gets the full deal, so citizenship, with the right to vote. And that means that the parents of Marius, who belong to the local aristocracy in Appenium, they basically belong to the first generation in the town, who can take this for granted, who can feel that they are part of not just the local politics of their own small town, but of the great city 80 miles to the west. This of course means that the young Marius, growing up in Appenium, he's aware of himself as a Roman, but he is also still very much aware of himself as a provincial, that he's in a city where people have not been able to vote for magistrates in Rome, let alone run as magistrates in Rome for very long, only a few decades. And so, probably as a boy, he doesn't hold out much prospect for himself, you know, as a future political star, because there is a very deep vein of snobbery in the Roman people, and they may resent the nobiles, the aristocracy for their wealth and their sense of superiority, but they do simultaneously love families with strong brand recognition. And I guess again, if you want to know what American parallel would be like, you know, the way people keep voting for Clintons or bushes or whatever. But unlike, let's say Bill Clinton, or indeed, I'd think any of the bushes, Marius is the recipient of an extraordinary omen, well, he's a subject of an extraordinary omen when he's a little boy, and Plutuck recorded this, didn't he? Something to do with an eagle. Plutuck has to be said, will always prioritize a fun story over a likely story. It'd be a very good history podcaster. Yeah, he absolutely would. So this is Plutuck. When Marius was still a boy and living out in the country, he caught an eagle's nest in his cloak as it fell from a tree. This nest contained seven baby eagles. His parents were so surprised by this freak occurrence that they asked a local southseier what it intended, and the southseier replied that Marius would become the greatest man in the world and was destined to hold the consulship no less than seven times. Wow, and of course, Plutuck is writing this sometime after the events after he knew what happened to Marius. Skeptic might say that Plutuck was making this up, but I choose to believe it. I choose to believe that this happened. Well, just to say that there is, as we will see in due course, evidence that Marius did believe something like this. He did believe that he was destined to have seven consulships, but seven consulships. Now, I know that that is an absolutely extraordinary prediction, and maybe you should explain to the listeners precisely why it's such a mad prediction. It's completely implausible because of the significance that the consulship plays in Rome's Republic. So every year, two consuls are elected, and they wield the powers of the monarchy that had been expelled from Rome back in 509 BC. So the consuls are the magistrates who lead Rome's armies into war, who preside over the Senate and over the elections that are held in the city, and who crucially mediate between the Roman people and the gods. And these powers, of course, are potentially very, very intoxicating, and this is why there are two consuls so that each one can keep a watch on the other, and it's why their term of office is limited to a single year, so that they won't have time to entrench their power. And for a century now, so as Marius is growing up, it's been a no-no for someone to have more than one consulship. That hadn't always been the case, but it's become kind of institutionalised, and whether this is an official law or whether it's just the pressure of custom is, I think, unknowable, but it's clearly the case that you're not supposed to have more than one consulship as Marius is growing up. And what makes it even more of a challenge for Marius? You know, any prospect of seven consulships, just having one consulship seems an almost impossible dream, because he is what the Romans called "anovus homo", a new man, someone who has no tradition of holding magistrates in his family, and particularly consulships. And it's obvious why this would be the case, because Marius is from Arpanum, and Arpanum has only just been given the vote, so of course, his family haven't had time to get loads of consulships. And just to emphasise how mad it is even to dream of having seven consulships, no Roman in history has held seven consulships. The record is six, seven just seems impossible. All right, well, we'll see whether he gets there, but let's kick off with Marius' first steps on the ladder. And I guess if you're an ambitious and talented young man from nowhere, from a provincial town, the obvious way to get ahead is through proving yourself in the one thing that the Romans prize more than any other, which is the kind of, you know, the military arena, because, you know, this is the bedrock of Roman power, isn't it? The army, and this is where Marius is really intending to make his name. Yes, if you want to make a name for yourself, what you ideally want is some desperate and hard-foot war, in which you can go off and be a hero. Unfortunately for Marius, in one three four BC, exactly such a war is being fought in the northeast reaches of Spain. So remember, we said that the Romans are pushing northwards into the Iberian peninsula, and they have come up against the people of a city called Numentia, and this war has been grinding on for two decades, and the Senate have got absolutely fed up with it. So the Senate is the assembly of the nobelays, the kind of the movers and shakers in Rome. And so accordingly, they say, we need our top man to go and sort this out. And there's no question who the top man in Rome at this point is, it's a guy called Scipio Imelianos, and people who listen to our episode on the destruction of Carthage may remember that he is the general who brings that war, final war against Carthage to a close and wipes the city out. And it's a measure of how desperate the Senate is to have Scipio take over this command that they allow him to have a second consulship. So we said this is very, very irregular. They really, really need Scipio at the front though, so they say they kind of turn a blind eye to the irregularity of it. And so Scipio travels to Spain in command of a vast army. He has 20,000 men, which is roughly four legions, so a very sizable fighting force of Roman citizens. He also has lots of Sochi, these Italian allies who fight alongside the Romans. And