WEBVTT NOTE Military Decadence in Ancient Rome 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 A few weeks ago, Joseph Stromberg asked me why I thought so many neoconservatives had an interest in the classics, in either Greek history or Roman history. 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Well, as it happens, a lot of these neoconservatives are Hellenists. They're people who specifically study Greek history. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:29.000 Leo Strauss, for example, quite infamous founder of Straussianism and very influential thinker who thought that neoconservatives have adopted, was himself a Hellenist. He didn't do a lot of work on Rome. 4 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:41.000 Be this as it may, though, nonetheless we do see a certain fascination that Rome exercises upon the imaginations of neoconservatives and, for that matter, students of realpolitik. 5 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:50.000 Why should this be the case? Well, where realpolitik is concerned, some of this is just pure power worship, I think. 6 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:54.000 And this was true in the ancient world as well as in the modern world. 7 00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:00.000 In the modern world we see a number of ancient sources who are very much interested in the development of the Roman Empire 8 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:04.000 simply because it was the biggest, most powerful thing that existed at the time. 9 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:10.000 It even eclipsed the accomplishments of Alexander the Great, which themselves had been tremendously influential. 10 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.000 In the ancient world you always found people trying to emulate, trying to surpass Alexander. 11 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:18.000 When the Romans came onto the scene that impressed people even more. 12 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.000 So if you wanted to be something, if you wanted to be world famous as a conqueror 13 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.280 You had to understand what made Rome successful and emulate that. 14 00:01:24.360 --> 00:01:27.280 I think this exercises a certain attraction 15 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:32.440 upon people who like global power, even today. 16 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:38.840 But you can kind of understand the realpolitik aspect of it. 17 00:01:38.920 --> 00:01:41.560 You can see that power, 18 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:44.320 even if you're not necessarily desiring to acquire it yourself, 19 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:46.160 is nonetheless something that is of interest to study. 20 00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:48.760 It is something that is likely to affect your life. 21 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:57.760 and so, you know, that's where the Real Politique angle might come in even for people who are not sort of megalomaniacs as some of these guys may be. 22 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:06.760 But I think that there happens to be actually quite a bit more to the fascination that Rome exercises over, well, neoconservatives but also people all over the political spectrum 23 00:02:06.760 --> 00:02:17.760 and that is that Rome stands as an example of what I would call military virtue, which is something that I think we see just very highly valued in our society today. 24 00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:40.760 There's this idea that the military, in one form or another, instills not only martial virtues like courage and discipline, but also certain higher virtues as well, perhaps loyalty to a cause greater than oneself, and also things like the ability to lead men and the ability to perhaps excel in competition, things like that. 25 00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:48.760 There's also an aspect of the fact that militaries make very firm sex distinctions. 26 00:02:48.760 --> 00:02:54.760 Oftentimes you'll hear conservatives complaining about the effeminization of America. 27 00:02:54.760 --> 00:02:59.760 Well, the military is one institution you can point to and say, okay, that is quite masculine. 28 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:05.760 One of the things you see here, and this is all by way of preamble, and you'll see where this is going in just a second here, 29 00:03:05.760 --> 00:03:15.760 But in the 1990s, you saw a lot of these very popular talk shows, Oprah Winfrey or Ricky Lake or Jerry Springer, whoever happens to be your personal favorite. 30 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:21.760 They would have segments along the theme of, my teenager is out of control. 31 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:25.760 And the solution to this was usually boot camp. 32 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:32.760 We're going to send the kid to something that emulates basic training for a Marine or for the Green Berets or something. 33 00:03:32.760 --> 00:03:37.400 and somehow this is going to make the kid behave much better so you can see I 34 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:41.680 think that is is an instantiation that's an example of this belief in military 35 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.880 virtue yeah I think you can see it as well in for example Bill Buckley's 36 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:49.800 enthusiasm for compulsory national service this idea that you know you take 37 00:03:49.800 --> 00:03:53.440 people who are just civilians who are just self-interested and you put them 38 00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:57.000 through either military or quasi militaristic training and somehow they 39 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:02.160 become better people for it there's also an idea that's kind of even broader than 40 00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:06.080 on that, which is that the military is a socially integrative force, that the military helps 41 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:11.400 construct a national identity, and that the military, well, for example, can erode racial 42 00:04:11.400 --> 00:04:12.960 barriers between peoples. 43 00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:17.240 They can help integrate society in that sense, but they can also help integrate society ideologically. 44 00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:22.780 It helps create a sense of Americanism, that the military not only enacts patriotism by 45 00:04:22.780 --> 00:04:28.400 going out and creating an opportunity for people to exercise their love of country, 46 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:36.400 I think that it also creates a kind of patriotism by creating this sense of an institution which all Americans, regardless of background, can support. 47 00:04:36.400 --> 00:04:39.400 They can say, oh, those are our boys, those are our troops. 48 00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:42.400 Well, what does any of this have to do with Rome? 49 00:04:42.400 --> 00:04:46.400 Well, Rome is the military society par excellence. 50 00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:53.400 There really hasn't been, I don't think, any other civilization that has been quite so thoroughgoingly militaristic as Rome, 51 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:56.800 from its very earliest founding in 753 BC 52 00:04:56.880 --> 00:04:59.120 down to the period I'm going to be covering, 53 00:04:59.200 --> 00:05:02.200 which is that of the Julio-Claudian emperors, 54 00:05:02.280 --> 00:05:04.760 who are the first emperors of the Roman Empire, 55 00:05:04.840 --> 00:05:07.800 or we might say the Roman Principate. 56 00:05:07.880 --> 00:05:10.520 Rome, of course, had been a republic before it became an empire, 57 00:05:10.600 --> 00:05:12.960 but even as a republic, it still had an empire 58 00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:16.120 in the sense of having territories beyond its own borders. 59 00:05:16.200 --> 00:05:18.320 So that's an important point to make there. 