[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So in October of 97, led by their new prefect, Kasperius Aelianus, the man appointed by Nerva to replace the dismissed Secundus, the Praetorians laid siege to the Imperial Palace and, quickly breaching the meager, non-Praetorian defenses, took the Emperor hostage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nerva quickly gave in to their demand that Domitian's killers finally be brought to justice. And in short order, Parthenius, Secundus, and the other conspirators were hunted down and executed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Emperor also wound up publicly thanking the Praetorians for reminding him of his duty, which was a part of the deal that sent them back to their barracks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The details of what else they wanted is hard to figure, but that was never the point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The point was to remind the Emperor who was Alpha Dog in Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't important what the Praetorians demanded. It was only important that the Emperor comply.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After this unsettling ordeal, Nerva knew that he needed to do something fast to salvage his decimated reputation. Not just for his own sake, but for the whole empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did not have the support of the legions, and the Praetorians had just publicly humiliated him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His only real political allies were in the Senate, and, well, nobody liked them anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nerva knew that conditions like these can lead quickly to civil war if they are not headed off at the pass.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Up until now, the old and childless Nerva had been coy about who he planned to name as his successor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in the aftermath of the Praetorian siege, he changed course and suddenly announced to everyone's delight, allegiance most of all, that he was adopting as his heir the most popular general of the day, Trajan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Immediately, the political waters that had been heating up to a full boil cooled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any hint of open revolt or civil war disappeared almost overnight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only group put out by the choice of Trajan was the Senate as they had hoped to be in the driver's seat on the issue of succession.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I said, every senator had their favorite candidate and they were all getting ready for some good old fashioned horse trading to get their preferred man in place when Nerva up and killed the game before it ever got started.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In time though, they would shed whatever resentment they had over being bypassed, as Trajan proved himself to be an emperor as great as the Divine Augustus himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This of course made him what no previous emperor had ever been. A provincial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, it is a matter of some dispute whether Trajan was technically a provincial or whether he was the member of a displaced Roman family that had moved into the region following Rome's embellishment of the Iberian Peninsula.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The argument boils down to whether you believe Trajan's branch of the extended Ulpian family was pure Italian or whether it had been native Spanish and adopted into the clan at some point in the past. Which yea, I'm not going to get bogged down in, since it doesn't really matter how pure Trajan's blood was when pointing out that he was the first provincial emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because every single citizen of the empire, Italian and provincial alike, considered him provincial. Full stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His family rose to prominence with the Flavians and Trajan's father was elevated to senatorial status following his loyal service to Vespasian and Titus during the Jewish war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The high regard Vespasian had for Trajan's father is amply demonstrated by the former's appointment in 76 AD to the governorship of Syria.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan accompanied his father and got his first taste of public service and military life, serving as a tribune in the Eastern Legions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shortly after his stint in the Syrian army, Young Trajan was granted a quaestorship and his rapid rise up the Kursus honorum was underway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His public career well begun, Trajan then managed to marry a woman who would go down in history as one of the finest matrons in the whole long history of the empire, Pompeia Plotina.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Roman writers typically cast their women either as reserved saintly mothers in the Cornelia Africana mold or as diabolical stepmothers in the Livia Agrippina mold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The difference in depiction, unfortunately, usually came down to how much power the woman in question wielded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the answer was a lot, then you can bet she was going to be portrayed as a scheming, probably murderous old witch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pompeo Plotina, however, managed to avoid this fate and somehow got the old historians to fit the notion of a capable and influential woman having a positive impact on the world around her into their heads.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that alone should prove what an impressive woman she actually was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan became Praetor in or around 85 AD and shortly thereafter found himself leading the 7th Legion stationed in Spain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan was a natural leader, and excelled at the art of war, and it was clear that his star was on the rise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had the kind of easygoing authority that made men not just ready to serve, but eager to serve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had a relaxed, familiar relationship with his troops that, coupled with his policy of strict but fair discipline, reminds you of no one so much as Julius Caesar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The young provincial general was fast becoming the most popular man in the Roman army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Coming to the aid of Domitian so readily during Saturninus' revolt earned him Domitian's gratitude and with his natural talents now joined with Imperial favor, he was off to the races.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 91 AD, he served a term as consul, followed by key appointments as governor in Moesia and Upper Germany.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As governor, he earned rave reviews not just for his military acumen, but for his administrative skills.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a provincial himself, he brought along with him none of the arrogant disdain the boys raised on the Palatine Hill seemed to carry around with them as they arrived in wherever to serve their perfunctory proconsul ships.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As emperor, Trajan brought this worldview with him, fully recognizing that the empire he ruled was not a collection of faceless conquered people led by a divinely ordained elite in Rome, but rather a collection of unique and talented peoples who were all contributing to the greatness of the empire to which they belonged.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a world view that would serve Trajan and the Roman Empire as a whole quite well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through the mess of Demission's assassination and Nerva's ascension, Trajan did his best to keep his troops in line and loyal to the legal emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he was not oblivious to their unhappiness with the situation, nor their whispered calls that perhaps he ought to be sitting on the throne instead of shifty old Nerva.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But before he had a chance to really be persuaded that he ought to, you know, take matters into his own hand, the Praetorian Revolt made the whole question moot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Knowing full well that Trajan was the most popular man in the army, and that he needed the army on his side if he hoped to remain on the throne,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nervous suddenly announced his intention to adopt Trajan and make him his heir.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Elevated to the consulship for 98 AD, and given a full share of the Emperor's tribunition powers,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan suddenly found himself not just heir, but practically co-emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's some speculation that with Trajan in place and well received, that Nerva was planning to abdicate the throne. But we'll never know for sure, because in January 98 AD, Nerva died of an illness at the age of 67, after just 16 months in office.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan was in Germany when Nerva died, and it is traditionally reported that it was young Hadrian, future emperor himself, who delivered the news that Trajan was now the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nervous Reign had been brief and stormy, and in the end we should probably be talking about the four good emperors rather than the five good emperors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But as a temporary stopgap to fend off civil war, he did just fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His elementary system did entrench itself as a cornerstone of the enlightened despotism that defined his successors. And whatever damage his economic flailing did was short-lived as Trajan soon solved the Empire's money problems.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Nervous Personal Legacy was a mixed bag that did some long-term good, but no real long-term damage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But of course, he will always be remembered as one of the five good emperors, because his chosen heir turned out to be Trajan, who was consistently ranked either second or third, depending on what you think of Constantine, on the list of greatest emperors of all time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Nervous stuck the landing on the most critical decision of his reign. And for that alone, we shouldn't kick him around too much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we come back, we'll begin the reign of Trajan, who, as I said, is widely considered one of the best emperors in Roman history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A military man at heart, he would leave Augustus' injunction against further expansion in the dust and push the empire into heretofore unconquered territory, bringing back with him riches that would fund a century of Roman brilliance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a result of his campaigns, practically every standard map of the Roman Empire you see today is labeled down in the corner, Roman Empire at its greatest extent, 117 AD, or something like that. That was Trajan. He was Rome at its greatest extent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, I must tell you that Trajan will have to wait until after the new year. I'm taking two weeks off for the holidays, but we'll be back on January 10 to begin the century given famously called the period when the condition of the human race was at its happiest and most prosperous. Happy Saturnalia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know from last time that Nerva was no egomaniacal despotic monster whose death was eagerly anticipated by a friend and foe alike. But neither was he seen as the best man for a very difficult job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The best man, everyone agreed, was Trajan. And from the minute he had been adopted, the Death Watch began on Nerva.