also he has auxiliaries. And the Sochi and these auxiliaries come to 40,000 in all. And among the auxiliaries, there is, there is some particularly glamorous and celebrated fighters. And these are horsemen from a region in North Africa, basically it's Algerian now called Namidia. And the Namidians have been allies of the Romans for almost a century. The alliance had been forged in the war against Hannibal. Originally the Namidians had been on the side of Hannibal and then they had switched sides. And when Carthage falls, the Namidians have been given a lot of Carthaginian territory as a kind of reward and to cement their status as allies of the Roman people. And the particular contingent of horsemen at Neumantia is led by a very charismatic young Namidian prince called Jagertha. And he has brought not only cavalry, but also 12 war elephants. And there is a kind of, a kind of ancestral relationship between the Namidian royal family and the families of the Scipios. Because Scipio Afrikanus, the guy who had defeated Hannibal, he'd been great mates with this Namidian king. So it's, it's, it's, there's a kind of sense that, you know, this is a family business. Now when Scipio travels to Neumantia, he takes with him as a junior officer, the young Marius. And Marius does really, really well there. Just a quick question about Marius. So, do we have any sense of his appearance, personality, sort of, I don't know, his bearing, his vibe at this point? I think he's, he's like, if you imagine Channing Tatum. Wow. He's big. Okay. He's brave. He's physically tough. He loves fighting. In other words, he's a natural soldier. And he's, a soldier in the kind of traditional old school way that the Romans love. So he, he despises fancy cooking. He's not interested in celebrity chefs. Okay. He despises snooty manners. He doesn't have a, you know, a kind of expensive education. He loves sleeping on hard ground with his men with only his cloak to cover him. You know, it's all that kind of thing. Right. So he's very Roman. A Roman in the way that the Romans like to imagine themselves. Yeah. He hasn't been spoiled. buy all these sneaky manners and things, and buy great, great learning and stuff. He's not a man for a sex manual. Well, we'll, we'll, we'll come and maybe come to that and do you course. I'd think at this point, he's not a man for a sex manual. He is, he's rough and tough and hardy, and he loves fighting barbarians. And this is, this is everything the Romans want in a kind of a young, upwardly mobile officer. He's also a very strict disciplinarian. And to be honest, the Romans love a strictest barbarian. They love being whipped into shape. And this is what Maris is very good at. And he fights and kills one of the, the commanders of the Neumantians in hand to hand combat. And the Scipio Amelianos is watching this and thinks it's absolutely brilliant. And later that evening, Scipio is with all his officers. He is Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Tom Thumb. Just look for participating item tags. They're an on eligible items from brands like Bubbler, Ghost Energy, Lindor, Halo Top, Vital Farms, Kellogg's, Campbell's and Hines. >> Crown Coins, casino. >> Winning never sounded so good. What would you do if you weren't big at Crown Coins, Casino? Real people win real prizes every single day. >> Hi, this is Chelsea from Dallas. One over 1,500K. >> Visit crowncoins.com. Sign up in seconds, intercode Crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus. You may win at the 10,000 sweepscoins. Crowncoins.com that's C-R-O-W-N-Coins.com. No purchase needed. Code valid for new users only. >> And one of them asks him, you know, who do you see as being the coming man? Who among the younger generation is someone to watch? And skip you turns to Marius and he touches him on the shoulder very fondly. And he says, perhaps this is the man. And this is a massive thing for Marius. You know, a commendation from the great war hero, skip you amelianos. And it marks him out as a man who, you know, deserves well of the Roman people. It's something that can launch a political career. >> He's a featuring the captain. That's exactly what he is, isn't he? He's the, he's the batsman who has been anointed by the team captain as the man who's going to carry the fortunes of the nation in the next 10 years. >> I think that's a very fair comparison. So in 133 BC, the amount he falls, it's all great. Skip you goes back. And Marius goes back as well. There is one problem, which is that skip you dies very shortly afterwards. Had skip you stuck around, then he would have been the perfect patron. So it is a bit of a blow. But Marius doesn't give up because he's got his battle scars. He does have this commendation from skip you, which is a big deal. Because all of these really matter when it comes to elections, particularly if you're an unknown, you know, you need a story to tell. And Marius has a story to tell. And fortunately, he does also have an alternative source of patronage to skip you. And this is one of the very grandest of the noble families, a family that has been serving as the patrons of Marius's family in Arpinum for several generations. And these are the Kaikili Metelli. And they are at this period, probably the top aristocratic dynasty in Rome. They are madly efficient as a dynasty in hoovering at consulships, for instance. So between 123 and 98 BC, no less than seven of them will hold the consulship. I mean, that's an unprecedented success rate for a single family. And they have been the great rivals of the skip you family. But when skip you are merely honest dies, the great patriarch of the Metelli behaves very, very well in exactly the kind of way again that the Romans like to think that their great men should. So he runs out into the streets sobbing, tearing his clothes, crying out to the great buttress of the city has fallen the man who was our bulwark. And he orders his sons to help carry the funeral buyer of skip you. So in death, there is reconciliation between these two great families. And how is it that Marius can ride both horses? How can he have the patronage of both, if they're rivals? Or is that not a problem? Because the Metelli are his political patrons and skip you had been his military patron. And basically, you know, if you're not a threat to either of them, you can have both of them, I think. So Marius is a, I mean, although we've portrayed him as Channing