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[Assistant] Especially since everyone realized that Virginia's vote would be THE vote to establish the union. Except it turns out it really wasn't because New Hampshire ratified four days before the Virginia vote, earning New Hampshire the title, the state that ratified the Constitution.


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[Assistant] But the Virginians didn't know that yet, and so their vote maintained the solemn gravitas that Virginians like to attach to things. They voted in favor 89 to 79. But, like Massachusetts and South Carolina, they also demanded amendments. The Bill of Rights was now a foregone conclusion. This put New York in a bind.


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[Assistant] The state was pretty wildly anti-federalist, and its dominant political leader, George Clinton, was prepared to go it alone. And had Virginia not ratified, I'm sure that's exactly what he would have done.


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[Assistant] But Virginia did ratify, and so staying out of the union was now a far trickier proposition.


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[Assistant] The Alexander Hamilton-led Federalists did not have the votes to compel ratification.


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[Assistant] But they did manage to produce one little trump card that did help convince Clinton to lay down his guns.


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[Assistant] New York City itself was dominated by Federalists, and they threatened to secede from the state and join the union themselves if the rest of the state didn't get on board.


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[Assistant] This left only North Carolina and Rhode Island out of the union.


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[Assistant] North Carolina wouldn't join until November 1789. Rhode Island would hold out until May 1790.


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[Assistant] So, first to declare independence, last to ratify the constitution. God bless you, Rhode Island. I love you.


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[Assistant] With the Constitution in effect, elections for the inaugural government were held over the winter of 1788-1789, with George Washington, of course, elected president unanimously.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned, one of the first orders of business for the new government would be to drop a list of amendments that would satisfy all those calls for a bill of rights.


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[Assistant] James Madison himself introduced a list of twelve in August 1789, ten of which would eventually be adopted.


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[Assistant] These amendments focus not on structural changes to the government.


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[Assistant] But rather on protecting individual rights from state abuse. And they included all the greatest hits. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, guarantees of habeas corpus and trial by jury, and access to legal counsel.


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[Assistant] Please go listen to it. It encompasses just about everything I love about America. And for all our faults and all of our mistakes, I believe the Bill of Rights will stand today and tomorrow and forever as objectively worthy of universal admiration. And they should hang on the wall of every classroom.


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[Assistant] Now that they have been adopted, we can close this chapter of the Revolutions Podcast.


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[Assistant] And just in time too, because in a few days I will be flying to London for the First Revolutions podcast tour, where we will get to relive the glory of the English Revolution, and get fired up for the coming French Revolution.


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[Assistant] Since I obviously can't do any real work during those eleven days, I'm gonna have to be gone for longer than the four weeks. So, I am officially setting the break to end on, oh look at that, Bastille Day. See you then.


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[Assistant] I'm sure this is true for most of you. And in fact, unless one of you out there is 1700 years old, I'd wager that this was true for all of you.


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[Assistant] Christmas, as we all know, is officially the birthday of Jesus Christ.


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[Assistant] But how was it that the 25th of December was chosen from all the dates on the calendar when there is no mention in the Bible as to the exact date of his birth? The 25th of December. Pretty random. Where did that come from?


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[Assistant] I guess we'd be pretty far off topic if the Romans didn't have something to do with it. So I suppose it won't come as a shock when I say the Romans had something to do with it.


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[Assistant] But we have to go back a little further than the Romans even and work out a little astronomy first to really understand the significance of the date.


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[Assistant] For as long as there has been civilization, there have been holidays and festivals.


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[Assistant] Days or weeks where work was put aside in honor of this or that god, and to celebrate this or that seasonal transition.


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[Assistant] The particulars change over time and place, but there are a few constants that seem to pop up over and over again, not just in Western civilization, but everywhere.


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[Assistant] For example, some sort of holiday or festival is invariably found at the beginning of spring in celebration of the return of life from its long winter dormancy. In agricultural societies, there is inevitably some sort of harvest festival, with communities feasting on the recently hauled-in bounty.


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[Assistant] And of course, across time and space, back to the earliest tribes of mankind, there has been some sort of midwinter festival. And the midwinter festival, whatever the particular rituals or traditions, is always amongst the most popular and most anticipated. Waxing somewhat philosophical on the subject,


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[Assistant] I believe the midwinter festival is omnipresent and omnilove because it's, well, in the middle of winter. It's cold and dark and there's nothing to do. It's been cold and dark for months and it will be cold and dark for months to come.


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[Assistant] So communities started gathering around fires and throwing week long feasts, giving each other presents and decorating everything in sight, all in an effort to break up the dreary months.


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[Assistant] These days, December is marked by an explosion of colored lights in windows, doorways, and rooftops. I can't help but think that this is a psychological reaction to the dull, gray, colorless winter.


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[Assistant] I always saw midwinter festivities as a prime example of humans throwing a party just because.


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[Assistant] It's the middle of winter for crying out loud. Let's have some fun. But there was always a harsh undercurrent as well.


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[Assistant] In early societies that lived on the razor's edge between survival and extinction, the winter was known as a time of famine.


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[Assistant] Any excess livestock had to be killed off before the truly hard months set in. The meat could be saved, but there was no point in having an excess number of mouths to feed. Accompanying this slaughter and the copious amounts of meat it produced were the communal feasts, sort of a last blowout before the rationing set in.


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[Assistant] But midwinter partying for its own sake is of course only part of the story.


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[Assistant] Just as humans have always been finding excuses to have holidays, we have also always had a strange fixation with astronomy.


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[Assistant] I am not going to bore you with my thoughts on the root causes of that particular obsession, but let's just say that humans love staring at the sky.


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[Assistant] It did not take long for early astronomers, who, of course, doubled as early priests and shaman.


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[Assistant] To note cyclical patterns in the movements of celestial objects and begin to attach significance to a few of the more noteworthy points in those patterns.


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[Assistant] They watched as the days grew longer and longer through the summer until there was a period when the day reached some kind of maximum length and then began to shorten.


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[Assistant] Later, there was a moment when the day and night were exactly the same length, and then, as winter came, the night began to last longer than the day, until it reached some sort of peak length, and contracted back to a day and night of equal length.


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[Assistant] People began to wrap up all kinds of religious and philosophical meaning in these days. What we now call the summer solstice, the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice, and the vernal equinox.


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[Assistant] They had no idea about solar systems and tilted axes and revolving spheres floating in space, but they knew something was up and wanted to get in on the action.


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[Assistant] So they started surrounding these important days with rituals, ceremonies, and you guessed it, festivals.


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[Assistant] So now we'll narrow our focus a bit and zoom in on the winter solstice in particular. If humans didn't need a reason to party in the middle of winter in the first place, it certainly wasn't going to bother anyone that now there was.


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[Assistant] Here the astronomer priests were telling them that on this one particular day, the darkness that had been spreading for the last six months, bumming everyone out, had reached its maximum ebb, and now the light would be ascended.


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[Assistant] The worst was behind them and from here on out every day would be a little bit lighter and a little bit warmer rather than a little darker and a little colder.


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[Assistant] And if that isn't a reason to invent distillation, I don't know what is.


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[Assistant] So the midwinter festivities began to occur on and around the winter solstice, just as the spring festivals began to hinge on the vernal equinox.


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[Assistant] And by the time the Romans came along then, there was already a rich tradition of festivities surrounding the winter solstice.


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[Assistant] They didn't invent anything, but they did have their own holiday calendar which became the conduit through which these ancient celebrations passed into our own modern era.


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[Assistant] A long-standing Roman winter tradition dating to the early Republic was called Saturnalia, a feast commemorating the founding of the Temple of Saturn.


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[Assistant] At first the celebration took place on December 17th.


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[Assistant] But as time passed, Saturnalia grew to encompass a whole week, generally ending on December 23rd, but by the middle imperial period, sometimes extending as far as our date of inquiry, December 25th.


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[Assistant] Saturnalia was by far the most popular of Roman holidays and came complete with large public feasts and a complete abandonment of traditional morality, always a must for the really good parties.


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[Assistant] Gambling was encouraged where, for the rest of the year, it was frowned upon. And it was encouraged not just for citizens, but for slaves as well, who were treated for the weak as real, actual people. In fact, in many cases, a sort of role reversal game was played, where the slaves were treated as master, and the master a slave.


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[Assistant] Roman citizens delighted in the novelty of serving food and running errands, while the slaves enjoyed a brief moment on the couch, humorously ordering their owners about. Those crazy Romans, what will they think of next?