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sooner the old emperor died, the sooner imperial authority would be back in the hands of a man who would know how to use it properly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when Nerva slipped his mortal coil just months after naming Trajan Air, everyone agreed how nice it was that the old man had not dragged things out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rome would again be ruled by a proper emperor, not a political fixture in over his head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The crazy thing about Trajan is that in his almost 20 years in office, he actually managed to exceed the high expectations everyone had for him. And after his death, every subsequent emperor would ascend to the throne blessed by the ceremonial prayer. May he be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no drama surrounding the succession, as he had already been entrusted with most of the important powers that collectively made up official imperial authority.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the few months between his adoption and nervous death, the two men resemble colleagues far more than they resemble present ruler and future heir.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I mentioned last time, there is even some speculation that Nervo was planning to abdicate the throne as soon as Trajan was settled into his new position, but die before he had the chance to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some wanted Trajan to take over completely right away, but the general declined to even return to Rome during the brief time he and Nerva shared power.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps it was just that he was too busy monitoring the situation on the Rhine. But it could also be that he understood all too well that he would utterly overshadow Nerva should he return to the capital. And out of professional courtesy, he stayed away to let Nerva serve out his turn with honor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would believe either explanation, but his well documented political humility and respect for the pride of proud men makes the latter an enticing conclusion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then again, he would be emperor in his own right for more than a year before he finally did make his way to Rome. So it could be that he really was just too busy ensuring the security of the Northern border to come back to the capital for some speeches and religious ceremonies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Careful attention to the real responsibilities of office, as opposed to the lavish trappings of power, was another of Trajan's character traits that endear him to everyone, ancient, medieval and modern alike.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I said, Trajan spent most of his first year in office traveling the Empire's frontier, first along the Rhine, and then the Danube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mostly satisfied with the defensive fortifications the mission had put in place, Trajan eventually arrived in Moesia, the province opposite the kingdom of Dacia, where he paused, studied, and concluded that war north of the Danube was inevitable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a career military man, he was well aware of the theory among his peers that the peace treaty the mission had signed with Decebalus. And now the new emperor was witnessing firsthand the fruits of that poison tree.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The money and material Domitian had sent to Decebalus was supposed to be used to bolster the Dacian border facing away from Rome to help the new client king fulfill his responsibility as a buffer against the uncivilized tribes beyond the frontier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Trajan's scouts reported back to him that Decebalus had actually built a substantial fortification network facing south, towards the Roman provinces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The implication of this fortification network was all too clear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Decebalus was clearly anticipating future hostilities with Rome. The only question was when the next war would break out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While he immediately apprehended that he was, at some point, going to invade Dacia, he knew that he couldn't just go flying off half-cocked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While the situation in Dacia was going to come to a head eventually, it did not look ready to explode just yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Undertaking an invasion on the scale he envisioned was going to take careful planning, but most of all, it was going to take a solidified political position at home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was popular now, the new car smell still lingering in the air. But Trajan understood how quickly novelty can wear off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His arrival in the Capitol was as magnificent as any triumphal procession.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His return to Rome had been anticipated since Nerva had named him heir, and the whole population of the city turned out to cheer their new emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Setting the tone for his reign, Trajan did not ride in on a splendid chariot or atop a great steed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Adopting a deferential tone and vowing to continue nervous policy that left men of senatorial rank free from the fear of imperial persecution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Senate had been unhappy that they had had no say in the adoption of Trajan, and even more unhappy that he was a mere Spanish provincial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the new emperor's demeanor disarmed even his most pessimistic critics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In both word and deed, Trajan signaled that he was returning to the old Augustan model of the emperor's princeps, merely the first among equals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This went a long way towards assuaging the doubts of the aristocracy, who quickly came to view Trajan as not only a man they could work with, but also a man who would work with them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indeed, Trajan wound up as a sort of ironic flip side to Demission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Demission had sought to emulate all of Augustus' ends, while ignoring the First Emperor's means.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan, meanwhile, emulated Augustus's means while, as we will soon see, pursuing his own very different ends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan spent the next two years in Rome solidifying his position, always with one eye on Dacia, but otherwise focused on ensuring political and economic peace across the empire he now commanded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To gain the support of the Senate, he freed more of Demission's old political prisoners and returned more confiscated property to the aristocratic victims of the last Flavians regime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He then set about systematically reducing the size and scope of the imperial court.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Demission had built an executive branch that commanded and controlled the goings on of the whole empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan had no interest in acting as an omniscient central authority and let it be known that in the future he would rely on the sound judgment of his provincial governors to decide for themselves how to handle their territories.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But other than that, requests for instructions were usually returned with a note telling the governor politely to figure it out for himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan's bottom line was that you know the people and specific circumstances of your province best, and I have no intention of micromanaging you from Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, Trajan had no intention of micromanaging from Rome because he planned to be busy with other, more important things. Like, for example, the conquest of Dacia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole time he was busy solidifying his political position, he was simultaneously focused on redeploying the legions to ensure the success of his planned campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In addition to raising two new legions, he reorganized who was stationed where to ensure that when he marched across the Danube, border security would not suffer because of the troops he had pulled away from their previous posts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He also put his men to work expanding and strengthening the road network south of the Danube to ensure the stability of his supply lines.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's an old maxim that amateurs think about strategy while professionals think about logistics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If this is true, then Trajan was a consummate professional.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His wars in Dayshift would become legendary not for the battle plans he drew up, but for the engineering feats he employed to make the campaigns possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not since Caesar had built his bridges across the Rhine, had the ancient world seen military engineering the likes of which Trajan demanded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leading the Emperor's Corps of Engineers was a key lieutenant who'd eventually go down as one of the greatest architects in history, Apollodorus of Damascus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Greek-born native of Syria, at some point, came to the attention of Trajan. And when the latter became emperor, he brought Apple Adores in as his chief architect, builder, and sculptor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the course of his reign, if Trajan needed something built, a bridge, a road, a triumphal arch, a new form for Rome, another triumphal arch, he always turned to Apollodorus, who fulfilled his emperor's requests with what would eventually become world famous vision and skill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The stone bridge he would soon build across the Danube would not only be the first permanent bridge across that great river, but also stand as the longest bridge ever built by humans for over a thousand years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But before he could display his skills, he needed the opportunity to use them. And in 101, Trajan was ready to create the opportunity they both needed to achieve everlasting fame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Satisfied that the Empire was in good working order, and the Legions were in place to prosecute and support his invasion of Dacia, Trajan went to the Senate and asked for their permission to invade.