Tatum as kind of Ruffune, he's a smart political operator to line up both of these. Yeah. And the fact that you play the simple Ruffune soldier, doesn't mean you're stupid. I mean, you may well be playing that part because you know that it appeals. I mean, there's obviously, you can't do it and necessarily a strong element of truth to it, but it doesn't imply that there's not an element of calculation and projecting that image. And again, you know, people will be able to think of people in their own politics, perhaps who, you know, you can draw comparisons with. Yeah. So in Britain, we would talk about the greasy bull, wouldn't we, about climbing the greasy bull, which Marius clearly is now hoping with their backing, with his war record that he can do. They don't have the same expression. Do they? Obviously, what's the expression the Romans have? So they call it the cursa sonorum. So it's literally the kind of, the, the race track of honors of, of magistracies. And the racetrack is obviously derived from the circus maximus, which is this great public space where all the people of Rome gather. And this racetrack leads from magistracie to magistracie. And the finishing line, of course, is the consulship, which is the top magistracie. But as we've said, this for a novice homo, like Marius, a new man, I mean, it's a big ask that finishing tape of the consulship is a very long way. So in the immediate present, he has to focus on kind of more junior magistracies. Unfortunately, there is one magistracie in particular, which really seems to suit his skill set, because this is a magistracie, which requires the man who holds it to defend the interests of the people against the sanitorial elites. And this is, you know, perfectly suited to Marius. The problem is that in 119 BC, when Marius decides to run for it, even though that this office is a very potent one, it is also quite a dangerous one to hold. And this office is the Tribune of the plebs, of the plebians, of the people. And it comes with incredible powers. So the Tribune has the veto, very famous. A Tribune can veto any bill that he thinks threatens the interests of the plebs, of the people. He has a right to convene public assemblies, so not the Senate, but gatherings of the general citizenship, and get them to pass bills of his own, so plebiscites. His own person is absolutely in violet. It is completely forbidden to lay hands on him. And the reason why that's important is obviously is that, you know, if the Tribune is passing measures or blocking legislation that is supported by the mass of the aristocracy, you know, he has to be respected. Is he respected? This is the question. So this is the question. So Marius decides that he's going to run for the Tribune in 119. And we've said, it's a very potent mattress to see. But at this time, it is also a very dangerous one for anyone to have. Marius has been elected Tribune just two years after one of his predecessors had been murdered. And this, of course, had been a terrible sacrilege. We've said that, you know, the person of a Tribune is in violet. And the death squad that killed this Tribune had been led by a consul. And the corpse of the Tribune had been systematically insulted. The body had been decapitated. And the head, the skull, had been filled with lead to serve as a trophy. So in other words, class war, as Marius is looking to make his way, you know, the first kind of lengths of the cursus and aureum has come to Rome. And for someone like Marius, who is a man of the people, no real pedigree or background, but very ambitious, this means the tightrope he's going to have to tread is incredibly treacherous and potentially fatal. So Marius is setting out on this potentially fatal tightrope. And the stakes are very high and we'll find out what happens after the break. Hey, it's Ryan C. Crest for Albertson's Entom Thumb. Get ten dollars off when you spend twenty five dollars or more on participating items. Just look for participating item tags to earn on eligible items from brands like Chobani, Banquet, Peets Coffee, Trisket and Ozarka. Restrictions apply. Being never sounded so good. What would you do if you won? Big. At Crown Coins Casino, real people win real prizes every single day. Hi, this is Michael from Dallas and I won 40K and finally renovated my home. CrownCoins.com, that's C-R-O-W-N-Coins.com. No purchase needed. 18 plus terms and addition to plunge. This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Tom throughout history changes often been driven by businesses and institutions that end up having a massive impact on society as a whole and there's probably no better example than the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford and his managers revolutionise production through their pioneering assembly lines and they influenced factories and working practices in countries all over the world. Another example of a business driving technological and social change is Amazon which is increasing the number of its electric vehicles used for deliveries in Europe to over 10,000 by the end of this year 2026. Now on top of that over 50% of Amazon deliveries now come with less packaging or sometimes no added packaging at all. It helps to avoid unnecessary waste and it makes recycling at home that much easier. Find out more at amazon.co.uk/sustainability. Welcome back everybody to the rest of this history of the year. It's 119 BC and the ambitious provincial self-made man, Gaius Marius, who is now already in his late 30s so he's only two years short of his 40th birthday. He has won his first major political office, his first major majesty see. He has become as he intended a tribune of the plebs and as we were saying before the break Tom although it's meant supposedly in violet. This is an increasingly dangerous role in the Fibra politics of Rome at this point for a man like Marius to hold. Now why specifically at this point is this so politically Fibra? What makes this so contentious? Because the previous decade and a half the tribunet had been used to foster what in the opinion of conservatives in the senate are very radical, very dangerous and in the opinion of conservatives very un-Roman reforms and policies and these have been pushed by two brothers. The eldest of these is Tiberius Grekkus. He had become tribune in 133 BC, his younger brother Gaius Grekkus he had become tribune ten years later and both these brothers had used their