60 00:05:18.400 --> 00:05:20.800 So for the most part, I'm going to refer to the Roman Empire, 61 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:25.480 Empire, as you guys probably know it, as the Roman Principate, because it's much clearer. 62 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:29.880 We're not just talking about, well, the distinction between the Republic and the so-called empire 63 00:05:29.880 --> 00:05:34.540 is that you had the rise of a sort of autocratic rule. 64 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:40.400 It's not that the one hadn't had these foreign possessions and that the other did. 65 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:45.660 So anyway, Rome is a military society par excellence, as I say, and so I think we can, 66 00:05:45.660 --> 00:05:49.760 by looking at Rome, gain some insight into the notion of whether or not there is such 67 00:05:49.760 --> 00:05:56.760 and such a thing as martial virtue, military virtue, whether in fact the Roman military helped to stabilize Roman society 68 00:05:56.760 --> 00:05:59.760 or whether it seems to us to have destabilized it. 69 00:05:59.760 --> 00:06:07.760 And if it did in fact destabilize it, then certainly that is a cautionary tale for us and perhaps there are lessons that we could learn from that. 70 00:06:07.760 --> 00:06:15.760 So, one of the reasons why Rome is particularly interesting as an example is because you certainly do have, as I said, 71 00:06:15.760 --> 00:06:20.260 This great power that encompasses most of the known world at the time, and you also 72 00:06:20.260 --> 00:06:26.600 have a great deal of courage, a great deal of manliness in the Roman legions, but at 73 00:06:26.600 --> 00:06:30.320 the same time you also have these phenomena that are associated with what we would call 74 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:31.320 decadence. 75 00:06:31.320 --> 00:06:36.920 I think plenty of people here probably know about the kinds of crimes and unnatural acts 76 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:44.200 committed by Caligula, Nero and emperors like that, ranging from incest with their own sisters 77 00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:48.080 to cruel and unusual punishments of totally innocent people, 78 00:06:48.080 --> 00:06:50.160 all kinds of things like that. 79 00:06:50.160 --> 00:06:52.000 So there is that kind of personal decadence, 80 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:53.760 but I think decadence can be expanded 81 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:55.600 into a much larger concept. 82 00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:58.160 We can also ask about the sort of political 83 00:06:58.160 --> 00:07:01.400 and civil instability that existed at Rome 84 00:07:01.400 --> 00:07:03.800 around the time of the birth of Christ. 85 00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:07.320 We can also talk about the demographic status 86 00:07:07.320 --> 00:07:09.920 of a certain country, in this case, Rome. 87 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:12.360 If your population is increasing, 88 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:18.360 And we can probably say that that's, if not a good thing, then that's at least a sign of growth, it certainly is that. 89 00:07:18.360 --> 00:07:22.360 And decadence would be the opposite. Decadence would be demographic decline. 90 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:30.360 We can also look at economic freedom. We can say that, okay, well, if you have flourishing economic freedom, that's probably a good thing. 91 00:07:30.360 --> 00:07:33.360 And certainly, ethically, we would say that is a good thing. 92 00:07:33.360 --> 00:07:39.360 And you can look at the opposite. You can say that, well, if you have economic freedom being abrogated, that that's probably a sign of decadence. 93 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:45.360 And finally, we might look at the military itself in our investigation into Rome and ask ourselves... 94 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:48.360 Well, in one sense, it wouldn't seem to be decadent because it would seem to be flourishing, 95 00:07:48.360 --> 00:07:53.360 it would seem to be going out and becoming more powerful than it had ever been before in the period that we're about to examine. 96 00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:58.360 On the other hand, if you look at the actual conditions of individual soldiers and commanders, 97 00:07:58.360 --> 00:08:00.360 they were often quite pitiable indeed. 98 00:08:00.360 --> 00:08:04.360 So in one sense, the Roman military in this period couldn't fairly be described as decadent, 99 00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:08.840 So in one sense, the Roman military in this period couldn't fairly be described as decadent, 100 00:08:08.840 --> 00:08:15.440 but in another, I think it could, especially where the individual is concerned. 101 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:17.440 So in Rome, you have this combination of things. 102 00:08:17.440 --> 00:08:21.840 You have both extreme militarism and also decadence, both on the individual level 103 00:08:21.840 --> 00:08:26.240 and in all of these broader political, demographic, or economic levels. 104 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:29.840 And so that's why Rome presents quite a question to us. 105 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:34.080 Is it the case, in fact, that these are simply things that happened accidentally 106 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:37.600 at the same time, or is it the case, in fact, that there's some sort of relationship here? 107 00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:41.560 Perhaps the military lessened the degree of decadence in Rome at this time, 108 00:08:41.640 --> 00:08:44.120 or perhaps the military actually contributed to, 109 00:08:44.200 --> 00:08:48.440 maybe even caused, the sorts of decadence that we'll be looking at. 110 00:08:48.520 --> 00:08:52.680 I should perhaps give you some background on the Roman army 111 00:08:52.760 --> 00:08:56.160 and its place in the Roman Republic prior to this period. 112 00:08:56.240 --> 00:09:00.760 So we're looking at basically the time from 509 BC when Rome becomes a republic, 113 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:03.960 down to about the time when Julius Caesar is assassinated actually, 114 00:09:03.960 --> 00:09:11.360 a little bit before that, because by the time Caesar is assassinated, the Republic has already fallen into civil war and decay. 115 00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:20.400 Well, actually, even before Rome had become a Republic, back between 753 BC and 509 BC, 116 00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:23.160 Rome was still a very militaristic society. 117 00:09:24.120 --> 00:09:27.280 And in fact, this is quite true of many early Indo-European societies. 118 00:09:27.280 --> 00:09:37.280 Some of you may know that, even to this day, the motto of Rome is SPQR, Senatus Populus Quae Romanus, the Senate and People of Rome. 119 00:09:37.280 --> 00:09:42.280 And that may sound unobjectionable to you, you know, okay, you have a Senate and then you have the people. 120 00:09:42.280 --> 00:09:48.280 But actually this phrase conceals something that might have been known to the early Romans, but that is unknown to most of us. 121 00:09:48.280 --> 00:09:55.280 And that is that the word populus doesn't originally mean people, as we use it today, in just general sense of individuals or persons. 122 00:09:55.280 --> 00:10:00.280 It originally meant an army, and this is actually true of other Indo-European cultures as well. 123 00:10:00.280 --> 00:10:03.280 I believe the German folk originally meant army as well. 124 00:10:03.280 --> 00:10:09.280 So there was always, in this sort of Indo-European background, a certain militaristic element. 125 00:10:09.280 --> 00:10:18.280 And in city-states like Rome, the army was from the very beginning a very important constitutive element. 126 00:10:18.280 --> 00:10:30.280 Now, in its very earliest period, between 753 BC and 509 BC, Rome was certainly trying to expand, but it wasn't necessarily for malevolent reasons. 127 00:10:30.280 --> 00:10:38.280 Rome was in Italy, it had various belligerent neighbors who were interested in conquering Rome's territory, or conquering one another's territory for that matter. 128 00:10:38.280 --> 00:10:48.280 So you would have, for example, the Etruscans or other city-states within Italy impinging upon Roman independence. 