Hey-hey-hey guys, I did a philosophy! In book form!
You should totally check it out by clicking the link!
Blue: Hey Red, can I talk about Rome again?
Red: What?
B: It's been, like, 6 months, and I've been so responsible!
R: You're the history guy, do whatever you want, man.
B: (Breathes in)
R: Ugh, imperium junkies...
(Blue from now on) Ahh, the Roman Empire.
Established by the eternally baby-faced Augustus-
-Rome dominated the Mediterranean and beyond for several centuries;
Laying much of the groundwork for European history to follow.
As my past few videos on the subject have demonstrated, Rome is a dense topic-
-And I'm gonna do my best here to be...
(Clattering as videos fall)
Concise.
So if you're unsatisfied with my two-parter on this most glorious empire,
I'll direct you to some further reading.
Go nuts.
Now I could follow the crazy carousel and talk about palace intrigue-
-shenanigans all day long,
but instead, I'd like to take a broad look at how the empire functioned-
-and how the slow burn of Roman development finally reached its peak.
So let's do some history!
To begin we have... uhh, okay,
so we gotta get through a little imperial dynastery first.
The curious case of Augustus disappearing heirs resulted in Tiberius-
-being appointed to the throne;
Whereupon he holed up in his palace on the scenic island of Capri-
-to enjoy an unending carnival of orgies.
His successor, emperor Caligula, who's nickname adorably means "little boots"-
-wasn't so much of a generic jerk, as he was completely detached from reality.
Appointing his horse as senator to insult the rest of the senate,
having conversations with the moon,
and sending a Roman legion to collect seashells off the coast of France.
Needless, perhaps, to say that pretty much nobody liked him, including his personal-
-escort, the praetorian guards, who actually assassinated him in 41AD,
this will become a shockingly common occurrence in later centuries.
But speaking of the Roman army!
The rest of the military remained pretty much as the Caesars had left it;
The Roman Soldier by this point had reached peak form,
with lorica armor, the galea helmet, the gladius blade,
and a gigantic scutum shield.
Soldiers were organized into centuries of 100, cohorts of 600-
-and the legion of 5,000.
The cool thing about imperial legions here is that they were specifically numbered-
-so you can actually track a particular legion over centuries of imperial history.
Also notable is how the Roman army reported not to the Senate, as before,
but directly to the emperor.
This, for now, significantly decreased the threat of mutiny or revolt;
Which you may remember, was a
Nowadays though the empire was strong, and Roman territory was secured by a constant-
-projection of power beyond Rome's borders.
Speaking of territory, let's talk the Mediterranean;
Which the Romans called "Mare Nostrum".
The low cost, and high speed of transportation kept-
-the empire running smoothly,
in port cities like Ostia, markets had stalls dedicated specifically-
-to goods from far-off provinces because the empire was so interconnected.
From there Rome's unprecedented road network helped move-
-items and people all over.
The roads were self-draining, resistant to freezing, and required no maintenance-
-because that's how Romans do.
This map is honestly one of the single most beautiful sights-
-that I've ever laid eyes on,
and my girlfriend Cyan is really pretty!
(Cough)
And it doesn't stop there, because lest we forget,
the Romans were
Concrete!
Domes!
Arches!
Water highways that ferry delicious H2O from the mountains down into cities!
Sewer systems!
Heated floors!
The Romans literally had no chill when it came to building stuff.
They also had no chill when it came to slavery, but that's a really big yikes-
-so I will leave you with this cut-in, and head back to the wacky emperors.
Next up we have Claudius and Nero:
Claudius was fine, but weak,
And Nero has a nasty rep for a lot of reasons.
We don't know what he was doing while Rome was on fire-
-and we're not sure if he caused it-
-but we do know that he took the fire as an excuse to build a shiny new house.
It didn't help his image that he was murder happy with his family-
-and with Roman Christians,
so between his imperial successors in the Flavian dynasty-
-and the eventual Christian emperors,
it is not hard to see why pretty much everybody had an axe to grind with him.
But enough of that, let's get a move on.
Following the Julio-Claudian cluster-fiasco,
we get the year of the four emperors, where:
(Quickly now)
Nero committed suicide,
Galba was assassinated,
Otho suicided after losing to-
Vitellius, who was murdered by-
Vespasian,
And Vespasian broke the chain of insta-murders, and-
-successfully reigned for nine years, founding the Flavian dynasty in the process.
By all accounts Vespasian was a skilled and just ruler-
-with one big exception we'll get to in a little bit.
He's best known for his contributions to the ever-growing catalogue-
-of Roman monuments, that developed from the time of Augustus-
-throughout the life of the empire.
The Colosseum!
In it's day it was known as the "Flavian Amphitheater",
after the dynasty that built it.
The arena today is missing part of its exterior shell because-
-renaissance architects treated it like a perfectly acceptable-
-QUARRY.
But- you can still see just how massive it would have been.
Beyond sheer scale, it played host to the classic gladiatorial matches,
as well as multiple exotic animals from Africa and the east.
If the danger-zoo isn't extreme enough, the Roman theater doubled as a-
Naumachia, which is like a gladiator fight, but with entire navies!
They'd fill those suckers with water, chuck some triremes in there-
-and watch the sparks fly.
For the record, I expect Lin Manuel Miranda's-
-next musical to include nothing short of a total recreation of-
-The Battle of the Chesapeake.
Get on it Lin, if anyone can do it, it's you, buddy!
On the subject of Colosseum fights, we should mention the classic Roman pastime-
-of throwing Christians at lions.
This was an extreme display of persecution that constituted standard practice-
-for the first two centuries of the empire.