tribunets to push for reforms that were very overtly in favor of the poor. So the measures that they push for included having publicly held land state held land being divided up and given as allotments to those who had no land in the city. So the bottom of the bottom the most impoverished layers of Roman society they had pressed for corn to be sold below the market rate. So subsidised food and they pushed for the poorest citizens when they got levied into the army to be given their own clothes, their own kind of kit and equipment. And this was seen by the senate as monstrously left-wing to be an acronistic about it. And particularly Gaius Grekkus, the younger, the Tony Ben of Republican Rome because he had far more than his elder brother a very self-consciously revolutionary vision. So he basically wanted to turn the republic into a kind of version of the democracy that the Athenians had. He wanted very deliberately to alter the balance of power between the nobelays between the senatorial elite and the mass of the people. And I suppose ultimately he wanted to enshrine the populace, the people as the arbiters of Rome rather than the sonatas, the senate. So it would be, I guess, the people in the senate of Rome rather than the other way around. That's his kind of ambition. And to conserve it as the senate, I mean, this is beyond the pale. This is monstrous. And they see Tiberius Grekkus and particularly Gaius Grekkus as potential tyrants. Why else would they be pushing these reforms? It could only be because they want absolute power. And something that confirms the senatorial conservatives in this opinion is a very sinister trend. So Tiberius Grekkus, when he'd finished his one year as Tribune, he'd immediately sought re-election. And Gaius Grekkus in one to two BC, he'd finished his term stood again and actually been elected. And this is really sinister because it is pretty fundamental to the way that the Romans understand politics that you shouldn't hold a majesty see for more than one year. Because if you do, then you have the chance to entrench your own powers, your own support. And so the enemy of the Grekkie in the senate feel themselves entirely justified in imagining that it is an ambition for tyranny that is motivating the Grekkie. And that the office of the Tribune, it may be in violet, but it's not as in violet as maintaining the integrity of the Republic. And so twice this great cry had gone up that the Republic needs defending. The Constitution is in peril. And twice this cry had been answered. So in 133, Tiberius Grekkus had been clubbed to death with the leg of a stool. He'd been cornered and had his heads smashed to pieces. And then in one, two, one, Gaius Grekkus, as we heard before the break, he'd been murdered, his corpse decapitated, the skull filled with lead, and 3,000 of his followers had been rounded up and executed without trial by the consuls. And these executions had been justified in terms of a national emergency. To the stress, if people think, well, this is probably part of the run of the mill, you know, Roman politics is very violent. That's not right at all right. This is a massive rupture with the previous traditions of Roman politics. Completely. These are the first eruptions of civil violence on the streets of Rome, since the expulsion of the monarchy back in 509 BC. It's that big a deal. Wow. So for 400 years or so? For 400 years. And it is experienced as something completely shocking. So what's the significance of these atrocities? I think both more and less than they seem. So more because it's a fatal precedent. I guess if you're being florid, you would say that a fatal toxin has been injected into the body politic. And we're never florid. If a consul can justify putting an elected Tribune to death and completely ignoring his inviolability, simply by referencing a national emergency, then what's the stop magistrates in the future doing exactly the same? I mean, it's a kind of Vimar process, isn't it? It leads to bad places. If you can kill a Tribune, then you can kill anybody. I mean, one consul could kill another consul and say there are threats to the survival of the Republic. Because when you break a taboo, the taboo is never as strong as it had been before. Broken. Exactly. So it's very pregnant with menace for the future. At the same time, I think it's kind of less than it seems because the instincts of the Romans remain across the board incredibly conservative. There isn't actually a threat of open class warfare of the kind that was always tearing Greek cities apart. And this is because as we've said, the Romans, the mass of the Romans are just inherently very, very conservative. They may feel resentful of the elites, but they simultaneously feel very respectful of them. Again, I think there's something of the way that maybe, I mean, American listeners may disagree with this, but from this side of the Atlantic, people seem to really hate billionaires in America, but also simultaneously respect them. I think there's something of that in the kind of the Roman attitude to the senatorial elite. It's part of the tradition that the Senate and the people should work together. And the people feel that tradition to be as precious as the Senate do. So it's not like actually Rome is going to collapse into, as I'm saying, into class conflict. And so this, for someone like Marius, here is an opportunity because he is perfectly suited to play the part of the people's friend, a popularist in Latin. You could translate that perhaps as a populist. People are very nervous among the tribunes. They're very nervous of pushing legislation that might offend the elites because they've seen what's happened. But Marius is bold enough to do this. So he passes a bill that restricts the ability of the Nobel A's to influence voters in the voting pens. It's kind of like, it's not exactly introducing a secret banit, but it's kind of something along those lines. And this is the first overtly populist gesture since the death of Gaius Grekkus. And to quote Plutarch, "This won him a reputation as a person of great courage, a formidable opponent of the Conservatives in the Senate, and someone who could be relied upon to stick up for the common man." And Plutarch isn't exaggerating there. Marius was, I think, being brave because it is a period of massive reaction. So the historian Salas writing a few decades later, he described it as a kind of a