129 00:10:48.280 --> 00:10:54.280 And there's actually some reason to think that during the period of kings before the Republic, 130 00:10:54.280 --> 00:10:59.280 so the period between 753 and 509, that Rome may in fact have been subjugated by the Etruscans. 131 00:10:59.280 --> 00:11:07.280 We can suspect that because several of the names of the Roman kings are in fact Etruscan names, not Latin names. 132 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:16.280 Rome had become a superpower, however, towards the end of the third century and the beginning of the second century BC, 133 00:11:16.280 --> 00:11:21.280 when Rome had come into contact with another superpower, a North African city-state called Carthage. 134 00:11:21.280 --> 00:11:27.280 Rome had encountered Carthaginian forces in Sicily and in Spain, 135 00:11:27.280 --> 00:11:35.280 and both Rome and Carthage had wanted to gain control of Sicily and Spain because these were quite rich areas, especially Sicily. 136 00:11:35.280 --> 00:11:49.280 So, this meeting of two growing regional powers led to warfare, and it was warfare that Rome ultimately won, and this would have some quite severe consequences that I'll discuss in just a moment here. 137 00:11:49.280 --> 00:11:59.280 But basically, the outline I'm providing is that Rome grew from a small city which perhaps was conquered by other peoples, to one that was able to stand on its own in Italy, 138 00:11:59.280 --> 00:12:05.280 to one that was ultimately expanding enough and successful enough in its contact with other peoples, 139 00:12:05.280 --> 00:12:11.280 successful in the military sense, that if a city attacked Rome, Rome would not only defeat it, 140 00:12:11.280 --> 00:12:14.280 but then would also pull it into its own political orbit. 141 00:12:14.280 --> 00:12:23.280 But Rome was sufficiently successful and powerful in that regard that it was emerging as a world power by about the third century BC. 142 00:12:23.280 --> 00:12:44.280 And in fact, in the course of the wars with Carthage, Carthage in fact allied itself with certain Macedonian and Greek warlords, and this brought Rome into contact with them as well, and Rome was able to subjugate Greece. 143 00:12:44.280 --> 00:12:59.280 So, for example, a Greek historian by the name of Polybius, who lived from about 200 BC to 118 BC, became very interested in Roman power and its forms and its ways of operating. 144 00:12:59.280 --> 00:13:11.280 And to that effect he wrote a history, which I have here in fact, and discussed some of the reasons for Rome's military success. 145 00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:16.280 He attributed a great deal of it, in fact, to the citizen-soldier, the fact that the Romans, 146 00:13:16.280 --> 00:13:20.280 unlike the Carthaginians, were not reliant upon mercenaries and foreign troops, 147 00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:22.280 that the Romans, in fact, did their own fighting. 148 00:13:22.280 --> 00:13:24.280 What they did was, you know, they had... 149 00:13:24.280 --> 00:13:28.280 Every male citizen of Rome was liable for military service, 150 00:13:28.280 --> 00:13:32.280 and, you know, military service was for a certain period of time. 151 00:13:32.280 --> 00:13:37.280 Because the Romans were fighting, you know, as a cohesive unit, they all sort of knew one another, 152 00:13:37.280 --> 00:13:40.280 they would feel shame if one of them failed to perform well on the battlefield. 153 00:13:40.280 --> 00:13:46.280 A mercenary was less motivated by that factor because a mercenary wanted his pay. 154 00:13:46.280 --> 00:13:48.280 He wasn't necessarily concerned with the glory. 155 00:13:48.280 --> 00:13:52.280 But the Romans would go above and beyond the call of duty, or so Polybius argues, 156 00:13:52.280 --> 00:13:58.280 because they wanted to perform well in front of their countrymen, the people they would see every day. 157 00:13:58.280 --> 00:14:08.280 They're followed from the Punic Wars, the wars with Carthage, basically a continual series of wars, 158 00:14:08.280 --> 00:14:22.280 Social wars, for example, in which the various city-states that Rome had conquered in Italy, decided that well, I should mention these city-states, once they were conquered by Rome, were themselves liable for providing auxiliaries to the Roman military. 159 00:14:22.280 --> 00:14:28.280 They had to provide certain legions of their own that the Romans would then command and use to expand their own power. 160 00:14:28.280 --> 00:14:41.280 Basically, these Italian city-states said, look, we speak a very similar language to you Romans. You're conscripting us for your warfare. You should extend citizenship to us. We should have the same rights and privileges as Romans themselves. 161 00:14:41.280 --> 00:14:50.280 The Roman Senate didn't like the idea of this very much, and so it led to a war between Rome and its allies, its socchi, and that's why it's called a social war. 162 00:14:50.280 --> 00:14:56.360 War, and there were various other wars as well in the East, for example, against a fellow 163 00:14:56.360 --> 00:15:02.120 by the name of Mithridates, who was the king, rather, of what is an area that is now part 164 00:15:02.120 --> 00:15:04.320 of Turkey, Pontus. 165 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:13.120 And then you had just the increasing power of generals and their armies at Rome itself. 166 00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:17.520 I can illustrate this, actually, by reference to a notion that we might borrow from Robert 167 00:15:17.520 --> 00:15:25.520 Howard Higgs, who in Crisis and Leviathan describes how in the opportunity provided by a crisis, a war, for example, 168 00:15:25.520 --> 00:15:31.520 government can grow in ways that it can't during peacetime, and that afterwards there's often a tendency, 169 00:15:31.520 --> 00:15:39.520 especially if there have been certain ideological preconditions met, for the state to remain at a slightly inflated level. 170 00:15:39.520 --> 00:15:46.520 Even as it decreases from its crisis level, it nonetheless remains larger than it had been before the whole cycle started. 171 00:15:46.520 --> 00:15:48.520 We see this, for example, in Rome. 172 00:15:48.520 --> 00:15:52.520 In Rome, during the earliest period of the Republic, there were about four legions. 173 00:15:52.520 --> 00:15:56.520 That was the Roman army, and the legions were about 6,000 men at peace. 174 00:15:56.520 --> 00:16:03.520 During the Punic Wars, though, around the late third century, early second century BC, 175 00:16:03.520 --> 00:16:09.520 this ballooned because they were fighting a war against a world superpower, against Carthage. 176 00:16:09.520 --> 00:16:12.520 So they went from four legions to about 11 legions. 177 00:16:12.520 --> 00:16:42.520 and then afterwards a lot of these legions stayed around and as Rome continued to be sucked into more and more wars I shouldn't say sucked into them because in fact the Romans were quite happy to engage in them but as Rome out of the aftermath of its wars with Carthage came into wars with Greece and with Mithridates the need for an increased number of legions continued to exist so we went from four legions to about eleven and then it went down a little bit and then it ballooned again to about twelve 178 00:16:42.520 --> 00:17:07.520 and then ultimately it was going to reach about 28 or 30 legions by the time of the civil wars, by the time of, well, shortly before Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, and then afterwards Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, the first pre-caps, he would stabilize the number of legions to 28. 179 00:17:07.520 --> 00:17:15.520 So, you can see that's quite a growth of state power right there, from four legions to twelve to twenty-eight. 180 00:17:15.520 --> 00:17:22.520 I should very briefly describe for you what these legions were like, how they were composed. 181 00:17:22.520 --> 00:17:29.520 Originally, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, the legion required... 182 00:17:29.520 --> 00:17:35.520 You had to be a Roman citizen to be in a legion, originally, and you also had to have enough property. 183 00:17:35.520 --> 00:17:43.520 You had to be both a landowner and you had to have enough money to equip yourself to buy whatever weapons and armor you would need for the fight. 184 00:17:43.520 --> 00:17:51.520 Gradually this changed though because there were only a limited number of large enough landowners or people with enough wealth to equip themselves. 