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't need to do this obviously, but he thought it prudent and beneficial to let the Senate give their seal of approval to his plans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gratified by the deference they had been shown thus far, and the respect they were being shown now, the Senate overwhelmingly supported Trajan and gave him their firm blessing to go out a concurrent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Emperor traveled to Moesia to take personal command of the four legions strong invasion force. And in March 101, crossing a temporary but still impressive bridge Apollodorus had built across the Danube, he led his legions into Dacia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fully cognizant of the trap Cornelius Fuscus had blundered into by advancing too quickly,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan took his time moving north, fully scouting and securing each territory before moving in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If he could repel Trajan, his renown would grow, and he would be able to possibly cobble together a kingdom strong enough to stand against the Romans not just temporarily, but forever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan, though, was an altogether different animal from the mediocre generals Domitian had sent previously. And rather than eternal renown, Decebalus would go down in history as just another barbarian king bested by the might of Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first phase of the war though went well for the Dacians, in that it resulted in something of a stalemate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once again, a battle was fought at the fortress guarding the pass at Tappy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A hard fought affair that saw Trajan endure losses far in excess of anything he was expecting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Romans technically won the battle, but only because the Dacians withdrew from the field after a sudden storm kicked up, rather than because they were beaten militarily. Somewhat shocked at the cost of his Pyrrhic victory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan came down out of the mountains before winter began and withdrew to the Roman side of the Danube to regroup. This was going to be harder than he thought.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still doable, but his men needed to rest and recuperate before they could be expected to finish the job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the winter of 101-102 though, the Romans were unexpectedly called back into action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Believing that he had the Romans on the run, Decebalus decided to go on the offensive, and he led his army across the frozen Danube to raid Moesia and further demoralize the battered legions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Decebalus' offensive got off to a rocky start when cracks in the ice swallowed a portion of his army before they had a chance to inflict any damage on the Romans at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now themselves demoralized. The Dacians were easily driven home by the quickly mobilized Roman response.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the spring of 102, Trajan was determined to press all the way to the Dacian capital and remind Decebalus that he was no equal over the Roman Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But after the previous winter's folly and the pretty obvious reality that Trajan meant serious business, Tekeblis decided to take the wind out of Trajan's invasion by offering his surrender.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This year's fighting had only seen a few brief skirmishes, but these were bloody and difficult affairs, and Trajan decided it may be in everyone's best interest for the Romans to accept Decebalus' surrender and renegotiate the terms of the peace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After all, it was not the fact that Dacia remained independent that was the problem. It was the fact that Decebalus had remained hostile after officially accepting an alliance with Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Trajan imposed far harsher terms than Demission had outlined.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ordering Decebalus to cede a portion of his kingdom to Rome, tear down the walls of his various fortresses, and dismantle the defensive war machines that line the mountain passes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dekebalus made a great show of accepting the terms, and it seemed, at least for the moment, that the Dacian question had been answered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was enough of an answer for Trajan anyway, that the emperor returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But after his experience with demission, Decebalus viewed surrendering to the Romans as little more than a way to buy time and possibly scam money and material out of the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Romans had left him alone to siphon funds for a decade before they caught wise to him before, and the Dacian king saw no reason why this latest surrender should be any different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he once again pledged to fortify the borders of Dacia facing away from the Romans if trade indirected appropriate funds his way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps convinced that the chastised king had learned his lesson.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan sent along money and men to help cement the renewed alliance between Rome and Dacia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the emperor was not totally oblivious to the duplicity of Decebalus, and in the years after his first campaign in Dacia, he had Apollodorus build a permanent bridge across the Danube in case the Romans needed to reinvade.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan's Bridge, as it would come to be known, was one of the most impressive engineering marvels of the ancient world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Guarded on both sides by fortified guard houses and perched a top 20 stone column sunk into the riverbed. The bridge would stand as a monument to Roman power for almost 200 years until the Emperor Aurelian demolished it as he attempted to re-solidify the empire during the dark days of the third century.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan no doubt hoped the bridge would help deter some of Decebalus's hostility. In a, you know, we can come at you whenever we want, so why don't you just chill out sort of way. But the Dacian king proved as obstinate as ever, and in 105, Trajan once again was preparing for war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time, the problem was that Decebalus was inciting local tribes to invade Roman territory and promising to support their efforts to undermine the Roman south of the Danube. Fed up completely with the unrepentant king, Trajan readied the legions for a second invasion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time, he was not aiming for anything less than the complete destruction of Decebalus and the annexation of Dacia into the Empire as a conquered province.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the spring of 106, Trajan ordered three columns into Dacia to overwhelm the kingdom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bulk of each of the three columns drove from different directions straight at the Dacian capital.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But small detachments were fanned out across the country to secure key points and generally smother any resistance that might pop up in the eventually occupied country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan led one of the columns to the capital himself, and once everyone arrived, he ordered a full frontal assault on the city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, even though Decebalus was facing down the Romans with a skeleton defense force, the Dacians held off the assault, and the Romans were forced to break off the attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seeing the brute force would not work, Trajan turned to cunning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Noticing that the capital received all of its clean water from a network of aqueduct pipes, he sent his men around to destroy them all and cut the Dacians off from their water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As soon as the water stopped flowing, it was only a matter of time before the Dacians surrendered. And soon enough, they raised the white flag and allowed the Romans to enter the gates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Decebalus and his family fled before his capital surrendered, but were soon tracked by a Roman cavalry unit and pinned down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Knowing what happened to captured enemies of Rome, especially captured leaders, Decebalus committed suicide rather than fall into Roman hands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His head was delivered to Trajan, and the Emperor sent it back to Rome to be put on display.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He then ordered the Dacian capital demolished, and a new capital, a Roman provincial capital, built some 40 kilometers away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dacia was formally annexed by the Romans, and it became the last major province added to the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan would of course add much more territory to the Empire before his death in 117 AD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dacia, though, would remain the empire until Aurelian abandoned the territory in the 270s AD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The conquest of Dacia was not just a military feather in Trajan's cap. It would also prove to be a huge boon to the Roman economy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dacia contained some of the best gold mines in the ancient world. And for years, the Romans would be able to rely on the steady stream of precious metal coming in from Dacia to fund all of their dreams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan received a down payment on future riches, when a Dacian general betrayed the location of Dekebalus's well-stocked treasure house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the emperor returned to Rome, he carted back with him riches not seen since the day Pompey returned from the east some 170 years before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in a stroke the financial problems Nerva had wrestled with were slayed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is now more than enough money, not only to pay for all previously incurred expenses and promises, but also to fund a whole host of new projects.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And with the help of Apple Adores, Trajan would see that the money was put to good use.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The most famous product of the Dacian treasure trove was the new forum complex Apollodorus designed and built to help alleviate the burden of Rome's overcrowded public spaces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Built just north of the main forum, the massive new space, which would become known as Trajan's Forum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...required the leveling of parts of the Quirineal and Capitoline Hills, a huge undertaking in its own right that had been on the Imperial to-do list since the days of Augustus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan's new forum would be formally inaugurated in 112 AD, greatly enhancing the day-to-day economic life of Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The next year, Apollodorus would complete the most famous part of the most famous product of the Dacian treasure trove, and in 113, Trajan's Column, the triumphal sculpture commemorating Trajan's victory, was unveiled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rising over 100 feet off the ground, the Free Standing Column is wrapped 23 times by 600 feet of free sculpture telling the story of Trajan's campaigns.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The column stands today in Rome, and in addition to simply being a marvel to behold, it also serves as a living record of Trajan's activities in Dacia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indeed, much of what we know about these wars, and much of what you have just heard, is directly sourced to the column.