faction of the, of the few, ruled by the few. And these few consist of just the top, the grandest, the snootiest Nobel A's. And among these Nobel A's are the Matelle. So obviously, you were asking previously, is there a risk for Marius of ramming against the interests of the Matelle? There absolutely is because the Metelli are furious with him for this law that he's introduced and they withdraw their patronage, and this has a knock-on effect for Marys' prospects because for several years after his tribunate, he struggles to get another magistracy and, in fact, in 116, massive embarrassment he manages to lose two elections on the same day. You know, he's clearly not doing well, but, you know, to pursue the sports analogy, he backs himself. Right. He's not going to be classed down by a few disappointments. Form his temporary class is permanent, and he's got class. He's got class, and the evidence of that class is that he's able to keep the backing of the people, but, in due course, he's able to win back the support of the Metelli. Because the Metelli can see he is actually someone it's worth having on the side, and so, relations between them are patched up. And so, a decade on from his tribunate, Marys is back in the race. You know, the Cursor Sonorum is going well for him. He's secured admittedly by the skin of his teeth, but, you know, he's got it, a governorship in Spain. And this enables him to do what he does best, which is to demonstrate his talents as a commander, and he promotes himself as a kind of no-nonsense enthusiast for law and order. Common sense governorship. So, again, to quote Plutarch, the province back then that Spain was still very savage and uncivilized since the Spaniards thought banditry an honorable profession. And Marys is having none of that. Lots of crucifixions and scourgings and enslavements. As I say, common sense. So, he's robust in Spain. But also, you know, we haven't mentioned his personal life at all, but actually his personal life has taken a very exciting turn because he is married into, well, the most single, most well-known family in all Roman history, hasn't he? He has. Yes, although at the time it's very ancient, it's very patrician, but it's slightly down on its luck. It hasn't had a great success in elections for centuries and more. And this, of course, is the family of the Caesars. So, Marius Marys, Julia, who is the sister of the father of Julius Caesar. So, Marius is going to be the young Julius Caesar's marital uncle. And so, big part in Colin McCulloch's books, all of this. Yeah. So, Marys is being knitted into the, you know, a key aristocratic family. And he's got the Matelli back on side, by this point. Yeah. So, brilliant. And this is crucial, because he's got the backing of one Matelli's in particular. And this is a guy called Quinter's Cachelius Matelli's, who is, he is an absolutely instinctive oligarch. I mean, he's very much politically not Marys' cup of tea. He's a person of great personal integrity, but in that kind of flinty, slightly off-putting manner that is characteristic of very moral, upstanding Romans. But crucially, for Marius, this reputation, as someone who is both very upstanding and a very effective soldier, has one Matelli's, a relationship to the consulship for the year 109. And this is great for Marius, because Matelli's as consul has been appointed to the command of an exceedingly challenging war in Africa. And this in turn means that Matelli is going to need a trusted and competent legatus, a number two, a deputy. And Marys is the obvious candidate. He's a man of proven courage, of proven ability, and he is also a long-term client of the Matelli. And so Marys says yes, doesn't he? And he says yes, both because he's obviously, he's obviously very good at fighting wars. So, he mad for him to say no. But also, you know, the military sphere and the political sphere, they're interconnected, aren't they, in Rome in this period. And Marius is thinking that proving himself on the battlefield is the perfect way to reboot his stalled political career. Well, I think more specifically, it might give him a chance to have a crack at the ultimate and go for the consulship. And Marys hasn't told Matelli's this, it's like a kind of dream that he's hugging to himself. But his plan, I think, is to go to Africa to win a few dashing victories, to make a name for himself in Rome, to have his back as in Rome of which he has quite a lot by this point, to kind of really hype him up. And then to go back, run for election, and you know, he might be in with a chance. Hey, it's Ryan C. Restrictions apply. Crowd coins to see go. Hi, this is Michael from Dallas, and I won 40K and finally renovated my home. Sign up in seconds, enter code crown, and get a free lucky wheel bonus. Buy a lot, 18+ terms and conditions apply. But obviously this does require him to make a good fist of things in Africa. And things there have not been going well for the Romans at all. So it's not going to be easy. So reason for this is because they are up against an enemy who knows them very, very well. And this is none other than an old Conrad of Arms of Marius. They'd served together at Neumantia. And this is the Numidian prince, Jagurtha, the guy who had brought the cavalry and the 12 elephants to Neumantia. And I say prince, but in fact by this point he's killed his two cousins who are the legitimate heirs to the Numidian throne, the legitimate princes, and made himself the king of Numidia. So he's a usurper sitting on the throne. And to oil the wheels of his rise to power, to get the approval of the powers that be in Rome, he has lavished massive bribes. He's just been spraying them around. And even Jagurtha had been surprised by the level of corruption that this had revealed in a city supposedly made up of stern flinty on yielding moralists. And he made a very famous comment on Rome, which Salas recorded. He described it as a city for sale and bound for imminent destruction, should a buyer be found. And on top of this, the other reason that Jagurtha has really been pushing things too far is that he hasn't been behaving as the Romans think a kind of tame client king should. So in 112, in direct contravention of Roman instructions, he had attacked and killed the second of his two cousins who'd kind of retreated and he's holed up in a town called Keirtha. And in the course of this attack, which the Romans had told Jagurtha anyway