185 00:17:51.520 --> 00:18:01.520 And as a result, they had to sort of lower the threshold for letting people come into the military because they needed these much larger armies to fight these world wars. 186 00:18:01.520 --> 00:18:07.520 So you had a diminution over time of the property qualifications for service. 187 00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:11.520 And there's also the factor involved there that if you are a landowner, 188 00:18:11.520 --> 00:18:16.520 you actually need to come back to your land to supervise, at the very least, its maintenance. 189 00:18:16.520 --> 00:18:18.520 And for a lot of these guys, they were kind of yeoman farmers. 190 00:18:18.520 --> 00:18:23.520 They were actually just small individual landowners who would actually be involved in tilling their own land. 191 00:18:23.520 --> 00:18:28.520 If you're going to have these very large armies, they still disbanded these armies from time to time, 192 00:18:28.520 --> 00:18:33.360 of Time, but they were in service for much longer periods of time than they had been before. 193 00:18:33.360 --> 00:18:37.000 If you're going to have these kinds of armies, you need people who are not required to go 194 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:41.560 back to their farms and attend to their land and their own personal affairs for however 195 00:18:41.560 --> 00:18:44.400 many months out of a year, six months or whatever. 196 00:18:44.400 --> 00:18:50.720 And so there was a certain appeal to having people with less property in the military 197 00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:55.980 to going towards the people who just didn't have anything to lose, they didn't have to 198 00:18:55.980 --> 00:18:59.980 to come back and attend to their own business for a couple of months a year. 199 00:18:59.980 --> 00:19:04.980 Even well before we get to the point of the Julio-Claudian emperors, 200 00:19:04.980 --> 00:19:08.980 in extraordinary circumstances, property-less persons could be enlisted in the Roman army anyway, 201 00:19:08.980 --> 00:19:10.980 if it was a sufficient emergency. 202 00:19:10.980 --> 00:19:12.980 So again, what we have here is a sort of Higgsian effect, 203 00:19:12.980 --> 00:19:15.980 where at first you have something that's just kind of an exceptional circumstance, 204 00:19:15.980 --> 00:19:17.980 over time it becomes less and less exceptional, 205 00:19:17.980 --> 00:19:21.980 as the threshold of what constitutes a crisis either decreases, 206 00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:25.940 or else the simple growth of the state gets them involved in more and more wars 207 00:19:26.020 --> 00:19:28.580 and as a result there's a continual crisis 208 00:19:28.660 --> 00:19:30.700 and so there's always an exception 209 00:19:30.780 --> 00:19:35.020 which allows for the enlistment of people who normally would not be able to be enlisted. 210 00:19:35.100 --> 00:19:38.140 It did, of course, change the nature of the Roman army 211 00:19:38.220 --> 00:19:44.060 that you should have this kind of, well, proletarianization is exactly what it is, 212 00:19:44.140 --> 00:19:47.820 the entry into the military forces of people who didn't have a lot of money. 213 00:19:47.900 --> 00:19:51.740 For one thing, it actually contributed to professionalization 214 00:19:51.740 --> 00:19:55.140 Because people who didn't have a lot of property, who entered the Roman military, 215 00:19:55.140 --> 00:19:59.020 they wanted to get something out of it, they wanted to get some pay out of it. 216 00:19:59.020 --> 00:20:06.220 Whereas you'd had, you know, a degree of that in the earlier army that had been slightly, 217 00:20:06.220 --> 00:20:08.140 composed of slightly wealthier citizens, 218 00:20:08.140 --> 00:20:11.860 but of course these wealthier citizens didn't need the army in order to make a livelihood. 219 00:20:11.860 --> 00:20:18.060 Whereas the, a lot of the property list persons, the proles, they did. 220 00:20:18.060 --> 00:20:23.260 And also because a lot of these proletarians needed their positions in the military to make a living, 221 00:20:23.260 --> 00:20:26.220 and it was a much better living than they could make on the Rome because they owned no land, 222 00:20:26.780 --> 00:20:30.460 they became quite loyal to their commanders because the commanders were the ones who were dispersing 223 00:20:31.100 --> 00:20:35.980 the spoils of war. As a result, what you see happening over time is that the Roman military, 224 00:20:35.980 --> 00:20:40.700 because of proletarianization, actually becomes more loyal to its commanders than to the city of 225 00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:46.380 Rome itself, and honor becomes much less of a consideration for the military than getting paid 226 00:20:46.380 --> 00:20:49.220 by the Commander. 227 00:20:49.220 --> 00:20:51.980 In fact, as time went on, the Romans 228 00:20:51.980 --> 00:20:55.940 became so needful of having yet more people enlist 229 00:20:55.940 --> 00:20:57.500 in their legions. 230 00:20:57.500 --> 00:21:00.580 And these continual wars had so damaged the population of Italy 231 00:21:00.580 --> 00:21:02.420 and of Rome itself that the Romans 232 00:21:02.420 --> 00:21:04.700 had to resort to enlisting within their own legions, 233 00:21:04.700 --> 00:21:08.180 as Roman legionaries, people who were not Romans at all. 234 00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:13.500 So for example, in the civil wars in the first century BC, 235 00:21:13.500 --> 00:21:21.500 And you actually see Pompey, the major rival of Julius Caesar, enlisting what he called a legio vernacular. 236 00:21:21.500 --> 00:21:25.500 He just got some Spanish citizens from his Spanish territories and said, 237 00:21:25.500 --> 00:21:28.500 OK, you guys are now a Roman legion and you're going to fight alongside my Roman legions. 238 00:21:28.500 --> 00:21:33.500 We're not going to pretend that there is a distinction or anything. You guys are the real thing. 239 00:21:33.500 --> 00:21:39.500 And this was different from how it had been before, where you would sometimes have foreign forces fighting alongside Roman forces, 240 00:21:39.500 --> 00:21:42.440 They were not considered to be actually Roman themselves. 241 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:43.440 Hoppe changed that. 242 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:47.760 He said, okay, you guys are now going to be constituted as part of our own military. 243 00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:54.620 And as a reward, we're probably going to give you citizenship at the end of your time. 244 00:21:54.620 --> 00:22:00.560 You may want to know what it was like to serve in the Roman military. 245 00:22:00.560 --> 00:22:06.700 During most of the Republican period, as we said, every Roman citizen was liable for military 246 00:22:06.700 --> 00:22:08.940 service, every male Roman citizen. 247 00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:12.480 On average, this tended to be about six years of service. 248 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:16.460 At a maximum, it could go up to about 16 years. 249 00:22:16.460 --> 00:22:22.800 And in fact, as you might imagine, as these wars continue, as Rome's power is expanding, 250 00:22:22.800 --> 00:22:27.940 the state sees more and more of a need to keep people in the legions for much longer 251 00:22:27.940 --> 00:22:28.940 periods. 252 00:22:28.940 --> 00:22:33.400 So, in fact, while six years of service had originally been the average and the legal 253 00:22:33.400 --> 00:22:37.040 maximum had originally been 16, by the time of the civil wars, you have people who've 254 00:22:37.040 --> 00:23:07.040 under Augustus, after the civil wars, Augustus the first emperor, he legally increased the amount of service that a Roman citizen could be called upon to provide in the military to 20 years, and in addition to that, a further five years of reserve duty, which meant that after 20 years you'd be decommissioned from your legion, but you still had to tag along with your legion, 255 00:23:07.040 --> 00:23:12.040 in its sort of baggage train, and in an emergency you might be called upon to fight. 256 00:23:12.040 --> 00:23:16.040 But you weren't supposed to be doing the regular duties that the Legion would have to do. 257 00:23:16.040 --> 00:23:22.040 For example, once you were a reservist, you didn't have to clean latrines or whatever might be required. 258 00:23:22.040 --> 00:23:29.040 You were just there to be a sort of auxiliary, to be a help in the case of a dire emergency, if you were needed. 