We'll see how Roman Christianity develops in the next video,
but for now, suffice to say that it was not fun being an early Christian;
As refusing to respect the Roman gods was considered an insult-
-against the
And dealt with accordingly.
Back to the big picture, let's jump north-west to Britain;
Where the empire had a foothold, but wasn't able to make much progress-
-since Caesar's expeditions a century earlier.
It was late during Vespasian's reign that Agricola, the governor and general-
-of Roman Britain, got going and glomped much of the island.
He then helped establish the city of Londinium on the banks-
-of the Tamasus river.
Early London was by no means a big city in the Roman world, but it does show us-
-how fast Rome could just plop down roots, and establish a city in new land-
-out of what seems like thin air.
And while the city of Rome itself looks like an urban planner's nightmare-
-all of their later additions demonstrate urban planning so good it's-
-honestly insulting to the rest of us.
Now you may be wondering why this one tiny corner of the empire is surprisingly-
-well documented - and there's one key reason for that;
Agricola's son-in-law was the historian Tacitus,
his account of Britain gives us a pretty clear insight into how-
-the Romans viewed conquered peoples.
Rome wouldn't treat them with any great warmth, but they had an interest in-
-keeping things running smoothly.
Some territories were turned into client kingdoms to preserve their local order-
-while maintaining Roman authority overall.
Usually the big cultural imports came as cities, language, dress-
-and perhaps most crucially: Religion
The Romans, having more-or-less copy-pasted their entire pantheon,
had no trouble seeing opportunities for crossover between cultures-
-and doing DBZ fusions on similar deities.
Famously, the Roman goddess Minerva was syncretised with the Celtic goddess Sulis-
-to make Sulis Minerva.
This is... not how Rome treated Judaism.
For one, Judaism is practiced inside a temple with closed doors,
while most Roman religion was open-air.
Most Romans thought that nothing good came of closed doors-
-so it seems that fears of Jewish conspiracies to take over the world-
go really far back.
It also didn't help that Rome and Judea had an adversarial relationship-
-since pretty much day one.
After a really bloody conquest by Pompey,
-a string of notoriously oppressive governors tightened the screws on Judea-
-until a revolt broke out in 66AD, and it resulted in a full-on invasion-
-by the general, and future emperor, Titus, during the reign-
-of his father Vespasian.
Jerusalem was ultimately sacked and looted as the commemorative arch of Titus-
-shows legionaries carting off a giant menorah,
and the Jews were sent into diaspora following the destruction-
-of the second temple.
Not a good time.
Whether it was karma or just bad luck, Titus was hit by a parade of-
-crises during his brief two years as emperor.
For one, he had to pick up the soot-covered pieces after-
-Mt. Vesuvius went kaplooey on the entire bay of Naples.
Tangent here, I kid you not, one time I had a dream that I was in-
-modern Naples and Vesuvius went off in the distance, my first thought-
-wasn't fear, or panic, no. It was, and I quote-
"Ugh, goddammit, not this bullsh*t again"
That's classic Blue for ya!
Anyway, aside from the obvious loss of nearly eight cities and-
-several thousand lives,
an eruption like this should have decimated the empire's food supply;
As volcanic eruptions often lead to harsh famines.
Luckily, Augustus came in clutch a century earlier because Egypt was-
-the
And they were able to easily absorb the shock of Italy's drought and keep-
-the empire from starving.
The next emperor was a jerk and got assassinated by his advisors, and
the usurper Nerva died a year later of natural causes,
he appointed Trajan as his successor;
And this is where things
Trajan was a military master, and pushed Roman territory to its fullest extent.
Throwing up a column to commemorate how dope he is.
He also funded a lot of public works, which is a very pleasant running theme-
for this century.
Any loser can spent money on their own palaces but only a real G-
-gives that stuff back to their people.
Following Trajan, emperor Hadrian consolidated imperial territory,
and built two walls in Britannia and Germania.
It's around this century that Germanic invasions became a regular pain in the-
-imperial butt, and in my mind, Hadrian's fortifications weren't so much to-
-keep invaders out, as to keep Rome from overextending itself.
Following Hadrian, the grand strategy shifted from-
-"Conquer everything and project power outwards",
to "Hey, maybe we should just try to work with what we have now",
and that policy of restraint worked rather well, the Pax Romana was in full swing-
-through the second century, not so much peace for Britain and Germany, and Judea,
but peace for Rome, and that's what the Romans cared about.
Next up, an often ignored emperor is Antoninus Pius, who's reign is remarkable-
-precisely because it's unremarkable;
Being so peaceful and quiet and nice and all.
It's just 30 years of chill, and honestly I respect that.
The last of the five good emperors is Marcus Aurelius.
Plato's perfect philosopher king, who spent all of his time moping in Germany-
about how bad it sucks to have, ugh, responsibilities. Gross.
Stoicism, the philosophy of calm self-reliance in the face of-
-frustrations and difficulties, had been on the rise since Seneca-
-popularized it as a coping mechanism for crazy emperors threatening to kill you,
and Marcy-Marc
From there his son Commodus became emperor and made a mess of the place,
fighting gladiatorial games and doing your typical tyranny, but we'll save the-
-unavoidable slow-motion train wreck that is the fall of Rome, for next time.
So, when it comes to the Roman Empire, the historian Edward Gibbon claims that-
-the second century is - without hesitation - the best period-
-in human history.
I uhh... am not sure how to feel about that claim, I feel like it's way too-
-subjective of a preference, and also some parts of the empire major sucked.
But I will say that as far as the average Roman is concerned, there wasn't a-
-better time to inhabit beautiful cities, to enjoy brilliant engineering, to-
-prosper from expansive trade, and to live in a secure empire.
It certainly wasn't
and honestly sometimes doing our best is all we should ask.
(Music plays)