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[Assistant] As for its connection to Christmas, Saturnalia was also accompanied by gift giving, the hanging of pine bows inside the home, and singing in the streets, which corresponds roughly to our caroling. Though the Romans apparently did this while drunk and naked, which I am thankful to say is a tradition that died with the empire.


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[Assistant] But for all its importance and obvious similarities to Christmas, Saturnalia was not the true reason Christmas is celebrated on December 25th.


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[Assistant] That honor goes to an imported Syrian feast called Sol Invictus, or the feast of the unconquered sun.


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[Assistant] In the Middle Late Imperium, the Romans began to embrace Eastern sun cults and adopted many of their corresponding rituals and holidays.


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[Assistant] And when we're talking about worshipping sun gods, the winter solstice is obviously going to be seen as a date of great importance.


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[Assistant] Sol Invictus honored the Sun God for holding fast against the encroaching darkness and celebrated the day he turned the tables on his eternal enemy night and began to retake the sky.


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[Assistant] The Syrian-born Emperor Elagabalus introduced the Romans to the feast around 220 AD and held it every year on December the 25th.


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[Assistant] Which, according to the Roman calendar at the time, was the date of the all-important Winter Solstice.


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[Assistant] 50 years later, the emperor Aurelian, whose patron god was Sol, one of the various sun gods hanging around at the time, popularized the feast and made it an empire-wide holiday.


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[Assistant] Twenty odd years after Aurelian, Constantine came along, and I think that we all know what happened next.


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[Assistant] Seized with either a mystical vision of Christ or a rather practical understanding that Christian bureaucrats were the only ones who could be trusted with the imperial treasury, Constantine officially ended the persecution of Christians and on his deathbed converted himself and the empire to Christianity.


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[Assistant] In the beginning of the Christian era, the leaders of the church attempted to stamp out the old pagan holidays, but ran into a great deal of resistance from the citizens of Rome, who continued to follow their old holiday calendar, holding fast to Sol Invictus in particular.


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[Assistant] The church elders, realizing they were fighting a losing battle, changed their strategy. And rather than attempting to stamp out the pagan holidays, simply co-opted them and refashioned them as Christian celebrations.


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[Assistant] The first official connections between Christmas and December 25th.


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[Assistant] Jesus was often depicted during these years with a radiating solar crown and was often used interchangeably with the various pagan solar deities by a citizen body transitioning between religions.


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[Assistant] By 400, December 25th was firmly established as a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and all mention of the Old Gods was gone.


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[Assistant] As the empire fell, taking the last vestiges of paganism with it.


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[Assistant] Roman Catholicism stood as the last bulwark of civilization, and despite the many past claims by other deities to December 25th and the winter solstice, it was now a date for Jesus and Jesus alone.


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[Assistant] Though the importance of Christmas Day itself as a holiday has waxed and waned over the years, it was always considered the birthday of Jesus. Just as it is today, when, as a holiday, it now dominates the Christian holiday calendar.


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[Assistant] For those of you who are celebrating Christmas, remember that when you sit down and exchange presents beneath a tree on December 25th, even though you may not be in Rome, you are doing exactly as the Romans did.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned at the end of last week, the show will be on hiatus next week as I am traveling for the holidays.


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[Assistant] But when I return, I hope to bring back with me a fancy new hosting server.


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[Assistant] As many of you have noted with frustration over the last few weeks, there have been many problems downloading episodes.


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[Assistant] At first I didn't quite know what the problem was, but it dawned on me that the thousands and thousands of download requests were overwhelming my poor little free hosting account.


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[Assistant] When I started the history of Rome, I never imagined I would need more than hobbyist-grade hosting.


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[Assistant] But the audience has now officially outgrown the venue, and I plan on spending a good chunk of my downtime getting all the bugs worked out of what I hope to be a server with more than enough bandwidth to accommodate everyone out there now and anyone who wants to hop on board in the future.


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[Assistant] So I will see you next year, hopefully fully upgraded so we can launch unobstructed into the Punic Wars by far Rome's greatest test and a time of very real peril and then begin to trace the long slow decline of the Republic until the whirlpool begins to suck furiously downward in the middle of the first century BC.


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[Assistant] Until then, I wish you all a happy feast of the unconquered sun.


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[Assistant] Last week, a 16 year old Nero ascended to the throne and, after spending a brief period dominated by his mother and other influential advisors, emerged as his own man.


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[Assistant] Maybe that's too strong a reading, as it conjures up images of Augustus or Tiberius emerging as their own men.


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[Assistant] Which implies a degree of independent competence that Nero never really attained.


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[Assistant] But he had definitely passed a point where it became dangerous to exert too much overt control over the Emperor. If nothing else, Nero had to think he was the man in charge, even if his policies were usually influenced on the front end and executed on the back end by men with their own agendas.


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[Assistant] Not that these separate agendas were nefarious, mind you. A lot of that backroom influencing resulted in the reigning inn of Nero's impulsiveness and making sure his grandiose declarations were always interpreted in a sound and practical manner as possible.


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[Assistant] It would be a few years yet before the men who were a positive influence on the young Emperor were replaced by men who encouraged Nero to embrace the darker side of his character for their own ends.


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[Assistant] This week, though, I want to move away from the cutthroat politics of the Imperial Court and focus instead on the foreign pressures the Empire faced during the first half of Nero's reign. Because right off the bat, Rome's enemies took one look at the untested 16-year-old Emperor and decided that now was the perfect time to push Rome around.


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[Assistant] In the East, the Parthians took advantage of the situation to strengthen their position in Armenia, the semi-independent buffer state that had been the source of so much conflict over the years.


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[Assistant] While the Romans dealt with rising tensions and then eventually all out war with the Parthians, a revolt in the newly acquired province of Britannia would break out, led by the warrior Queen Budica, that would erupt with such ferocious energy that for a while Nero considered just abandoning the island altogether.


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[Assistant] Eventually though, the uprising in Britannia would be put down and a settlement reached with the Parthians.


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[Assistant] Both conflicts left a lot of lingering resentment and unanswered questions about the future. But all in all, Nero's response to these threats earned him a solid C, maybe even a C+, in foreign policy.


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[Assistant] He didn't gain any territory, but he didn't lose any territory either. Though his critics did accuse him of essentially giving up Rome's hegemony over Armenia when the final deal with Parthia was signed. But I would argue that the agreement, which averted continuous war with Parthia, actually goes down on the credit rather than the debit side of Nero's ledger.


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[Assistant] Since the time of Augustus, a deal had been worked out between Rome and Parthia whereby Rome retained the right to appoint the monarch of Armenia, this nominally independent buffer state.


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[Assistant] The arrangement worked out fine until the early 50s AD, when the Roman-nominated king was overthrown by his own nephew.


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[Assistant] The nephew turned out to be a terrible ruler, and the people of Armenia soon grew to despise him.


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[Assistant] The new king of Parthia, Volagases I, saw what was going on in Armenia and decided that he could make his mark on history by prying the country away from the Romans.


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[Assistant] Skillfully parlaying disgust with the sitting king and his support for a Parthian alternative, Volagossis invaded Armenia and installed his own brother Tiridates on the throne.


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[Assistant] After a few years of back and forth between the rival claimants, the people of Armenia backed Tyrodates, and in 54 AD, the Parthians found themselves effectively ruling Armenia.


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[Assistant] 54 AD is also, of course, the year that Claudius died and Nero became emperor, making the eastern encroachment of the Parthians one of the first major tests of the new emperor's medal.


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[Assistant] Being young and wanting to make a mark himself, Nero was convinced to push back hard against the Parthians.


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[Assistant] To spearhead this pushback, Nero appointed a man named Neus Domitius Corbulo, a general who had made a name for himself battling the always active Germanic tribes during the reigns of Caligula and Claudius.


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[Assistant] Corbulla was made pro-praetor and later pro-consul of the provinces of Cappadocia and Galatia and instructed to gather and train an army that could be put in the field against the Parthians should diplomatic overtures fail.


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[Assistant] As he gathered his forces though, it became apparent that the bulk of whatever force he led would be drawn from the legions stationed in Syria.


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[Assistant] So for the next few years, while Rome waited for Parthia to back down and Parthia waited for Rome to give up.


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[Assistant] Corbulo trained his men, going so far as to keep them encamped throughout the winter to get them ready for the harsh conditions they would find in mountainous Armenia.


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[Assistant] The basic demand of the Romans was simple. Uh, Pteridates had to travel to Rome and receive an official endorsement from the emperor.


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[Assistant] Otherwise, his presence on the Armenian throne would be considered illegitimate and an act of war.