259 00:23:29.040 --> 00:23:35.040 We say that Augustus increased the maximum service period from 16 years to 20 years. 260 00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:44.040 That's true legally. In terms of actual practice, like I said, you already had people serving 20 years and more within the Roman legions. 261 00:23:44.040 --> 00:23:51.040 And in fact, even after Augustus increased the legal limit, you still had people serving much longer than they were supposed to. 262 00:23:51.040 --> 00:24:00.040 Now, naturally, if you have this enormous, world-conquering military, you have to pay for it. 263 00:24:00.040 --> 00:24:09.040 And not only that, but also, what do you do with these guys who are decommissioned, these guys who do retire from the military? 264 00:24:09.040 --> 00:24:17.040 Now think about it, if you have a sort of seasonal army of citizen soldiers, they go to war, and then they go back to their farms at the end of that. 265 00:24:17.040 --> 00:24:21.040 And they take care of their farms, they have their own way of making a living, they're fine. 266 00:24:21.040 --> 00:24:28.040 If, on the other hand, you're taking men, even assuming that they do have a farm, even assuming that they do have some means of sustaining themselves, 267 00:24:28.040 --> 00:24:34.040 But if you take them and then keep them for 20 years in the military, what can they do after that? 268 00:24:34.040 --> 00:24:40.040 Even assuming that they had had property, by this point their property is either worthless or has been taken over by somebody else. 269 00:24:40.040 --> 00:24:45.040 Because in fact, things like that did happen if you were away from your property for long enough. 270 00:24:45.040 --> 00:24:49.040 The Romans could be quite glib about what might happen to it. 271 00:24:49.040 --> 00:24:58.040 But, you know, after 20 years of just being a soldier, you're not very well positioned to do anything else. 272 00:24:58.040 --> 00:25:05.040 So this was a very serious problem. You had all these veterans and they needed some sort of pension plan. 273 00:25:05.040 --> 00:25:17.040 Well, Augustus, for a while, and before Augustus, Pompey and Caesar during the Civil Wars, had simply given land to the veterans. 274 00:25:17.040 --> 00:25:23.040 They said, okay, well, we'll give you a land grant in Italy or something and you can learn to farm again. 275 00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:30.040 Maybe you still have some slaves or something and you can make a living that way, even if your old property has been lost. 276 00:25:30.040 --> 00:25:34.040 This didn't work so well, though. There's only so much land to go around in Italy. 277 00:25:34.040 --> 00:25:41.040 And what Caesar and Pompey and later Augustus had to do, in fact, was to confiscate the land from other landowners. 278 00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:52.040 So, for example, the Roman poet Virgil, who is sort of the greatest poet of all, of the Latin language, even he, in his youth, had been expropriated by Augustus. 279 00:25:52.040 --> 00:25:56.040 His family estate had been confiscated and given over to veterans. 280 00:25:56.040 --> 00:26:00.040 You might think of some of the situations that pertain right now in Africa. 281 00:26:00.040 --> 00:26:06.040 I think perhaps in Zimbabwe, for example, you have these people who claim to be military veterans. 282 00:26:06.040 --> 00:26:15.040 in Africa, oftentimes they aren't, who say that, well, you have to give us, you know, land, you have to take land from the white settlers and give it to us because we need to make a living. 283 00:26:15.040 --> 00:26:24.040 Something like that was happening at Rome. You had, in order to keep the military happy, in order to give the veterans a pension, you had to give them land. 284 00:26:24.040 --> 00:26:28.040 Well, I mean, this was just causing so many problems that Augustus eventually abandoned it. 285 00:26:28.040 --> 00:26:35.040 And what he decided was, well, instead of doing this, instead of confiscating people's land, giving it to veterans, what I'm going to do is just give the veterans a pension. 286 00:26:35.040 --> 00:26:39.320 Commission, give them a one-time cash payout when they're decommissioned, when they're 287 00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:43.120 demobilized, and it'll be large enough that they'll be able to survive for the rest of 288 00:26:43.120 --> 00:26:46.440 their lives off of this cash gratuity. 289 00:26:46.440 --> 00:26:52.800 Well, as you might imagine, this cash gratuity doesn't just grow on trees either. 290 00:26:52.800 --> 00:26:54.500 It has to come from someplace. 291 00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:59.220 And just as the state had resorted to expropriating landowners earlier in order to give veterans 292 00:26:59.220 --> 00:27:07.220 The State now resorted to taxation in order to give veterans a pension or a cash gratuity. 293 00:27:07.220 --> 00:27:14.220 So now I go into Julio-Claudian taxation because Augustus was the one who set this up. 294 00:27:14.220 --> 00:27:21.220 So we're now firmly in this period between 31 BC and 68 AD, during which you have these first five emperors, 295 00:27:21.220 --> 00:27:25.220 Augustus, Caligula, Claudius, and then Nero. 296 00:27:25.220 --> 00:27:38.220 In order to provide for these pensions, Augustus decided he would form a new sort of treasury because his own finances were already stretched pretty thin. 297 00:27:38.220 --> 00:27:46.220 Augustus was having to maintain this enormous army, this enormous Roman army of 28 legions of 6,000 men each. 298 00:27:46.220 --> 00:27:53.220 Just paying their salaries was an enormous drain on the state revenues and it was in fact taking up about 50% of state revenue, 299 00:27:53.220 --> 00:27:56.020 Maybe a little bit less than that, but it was quite high. 300 00:27:56.020 --> 00:28:02.100 And then beyond what went to the military for pay, you also had, at the time, things 301 00:28:02.100 --> 00:28:07.260 like the corn dole, you had to give bread to the property-less persons in Rome in order 302 00:28:07.260 --> 00:28:12.300 to keep them happy and keep them from starving or whatever. 303 00:28:12.300 --> 00:28:17.140 So Augustus couldn't just rely on the funds he already had in order to pay these pensions, 304 00:28:17.140 --> 00:28:19.620 these cash gratuities to the veterans. 305 00:28:19.620 --> 00:28:23.180 What he did then was institute new taxes. 306 00:28:23.180 --> 00:28:26.620 The Romans had been very tax-averse through their whole history. 307 00:28:26.620 --> 00:28:32.020 They had had a few indirect taxes, there was a tax on the manumission of slaves, there 308 00:28:32.020 --> 00:28:36.420 was a tax on auctions, but for the most part the Romans didn't like to be taxed themselves. 309 00:28:36.420 --> 00:28:38.380 This was why you had provinces. 310 00:28:38.380 --> 00:28:42.340 The whole point of the Romans going out and conquering other peoples was that you could 311 00:28:42.340 --> 00:28:47.740 make conquered peoples pay their taxes to you rather than having to pay taxes yourself 312 00:28:47.740 --> 00:28:53.660 as long as you wanted this sort of public fund. 313 00:28:53.660 --> 00:28:58.700 So what Augustus did is he said, well, we can only get so much revenue out of the provinces. 314 00:28:58.700 --> 00:29:01.620 We're going to have to institute some new taxes here in Rome itself. 315 00:29:01.620 --> 00:29:02.620 And in fact, he did. 316 00:29:02.620 --> 00:29:08.140 He instituted a sales tax of about 1% and an inheritance tax of 5%. 317 00:29:08.140 --> 00:29:15.020 And this went towards the new military treasury, the Irarium Militare. 318 00:29:15.020 --> 00:29:20.240 In the provinces, it's actually a kind of interesting situation in the provinces. 319 00:29:20.240 --> 00:29:24.780 The provinces have been in terribly bad shape during the Republican period, because in the 320 00:29:24.780 --> 00:29:30.340 Republican period, you had sort of temporary rule in these provinces. 321 00:29:30.340 --> 00:29:36.540 A proconsul or a proprietor would be assigned to the consul for a year, during which time, 322 00:29:36.540 --> 00:29:40.980 as you might imagine, this proconsul would try to take as much money as possible from 323 00:29:40.980 --> 00:30:10.980 Under the Empire, because you had a more stable rule, you had a more sort of Hoppean situation, where a single man was in charge, he gave a legate responsibility for raising funds and controlling a certain province, and as a result, the Provincials were actually quite happy, they were no longer being exploited from year to year, instead they were still being exploited, but it wasn't as much of a mad game. 324 00:30:10.980 --> 00:30:24.980 and also Augustus' way of looking at the world had changed a bit because he now had to keep not only the masses at Rome satisfied but he also had to sort of prevent rebellions in the provinces. 