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With all the attendant caveats about the danger of relying too much on imperial propaganda, which the column most assuredly was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had he simply stopped there, Dacia conquered, and the infrastructure of the Empire receiving a much needed upgrade.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan will turn his attention to the east, and really flip Augustus's injunction against further expansion on its head. Though in the end, his conquest would prove fleeting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan's campaigns in the east would give the Romans one last glorious adventure to cheer on before they settled in to their nice, long, slow decline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I said at the end of last week's episode, had Trajan died after his first decade in office, he probably would have been viewed by history as a highly successful emperor. When he took power, the empire was still a bit hungover from the last paranoid days of demission, and his predecessor, Nerva, had done nothing to settle anyone's stomach or cure anyone's headache.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the force of Trajan's personality had calmed a growing political crisis that might have engulfed a lesser man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A weaker emperor might have invited ambitious generals to replay the tragic events that followed the collapse of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in 68 AD. But Trajan was no weak emperor, and the collapse of the Flavians was not accompanied by a destructive civil war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This feat by itself was an enormous accomplishment that is sometimes overlooked because it revolves around what didn't happen rather than what did happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's easy to hold a triumph for conquering Dacia, much harder to hold one for preventing a theoretical civil war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But of everything Trajan did over the course of his reign, the simple fact of the stability he provided was at least as important as anything else he did, if not more so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the Julio Claudians collapsed, there was war. When the Antonines collapsed, there was war. When the Severans collapsed, the Empire almost fell apart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when the Flavians collapsed, there was Trajan, and so, there was peace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan is remembered as a martial emperor because he opened his reign with successful campaigns in Dacia and closed his reign with successful campaigns in Mesopotamia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when you crunch the numbers, he spent the bulk of his time engaged in the mundane toils of civilian administration.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indeed, for seven undisturbed years after he returned from Dacia, the great general ruled an empire at peace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what does a vigorous man of action do when there are no wars to fight?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apparently he does everything in his power to enhance the material lives of the citizens that he rules.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan returned from Dacia laden with riches that he aimed to put to good use and apart from his precious triumphal arches, of which there are more than a handful, he directed all of that money directly into the infrastructure of the Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I already mentioned the new forum Apollodorus built in Rome, but a new marketplace, creatively called Trajan's Marketplace, was erected in the capital at the same time, as well as an extensive bath complex, creatively called the Baths of Trajan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They covered up the final remains of Nero's Golden Palace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Elsewhere in Italy, Trajan had a new harbor at Ostia built to put an end once and for all to the silting issues that had plagued the port town for generations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He also built a new road from Beneventum to Brindisium to provide an alternative to the winding and heavily traffic Appian Way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Roads elsewhere in Italy and the provinces were expanded, upgraded, rebuilt, and generally improved, with Apollodorus continuing to litter the European countryside with bridges across previously impassable rivers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no doubt that this investment in the roads did much to ensure the longevity of the empire, as both internal communication and the movement of troops sped up considerably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, the Romans' magnificent road networks would eventually contribute to their undoing, as it allowed barbarian hordes to march from the frontiers to the gates of Rome with alarming quickness. But centuries would pass before that unfortunate consequence emerged, so we ought not dwell on it now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan was consumed not only with building projects, but also general administrative duties.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though he delegated a great deal of responsibility to a grateful Senate, and did his best to empower governors to act on their own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was still an avalanche of urgent, pressing, emergency, read first, triple exclamation point business for the emperor to attend to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To help us get a sense not only of Trajan's personal managerial style, but also the kind of action items that pass through the Emperor's inbox.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are lucky to have at our disposal the letters of Pliny the Younger, a contemporary and friend of Trajan's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had not Pliny been left childless, he might never have been compelled to publish his correspondence so that he would be remembered by someone, anyone out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he was left childless. So we get the benefit of reading through, among other things, real-time conversations between the emperor and a loyal provincial governor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't want to get off on too much of a tangent, but Pliny really is an interesting guy, and since his letters fill in so much of the detail about daily life and early imperial Rome, detail that gets left out of the monument descriptions and sanitorial decrees, he is worth pausing on for a moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Born in 61 AD into the equestrian class, Pliny's father died when he was young, and by an odd little twist of fate, the younger Pliny's education was put in the hands of Virginius Rufus, the same Virginius Rufus who had refused to betray Nero at the beginning of the crisis of 68-69 AD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Young Pliny eventually traveled to Rome and continued his education, and while there, became close with his uncle, the famed naturalist Pliny the Elder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Pliny the Elder died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, his will stipulated that the younger Pliny should inherit all of his estates and be posthumously adopted into his family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With his uncle's money backing him up, Pliny the Younger then embarked on a highly successful trip up the cursus honorum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He served with distinction at every stop and eventually became a well-respected lawyer, senator, and administrator, who counted among his friends the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and of course, the Emperor Trajan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The emperor so trusted Pliny that in 110 AD, when the provincial government of Bithynia Pontus seemed to be falling apart,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan sent his friend Pliny to clean the situation up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the two years that followed, Pliny and Trajan exchanged letters that touched on all aspects of imperial administration.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The correspondence provides a rare window into the daily grind of managing an empire and Trajan's philosophy of government, which seems to be founded on moderation, tradition, and common sense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Among the litany of topics discussed were whether soldiers should be used as prison guards. No, keep using the public slaves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether the emperor could send out some land surveyors? No, I can't afford to, but I'm sure you'll be able to find qualified provincials to help you out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether Pliny could authorize the rebuilding of some public baths? Yes, as long as no new taxes are levied and all other essential services continue uninterrupted. Whether a volunteer fire company could be chartered?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, whatever the public good, associations like that always lead to political discord.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How to handle criminals that had escaped punishment. If their crime was less than 10 years ago, round them up and put them to work in the mines. If greater than 10 years ago, put them to work as janitors in the public baths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And of course, there was the famous question of what to do about the Christians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the course of the last 50 years or so, more and more adherence to this strange new cult had begun popping up all over the Eastern Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Professing a monotheism that forbade them from worshipping the accepted deities of the Roman world, including the deified emperors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Governors across the empire were vexed over the question of just what to do with these people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They seem docile enough, but then again, they also seem to be actively fomenting sedition against imperial authority.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pliny wrote to Trajan for instructions after being handed some lists anonymously that named active Christians in Pliny's province.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Christians were clearly violating Trajan's injunction against the formation of independent political societies, but how severely should they be punished? Trajan's reply was brief, but to the point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Forget about the list, he said. Relying on anonymous informants is a slippery slope that leads to counterproductive tyranny.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If someone gets hauled into court because there is independent proof that they are a Christian, then give them the chance to renounce their religion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If they don't, then punish them as you would any other seditious troublemaker.