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[Assistant] The Parthians hemmed and hawed, and so finally in 58 AD, Corbua was given the green light to begin pressing the Roman case by other means.


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[Assistant] Tyrodates had scattered his defense forces across Armenia to avoid the decisiveness that comes with a single large battle. So rather than invading the country with a single column, Corbulo sent in dozens of small detachments and simultaneously ordered the Roman allied kings along the Armenian border to begin stirring up trouble.


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[Assistant] If he couldn't knock Tirodates out with a single punch, Corbulla was content to do it with a thousand cuts.


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[Assistant] At first, things went well for Rome, and in short order, the swarming legions caused Tiridates to demand a meeting.


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[Assistant] The two sides agreed to come together, but when the Armenians showed up with a thousand men and the Romans showed up with three thousand men


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[Assistant] The Armenians then tried to cut off the supply line of the legions, the tactic that had brought Mark Antony to his knees. But Corbulo had studied his military history and made sure that his supply chain, though long, was well defended.


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[Assistant] Unable to make a dent against the Roman invasion, Tiridates fell back into a defensive posture, leading Corbulo to recall his own scattered forces and prepare them for a series of traditional assaults on the main Armenian strongholds.


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[Assistant] Encountering little real resistance, the Romans captured city after city on their way to the northern capital of Artashada, where Tiridates had holed up.


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[Assistant] The Armenian king dispatched everything he had against the besieging Roman forces, but he was unable to break their line. Tiridates was forced to flee and abandon his capital. Unable to garrison the city properly, Corbuo burned it to the ground.


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[Assistant] The next year, the legions headed towards Tigran Aserta, the capital of southern Armenia.


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[Assistant] It was a difficult road, and along the way at least one plot to assassinate the hard-driving Corbulo was exposed. The conspirators, mostly allied Armenians who had grown tired of following the Romans, were all executed.


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[Assistant] The affair actually turned out pretty well for the targeted Roman general, not only because he survived.


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[Assistant] But also because when he arrived outside of Tigran Serta, it is reported that he launched one of the conspirators heads into the city, reminding the leaders of the capital what happened to those who defied Rome. The ruling council voted to surrender without a fight.


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[Assistant] Having successfully ejected the Parthians from this key territory with only minimal losses, Corbua was hailed as a hero back in Rome and became the most celebrated general of his generation.


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[Assistant] As a reward for his achievement, the victorious Corburo was given the governorship of Syria, the most important province in the Eastern Empire, aside from Egypt, of course.


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[Assistant] He left a legion garrisoned in Armenia to support the new king and headed south to his new assignment, believing the Armenian question had now been answered. But it was not to be so.


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[Assistant] As it would turn out, Korbulo's victories came so easily because, while the Romans were intensely focused on the conflict in Armenia, Volagassis and the Parthians were being pulled in a dozen different directions, dealing with nasty revolts both out on their frontiers and within their royal family itself.


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[Assistant] Stretched so thin, Parthia was unable to supply Tiridates with the resources he needed to successfully ward off the Roman assault.


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[Assistant] There is no way Volagosis could ignore such an insult.


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[Assistant] Settling his other internal problems so as not to be distracted, the Romans soon discovered that they had earned Parthia's full attention. From here on out, things would not be so easy.


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[Assistant] Just as things were about to get dicey in the east, a revolt in Britannia exploded with such force that Nero and his advisors seriously considered just giving up the island completely.


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[Assistant] At what point, they wondered, will it simply no longer be worth it to hold this cold and foggy island on the edge of the world. But as quickly as it started, the revolt flamed out.


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[Assistant] However, had Gaius Suetonius Polinus lost the battle of Watling Street, which, given how outnumbered he was, was not entirely out of the question, there is a very real possibility that the Romans would have withdrawn from Britain completely.


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[Assistant] Altering the course of Western European history in the process.


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[Assistant] During the initial Roman invasion of Britain in 43, the Iceni, who hailed from modern day Norfolk on the east coast of Britain, had either been one of the eleven tribes who surrendered to Claudius, or they had worked out an independent peace with the Romans not long after.


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[Assistant] However it happened, the Iceni had been able to maintain their independence, and Prosetagus was set up as an official client king of the Roman Empire.


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[Assistant] In an attempt to keep control of his tribe within the family, Prosetagos filled out a will that left Iceni territory jointly to the Romans on the one hand and his wife and daughters on the other.


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[Assistant] But when the king died, the Roman procurator of the province, a particularly rapacious character named Cadus Decianus, announced that patriarchal Rome did not recognize the rights of women when it came to inheritance.


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[Assistant] The claims of the Iceni were denied and their territory was annexed by Rome.


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[Assistant] To the Britons, who had no problem with women inheriting property or holding positions of authority, this was incomprehensible.


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[Assistant] It was right and good that the kings wife should rule upon his death and his daughters grow up to be queens.


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[Assistant] So when Budica, the widow of the dead king, went about her business as usual and paid no more or less tribute to the Romans than before, she was shocked at the Roman reaction.


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[Assistant] Soldiers were sent to her village. Budica was tied up and flogged, while her daughters were carted off and raped.


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[Assistant] These ghastly acts committed, the Romans believed that they had put the upstart women in their place and thought no more of it.


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[Assistant] Little realizing that they had just lit a fuse that was burning quickly down towards the powder keg that was Queen Boudica.


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[Assistant] With the Roman governor of Britain, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, leading the majority of the British legions on a campaign on the Isle of Anglicy in Wales, Boudicca took the opportunity to translate her fury into action.


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[Assistant] After convincing a neighboring tribe to join in the fun, Boudica gathered everyone up and declared war on Rome.


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[Assistant] The first stop was Camelodunum, the original headquarters of the Roman occupying force and site of a great temple built to the now divine Claudius.


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[Assistant] When Roman scouts brought back word that a huge force of Britons was headed straight for the city, the call for reinforcements went out.


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[Assistant] But with the bulk of the British legions occupied in Wales, the procurator Decianus decided that Budica's revolt wasn't worth rearranging the remaining garrisons for, and only sent an additional 200 troops to Camel and Dunham.


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[Assistant] Not surprisingly, 200 more troops didn't do the Romans in the city much good, as Budica's force had to be in the tens of thousands. I'm having trouble tracking down an accurate headcount for them.


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[Assistant] The Britain rebels easily crashed the gates, forcing the surviving Romans to make a last stand in the barricaded temple of Claudius, where, after two days of fighting, they were annihilated. Camel and Dunham was then burned to the ground.


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[Assistant] After the scale of the danger posed to the residents of Camel and Dunham became apparent, a detachment of 2,500 men from a nearby legion were sent to reinforce the city. But by the time they arrived, it was too late.


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[Assistant] They showed up just in time to find the smoldering remains of Camel and Dunham and a horde of British warriors with their hackles raised and nothing else to do.


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[Assistant] The subsequent encounter, known as the Massacre of the Ninth Legion, did not, as you can imagine, end well for the Romans.


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[Assistant] When news of the destruction of Camel and Dunham reached Suetonius in Wales, he immediately abandoned his campaign and marched straight for the new commercial center of Londinium, founded 20 years before and thriving nicely.


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[Assistant] But upon arrival, he assessed the situation and decided the new city was indefensible. With Budica marching straight for them, he abandoned the town and looked for a better position from which to direct his counterattack. Budica had no trouble overrunning undefended Londinium.


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[Assistant] She burned to the ground and slaughtered anyone crazy enough to stay in the city after Suetonius left with his legions.


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[Assistant] Boudicca then marched on Verulamium, the site of modern St. Albans, and put it too to the torch.


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[Assistant] This string of victories was gaining Boudicca quite a reputation and disaffected Britons from across the country flocked to her banner.


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[Assistant] The Romans were on the run, and with a little luck, they might just be run off the island altogether.


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[Assistant] But Suetonis was not ready to give up just yet. He managed to gather about 10,000 troops, composed of portions of a few legions and irregular auxiliary forces, and station them at a defensible position in the West Midlands, along a trade road known later as Watling Street.


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[Assistant] The reports that Budica led 230,000 warriors is certainly an exaggeration.


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[Assistant] There is no doubt that the Romans were massively outnumbered.


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[Assistant] Tacitus reports that though Suetonius arrayed his men in a single line, it was not enough to match the length of the far deeper British army.


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[Assistant] But Suetonius knew what he was doing and had placed himself at a spot where only so many Britons could attack at any one time.


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[Assistant] Boudicca roused her army with a speech imploring them to make this moment the last moment for the Romans in Britain, and reminding them that she stood before them not as an aristocrat whose power had been usurped, but as a free woman whose liberty had been denied.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately for the British, as we have seen so many times before, when it came to set peace battles out in the open, the Romans were second to none, even when they were outnumbered ten to one.