325 00:30:24.980 --> 00:30:34.980 He didn't want a lot of that going on while he was still trying to conquer territories in the East, for example, and just maintain this enormous worldwide empire that the Romans had built up. 326 00:30:34.980 --> 00:30:42.980 So, in fact, Augustus had good reason to liberalize policies towards the provinces, liberalize tax collection there a little bit. 327 00:30:42.980 --> 00:30:50.980 But in order to make up the revenue, what he did was to clamp down on Rome itself and to impose the 1% sales tax and the 5% inheritance tax. 328 00:30:50.980 --> 00:30:57.980 And, of course, two points to be made here is not only was this bad for Romans themselves in Rome, who had previously not had to pay these taxes, 329 00:30:57.980 --> 00:31:00.540 But also, this was a very un-Roman thing to do. 330 00:31:00.620 --> 00:31:05.020 Romans just didn't pay taxes, except in very rare cases. 331 00:31:05.100 --> 00:31:07.700 What you had here was a novelty. 332 00:31:07.780 --> 00:31:11.820 Rome was a very, very conservative city. 333 00:31:11.900 --> 00:31:13.820 They didn't like the idea of novelties. 334 00:31:13.900 --> 00:31:17.780 They didn't like the idea that a government could come and do something it had never done before. 335 00:31:17.860 --> 00:31:21.380 So, if you had these ancient taxes, like the manumission tax, 336 00:31:21.460 --> 00:31:22.780 it was less of a problem. 337 00:31:22.860 --> 00:31:26.380 But when you had new taxes instituted, that was a growth in government 338 00:31:26.380 --> 00:31:30.220 and a change in culture that to the Romans was absolutely revolting. 339 00:31:30.300 --> 00:31:35.420 But, nonetheless, these taxes were less of a problem for Augustus 340 00:31:35.500 --> 00:31:37.900 than it would have been to try to expropriate landowners 341 00:31:37.980 --> 00:31:39.900 and give their land to veterans. 342 00:31:39.980 --> 00:31:44.100 So, in fact, this irarium militare stayed in existence for a while. 343 00:31:44.180 --> 00:31:46.460 You had these sales and inheritance taxes. 344 00:31:46.540 --> 00:31:50.820 Interestingly enough, Caligula abolished the sales tax for a while. 345 00:31:50.900 --> 00:31:55.380 It was his way of gaining some popularity with the Roman masses. 346 00:31:55.380 --> 00:32:00.380 But it seems like this tax was later re-imposed, although the records are not entirely clear on that point. 347 00:32:00.380 --> 00:32:06.380 So, one of the changes you had had in the Julio-Claudian period was that in order to pay for the military, 348 00:32:06.380 --> 00:32:11.380 especially to pay for those pensions and retirement benefits, you had the institution of new taxes. 349 00:32:11.380 --> 00:32:18.380 Well, the Julio-Claudian period is also a very interesting time in terms of its demographics. 350 00:32:18.380 --> 00:32:28.380 If you're going to have an army that's a superpower, you not only need the money to pay for it, but you also need enough men to serve in it. 351 00:32:28.380 --> 00:32:39.380 Where do you get these men from? Rome had suffered under a civil war for about a century, and that's quite apart from all these wars in the East and in Gaul and so forth. 352 00:32:39.380 --> 00:32:43.380 So all this had led to a great deal of attrition of actual Roman citizens. 353 00:32:43.380 --> 00:32:55.380 Roman citizens. People have been killed in the wars, and for that matter, some of them were just maimed in the wars as well, and just could no longer be of military service. 354 00:32:55.380 --> 00:33:08.380 And also, as you might expect, well, in some ways it's actually unexpected. Interestingly enough, demographic studies tend to show that in war, I guess, populations can sometimes increase. 355 00:33:08.380 --> 00:33:14.380 You often have a lot more reproduction than you have in times of peace. 356 00:33:14.380 --> 00:33:17.380 But that wasn't so much the case in this period. 357 00:33:17.380 --> 00:33:23.380 Rome actually was experiencing a demographic decline. 358 00:33:23.380 --> 00:33:29.380 War had partially depopulated Rome and Italy, and especially the senatorial class. 359 00:33:29.380 --> 00:33:33.380 The senatorial class had suffered not only from being involved in all these wars, 360 00:33:33.380 --> 00:33:50.380 in these wars, but also it was the senators who had the most to fear personally from the emperor because the senators might displace him, so you had had prescription lists and prominent men were being killed because they posed a threat to the emperor and earlier to the triumvirs. 361 00:33:50.380 --> 00:34:02.380 And so for that reason, that contributed to Rome's demographic problems. Pliny the Elder actually describes this as a penuria un tutis, a shortage of young men. 362 00:34:02.380 --> 00:34:07.380 And it was also a shortage of young men because fewer and fewer young men wanted to volunteer for the military. 363 00:34:07.380 --> 00:34:12.380 For the most part, Augustus tried to keep enrollment in the legions as voluntary as possible. 364 00:34:12.380 --> 00:34:17.380 He did not want to conscript Romans and Italians because of the uproar that that would cause. 365 00:34:17.380 --> 00:34:26.380 But here you had a shortage. Men didn't want to enlist in the legions for the very simple reason that you might be serving in the legion for 15 or 20 years or even more. 366 00:34:26.380 --> 00:34:32.380 Your whole lifetime would go down the toilet, basically, if you enlisted, so they didn't do it. 367 00:34:35.380 --> 00:34:38.380 Well, so how do you make up for this shortfall? 368 00:34:38.380 --> 00:34:43.380 Well, what Augustus and later emperors did was to turn to recruiting foreigners, for example. 369 00:34:43.380 --> 00:34:52.380 The precedent for that had already been established by Pompey when he had created this vernacular legio, this sort of Spanish legion. 370 00:34:52.380 --> 00:35:04.380 So, for example, in the Julio-Claudian period and a bit later on, between the rule of Augustus and that of Caligula, the legions were about 65% Roman and Italian. 371 00:35:04.380 --> 00:35:20.380 Between Claudius and Nero, that percentage declined to 48% and then later on, from 68% until 117 AD, the percentage of Italians in the Roman legion, and Italians includes the Romans, of course, was only 21%. 372 00:35:20.380 --> 00:35:26.380 So increasingly, the Romans were having to enlist non-Romans in order to fill out the military. 373 00:35:26.380 --> 00:35:30.380 As you can imagine, this had some very significant effects. 374 00:35:30.380 --> 00:35:36.380 Romans might have compunctions about going to war with other Romans. 375 00:35:36.380 --> 00:35:43.380 I might not want to kill someone I know who's a countryman, but I might have much less resolve about that, much less of a reservation. 376 00:35:43.380 --> 00:35:48.380 If this is someone to whom I'm not related, I maybe don't even speak the same language. 377 00:35:48.380 --> 00:35:55.380 and Language, although for the most part they tried to make sure that the legions were learning Latin for obvious military reasons, you have to communicate. 378 00:35:55.380 --> 00:36:05.380 Nonetheless, the sort of sense of Roman-ness declined and therefore the legions had less reservations about, if necessary, going to war with other Romans, 379 00:36:05.380 --> 00:36:11.380 because Roman citizenship was becoming a legal fiction as opposed to an actual ethno-cultural reality. 380 00:36:11.380 --> 00:36:26.380 Well, and in fact, in 69 AD, after Nero, what happens is that Nero commits suicide, and then the legions of different parts of the empire all declare that their own commander is going to be the emperor. 381 00:36:26.380 --> 00:36:32.380 So as a result, in the year 69, you actually have four competing claimants to the throne, four people claiming to be emperor. 382 00:36:32.380 --> 00:36:35.380 And some of these guys were quite de-Romanized indeed. 383 00:36:35.380 --> 00:36:53.380 So, for example, in 69 AD, while the armies of these four people claiming to be emperor are fighting one another, some of them, for example, are seen in Rome, and when the sun is rising in the morning, they actually turn and sort of worship the sun, which is quite an unusual, it's not a Roman practice at all. 384 00:36:53.380 --> 00:37:01.380 These legions had gone native because they'd been out in the field, out in the east for 20 years or 30 years or even more. 385 00:37:01.380 --> 00:37:09.380 So, you have a demographic decline, you have a turn towards non-Romans to fill out the ranks. 