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if they do, then let them go free, no works for the wear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically, there is no point in actively persecuting the Christians, but if they wind up on your doorstep unrepentant, then punish away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The question of what to do with the growing society of Christians in the empire would continue to befuddle emperors for the next 200 odd years, who alternatively ignored them, embraced them, or persecuted them until Constantine put the issue to rest and by that sign, conquered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan's time playing the part of Enlightened Despot was a productive and beneficial time for the Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And indeed, he was quickly given the title Optimus or the best to add to his litany of honorifics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the emperor had spent his entire life under arms. There was little chance he was going to pass the rest of his reign in peaceful domesticity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Luckily for Trajan, in 113 AD, events conspired to provide the old general with one last opportunity for military glory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After the victories of Korbulo during the reign of Nero, Roman Parthia had come to an understanding over the semi-independent Kingdom of Armenia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Parthia was allowed to pick who ruled the kingdom, but Rome had to ratify the choice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 113, the Parthians dutifully nominated a new king to fill the recently vacated throne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the choice, the Parthian king's own nephew, was deemed unacceptable by Trajan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the Parthians decided to test the limits of Rome's disapproval and refused to remove the offending monarch from the throne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether or not Trajan was waiting for some pretext, any pretext, to launch a campaign in the East, or whether he was really and truly motivated to action by the question of Armenian succession, is still an open question. But the results were the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan headed east, gathered up his legions, and invaded the kingdom of Armenia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 114, Trajan easily dismantled the Armenian defense force and overthrew the offending Armenian king, who would later die in Roman custody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Emperor, though, had no plans to place his own puppet on the throne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead, he declared his intention to formally annex the kingdom and reorganize it as a Roman province.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He spent the rest of the year overseeing the creation of the new province of Armenia and demanding the recognition of Roman hegenomy from northern tribes who inhabited the Black Sea coast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had he stopped there, we could probably state with confidence that Trajan had in fact been animated to action by a little more than the unacceptable situation in Armenia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But as soon as Armenia was annexed, Trajan immediately turned south and marched out on what was clearly now an open-ended war of conquest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 115, Trajan emerged from the mountains of Armenia into the deserts of Mesopotamia and launched himself against the Parthian Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the time, the Parthian kingdom was divided by internal political discord, which was one of the reasons the king had felt it necessary to place his nephew on the throne of Armenia in the first place. And the great empire of the east was able to offer little resistance to Trajan's invading legions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By 116, the Romans already controlled enough territory to organize a new province between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that Trajan dubbed Mesopotamia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He then sent two legions south to secure key cities, with one eventually capturing the ancient city of Babylon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan himself gathered a fleet and set sail with the rest of the legions down the Euphrates River.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After riding that river for a ways, Trajan ordered the fleet hauled overland to the Tigris, where they would continue south on their way to capture Seleucia and the Parthian capital, both of which lay on the Tigris.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Encountering little resistance, Trajan seized the Parthian capital, and, leaving behind a garrison, continued down the Tigris to the Persian Gulf, where he seized the important port city of Charks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His only regret, expressed while standing at the shores of the Persian Gulf, was that his advanced age prevented him from following Alexander the Great all the way to India.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the swiftness of his victories hid the superficiality of Roman control.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No sooner had he reached the gulf than he was forced to turn around and deal with a Parthian insurrection led by another of the Parthian king's nephews.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though the legions were able to defeat the Parthian army, further revolt, including a serious Jewish uprising that was beginning to engulf the whole southeastern quadrant of the empire, led Trajan to scale back his ambition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rather than attempt direct rule of Parthia, he decided to impose a puppet on the throne and make Parthia the greatest Roman client kingdom of them all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In late 116, Trajan was trying to root out the last holdout city in his new Mesopotamian province when he suffered heat stroke under the strong desert sun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Already plagued by supply issues caused by the spreading Jewish revolt, Trajan decided to withdraw from the siege, spread his troops out to quell the revolt, while he himself returned to Italy to recuperate from what was proving to be a physically trying campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I know what you're possibly thinking at this point. Is that it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here we are talking about a man who led Rome for longer than any emperor since Tiberius. A man who's widely considered one of the two or three best emperors ever. And all he gets is the better part of two episodes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unfortunately, the answer is yes. That's all he is going to get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The problem with Trajan is that we run into a paucity of primary source accountings of his reign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plutarch and Tacitus and Suetonius all lived in and around his reign and prudently avoided commenting on the sitting emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the key sources that we used for everything up to this point just sort of cut out around the reign of the Flavians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For Trajan, we're left with snippets from Cassius Dio, inscriptions from monuments, coins, and building projects, like the triumphal column in Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The letters he exchanged with Pliny and scattered summaries from historians like Aurelius Victor who would not be born for centuries.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All in all, it leaves us with a dissatisfying amount of information about an emperor who was so highly regarded and who was so important to the present and future greatness of the empire. But, such is life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We will run into similar difficulties with Hadrian and then hit bottom with Antoninus Pius, whose only existent biography is in the Augustan history, a notoriously unreliable collection of imperial biographies that we should probably just pretend doesn't exist at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But despite the lack of detail, the broad sweeps of Trajan's legacy are well understood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was the first emperor to be drawn from the provinces rather than the Italian peninsula.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A major landmark that allowed men of merit from across the empire to believe that every door in the empire was open to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In time, other Spaniards and Syrians and Thracians, and most famously, a series of Illyrians, would come to dawn the purple and rule the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] had Trajan not been so successful in practically everything he set out to do it is possible that the Roman aristocracy would have associated his failures with his provincial status and banished forever any other provincial from reigning


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shutting off a pipeline of talent that would in time save rather than destroy the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan was also the last of the great conquering Romans. The outward expansion of the empire had been a defining feature of the Roman character for hundreds of years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in the last century, it was a driving impulse that had been left to wither on the vine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan reintroduced the glory and riches and satisfaction that accompany foreign conquest and that for so long had been denied the Roman ego.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The province of Dacia was an enormously valuable acquisition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And though most everything he took in the East would be abandoned by his prudent successor, the dispatches that came back to Rome detailing the capture of the Parthian capital and the seizure of a port on the far-off Persian Gulf were reminiscent of Caesar's dispatches from Gaul and the people and Senate both reveled in the glory of it all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the coming centuries, great generals would come and go, and great battles would be won and lost.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan was Rome at its greatest extent, and for that, he would remain the envy of every future Roman general.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He came to power inheriting your Lord and God demissions centralized autocracy and left behind a substantially devolved principate that relied on the sound judgment of provincial governors and the input of the Senate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In all his letters with Pliny, he stressed over and over again that the guiding principle of all that they did should be the welfare of the people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ruling was not about living a lavish life or indulging egotistical power trips. It was about guaranteeing that your subjects not only survive in a cold hard world, but thrive in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These principles would guide the policies of his successors, and Trajan's model of enlightened despotism would see the empire reach its full potential in the decades to come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this though, his legacy was all too fleeting, and the inevitable slip from positive monarchy to negative tyranny came just 60 years later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But for the next little while, all would be well with the world, thanks to the wise precedent Trajan set.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His final legacy though, was his choice of successor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just as Nerva had balanced all of his missteps by bringing Trajan into the Imperial Fold,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trajan himself would put the cherry on the top of an already brilliant career by naming his former ward Hadrian as heir.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hadrian is on the short list of all time greatest emperors himself, and the seamless transition from the one to the other turned the whole first third of the second century into one bright shiny package.