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[Assistant] And before the battle, she had stationed the wagons and dependents who made up the rest of the troop behind the actual warriors.


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[Assistant] Her revolt shattered. Utica drank poison to avoid capture.


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[Assistant] Boudica's rebellion very nearly caused Nero to abandon Britain altogether.


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[Assistant] Had she been able to lure Suetonius onto less favorable ground, it is likely that her far superior numbers would have been able to overwhelm him. But in the end, if there was one thing the Romans did really well, it was running a savvy military operation. So the counterfactual just doesn't hold up.


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[Assistant] Having abandoned Londinium, it was clear that the one thing Suetonius was not going to do was be lured onto unfavorable ground. Inevitably, Boudicca's furious revolt was going to run into the cold, careful planning of the Roman legions, and, like so many before her, she would be destroyed by it.


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[Assistant] Rome was pleased to hear the good news arriving from Britain that the uprising had been quelled, but they were simultaneously nonplussed by the news coming in from the east.


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[Assistant] Having set a Roman client back on the throne of Armenia, Corbulo had settled conditions in the east back into their natural state. But Tigranus VI, the new king of Armenia,


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[Assistant] Immediately tried to upend the apple cart by raiding into Parthian territory.


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[Assistant] Where before the Parthian king Volgausis had regretfully deemed the Armenian situation a low priority, invasions into Parthia itself were another matter.


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[Assistant] Reacting to the enraged pleas from his loyal subjects, the Parthian king settled his other business and turned back to the Mediterranean.


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[Assistant] He formally announced that his brother Tiradates was still the rightful king of Armenia and re-crowned him as such.


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[Assistant] A Parthian force then invaded Armenia and attempted to dislodge the Roman garrisons, but they were unsuccessful.


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[Assistant] Hoping to keep things civil, Corbulo met with Volgassis and it was agreed that both empires would leave the disputed country while envoys from Parthia traveled to Rome and attempted to work out a deal.


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[Assistant] But by the spring of 62, no deal had been struck and hostilities were renewed.


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[Assistant] This time with Corburo focused on protecting the key province of Syria from possible attack


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[Assistant] Nero appointed a legate named Lucius Cisenius Pytus to spearhead operations in Armenia.


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[Assistant] The new commander took two legions and marched them straight toward Tigranaserta, which had been seized by the Parthians. But after a few easy but minor victories, he was forced to withdraw when winter came due to an unsteady supply line before reaching the southern capital.


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[Assistant] The ease of the first year's campaign had lulled Pytus into a false sense of security.


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[Assistant] When, in early 63, this false sense of security was shattered, he quickly showed himself to be a pretty awful commander.


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[Assistant] Unable to make any headway against Corbulos fortifications in Syria, which Volgossis had been planning to invade,


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[Assistant] The Parthian king decided to abandon the attempt and just go for broke in Armenia.


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[Assistant] So when the second Parthian army, which Pytus had not accounted for, suddenly appeared along the Roman-Armenian border, where he was camped for the winter, Pytus panicked.


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[Assistant] Having sent his officers away on leave, and having dispersed the rest of his troops across the countryside, Hytas was in no position to fight the Parthians.


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[Assistant] He hastily ordered the troops he had on hand to blockade the various passes in the mountains to prevent the Parthians from entering Roman territory, but this had the effect of only dispersing his already dispersed troops even more.


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[Assistant] The Parthians were able to easily overrun these small detachments, forcing Pytus to fall back into his fortified camps outside of Randia. Facing imminent doom, Pytus was paralyzed.


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[Assistant] The most proactive thing he could think of to do was to call Corbulo for help.


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[Assistant] Having never liked Pytas to begin with, Corbulo took his sweet time gathering a relief force, but when the reports became sufficiently dire he marched out half the men at his disposal and attempted to reach the besieged legions in time. But he would arrive too late. While en route, Pytas had given up and surrendered to Volgausis. The terms of the surrender were humiliating for Rome.


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[Assistant] The Parthian king demanded that the defeated army build him a bridge across a nearby river so his entourage could march over it victoriously. Then, according to some sources, he allowed the Romans to leave only after marching them under the yoke, which, as you recall from the Battle of the Coaline Gate during the Samnite Wars, was about as humiliating as it gets.


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[Assistant] The remnants of Pytas's army met up with the approaching legions led by Corbulo, and despite Pytas's pleas to keep fighting, Corbulo refused and led the whole force back to Syria, unwilling to risk getting entangled with the Parthians at a time and place of their choosing.


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[Assistant] Having driven the Romans out of Armenia, Volgassi sent envoys to Rome to work out a new peace accord. When the envoys arrived though,


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[Assistant] Nero and the Senate were shocked to discover the magnitude of Piatus' defeat.


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[Assistant] Though he had been communicating his ever-worsening position to Corbuo,


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[Assistant] Pytus had continued to send cheerful letters back to Rome, acting as if nothing was amiss.


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[Assistant] So when Parthian envoys showed up with news of Roman legions marching out under the yoke, the leaders of Rome had trouble fitting this revelation into their heads.


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[Assistant] For God's sake, the triumphal arch marking the defeat of the Parthians in Armenia was already halfway constructed.


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[Assistant] What are we supposed to do with a halfway built triumphal arch? Turn it into a giant swing set?


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[Assistant] Pytas was immediately recalled to Rome, and Corbulo was given emergency imperium over the entire Eastern Empire. His job was to whip the Parthians and make sure that it stuck this time.


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[Assistant] Korbulo led a large force out of Syria and into Armenia to do just that.


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[Assistant] But before a battle could be fought, Volagasi sent word that he wanted to deal.


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[Assistant] He knew full well that Corbua was not pietous and that the Romans would not be taken so easily again. So the two sides met and struck a deal.


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[Assistant] Henceforth, Parthia would be able to appoint the monarch of Armenia, but their choice had to be ratified by the Roman emperor.


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[Assistant] Chiridates then laid his diadem down in front of a statue of Nero that Romans had brought, and swore not to put it back upon his head until Nero had placed it there.


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[Assistant] In 66 AD, Tiridates then did travel to Rome to meet with the Emperor and accept his crown.


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[Assistant] Nero threw a huge party and made a big to-do about his right to crown the king of Armenia.


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[Assistant] But critics within the Senate and beyond believe the Emperor had done nothing less than hand Armenia over to the Parthians. Ratify the candidate that they nominate? What great power is that?


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[Assistant] But Defenders of Nero saw it as a practical move that averted all out war with the one power big enough to really challenge Rome.


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[Assistant] In closing out the ceremony, Nero even went so far as to close the rarely closed gates of the Temple of Janus, which signaled the arrival of universal peace.


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[Assistant] Next week, just months after the gates swing shut, they will be opened again.


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[Assistant] The always simmering province of Judea will finally boil over, leading to what is now known as the Great Jewish Revolt.


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[Assistant] The historical implications of this brief conflict were vast, as the Romans both destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem and triggered a diaspora of Jews out of the east, with the survivors of the revolt fleeing to communities across the empire, which sowed the seeds for so much medieval and modern tension between Jew and Gentile.


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[Assistant] At the end of last week's episode, I hinted that today we would be getting into the great Jewish revolt, which erupted in Judea in 66 AD and led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.


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[Assistant] However, as I began to unpack my outline for this week I quickly realized that this hinting was premature.


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[Assistant] So, to those of you out there who got really psyched for that story, sorry, you're gonna have to wait until next week.


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[Assistant] There is too much I want to get into about Nero, the great fire of Rome, the Emperor's relationship with the early Christians, and his relationship with the Senate, to cram the great revolt in there too. So, the great revolt will be next week.


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[Assistant] You'll remember from two weeks ago that in 59 AD, Nero had grown so tired of his mother Agrippina that he conspired to have her killed.


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[Assistant] Though this act of matricide could not be said to mark a clear line between neuro the self-indulgent and neuro the sadist,


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[Assistant] Since on the one hand, killing your own mother goes way beyond self-indulgent, and on the other, Nero the sadist didn't really get going until after the death of the Praetorian prefect Burris in 62 AD, the death of Agrippina pretty clearly foreshadowed what Nero was capable of and what he was becoming. But like I say, it wasn't a clear breaking point. For a few years, Nero continued on as he always had.


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[Assistant] Moderately interested in the affairs of state and excessively interested in affairs of, well, excess.


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[Assistant] He served his consul four times, from 55 to 60 AD, an office which, while not as important as it had once been, was still a key administrative cog in the empire, signaling that Nero enjoyed at least some aspects of practical governance.