386 00:37:09.380 --> 00:37:15.380 Augustus didn't really like this. Augustus wanted to get things back as much as possible to Romanism, to Rome. 387 00:37:15.380 --> 00:37:28.380 And so he tried to pass state legislation, actual government, to try to use the power of government to facilitate greater fertility among the Roman people, let's put it that way. 388 00:37:28.380 --> 00:37:37.380 He tried to regulate sex and marriage. He tried to restore the Roman senatorial class through legislation. 389 00:37:37.380 --> 00:37:44.380 As you might imagine, this didn't work at all. In fact, it was a laughing stock. Augustus' own daughter, Julia, was a slut. 390 00:37:44.380 --> 00:37:51.380 If Augustus' own family wasn't able to live up to these standards, it was a joke that anyone else would be expected to. 391 00:37:51.380 --> 00:38:07.380 And Augustus only had one daughter. Part of Augustus' moral legislation was that he imposed penalties for people who had no children and financial incentives for people to have as many children as possible. 392 00:38:07.380 --> 00:38:13.380 But Augustus himself only had one daughter, so there's certainly not a case of leading by example there. 393 00:38:13.380 --> 00:38:22.380 Marriage, interestingly, right now you have a lot of debates here in America over things like gay marriage and divorce and things like this. 394 00:38:22.380 --> 00:38:27.380 Marriage in Roman times, during the Republic at least, had been almost completely a family matter. 395 00:38:27.380 --> 00:38:31.380 It was not something that the state regulated, controlled or created. 396 00:38:31.380 --> 00:38:39.380 Augustus, through his moral legislation, basically took over the administration of things like divorce and marriage. 397 00:38:39.380 --> 00:38:43.380 This, again, is an extraordinarily revolutionary thing to do. 398 00:38:43.380 --> 00:38:45.380 This is something that was very, very much un-Roman. 399 00:38:45.380 --> 00:38:51.380 But as we've seen, the whole process of imperial expansion had de-Romanized things, 400 00:38:51.380 --> 00:38:56.380 and it created such a crisis that it made the culture much more flexible, 401 00:38:56.380 --> 00:39:05.380 much more amenable to these sorts of changes, these sorts of revolutionary alterations. 402 00:39:05.380 --> 00:39:19.380 Robert Nisbet, who was an American sociologist, he died around 1994 or so, but a very good guy, he was not exactly a libertarian, but he was very much a scholar that we should have a look at, 403 00:39:19.380 --> 00:39:24.380 has written about how, in fact, during the Julio-Claudian period, the first century AD, 404 00:39:24.380 --> 00:39:36.380 Imperium, which is the legal authority that a commander exercises over his troops, displaced what had been patria potestas, the power of the father over his family. 405 00:39:36.380 --> 00:39:46.380 In short, what you saw happening was that increasingly what defined a person's day-to-day life was his relationship to his military unit, 406 00:39:46.380 --> 00:39:58.380 because it had such a growth and expansion of military power and less and less was it the case as had been in earlier Roman days that it was the family that was the central institution of Rome that had been the defining element. 407 00:39:58.380 --> 00:40:11.380 So, for example, people were spending less and less time under the authority of their father. In Rome, they were actually legally under the authority of their father. They could even be executed. Even a fully grown son was still under the authority of his father. 408 00:40:11.380 --> 00:40:18.380 Well, the exception to that, of course, was when he was out serving in the legions, where you could even potentially have a son outranking a father. 409 00:40:18.380 --> 00:40:25.380 And so as you see the growth of imperium, the growth of military command, you see a breakdown in patria potestas. 410 00:40:25.380 --> 00:40:29.380 And this was true with respect to the emperor as well. 411 00:40:29.380 --> 00:40:33.380 The emperor was called the emperor precisely because he exercised imperium. 412 00:40:33.380 --> 00:40:35.380 and the imperialized imperium. 413 00:40:35.380 --> 00:40:42.380 And this had the effect of further weakening the traditional patriot protestos. 414 00:40:42.380 --> 00:40:45.380 Instead, your relationship as a person towards the emperor, 415 00:40:45.380 --> 00:40:48.380 whether you were in his employ, whether you were getting money from him, whatever, 416 00:40:48.380 --> 00:40:52.380 became more and more important than your relationship with your family had been. 417 00:40:52.380 --> 00:40:55.380 And it became less a matter of you being from a noble family 418 00:40:55.380 --> 00:40:59.380 and trying to rise up in the ranks, as it had been during the Republican era, 419 00:40:59.380 --> 00:41:02.380 and instead was a matter of how you could please the emperor 420 00:41:02.380 --> 00:41:07.380 and the Emperor's opinion mattered to you much more if you were in his employ than your father's opinion. 421 00:41:07.380 --> 00:41:12.380 So this contributed to the social breakdown and the demographic decline of Rome as well. 422 00:41:12.380 --> 00:41:18.380 What you had was both political centralization and sort of cultural atomization, 423 00:41:18.380 --> 00:41:24.380 precisely because the relationship to the military or to the Emperor took precedence over relationship to the family. 424 00:41:24.380 --> 00:41:28.380 And this of course also, as you might expect or may not, 425 00:41:28.380 --> 00:41:33.380 led to increasing amounts of bachelorhood, on the one hand, and also promiscuity. 426 00:41:33.380 --> 00:41:39.380 Simply because, whereas the family had been concerned with keeping legitimacy, 427 00:41:39.380 --> 00:41:44.380 you have to have legitimate offspring with a legitimate wife in order to pass down the property 428 00:41:44.380 --> 00:41:49.380 and also maintain the honor of your family, during the Empire this became less of an issue. 429 00:41:49.380 --> 00:41:54.380 Instead it was about getting your pension from the commander, from the legion and also from the emperor. 430 00:41:54.380 --> 00:42:00.380 So there was much less of an incentive to moral, sexual, I guess, fidelity. 431 00:42:00.380 --> 00:42:05.380 And that may tie into the demographic problems. 432 00:42:05.380 --> 00:42:11.380 So we've seen there were economic changes in this period, there were demographic changes. 433 00:42:11.380 --> 00:42:14.380 You may think, well, what about politics? 434 00:42:14.380 --> 00:42:19.380 One of Augustus's great claims to fame was that he had brought peace back to Rome. 435 00:42:19.380 --> 00:42:24.380 Rome had previously suffered under about a century of civil war. 436 00:42:24.380 --> 00:42:30.380 If nothing else, didn't the military at least stabilize Rome politically? 437 00:42:30.380 --> 00:42:32.380 Well, the answer to this is no. 438 00:42:32.380 --> 00:42:35.380 What in fact happened was that as soon as Augustus died in 14 AD, 439 00:42:35.380 --> 00:42:39.380 two legions, well actually a couple of legions, in Pannonia, 440 00:42:39.380 --> 00:42:43.380 which is more or less modern Hungary, and in Germany, revolted. 441 00:42:43.380 --> 00:42:47.380 They revolted, well, for very good reasons actually. 442 00:42:47.380 --> 00:42:52.460 They were, they had been in the field for over 20 years in some cases. These had become quite old men. 443 00:42:52.540 --> 00:42:56.160 They were suffering from brutalities at the hands of their commanders. 