not to do, Jagurtha's men had killed a number of Romans. And this is too much really for the Senate. Back in Rome, no matter how many bribes Jagurtha is shoveling their way. And so they think, okay, this has gone too far, we need to topple him. This, however, proves easier said than done. And the reasons for this are numerous. Firstly, Numidia is kind of flat and open, so it's perfect cavalry country. And the strength of the Romans, of course, is their legions, their heavy infantry. Also, the Roman forces in Africa are very flabby and out of shape, so they need a strict disciplinarian to turn up and whip them into shape. And a consul who had been sent out to fight Jagurtha had shown himself to be absolutely useless and resulted in a series of embarrassing defeats. So again, to pursue the sporting analogy, the England manager has lost to Andora. Yeah, to Iceland. Or Iceland, yes. And Mattelis is the guy who's been appointed to go and whip them into shape. Yeah, basically they've been messing around with wags. Yeah, exactly. They're barely training and you've got a new manager who's a disciplinarian and bringing in Marius, who is the number two. Yeah, who's the set piece coach or whatever. Exactly, grim-faced set piece coach who will make them like train six times a day. Yes. So Salis describes Mattelis as a formidable and unrelenting man and so he is. He goes in, gets them onto the training ground, you know, practicing their corners, whatever. And whips them into shape. And then he gets them ready. They go on the offensive. They defeat Jagurtha in a pitch battle. All Jagurtha's war elephants are wiped out. And Mattelis very cleverly then starts aborning Jagurtha's in a circle so that Jagurtha doesn't know who he can trust. Jagurtha inevitably opts for a guerrilla war. This is the classic thing. I mean, you know, this is where new media is the place where the French will end up fighting their war in Algeria, centuries and centuries later. And Mattelis, rather like the French do, he responds by ravaging the countryside, taking vast numbers of prisoners, capturing settlements one by one, burning them if they resist, kind of calculated series of atrocities. And the Senate think this is brilliant to quote Salas. They decreed supplications to the immortal gods in return for the success of the war. deeds of Mattelis and really the only flying the ointment as Mattelis is year as consul draws to a close is the fact that Jagertha is still on the loose but Mattelis is assuming that's not really an issue he's done so well that even though he's no longer consul either he's presuming that he will continue to to be in charge of this war and it is at this point that Marius makes his move so in the summer of 108 he goes to Mattelis and he says that he wants to head back to Rome and he wants to run for the consulship and Mattelis is stunned by this you know he responds with complete astonishment then with contempt and then he makes a joke of it but Marius is absolutely obterate and Mattelis who thinks he hasn't got a hope I mean he's just a novice homo what hope does he possibly have he says fine okay you can go back but very pointedly he keeps Marius with him in the field until the very last moment so that Marius only gets back to Rome in the very nick of time to register himself for the consular election and I think that Mattelis is doing this to ensure that Marius won't have time to do any of the campaigning that you know he's essentially if you're going to be consul but Mattelis has badly underestimated Marius because we said that Marius has lots of agents back in Rome and unknown to Mattelis these have been doing a lot of campaigning while Marius has been away in Africa and they have been playing the popularist card they've been saying look Mattelis is stiff arrogant chilly haughty this isn't the kind of person that we want what we want is a man of the people a man like a man like you that's pretty um sneaky of Matt Marius is turning on his own patron he completely is that's poor that has slightly messed with my sense of guys Marius who I always thought was like root at low turning on night or for hours well that's not the that is absolutely not the the analogy that I would have picked so I always thought that Marius was would never have stoop to that but I was wrong well we said he he gives the impression of being I think a bit of a meathead yeah but that's the show Marius is a very shrewd calculating commander but also a politician he's very very effective and he knows that you know in politics as in war you have to prepare for success and that's what he's been doing and he knows that there is a huge constituency and not just among the mass of the people in the Senate as well who are fed up with this kind of faction of the few these guys who've been in control and hogging the consulship for year after year after year and want them out of the way and so he is the guy who dares to put his head above the parapet and he duly reaps the reward so not only is he elected consul for 107 BC he gets Mattelis's African command my god if you're Mattelis you are absolutely raging at this point he's furious he's absolutely livid he's he's the guy who's basically defeated to girther and he's closing in on the kill and just as he's doing that suddenly he gets a message saying you got a hand over your command to your former deputy but it is what it is you know Mattelis has got to do what the Senate tells him and so he goes back to Rome in a massive stroke and his mates in the Senate there tried to make things up for him by boating him a splendid title Neumidicus you know the guy who's defeated the Neumidians and we've said how the number of names that you have in Rome is a marker of your status he now has a fourth name so that's some consolation I guess meanwhile Marius is in Africa he takes control of the war against girther and within a year he has brought it to a successful conclusion girther himself is driven out of Neumidia and goes to Mauritania the neighboring kingdom what's now Morocco but Marius is not going to leave him there to continue to stir up trouble he wants a line drawn under the whole war with girther and so accordingly he has an eye for talent he's got this general staff and he picks out the shrewdest the cleverest the most diplomatically able the bravest of all his left tenants sends this officer to the king of Mauritania to negotiate the surrender of girther and