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[Assistant] Nero was essentially a bohemian emperor. He liked drinking, poetry, and music. He liked lazing around during the day and partying his way through the night.


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[Assistant] He and his friends would go on drunken romps through the city, stirring up trouble at brothels and bathhouses, and generally making the LA nightclub scene look like a meeting of the woman's Christian temperance union.


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[Assistant] But even with the emperor whirling around Rome in a debauched frenzy every night, the day-to-day operations of empire were still in relatively good hands.


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[Assistant] The Prefect Burris and Seneca the Younger continued to act as moderating hands, steering the no doubt perpetually hungover Nero away from this terrible idea and toward that sound policy. But in the early 60s AD, things began to change.


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[Assistant] And the sort of embarrassing but harmless Bohemian Emperor.


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[Assistant] began to turn into something much darker. And in response, the people of Rome began to turn on him.


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[Assistant] In 58 AD, Nero met the wife of his friend Otho, who was a stunning and ambitious woman named Papia Sabina, and was immediately smitten with her.


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[Assistant] Papia was more than happy to return the Emperor's affections, as it was widely rumored that she had initially targeted Otho for marriage specifically to get closer to Nero.


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[Assistant] The two began to have an affair shortly thereafter, that some pointed to as the key factor in Nero's decision to off his disapproving mother.


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[Assistant] And though that explanation has been pretty well debunked, it is worth noting again that the accusation was thrown around at the time.


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[Assistant] The reason Agrippina disapproved is that Nero was still married to Claudia Octavia, the daughter of Claudius.


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[Assistant] The union between Nero and Claudia kept the two wings of the Julio-Claudian dynasty tied together, and Agrippina didn't want Nero to throw that away in a fit of young lust.


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[Assistant] Mistresses were fine, as long as they remain mistresses.


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[Assistant] But Nero was never happy in his arranged marriage and was always looking to turn his mistresses into wives. Something that would shatter the only recently reunited bonds of the Julians and the Claudians.


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[Assistant] Papia, for her part, had no interest in remaining Nero's mistress, and was forever whispering in the Emperor's ear that he ought to ditch his prudish wife and marry her instead.


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[Assistant] In 62 AD, things came to a head when Pompeya announced that she was pregnant with Nero's child.


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[Assistant] The emperor finally decided that it was time to give up all the pretenses and announced to the people that on grounds of infertility, he was divorcing Octavia and marrying Poppaea instead.


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[Assistant] He then banished Octavia to the same small island that had previously been the de facto prison of her aunt, Agrippina the Elder.


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[Assistant] 18 days later, Nero married Papia in a lavish ceremony.


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[Assistant] The divorce and remarriage of Nero marks the first time the public really turned on the young emperor.


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[Assistant] Up until now, he had been writing his Julian blood and generous social programs right into the hearts of the masses.


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[Assistant] Well liked for her noble demeanor, they couldn't understand why Nero was suddenly dumping this fine Roman woman who they were all proud to call their empress. And who was taking her place? Some harlot adulterer? No, they weren't happy about this at all.


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[Assistant] It got so bad that people began carrying statues of Octavia through the streets, demanding that she be recalled from exile.


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[Assistant] Nero, spooked by the sudden demonstrations, nearly caved in. But Papilla convinced him to do the other thing. The thing where, sorry, Octavia is dead, so as much as I'd like to, there's no one really left to recall.


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[Assistant] Imperial agents staged the murder of Octavia to make it look like a suicide, but no one was buying it.


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[Assistant] Whatever benefit of the doubt Nero had been receiving was now gone, and two years later, when Rome went up in flames, no one hesitated to accuse the Emperor of setting the blaze himself for his own insane purposes.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't just the incident with Octavia that turned the people against Nero.


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[Assistant] In general, his policies were trending towards unsustainable extravagance.


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[Assistant] Not typical rich boy extravagance, mind you, but a budget-busting, megalomaniacal extravagance that was beginning to weigh the whole empire down.


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[Assistant] The key shift in his attitude came later in 62 AD, when the Praetorian Prefect Burris died of an illness.


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[Assistant] Though he had been gradually losing favor with the Emperor, especially since the arrival of Poppaea.


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[Assistant] Burris was still a positive influence on Nero, and his death left a giant hole where moderation used to be.


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[Assistant] His death also left the key office of Praetorian Prefect open, and Nero filled the vacancy not with a man who would moderate his advices, but who would openly encourage them.


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[Assistant] Further, with Burr's dead, Seneca the Younger found himself isolated in an imperial court that was now dominated by Papia and her friends.


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[Assistant] After they began passing around rumors that the old man was embezzling from the state treasury, Seneca knew that he was a marked man.


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[Assistant] Rather than run the risk of winding up in front of some treason trial on trumped up charges, Seneca resigned from his post and retired to a quiet life of philosophical contemplation. Not that it would all do him much good.


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[Assistant] Recognizing that his young charge was becoming a massive liability for the Empire, Seneca would get caught up in the Peasonian conspiracy, and then be exposed along with everyone else when the plot was betrayed in 65 AD. All of which I'll get to in a moment.


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[Assistant] The man who replaced Burris' prefect was Gaius Ophonius Tegelinus, and it can be justifiably said that the downfall of Nero coincides neatly with the rise of Tegelinus.


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[Assistant] The new prefect quickly gained a reputation for cruelty and spent the majority of his seven odd years in office either persecuting the enemies of Nero or orchestrating his mass orgies.


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[Assistant] As I just said, where Burris had acted to keep Nero in check, Tegalinas actively encouraged the Emperor to indulge himself without reservation or hesitation.


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[Assistant] The combined influence of Papia and the new Praetorian Prefect unhinged Nero completely from his superego and sent him down a path that eventually led to him committing suicide after being declared an enemy of the state in 68 AD.


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[Assistant] So remember kids, the super ego may be a joyless old stick in the mud, but it's there for a reason.


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[Assistant] In 64 AD, the negative consequences of the emperor's excesses were finally put on full display following one of the seminal events of Nero's reign, the Great Fire of Rome.


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[Assistant] The accusations and counter accusations about who was behind the disaster paint a picture of an emperor who had not only lost the faith of the aristocratic classes, but of the general public as well.


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[Assistant] Because the widely spread and widely believed rumor was that Nero had himself started the blaze.


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[Assistant] A popular and well-regarded ruler does not usually have to answer questions about whether or not he has burned his own capital down, but an increasingly disliked and despotic ruler


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[Assistant] Well those are exactly the sorts of questions that everyone starts asking. As disconnected as he was becoming from reality though,


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[Assistant] Nero wasn't oblivious to this evidence at his sinking popularity, or the threat that that posed to his regime.


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[Assistant] His decision to scapegoat the early Christians and blame them for starting the fire is clear evidence that Nero decided he needed some kind of evil foil to point to to keep the public's attention off of his own failings.


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[Assistant] With the Romans already suspicious of those weirdo Christian cultists, Nero guessed that it would be easy to fan the flames of bigotry and in the process maybe regain some of his lost popularity.


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[Assistant] Accounts of the breadth and depth of the great fire differ, but the classic accounting is that three of the fourteen districts of Rome wound up utterly destroyed and another seven were badly damaged.


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[Assistant] The fire broke out near the Circus Maximus and quickly raged out of control, ultimately burning for somewhere between five and seven days before running out of fuel.


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[Assistant] In addition to the countless homes and businesses that were destroyed in the blaze, portions of the Imperial Palace were consumed, along with the hearth of the Vestal Virgins and the Temple of the Jupiter Stater, which, legend had it, had been founded by Romulus himself after the Romans' first successful battle with the Sabines.


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[Assistant] The fire was devastating, and in its aftermath the displaced victims, families who had lost everything.


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[Assistant] But there was no clear cause, and in the absence of a plausible explanation, rumors began to fly that perhaps Nero was behind the whole thing.


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[Assistant] It had long been known that the Emperor dreamed of building a massive palace complex in the heart of the city, so wasn't it obvious that Nero had sent his agents, led by that damned Tigalinis, to start the fire in order to clear out the existing buildings that were in the way of his opulent vision?


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[Assistant] Reports began to crop up that while the fire raged, a joyful Nero had plucked at his prized lyre while watching the city go down in flames.


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[Assistant] In fact, wasn't it true that setting the fire hadn't even been about building his golden palace? Wasn't it just that Nero desired a magnificent backdrop for some new performance, and that in the midst of the blaze he had dressed in a costume and sung the sack of Ilium for him and his monstrous friends?