444 00:42:56.900 --> 00:43:01.240 As you might expect, I mean, this is the military. If your commander tells you to do something, you have to do it. 445 00:43:01.240 --> 00:43:07.740 And if you don't do it, you can be punished. Well, in the Roman case, it was a, these punishments could be quite severe, whipping and scourging, 446 00:43:08.420 --> 00:43:12.080 whatever the commander felt like. This imperium really was, 447 00:43:12.080 --> 00:43:17.040 was, did go that far. The Imperium was such that a commander could do just about anything 448 00:43:17.040 --> 00:43:23.760 to his troops. So conditions were just absolutely abominable within the military itself and 449 00:43:23.760 --> 00:43:31.200 as a result, you know, the soldiers just wanted out of this situation and they wanted out 450 00:43:31.200 --> 00:43:35.160 of the field. I mean, you see right now a lot of American soldiers want to be brought 451 00:43:35.160 --> 00:43:39.680 home from Iraq. They've been there for about, you know, six months in some cases, maybe 452 00:43:39.680 --> 00:43:46.920 almost a year. With these Romans, some of them had been in Hungary or in Germany for 453 00:43:46.920 --> 00:43:51.200 as much as 20 years or even 30 years. And even if they had very little chance of assimilating 454 00:43:51.200 --> 00:43:54.760 back into Roman culture at home, they at least wanted out of the military. They at least 455 00:43:54.760 --> 00:44:00.020 wanted to be decommissioned and to get their pension. And, you know, you saw the kinds 456 00:44:00.020 --> 00:44:04.480 of things going on here that you often see in other states as well. The military does 457 00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:11.480 The state is quite eager to cheat veterans out of their pensions. 458 00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:15.480 It's easy enough to do, so that's something that the state sees as a way of saving money. 459 00:44:15.480 --> 00:44:22.720 And of course, as you can imagine, having 20 years of service and then another 5 years 460 00:44:22.720 --> 00:44:27.400 in the reserve meant that there was a very good chance that just because of old age, 461 00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:31.960 remember you've got a life expectancy here of about in the 40s or in the 50s, that if 462 00:44:31.960 --> 00:44:38.960 If you kept someone in the military that long, they would die before they could claim their pension, so this was another way of the state saving money. 463 00:44:38.960 --> 00:44:44.960 And it appears that about half of the legions would die before they reached the age at which they could claim their pension, 464 00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:51.960 and the other half actually were able to reach that age, although whether or not they actually got their pension was another question. 465 00:44:51.960 --> 00:44:59.960 So as a result of the terrible conditions and being cheated out of their pensions, the Roman legions revolted in Germany and Pannonia, 466 00:44:59.960 --> 00:45:13.960 destabilizing Rome, they had to send other legions, they had to send representatives of the emperor to negotiate with them, offer them higher salaries and more luxurious pension packages and it succeeded. 467 00:45:13.960 --> 00:45:21.960 Tiberius was the one who did this and he was able to quell the revolts in Pannonia and Germany but nonetheless it was a sign of political problems down the road. 468 00:45:21.960 --> 00:45:26.960 There had also been the Praetorian Guard which was established by Augustus. 469 00:45:26.960 --> 00:45:32.960 The Praetorian Guard was sort of the home guard for Italy and Rome. It was also the personal bodyguard for the emperor. 470 00:45:32.960 --> 00:45:36.960 Well, the Praetorian Guard had control over who got to see the emperor and who didn't. 471 00:45:36.960 --> 00:45:41.960 And as a result, it could sort of filter his appointments. 472 00:45:41.960 --> 00:45:45.960 And so the Praetorian Guard actually became very powerful, as perhaps you know. 473 00:45:45.960 --> 00:45:51.960 And ultimately, the Praetorian Guard was in a position, if it wanted to, to kill the emperor and to appoint a successor. 474 00:45:51.960 --> 00:46:08.960 Praetorians were involved in the assassination of Caligula, for example, and even earlier during the period with Augustus, I'm sorry, with Tiberius, the Praetorian prefect Sejanus was almost as powerful as a co-emperor, basically, simply because of the position that the Praetorian Guard enjoyed. 475 00:46:08.960 --> 00:46:38.960 And then, of course, we see at the very end of the Julio-Claudian period in 69 A.D. that civil war erupts again. You have four people claiming to be emperor, different legions are supporting different claimants, and the idea that Augustus had established peace, well, it was a very temporary peace. It lasted from Augustus' reign down to the end of Nero, and even that had been interrupted by these periodic revolts in places like Penermia in Germany. 476 00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:43.960 The military was not a stabilizing force in Rome, it was a destabilizing force. 477 00:46:43.960 --> 00:46:48.960 It was something that could erupt into civil war unless very high salaries and pensions were paid 478 00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:53.960 and very careful measures were taken by the emperor. 479 00:46:53.960 --> 00:47:00.960 Those are the main elements I should cover here. 480 00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:07.960 And in conclusion, what do you have going on? 481 00:47:07.960 --> 00:47:13.960 A number of the characteristics that had been essential to Rome during the Republican period, 482 00:47:13.960 --> 00:47:19.960 that Romans generally did not pay taxes, that Romans, what they did do is they served in the military, 483 00:47:19.960 --> 00:47:25.960 that Rome had very high moral standards, that marital fidelity, 484 00:47:25.960 --> 00:47:32.960 While not, you know, obviously perfectly observed, nonetheless counted, and legitimacy in children was a very important thing, 485 00:47:32.960 --> 00:47:37.960 all of these things sort of had gelled together during the Republican period, 486 00:47:37.960 --> 00:47:41.960 but these were slowly dissolved by the military towards the end of the Republic, 487 00:47:41.960 --> 00:47:46.960 and then during the early Principate or the early Empire, it becomes even worse. 488 00:47:46.960 --> 00:47:51.960 That basically the military was, because of its demands of money and men, 489 00:47:51.960 --> 00:47:57.960 breaking down all of these elements, it was breaking down the social structure in Rome, 490 00:47:57.960 --> 00:48:02.960 it was breaking down the traditional Roman reservations against taxation, 491 00:48:02.960 --> 00:48:11.960 and it was also not something that was terribly beneficial for a lot of the people serving in the legions themselves, 492 00:48:11.960 --> 00:48:16.960 and because the legions were increasingly having to draw upon foreigners in order to fill out their ranks, 493 00:48:16.960 --> 00:48:24.960 and you even had a process of de-Romanization, that the legions became less and less tied to Rome culturally and ethnically. 494 00:48:24.960 --> 00:48:39.960 So I would certainly say that it looks to me as if what you see in Rome is not a case of military virtue, of boot camp creating better citizens and of everyone coming together to support a national identity, 495 00:48:39.960 --> 00:48:45.960 so much as what you see is actually the destruction of what had once made Rome characteristically Roman. 496 00:48:45.960 --> 00:48:50.960 Of course, you could say that you do see the creation of a new sort of identity out of all of this decadence. 497 00:48:50.960 --> 00:48:58.960 You do see the rise of an imperial identity defined, of course, by the military, defined by the emperor as the supreme commander-in-chief 498 00:48:58.960 --> 00:49:08.960 and by the legions which take on more and more importance as the livelihood and as the sort of cultural milieu in which large numbers of people live. 499 00:49:08.960 --> 00:49:17.960 So in that sense, I mean, that would be something that perhaps militarists would like, that you can create an identity of sorts out of this. 500 00:49:17.960 --> 00:49:30.960 But traditionalists, I mean, people who actually value, you know, Romans who would have valued Rome for what it had been, for all of the things that have made it characteristically Roman, avoidance of taxation, things like that, and the moral codes, 501 00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:35.960 Rome was no longer Roman at all, and that's why you see in historians like Tacitus, for example, 502 00:49:35.960 --> 00:49:41.960 in all these Roman historians, a very elegiac, a very gloomy sense that Rome had fallen already. 503 00:49:41.960 --> 00:49:46.960 Even though, I mean, the Julio-Claudian period runs through 68 AD, 504 00:49:46.960 --> 00:49:50.960 Rome itself doesn't fall to the barbarians until 474 AD. 505 00:49:50.960 --> 00:49:53.960 So, I mean, the Roman Empire survived a very long time, 506 00:49:53.960 --> 00:49:56.960 but what had been great about Rome, what had been Roman about Rome, 507 00:49:56.960 --> 00:50:04.960 As far as historians like Tacitus are concerned, had already died in the period between 31 and 68 AD.