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the trick to this final legacy is that Trajan may not have been the one behind it at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll get into the early years of the next Emperor's Biography next week, but for now, let it suffice to say that Trajan and his wife Pompeia had been the boy's guardian after Hadrian's father died, and Pompeia was enormously fond of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is speculation bordering on confirmed fact that when Trajan died in Cilicia in 117, he had not yet named an heir, and that he may have intended power to transfer to one of the generals that he left in charge of the armies in the east when he made his way back to Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pompeya, though, had long lobbied for Hadrian, and when Trajan died without leaving explicit instructions, there is suspicion that she manufactured fake orders stipulating the dead emperor's posthumous adoption of her favorite, Hadrian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While not quite as awesome as Edith Wilson's secret presidency, Pompey's clandestine plot to put Hadrian on the throne was a plot that bore fruit for Rome for the next 20 years and cemented her own legacy as a woman of farsighted wisdom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll begin to unpack the fruits of Pompeius' labors and introduce an emperor who embodied the virtues of a renaissance man, equally skilled in war and poetry and philosophy and rhetoric and architecture, and whose mind raced daily with ways to improve and refine everything that surrounded him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It should come as no surprise then that the legacy of such a learned and impressive leader is generally... Hadrian?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We date the reign of Septimius Severus from the moment he was hailed Emperor by the Pannonian Legions in April 192. But it wasn't until February 197 that he could really relax comfortably on his throne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During the intervening five years, he had been forced to sit perched on the edge of his seat as he parried the thrusts of first Didius Julianus, then Paschinius Niger, and finally, Claudius Albinus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But following the defeat of Albinus at Lugdunum, the Empire ran out of men willing to get in Severus's way. Rome was now his, and his alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But where other men might have been able to enjoy what they had won, Severus soon discovered that it was the chase, far more than the object itself, that had excited his passions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though he would rule the Empire for another 14 more or less successful years, the morning of the final battle with Albinus was probably the last time Septimius Severus found himself really excited to greet the new day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Upon his return to Rome following the brief but decisive campaign against Albinus in Gaul, the now undisputed emperor set about transforming the imperial order.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I've said previously, Severus and his descendants had no use for the romantic fictions of the Augustan Principate, and what remained of the Republican charade survived their reign only out of inertia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Senate still gathered, and consoles were still named.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the leading men of Rome were reminded of their powerlessness with a bluntness not felt since the days of Domitian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Naturally, this led most of them to dislike Severus a great deal, but the Emperor could not have cared less. Rich and vain old men were not his concern.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was in office by virtue of the fact that the armies were with him. He knew that and they knew that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when he needed to use flattery to achieve his ends it was the army that he flattered. And when he needed to use money to achieve his ends it was the army that he paid. Everyone else was irrelevant.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But even with his single-minded focus on keeping the army happy, the common citizens of the Empire generally supported Severus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The reign of Commodus with all its mad corruption was still fresh in everyone's mind. And so, simply by virtue of the fact that he ran a pretty sane and relatively honest ship, Severus earned the people's respect, even if in the end, he never quite earned the people's love.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of all the long-term stamps Severus put on the Empire, nearly all relate in some way to the place of the legions in the political order.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was his reign that provided the crucial bridge between the enlightened despotism of the previous century and the raw military dictatorships of the next century.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As we've already seen, he reorganized the Praetorians into a force of some 50,000 crack troops, and in so doing, altered their mandate from being the Emperor's personal bodyguard to being the Emperor's personal army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Refusing to forget about the regular soldiers who would not be chosen to serve in the expanded Praetorians, Severus then nearly doubled the annual pay of all the men left out on the frontiers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this, Severus found himself once again paralleling to Mission, who, you'll recall, used a similar wage increase to guarantee that an officer's call to revolt would always fall on deaf ears.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The long-term effects of the raise, though, would be to further cleave the interests of civilian and soldier as it became more and more of a burden for the former to pay what the latter expected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And not only were the troops being paid more, but by the end of Severus's reign, there were more of them to pay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before his death, Severus had ballooned the active service up to 33 full legions, with increases in local auxiliaries to match.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rome had not seen this many active duty soldiers since the days of Octavian and Antony, and they all swore their allegiance to Severus and Severus alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, not only Severus, also his sons Caracalla and Geta.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also, the man Severus put in charge of his newly reformed praetorian guard, Gaius Fulvius Platianus. For a while, they swore allegiance to him too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A development that everyone in the Severan Inner Circle came to view with alarm. Everyone, except the Emperor, that is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plotianus was Severus's maternal cousin, and the two men had been close friends for years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Albinus was vanquished, Severus finally had a free hand to conduct the affairs of state his way, and one of his first unfettered acts was to appoint Plotianus Praetorian Prefect in 197.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This promotion effectively elevated Poitianus to the position of Severus's second in command.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Karakalla and Geta, while officially Severus's heirs, were still only 9 and 8 respectively, and in no way ready for official responsibility. So it fell to Plotianus to help Severus run the show, and from the get-go, his influence was felt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In contrast to the period following the defeat of Niger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're so various took great pains to avoid executing the Syrian governor supporters in the Senate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was convinced to follow up his final victory over albinus, or the spate of political executions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With Potionus' help, Severus drew up a list of friends, non-entities, and enemies, with the aim of promoting the first, ignoring the second, and liquidating the last.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though they did spare many, Severus and Plotianus executed some 20 to 30 members of the Senate who had openly supported the governor of Britannia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Throne onto this list for good measure was also Pertinax's father-in-law, Sulpicianus, the only man left alive in the empire who had ever publicly aimed at becoming emperor. We can't have that lying around now, can we?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The purge whetted Plotianus' appetite as he personally took control of the estates of all the dead senators.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Suddenly, he had power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, and naturally he wanted more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the next few years, the governing relationship between Severus and Plotianus grew to reflect the former's disdain for the tedium of imperial governance and the latter's insatiable lust for more and more power.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus began to defer to his prefect on practically any matter of domestic importance, and Patianus was only too happy to take responsibility for the everyday maintenance of the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From his perch atop the newly enlarged Praetorian legions, Plotianus became the de facto dictator of Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you wanted something done, you had to go through Plotianus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you ran afoul of the prefect, there was no appeal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus, in his own words, loved and trusted the man more than any other in the Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Poitianus exploited this trust to the hilt, settling personal scores, confiscating whatever property he took a fancy to, and generally using the imperial bureaucracy as a means of personal enrichment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With Podionus captaining the ship of state for him, Severus was free to indulge in pastimes that interested him far more than running the government. Namely, war and conquest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So far, apart from his brief campaign in Parthia, All Severus's great victories as emperor had come against his fellow Romans, a legacy no general was eager to leave behind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Severus decided he needed to do something to bolster his historical credibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having already achieved a string of easy victories in the East following his triumph over Niger, the Emperor decided that Parthia would once again be a great place to pad his resume.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His official causes belly for war came in 198 after the Parthians moved some forces to their western frontier as a delayed response to his previous invasion of their territory in 195.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Citing the threat to Roman interest, the emperor headed to Syria to oversee an offensive into Mesopotamia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As was Severus's style, actual leadership of the initial campaign was handed over to a highly capable subordinate. In this case, a general named Letus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in case you're wondering, the answer is no. I don't know if this Letus was related to the conniving Praetorian prefect so recently executed by Severus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This Letus had served Severus throughout the civil wars and is credited in some histories with being the man who turned the tide at the battle of Lugdunum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After Severus had been swept up in the nearly disastrous retreat of his left wing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He'd been posted in the East following the battle and in the intervening year had been skirmishing with the Parthians in and around the Euphrates River.