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[Assistant] I tend to follow Tacitus on this because as biased as he is against Nero, he's usually reliable with his facts, and he reports that Nero wasn't even in Rome at the time, and when news that the city was on fire reached him, that he rushed back and immediately spearheaded a relief effort.


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[Assistant] Housing refugees in the standing portion of the palace and arranging for food and water to be dispersed to victims throughout the city.


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[Assistant] Once the immediate emergency had passed, Nero then began a reconstruction effort that led to some pretty major revisions to the fire code and a rationalization of the organic mess that had been the urban plan of Rome.


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[Assistant] But for all these good works, Nero still managed to come off as the leading candidate for having set the fire, because in the aftermath, he did indeed set to work on building his Golden Palace, a complex of opulent buildings that eventually covered somewhere between 100 and 300 acres of prime downtown real estate.


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[Assistant] It was this blatant land grab as much as anything else that led many to believe that Nero had indeed set the fire.


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[Assistant] Conscious that his standing with the people was taking a hit, Nero decided he needed to find someone to take the fall for the fire.


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[Assistant] Someone he could point to and say, it was them, not me. I didn't have anything to do with it.


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[Assistant] But he couldn't just grab someone off the street, because with his popularity sinking like a stone, that would just engender the further charge that he was setting up some innocent to take all the blame.


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[Assistant] What Nero needed was someone, some group that the people disliked even more than him.


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[Assistant] Someone that the people were ready, willing and able to believe had done this horrible thing.


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[Assistant] But through the missionary work of Saint Paul, known later as the Apostle to the Gentiles,


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[Assistant] This new religion began to spread into the Greco-Roman world.


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[Assistant] By the reign of Nero, a tiny community of believers, led according to tradition by Saint Peter, had established a religious beachhead in Rome itself.


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[Assistant] The problem the early Christians faced in Rome, though, was not just that their religion, in comparison to the wider pagan world, struck the average Roman as downright weird.


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[Assistant] But also that at this point most Christian adherents were non-citizen resident aliens of the city who spoke primarily Greek or Hebrew.


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[Assistant] So the Christians in Rome looked different, spoke a different language, usually came from the lower rungs of the social ladder, and belonged to a strange monotheistic cult that seemed to have cannibalistic overtones.


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[Assistant] All in all, they were capital O other in every sense of the word. And as has been proven over and over again by history, whenever terrible things happen to a community,


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[Assistant] So, desperate to shift responsibility for the Great Fire away from himself, Nero looked at these others and decided to lay it all on them.


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[Assistant] He sent out his agents into the city and held them round up as many identified Christians as they could find, dragged them into dark rooms, and tortured them until they admitted to starting the fire.


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[Assistant] These confessions in hand, Nero then decided to expand his persecution beyond some limited group of conspirators and target the Christian community as a whole.


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[Assistant] According to Tacitus, Nero embarked on his persecution with a cruel zeal.


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[Assistant] Christians were thrown to the dogs for public amusement, crucified and left to die, or perhaps most gruesomely, crucified and then burnt alive to serve as torches for Nero's nightly parties.


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[Assistant] But if Nero was hoping that he could regain the public's favor by torturing Christians, he underestimated the humanity of the masses. Sure, the Christians are weird, and nobody really wants them around, but at a certain point, burning them alive for sport? While you and your friends watch and drink yourselves stupid? Really? That seems a bit excessive, you know?


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[Assistant] Sympathy for the Christians grew, while Nero wound up even more unpopular than he had been when he started. So you could say that the plan backfired.


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[Assistant] I should also note that while it is not confirmed that St. Peter himself was caught up specifically in the great fire persecution, tradition does have him being crucified by the Romans at some point in the mid-60s AD.


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[Assistant] St. Peter's Basilica, the beating heart of the Catholic Church, is allegedly built upon the spot where he was buried.


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[Assistant] As unpopular as Nero was becoming with the people of Rome, their dissatisfaction paled in comparison to the feelings of the Christians themselves who now came to revile Nero with an understandable fury.


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[Assistant] It has been suggested, I think plausibly, that the reference in the Book of Revelations to 666, being the number of the beast, is a coded reference to Nero.


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[Assistant] I'm not going to get into the specifics of Jewish numerology, but basically, if you take the Greek spelling of Nero's name and translate it into Hebrew,


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[Assistant] You are left with a name that has the numerological value of 666.


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[Assistant] After Nero's suicide, there was a great deal of speculation, especially in the East, that Nero had not really died, and was poised to make a dramatic comeback at any time.


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[Assistant] Fearful of Roman reprisals for speaking against the Caesars, but still wishing to warn their brethren about the threat that Nero posed, the early Christians used numerology to code in a reference for those with the wisdom to see.


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[Assistant] I think it's fair to say too that one of the primary reasons Nero has such a terrible historical reputation is that around about the 4th century the Church Fathers got a hold of the history books and saw no reason to paint Nero as anything more than a demonic monster.


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[Assistant] While that perhaps went too far, even in his own time, Nero was fast running out of defenders.


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[Assistant] The people no longer trusted him, and the aristocracy, well, they hadn't liked him from the beginning.


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[Assistant] Like most autocrats, Nero had come to the throne promising greater power for the Senate and a lighter imperial hand.


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[Assistant] But before long, as usual, those promises were forgotten, and the Senate returned to its natural state of irrelevancy.


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[Assistant] While this irrelevancy suited many men, who were members primarily for the social status it conferred upon them,


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[Assistant] There was still a core group of senators who either had an interest in good governance for its own sake or had personal political ambitions that they thought membership in the Senate could advance.


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[Assistant] The emperor was slashing taxes while increasing public works projects and diverting funds into the construction of his palace, which now featured a 120 foot statue of himself looking down upon the city.


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[Assistant] All of which left the state teetering on the brink of insolvency. This of course offended the good government types.


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[Assistant] At the same time, if you weren't a part of Nero's inner circle of friends, good luck advancing your career.


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[Assistant] Nero played favorites early and often, and there were dozens of powerful men who didn't get on with the emperor personally which left them out in the cold politically. This, of course, offended the ambitious types.


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[Assistant] These various offenses bubbled under the surface until a formal conspiracy to assassinate Nero coalesced around Gaius Calpurnius Piso.


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[Assistant] Piso was a distinguished statesman and orator who enjoyed a fine reputation at all levels of Roman society and who had been watching the devolution of Nero's reign with disgust.


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[Assistant] If Rome could be ruled again by a man of talent, like Augustus, rather than men like his incompetent and insane descendants, the empire might thrive again, rather than simply stagnate as it seemed to be doing.


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[Assistant] Details of the plot remain sketchy, but it seems as though Piso had secured the support of Tegalinas' Praetorian Prefect Kali, Phineas Rufus,


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[Assistant] And the two men had agreed that upon the assassination of Nero, however that went down


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[Assistant] Rufus would lead Piso to the Praetorian camp where Piso would be declared the new emperor.


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[Assistant] Dozens of men in the senate, in the imperial bureaucracy, and in the army eventually joined in the word of mouth conspiracy, including Seneca the Younger. But before the plan could be initiated, it was betrayed.


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[Assistant] When a young officer was heard complaining that his career had stalled because Nero didn't like him, he was approached about joining the growing plot.


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[Assistant] But rather than join, he decided to use the information he obtained to betray the plot as a means of creating favor with the Emperor.


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[Assistant] Though the young officer lacked details, he put the Imperial Court on notice that a sizable chunk of the aristocracy was actively plotting the regime's downfall.


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[Assistant] In April of 65 AD, a freedman secretary confirmed the existence of the plot and provided the details that Nero's agents were looking for. Piso and everyone else were either ordered to commit suicide or were exiled to the provinces. Seneca committed suicide.


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[Assistant] The Peasonian conspiracy represented a very real threat to Nero. It was not some ham-fisted caper.


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[Assistant] It was a well orchestrated plot that involved some of the most prominent men in Rome. Scared out of his wits that now everyone was out to get him.


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[Assistant] An increasingly paranoid Nero re-initiated indiscriminate treason trials. The bloody calling card of imperial insecurity.


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[Assistant] The trials, of course, only entrenched the aristocratic hatred of Nero, and in a few short years he would find himself fleeing his golden palace, friendless and officially an enemy of the state.


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[Assistant] Next time, we'll hop back and forth between the final stages of Nero's reign and the great revolt that erupts in Judea in 66 AD. And after that, I'll lay the groundwork for the year of the four emperors, the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and the rise of the new Flavian dynasty that took its place once all the dust had settled.