this officer you know proves himself to be everything that Marius had hoped incredibly subtle incredibly fearless he pulls the diplomatic mission of girther falls into Roman hands this lieutenant takes girther back to Marius and Marius then heads back to Rome with girther in chains you know I've been massively looking forward to this well that's you dreading it because I remember having to translate this like some passage about girther's in chains yeah in Salist as it was Salist yeah we had to do this at school I mean I don't want to make listeners switch off but the act of translating this was sold destroying it was so dull but you're going to make it exciting aren't you I thought from your enthusiasm for Colin McCulloch that you were going to say that you remember this moment as a particularly grim and terrifying moment so Marius has gone back and it's the first of January 104 so it's the new year the Roman New Year and he's been given a triumph you know it's great kind of celebrated procession through the streets of Rome that gets given to victorious generals and he's celebrating it on the on New Year's Day his triumph involves him riding in a chariot dressed in the robes of a tranquil general through Rome with his legions all the loot that he's taken in New Midia and his legions following him and to girther is led in chains before the cheering mass of the Roman people being booed and spat out and people throwing eggs and whatever at him kind of moderately interesting and fun I think no it's a genuine string I just I think the key thing looking at your notes is they probably didn't know the word for earlobes and that that was that was what threw me because because at the end of the triumph girther is taken to one side and taken to this hideous prism and there his his earrings are pulled off and they yanked off so brutally that his entire earlobe comes away with the earrings and surely any young Sandbrook would have enjoyed it if he'd got to translate it and then he's thrown into this freezing cold dungeon and I'll quake Plutarch. Girther's wits unsettled by this and grinning horribly he cried out by Hercules what cold baths you have here in Rome. Great banter. I don't think it's banter I think he's gone mad by this point already and so he's chained up down in the bottom of this hideous cell and six days later he dies of the cold and malintrition and that's the end of Girther and say for Marius everything's turned out brilliantly so he's got his consulship he's gone to Africa he's won his war he's got a brilliant name for himself as Rome's greatest general there are just two slight clouds on the horizon and the first of these is that beyond the Alps the two tons and the Kimberi are reported to be moving on Italy the asteroid is heading towards earth the zombie apocalypse is breaking out do you know what they are they're the white walkers they're the white walkers from Westeros yeah and so he's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Tom Thumb it's time to stock up and save now through October 27th get ten dollars off when you spend twenty five dollars or more on participating items just look for a participating item tags to earn on eligible items from brands like Chobani banquet pizza coffee trisket and ozarka clip once and save through October 27th every time you shop grab these hot deals before they're gone save on brands you trust restrictions apply see website for full-terms and conditions when you never sound it's so good what would you do if you want big at Crown Coins Casino real people win real prizes every single day hi this is Chelsea From Dallas I just hit the jackpot one over 1,500 days visit CrownCoins.com sign up in seconds intercode crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus you may win up to 10,000 sweeps coins CrownCoins.com that's C-R-O-W-N-Coins.com no purchase needed code valve for new users on board we're headed by law 18+ terms and addition supply in Rome all eyes are fixed on areas he is the hero of the hour he is Rome's greatest soldier and so it's not surprising that it's on his shoulders that responsibility for saving the city is laid by a desperate and terrified people then there is a second cloud and this is less obvious it's more private I'd say that at this stage it's just a kind of a little niggle but it is one that threatens a good deal of trouble in the future to put it mildly so just as Mattellas had been upstaged by Marius so does Marius feel just a little bit upstaged by his own lieutenant and this is of course the guy who had successfully negotiated the surrender of Jagertha and this lieutenant like Marius himself is a naturally ambitious man a man with a hyper keen sense of his own worth and a man with all kinds of military and political talents and there are some in Rome Marius's enemies in the Senate prominent among them who have begun to attribute the defeat of Jagertha not to Marius but to this lieutenant they're saying Marius is just a show boating the guy who really ended the war is this person and this person this lieutenant you know he doesn't disavow this perspective and in fact he's had a signet ring made for himself which shows him negotiating the surrender of Jagertha and so he kind flashes it around. And to quite pollute up by insisting on wearing this ring all the time, he greatly irritated Marius, who was incredibly sensitive when it came to his own honour, scorned to share his glory with anyone else and was always ready to take offence. And Dominic, the name of this Lieutenant, we are going to be hearing a lot about him in the episodes to come. It is Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In our next episode, we are going to be finding out who he is, what is his background, his upbringing, all of that. And we will also, of course, be following Marius to war with the two taunts and the Kimberley. Griggy, so exciting. So if you'd like to hear that episode right now, and if you'd like to hear the final two episodes of this absolutely thrilling swashbuckling Roman series, and if you're not already a member of the Restist's History Club, because of course if you're in the club, you can listen to the next episode. Well, if you want to hear it, join our own band of Marauding Barberian Cannibals, the Restist's History Club at therestishistory.com. And you can, of course, always find out more about this series and about what's coming next on the Restist's History by