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Severus arrived, Letus was more than ready to be let off his leash, and a fleet was ordered built to ferry the Syrian legions down the Euphrates River.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Following the footsteps of Trajan and Avidius Cassius, the Romans sailed down the Euphrates, sacking Babylon, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon along the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As usual, the Parthians were no match for the sudden Roman invasion, and as before, the victories came easy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The next year, Elidus and Severus led the legions across the river into the heart of Mesopotamia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They met little resistance until they came to the strategically important city of Hatra.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unlike the more westernly Parthian cities, which were often quickly abandoned by the Parthian king, and then reoccupied later when the coast was clear, Hatra was actually, militarily speaking, a key Parthian asset.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Centrally located, it served as a launching pad to points all throughout old Persia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Losing Tessifon, even if it was technically the capital, was one thing. Losing Hatcher was quite another.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as a result, the Romans meant obstinate resistance to their siege.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The legions were forced to retire before the arrival of Winter, having little to show for their efforts but dead bodies and destroyed equipment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the winter, and there was a shakeup in the high command, as Severus grew increasingly paranoid of Atletus, who was brilliant, charismatic, and beloved by the troops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was rumored that his legions would not march unless Letus gave the signal. A rumor that, whatever its validity, really rubbed Severus the wrong way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when you rub a Roman emperor the wrong way, the consequences are often dire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Along with another officer thrown in for some minor slight, Letus was accused of some imagined crime or another, seized by Imperial agents and executed by Severus in late 199.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With his able commander gone, the next year, Severus personally led the legions back across Mesopotamia to Hatra, planning to sack the city or die trying. In the end, he didn't either. Hatra once again held out against the Roman attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After most of his siege engines were destroyed and most of his men lay dead or wounded, Severus withdrew back across the Euphrates with the winner of 200 approaching.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Weary of banging his head against the walls of Hatra, Severus did what any good leader would do. He declared victory and left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus celebrated this, uhm, victory by erecting the now famous Arch of Septimius Severus in 202. Famous in part because it's still standing in Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Depicting his triumphs in the East and generally glorifying the Severan family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Arch is indeed impressive and architecturally it stands up well to the Arch of Titus and the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, but the underlying campaign itself doesn't hold a candle to the victories of his predecessors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Arch of Severus is a glorious mountain erected atop an inglorious molehill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While Severus was off playing the part of conqueror, Plotianus was back in Rome playing the part of emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He considered himself well above the law, confiscating whatever he liked, exiling or killing whatever he didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pretty soon, even Severus' allies began to grow concerned about the unchecked hubris of good Plotianus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But throughout this period, any attempt to convince the emperor that his prefect was turning into something of a monster was met with a dismissive hand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The basic problem was that Severus trusted Plotianus more than any of the men who denounced him. So he always believed the prefect side of any story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But despite his best efforts to remain in denial, it seems that eventually, the steady drip of complaints began to have their effect on the mind of the emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when he returned from the east he began to notice things that reinforced his nascent suspicions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When coins were minted, Plotianus now included himself on the list of acceptable likenesses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the Praetorians took their oath of fidelity, a promise of personal loyalty to Plotianus had been inserted into the ceremony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When statues of the imperial family were commissioned, Plotianus made sure that statues of himself were carved as well, and sometimes he went so far as to order that his be made slightly larger than those of Severus and his sons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of these little pieces began to fit together in Severus's head, and a picture started to emerge that looked an awful lot like the man his other advisors had been warning him about for years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cassius Dio finally tells a brief story of a highly embarrassing moment for the Emperor, when Severus ordered a bailiff to call a particular case to trial. But the bailiff, practical man that he was, that is, he took seriously his own self-preservation,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...replied that he wasn't going to bring any case to trial without Platianus's permission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The parallel to Letus' men maybe refusing to march without their generals okay was obvious. And while Severus no doubt played the incident off well, the question now hung out there in the open. Who was really in charge around here?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But still, the emperor persisted in his denial through 202, when he married Caracalla to Platianus' daughter Platina.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And through 203, when he made plotty on his console.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in late 204, the wheels finally came off the bus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because the thing is, while Severus loved and trusted Plotianus, the rest of the Severan family hated his guts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus's wife Julia Domna and Plotianus despised each other and each took every private opportunity offered to disparage the other to the Emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Karakalla, meanwhile, suspected Plotianus of plotting to undermine his rightful inheritance, and took his rage out on Platina, who he hated by extension.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only 14 at the time of the marriage, Caracallo was already showing his sociopathic tendencies and made it quite clear that when his father died and he became sole emperor, that he was going to kill his new wife and father-in-law as his first order of business.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now it seems possible, even probable, that Plotianus was indeed looking to ace Caracalla out of his inheritance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if Caracalla was looking to guarantee that Plotianus was looking to ace him out of his inheritance, well, violent death threats are just about the way to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think it's safe to say that whatever plot Yannis' intentions had been, he was now definitely plotting to keep Karakawa off the throne. After all, his life depended on it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rumors then reached Caracalla of Claudianus' intensified scheming, and the young prince took it as confirmation that he had been right all along, and decided that he needed to act sooner rather than later to deal with the troublesome prefect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What he settled on was a frame-up job that was so comically transparent, it is shocking that Severus even believed it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doubly shocking, in that whatever doubts had been growing quietly in his mind,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus had for years proven himself to be constitutionally incapable of distrusting Plotianus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why did Severus decide that now was finally the time to give up on his once beloved colleague?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The answer seems to lie in a conversation between the emperor and his brother, Publius Septimius Geta, while Publius lay on his deathbed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Free of any fear of reprisal, Severus's brother laid out in stark detail the crimes and ambitions of Plotianus. And this time, with the denunciation coming from an even more trusted source than Plotianus, Severus finally changed his mind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when Karakalla contrived to flame Patianus for attempted assassination, Severus was ready this time to believe the charges, even if they were complete fabrication.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In January 205, Caracalla went to a few centurions in the Praetorian camp and convinced them to interrupt an imperial banquet with forged proof that Plotianus had ordered them and eight of their associates to assassinate Severus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Severus, already stewing over his brother's words, was in a mood to believe the worst of his former favorite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plotianus was called to the palace and confronted by the emperor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the midst of the Prefect's denials, Karakawa, perhaps fearing the denials would be all too believable, since they were, after all, true, rushed forward and struck Plotianus in the face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He then drew his sword but was prevented from killing the prefect by Severus, who ordered that the deed be done instead by a nameless subordinate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plotty honest then, like so many hubris-ridden praetorian prefects before him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...was unceremoniously executed and his body thrown into the streets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a nod to their once happy partnership, Severus eventually ordered the body retrieved and buried.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When he finally became sole emperor in late 211, Karakalla made good on the promise he had made and ordered all of them, especially his hated ex-wife, strangled to death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Following the death of Plotianus, the succession issue became in one sense more clear, and in another, more cloudy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The likelihood that anyone would be able to stand between the sons of Severus and their birthright was now almost non-existent. That much was the clear part.