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[Assistant] So before we take off into that next phase of Roman history, as some of you have already noticed, the history of Rome will be going off the air for about four weeks, following the September 13th episode.


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[Assistant] I am getting married on September the 23rd and then immediately moving from Portland, Oregon to Austin, Texas. So long story short, I am going to be a very busy man and will not be able to pay my little podcast the attention it deserves.


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[Assistant] I want to direct all of you back to thehistoryofroam.typad.com where I have posted a brief message on all of this.


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[Assistant] And also address the growing movement to have me keep going with this thing until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which as I explained is most likely not going to happen.


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[Assistant] So, after this, we'll have three more episodes, the last of which will probably be a fun episode dedicated to Roman wedding customs because, hey, right now it's basically wedding stuff all the time for me, so why should the history of Rome be any different?


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[Assistant] Nero had dodged a bullet in 65 AD when the far-reaching Peasonian conspiracy was exposed before it had a chance to act.


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[Assistant] Thus far, Nero had been living his life with a sort of flippant disregard for the aristocracy, obsessed about his standing with the masses, sure, but not really giving a hoot what a bunch of crusty old senators thought about him.


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[Assistant] But after the plot was discovered, Nero was exposed to a reality that he had never really considered before.


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[Assistant] Not only were powerful men unhappy with them, but they were willing to go to extreme lengths to express their unhappiness. And not only were they willing to go to extreme lengths to express their unhappiness, but, except for one lucky break, they had almost gone to them.


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[Assistant] Nero suddenly realized that his reign and his life existed in a far more precarious place than he had previously thought.


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[Assistant] Now this is the point where a more introspective man, aided by wise counsel, might examine the roots of the aristocracy's displeasure and wonder what he, Nero, might be able to do to mute their anger.


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[Assistant] Were there things he did that were unnecessarily inflammatory? And that, if he knocked off the more extreme stuff, maybe he could avoid perpetually dealing with plots against his life?


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[Assistant] But Nero was not an introspective man, and his counsel was not wise.


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[Assistant] So, rather than repent his extravagances and grow up a little, he decided to dig in his heels.


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[Assistant] And if anyone didn't like it, well, there were always treason trials for the incorrigible.


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[Assistant] But as is so often the case, show trials and indiscriminate persecutions create far more enemies than they destroy, and in a few short years, Nero will reap the full blowback for his actions.


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[Assistant] Sixty-five was not just a bad year for Nero because it was very nearly his last, but also because his wife Papia, mother of his daughter and pregnant with his second, died during the summer.


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[Assistant] There are conflicting reports about her death, with some surmising that Papilla died naturally during childbirth, as often occurred in the ancient world.


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[Assistant] But of course, the more famous and salacious version offered by Suetonius and Tacitus is that, over the course of an argument, Nero became enraged and repeatedly kicked her in the stomach until she and the unborn child were dead.


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[Assistant] Whichever way it occurred, Nero became almost insane with grief, or remorse depending on the version of the story you believe. And rather than cremating Papia, he had her stuffed and embalmed so that he could visit her in the Imperial Mausoleum.


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[Assistant] In the years after her death, Nero would delve even deeper into his singing, acting, and chariot racing, uhm, career, culminating in 67 with his participation in the Olympic Games.


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[Assistant] Despite being thrown and nearly dying from a ten-horse chariot and delivering amateurish singing and acting performances, Nero won the victory crowns for every competition he entered. It was still good to be the king.


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[Assistant] While Nero was off pretending to be some great entertainer, in the Far East, the Romans became embroiled in what would prove to be the first of several major revolts in the combustible province of Judea. That the first of these is known simply as the Great Revolt is all you need to know about the impact the conflict will have on the history of the world.


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[Assistant] We won't be able to finish the whole thing today, as in between the beginning and the end of it, the whole year of the four emperors, things happen. But we can at least get it started along its way.


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[Assistant] Trouble had been brewing in Judea from the moment the Romans first showed up in the region.


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[Assistant] Pompey the Great had famously entered the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem over the vehement protests of the High Priest, which pretty much got the Romans and Jews off on the wrong foot.


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[Assistant] A short-lived revolt had broken out in the middle of Augustus' reign, and of course Caligula had nearly sparked a revolution when he insisted on having a statue of himself placed in the temple.


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[Assistant] But Judea remained relatively calm following the death of Caligula, as Claudius had done his best to walk the fine line between Roman administration and Jewish autonomy.


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[Assistant] But when Nero arrived on the scene, he was far less attentive to that line, and Jewish complaints about Roman rule began to grow, culminating finally in what is known as the Great Revolt or the First Roman Jewish War.


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[Assistant] The list of grievances ticked off by the Jews usually included a host of religious issues. But as much as conflicts between the monotheistic Jews and polytheistic Romans antagonized both parties,


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[Assistant] At the heart of the great revolt was something far more basic. Tax policy.


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[Assistant] Despite their persistent attempts to move away from the system, the Romans continued to rely on tax farming in Judea and so dealt with the inherent problems that the system introduced.


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[Assistant] And just to recap, remember that a private collector would bid for the amount of tax room required, and then anything they brought in above that quota was the collector's profit.


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[Assistant] Local upper and middle class urban Jews began to work these tax farming contracts and in the eyes of the rural population and the lower class laborers began to shore the sheep a little too close to the skin in an attempt to maximize their profits.


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[Assistant] I bring this up only to note that with everything that happened at the outbreak of the revolt and beyond, I think it's fair to say that as much as the unrest was a Jewish revolt against foreign occupiers, it was also a civil war within the Jewish community itself between those who were profiting from the existing political structure and those who were not.


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[Assistant] One of the other important things to note about why the revolt broke out in 66 and not some other year.


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[Assistant] Is that according to Josephus, the complete rebuild and expansion of the Temple of Jerusalem, begun by Herod the Great, was finally completed in 63 AD, which immediately left thousands of poor laborers and middle class artisans out of work.


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[Assistant] And basically, anytime you have thousands of young men out of work, concentrated in a city center, you are going to have problems.


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[Assistant] It took a couple of years scraping by while continuing to be gouged by the Roman collaborating tax farmers for these men to reach their boiling point. But when they did, boy, did they ever boil over.


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[Assistant] They finally passed from 99 to 100 degrees Celsius in 66, when the Roman governor decided he was running low on funds, the imperial treasury having been systematically drained by Nero, and decided to simply confiscate all the money the high priest had accumulated in the great temple.


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[Assistant] When word got out that the high priest had allowed the Romans to have the money, which had been collected from the masses above and beyond the taxes they had already paid to Rome, well that just about does it, don't you think?


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[Assistant] In August of 66 AD, an armed insurrection seized control of the Roman stronghold at Masada.


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[Assistant] The men who took Masada were members of a splinter group of the most radical sect of Judaism, the Zealots.


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[Assistant] These radicals, known as the Sicarii, which is Latin for daggers, were uncompromisingly militant and planned to settle for nothing less than the expulsion of the Romans from Judea.


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[Assistant] From their new base in Masada, this group of Sicarii headed north to Jerusalem, where they confronted the high priest who they believed to be a corrupt Roman collaborator.


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[Assistant] In the confrontation that followed, the high priest was killed, and in retaliation, the leader of the Sicarii himself was assassinated. But this was only the beginning.


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[Assistant] As August gave way to September, a small Roman garrison in Jerusalem was besieged, forced to surrender, and then hanged by an angry mob.


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[Assistant] With the Roman military presence wiped out, Jerusalem became an increasingly dangerous place for Greco-Romans of all types. Not only were citizens of Rome targeted, but also any Greek-speaking foreigner who had made the unfortunate decision to settle in the city.


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[Assistant] And once the foreigners had all been purged, the mobs turned on Jews identified as collaborators with the Roman regime.


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[Assistant] When word came north that the garrison in Jerusalem had all been murdered, the legate of Syria took a legion south into Judea to restore order.


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[Assistant] But in November 66, the revolting Jews shocked the Romans by ambushing the invading legion at the pass at Beth Horan and not only wiping the Romans out, but also capturing their legionary eagle in the process.


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[Assistant] The victory would prove to be a mixed blessing for the Zealots as it simultaneously convinced them that Rome could be beaten.


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[Assistant] While at the same time raising Roman ire to the point that they were done taking the insurrection lightly.


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[Assistant] Which basically guaranteed that it was going to be crushed.


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[Assistant] Plans for a Roman response were escalated all the way to the imperial court and in late 66 Nero appointed the general Vespasian to take command of the situation in the east and do what was necessary to reassert Rome's dominance in Judea.