subscribing to our newsletter. Now, if you don't want to join the Restist's History Club, first of all, you're insane. So I have no time for you. I don't care what you do, frankly, because you've made poor life choices. However, you can actually, because we're kind, you can actually hear the first five minutes of the next episode right now. We are going to be playing the first five minutes of that episode now. So after that, you probably will want to join the club. Now we're only doing it because we like you. We're not doing it to entice you to join the club. Anyway, here are the next five minutes. Goodbye, everybody. Enjoy them. Arve, a cove allé. Even as Marius is riding through the streets of Rome and being cheered by the watching crowds, there is a mood of panic, maybe even desperation in the city. Because Jagertha may have been defeated. The dignity of the Roman name may have been upheld in Africa, but to the north, beyond the Alps, there is a much more terrifying threat than some African king massing on the frontiers of Rome's empire. And again, we mentioned this in the previous episode. Yeah. It's an immense migration of Germans, the tutors and the Kimberi from Jutland to the frontiers of the Roman world. So it's almost a kind of proto Viking invasion. Yeah. So in the last episode, please people who online like to count how often we refer to either the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. I compared them with the the white walkers, the people who in the Game of Thrones TV series, you see right at the beginning, they're massing all the time. You know, all the internal politics of Westeros is nothing compared with the existential apocalyptic threat that these blokes represent. And actually, I'm going to congratulate myself on my own comparison. I think it's an absolutely superb comparison. Yeah. Because, I mean, these people, the tutors and the Kimberi, they're massive, they're terrifying, they look weird, they are an existential threat. They're appointed to be cannibals. Right. This is Plutarch on them. He said they were impervious to cold because they'd been brought up in ice-bound countries full of forests. I mean, Tom, the parallels are stacking up. Yeah, absolutely right. And also, I think, isn't this also the case with the white walkers, the tutors and the Kimberi accompanied by women and children. Yeah, because some of them are women and children, yeah. In fact, actually, in Game of Thrones, the children are the most frightening. There's always something terrifying about a murderous sinister child. And frankly, if you've ever met a German child, you know, it's the same story. Well, their days really aren't they? Yeah, they're the worst. And the women also are very frightening because they're said to fight alongside the men. Right. And it's an entire people on the move. So there are tens of thousands of them, according to the Roman sources. I mean, we don't know how accurate they are. But basically, there are loads and loads of them. And they are experienced by the Romans less as an army than a some kind of force of nature. You know, a great flood, a tide, a tsunami, whatever you want to to reach for. You know, the news have been brought to them that this monstrous tide of people is advancing towards you. And so they sent an army under a console into a region called Noracom, which is basically Austria today in 113 BC. And the console had set an ambush for these, these barbarians and the barbarians had rumbled it and had outsmarted the console and given him a serious mulling. And so he'd withdrawn. And he had assumed that the barbarians would pursue him and invade Italy. In fact, they don't. They swing westwards into Gaul, which is a big relief to the Romans. But I think it's also a little bit unsettling because it's clear that the Kimberian the Tutans are unlike any enemy that they've come up against before. There's no predicting what they'll do when you're fighting Carthaginians or Greeks or even Gauls. There's a sense in which the Romans understand what makes these people tick. But with these barbarians from the far north, and again, this is maybe the kind of the white walker comparison. The Romans don't understand what they want. They don't understand what's going to motivate them. They don't understand how they're going to behave. And so that means it's very difficult, I think, for the Romans to defy a strategy to cope with this onslaught. And this becomes manifest in a succession of disastrous Roman attempts to go and be proactive and meet the Tutans in Kimberi and wipe them out beyond the limits of Roman power. Because the barbarians, they're just roaming around Gaul, kind of looting and pillaging and killing and all that kind of stuff. And the Romans keep going and trying to attack them, and they keep being defeated. So first in 109 BC, and then two years later near what today is Bordeaux. And one console in that battle is killed. And the other one is cornered. And the only way that he can extract himself is to agree that he and his army will go beneath the yoke. Oh my God. Yeah, ultimate humiliation. You put up two spears and put another spear across it. And everyone has to symbolically bend and crawl, and well, not symbolically. I mean, you literally do it. But it's obviously a symbol of humiliation. So that's very bad. And then I had forgotten the full details of this defeat. So it happens in 105. And it's a culminating disaster in the Roman attempts to stop the barbarians. It happens outside Aroussio, which is the town in southern Gaul, which gives its name to Orange. So ultimately to the orange order. I mean, that's the basic thought. And in this battle, the Romans, it said, lose over 100,000 men, which is more than they lose in at can I? Is that plausible? Really? That they lost that many? I mean, these figures are all made up, aren't they? But I don't think they made it. It's clearly a massive defeat. And yet it's barely remembered. And you think how much it's written about can I and the impact it had on the Romans. At the time, it must have just seemed overwhelming. It must have seemed a disaster on par with that. And when the news of it is brought to Rome, there is this terrible mood of panic. So thank you very much for listening to that. And if you liked it and you would like to hear more, then you can find the full episode at the rest of history dot com. 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