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What clouded the picture was the bit about the sons of Severus. Plural.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the mind of their father, the joint rule of his sons would be the best possible state of affairs. So that's how he wrote up his will.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it seems hard to understand how he came to this conclusion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apparently in his mind, allowing the boys to become co-Augusti would eliminate the odds of a bloody dynastic struggle flaring up. But in this, he had it completely backwards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone knew that Karakalla and Geta hated each other. There was simply no way they would be able to share power peacefully.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If Karakal are rooted for one charioteer, Geta, rooted for another.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only way to elicit an identical answer to a question would be to ask them, is your brother worthless? Because both would answer a scornful yes. Far from avoiding a diagnostic struggle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus' plan of joint inheritance guaranteed it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whatever fraternal bond the boys had shared was finally shattered by the execution of Plotianus, the hatred of whom had been about the last thing they shared in common.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The death of the prefect is also blamed for a, how do you say, loosening of morals on the part of the boys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When he was still wielding his very real and very threatening powers, Pladeon has acted as a psychological check on the sons of Severus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Keeping them directly fearful on the one hand of the prefect, but also indirectly fearful of losing favor with their father, who could always turn to Plotianus if he caught wise to the fact that his boys had far more in common with Commodus than they did with Augustus. But with Plotianus gone, it was time for the teenagers to let it all hang out. Who else was their father going to turn to?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Distaining any real responsibilities, both boys became obsessed with chariot racing, drinking, gambling, and everything else that happens in the wee hours of the morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The ironic thing is that when you got right down to it, they were pretty much the same terrible person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even if hinting at this fact was liable to get you killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus watched all this with alarm and began to despair for his heirs. He also began to despair for himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plotianus, however personally unscrupulous he may have been,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had always shielded Severus from the mundane details of Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But now that the prefect was dead, Severus found himself snowed under by a staggering amount of paperwork.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was with great relief that he greeted news from Britannia in 208 to the effect that the natives there were getting restless. Here was a chance to kill two birds with one stone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The distraction of a good old legionary campaign would do wonders for his own mental health.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And hopefully, the rigors of military life might whip his wayward sons into shape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he dug Caracalla and Guetta out of wherever they were sleeping it off, and happily informed them that they were all going on a father-son camping trip to Britain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The boys, now 19 and 20, were appalled with the idea of fighting a war in the frozen north.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Next week, we'll follow the Severans on their family bonding trip to Britain, where, among other things, they will attempt to exterminate an entire race of people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their genocidal aims will be halted only by the death of Septimius Severus in early 211.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who's passing, further, gave control of the empire to Karakalla and Geta.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who will go down in history as a pair of comeduses. To match the one comedus, Severus had once upon a time criticized Marcus for not smothering with a pillow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We left off with the Imperial family packing for their camping trip to Britain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You'll recall that in 208 Septimius Severus had seized on a relatively minor military uprising as an excuse to get himself and his sons out of Rome for a bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Getting away from the capital would, for Severus, mean getting away from the banality and pettiness of government. While for his sons, it would mean getting away from the temptations that they had been all too recklessly indulging in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were the coheirs to the throne, and yet, so far, at 19 and 20, they knew far more about chariot racing and what the best kind of hangover cures were than they did about, say, running a multi-ethnic empire with mortal enemies surrounding it on all sides.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like many a stern father who had had to struggle for every dollar and honor that he had ever won, Severus was afraid that his sons were turning out soft and unserious, and he knew just how to cure that. A good old-fashioned military campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They arrived in country in 209 after having raised a new legion to help them wage what Severus hoped would be a strenuous but not necessarily difficult war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After all, the Emperor was at this point looking to add one more great victory to his resume before dying. So in picking to go out fighting in Britannia, it is probable that Severus thought the deck would be pretty much stacked in the Roman favor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to further that point, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that this would be Severus's last campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was suffering from the effects of old age and in particular an onset of gout that required him to be transported in a litter everywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His doctors cannot have been pleased that their patient was planning to go marching around Britain. But Severus, ready after a long and trying life for the sweet release of death, was no doubt looking to die with his boots on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The particular natives in question who had gotten restless were a confederation of Caledonians living beyond Hadrian's Wall up in modern day Scotland.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They'd been stirring up trouble for some time, but ever since Albinus had dragged the British legions away from their post, they had grown bolder still.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, Severus had not neglected to set things back in place following his victory at Lugdunum. But still, Hadrian's wall was crumbling and now manned mostly by new recruits.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus and his sons arrived on the scene with backup, including a newly raised legion, a bunch of Gallic auxiliaries, and an offshore fleet to keep the Caledonians cut off from outside trade. And in mid-209, the Romans advanced north of Hadrian's Wall for the first time in a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They marched around doing their level best to draw the Caledonian army into battle, but there was just one problem with this strategy. The Caledonians refused to fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it's not that they refuse to fight, it's just that they refuse to fight in a big ol' battle that would look spiffy on another severin' triumphal arch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead, the Caledonian forces scattered to the hills and embarked on a classic guerrilla campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They sprang up out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Picking off isolated Roman companies, harassing supply lines, interfering with communications, and generally making life miserable for the legions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus was looking for one last shot at glory, and what he got instead was a two year war of attrition against an enemy he could never stop from poking him in the head whenever his back was turned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And rage at his own frustrated impotence, the emperor responded to all of this by ordering genocide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The legions marked back and forth across the country, destroying whatever villages they came across, and killing every man, woman, and child they could find.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Severus was mostly hoping his campaign would provoke the regular Caledonian forces enough that they would come out of hiding and battle him in the open.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Emperor's real wish was finally granted, and he died after a brief illness in February 211 AD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Septimius Severus was 65 years old and we say that he ruled the empire for just about 18 years, even though his claim to the throne had been hotly disputed there at the beginning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The final campaign in Caledonia had been a disaster.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Romans had lost something on the order of 50,000 men, and the Caledonians, while somewhat chastened, had by no means been brought to heel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only lasting benefit of the war to the Empire was that along the way Hadrian's Wall had been reconstructed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A project that led later Romans to call the wall the Severan wall rather than Hadrian's wall as we know it today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But really, Severus could have just ordered that done without having to waste all the blood and treasure his war in the Highlands had just cost the Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But speaking of that, I guess there was one other benefit to the failed campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At this point the Romans stopped trying to conquer Scotland, which was probably a prudent move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As for Severus's other suspected motive for starting the war in the first place, so that his sons could have some sense beaten into them, well, that didn't work at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their friends back home were relieved to find Karakalla and Geta emerged from the war. No worse for the wear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were just as licentious, lazy and shallow as they had been before they left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Despite going out on such a low note, the reign of Septimius Severus has generally been viewed favorably by history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no getting around the fact that his militarization of the government would come back to haunt the empire. Especially the effect his wage increases and lavish donatives had on the discipline of the troops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he also took over an empire that had been run into the ground fiscally, politically, and morally by communists, and he did a pretty good job stabilizing it.