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[Assistant] Titus Flavius Vespasianus was born in 17 AD in central Italy and entered public life for the first time in 36 when he was elected military tribune in Thrace at the age of 19.


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[Assistant] His father was of equestrian rank, and his mother was the sister of a senator. So Vespasian was fast-tracked up the curses honorum. And by forty, he had already served a quaestor ship, an aedile ship, and a praetor ship.


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[Assistant] Providing the critical bridge between an empire ruled by members of the Julie O'Claudian family and an empire ruled by whichever man was strong enough, smart enough, and savvy enough to hold onto power.


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[Assistant] When Claudius ascended to the throne, Vespasian was able to swing a friendly relationship with Narcissus into an appointment as a legate in Germania, and then a leading role in the invasion of Britain a few years later.


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[Assistant] Cast with subduing the southern coast of the island after the initial invasion, Vespasian was so successful that he was awarded the right to wear triumphal regalia in public. The triumphal march itself was now reserved exclusively for the emperor.


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[Assistant] In 51 AD, he capped his public career off with a brief console ship.


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[Assistant] Though he was still young, Vespasian had achieved everything an ambitious man in Rome could have ever hoped for. So when his consulship was up, he retired from public life.


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[Assistant] But in 63, he was coaxed out of retirement by Nero, an appointed governor of the province of Africa.


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[Assistant] Reports conflict about whether his administration was loved or hated by the locals, but at the very least, it is agreed that Vespasian did not take the opportunity to extort a personal fortune for himself, as was usually the case with proconsular appointments, despite the constant regulatory reforms that were introduced every few years to discourage the practice.


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[Assistant] Vespasian instead focused on building a strong social network of clients and allies, and though we don't know if it was necessarily on his mind at the time, these allies will prove to be invaluable when he makes his move for the Imperial Throne just a few years later.


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[Assistant] When he was recalled from Africa, Vespasian joined Nero's imperial entourage as it toured Greece, and it was here that the thus far uniformly successful career of Vespasian hit a snag.


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[Assistant] Apparently, during one of Nero's numerous lyre performances, Vespasian had paid, quote, insufficient attention to the performance, read, he fell asleep, and immediately lost the Emperor's favor, which made Vespasian a political non-entity. It speaks volumes then about the esteem that he was held in, that ultimately,


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[Assistant] When the crisis of Judea broke out and things started to go poorly for the Romans,


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[Assistant] Vespasian's grave crime of dozing off could not outweigh the fact that he was simply the best man for the job.


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[Assistant] In April of 67, Vespasian arrived in Ptolemaeus, a Judean port on the Mediterranean coast, with two legions, and was shortly thereafter joined by a legion led by his eldest son Titus.


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[Assistant] Coupled with the force led by the Roman client King Agrippa II and other auxiliary forces, the army led by Vespasian soon numbered some 60,000.


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[Assistant] The Roman general set about systematically subduing the northern half of the province, accepting the surrender of towns that were so inclined, and annihilating towns that refused.


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[Assistant] By early 68, he held the north and from his base in the port city of Caesarea began to sweep south along the coast.


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[Assistant] Not counting the leaders who wanted no part of the war with Rome to begin with, there were resistance leaders who counseled for opening talks with the Romans immediately.


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[Assistant] Resistance leaders who counseled holding out but only to a certain point.


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[Assistant] And resistance leaders, among the zealots especially, who thought that any talk of surrender was proof that you were in league with the Romans and probably ought to just be killed.


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[Assistant] All these leaders wound up fleeing to Jerusalem throughout the year, where they all hold up together behind the reasonably sturdy walls of the city where they plan to make their stand.


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[Assistant] Vespasian and his son Titus prepared to lay siege to the city from three sides when an unexpected piece of news came that stopped Vespasian and his tracks. Couriers arrived from Rome with a note.


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[Assistant] Wrapped up as he was in the far east of the empire, Vespasian could not have hoped to keep up with the daily politicking in the west, and when, in a matter of a few months, Nero went from undisputed ruler of the greatest empire on earth to quivering child, Vespasian was shocked, but probably not surprised, if that makes sense.


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[Assistant] The great revolt in Judea will continue for another few years, but as the next important event in the struggle, the sack of Jerusalem, does not occur for another 18 whole months, I'm going to have to return to it after the yet to be determined number of episodes I'll need to get through just the single year of 69 AD.


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[Assistant] So before we can keep going with the great revolt, we're gonna have to backtrack a little and figure out what led to the shocking note that Nero had committed suicide.


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[Assistant] As I said, Nero's erratic behavior was getting really, really old.


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[Assistant] He was neglecting his official duties, spending all of his time at chariot races and bankrupting the empire in the process.


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[Assistant] Not only that, he had initiated his own little reign of terror, and the senators and generals who made up the backbone of the imperial aristocracy all lived in fear of winding up on Nero's hit list.


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[Assistant] No less a figure than Korbulo, hero of the war in Armenia, had been ordered to commit suicide in 67 AD.


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[Assistant] It was only a matter of time really before Nero paid the price for his fear inducing extravagances.


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[Assistant] In March of 68, a governor of one of the Gallic provinces, Gaius Julius Vindex, had finally had enough.


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[Assistant] Yet another set of orders had come down, ratcheting up the tax levies to help pay for Nero's total lack of fiscal responsibility.


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[Assistant] Vindex was a Roman all the way, but he couldn't help but feel for the local Gauls who were being taxed to the breaking point.


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[Assistant] He heard complaint after complaint from his subjects that things couldn't go on like this and taking a look around he believed them.


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[Assistant] The Empire hadn't grown as large as it had or as strong as it had by breaking the backs of those that supported it.


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[Assistant] Vindex decided that Nero and the health of the Empire were two ideas that were now mutually exclusive.


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[Assistant] But surprisingly, when Vindex declared in March that he was no longer taking orders from the Emperor, he also declared that he himself was not looking to become the Emperor.


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[Assistant] Instead, he announced that should Servius Sulpicius Galba, the wise and capable governor of Spain, rise to the occasion, that Vindex would back him.


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[Assistant] But Galba was noncommittal, and Vindex was left hanging in Gaul by himself.


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[Assistant] Nero ordered the governor of Upper Germany, Lucius Virginius Rufus, to crush Vindex, and in short order, the stronger and more capable Virginius did just that, routing Vindex after a short and decisive battle. Vindex committed suicide to avoid capture, but his dream of dislodging Nero did not die with him.


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[Assistant] In the glow of victory, Virginia's troops did something unexpected.


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[Assistant] They declared their general, Imperator, and swore to follow him if he decided to turn on Nero. But, Virginia refused to betray the Emperor.


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[Assistant] In the end, despite having now allied himself with Nero, Virginius managed to escape the chaos of the year of the four emperors and slip away unnoticed to live another thirty years in quiet anonymity. Good for him.


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[Assistant] Back in Rome, Nero watched all of this unfold with horror, and even though Galba had not joined in Vindex's revolt, it was clear that the old general was a rallying point for the Emperor's enemies.


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[Assistant] So he declared Galba an enemy of the state and ordered him arrested. But this proved to be a fatal miscalculation.


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[Assistant] Galba had been wavering back and forth on whether or not to be the man so many seemed to want him to be.


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[Assistant] But when he got the notice that Nero had declared him an enemy of the state, well, that really helped make up his mind, didn't it?


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[Assistant] When the arrest warrant for Galba was announced, things quickly got out of hand for Nero.


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[Assistant] One of the Praetorian prefects, Gaius Nimphidius Sabinus, declared his intention to follow Galba as civil war broke out. With a large chunk of the guard following their leader, Nero suddenly realized that he was in a very tight spot.


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[Assistant] Afraid for his life, that happens when your bodyguards start hinting that they too would like to see you dead.


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[Assistant] Nero fled down the road to the port of Ostia, where he hoped to lead a fleet east and regroup.


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[Assistant] But the soldiers at the pier could tell which way the wind was blowing and they refused to obey Nero's orders, taunting him with a line from the Aeneid, Is it so dreadful a thing to die? Really, really spooked now.


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[Assistant] Nero returned to Rome and tried to figure out how in hell he was going to get out of this alive.


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[Assistant] He considered throwing himself at Galba's feet and begging for mercy. Then he considered throwing himself at the people's feet and begging them for mercy, but rejected both of those ideas as likely to lead to his swift execution.


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[Assistant] So he then considered fleeing east and asking the Parthian king for asylum.


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[Assistant] But realized that that too was a ridiculous idea that would never work.


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[Assistant] He tried to sleep on it in the palace, but woke up around midnight and realized that the guard had all deserted their posts.