Quotulatiousness

November 6, 2026

The Senate, from the monarchy to after the empire

Filed under: Europe, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Roman Senate had been created very early in Rome’s history, served under the kings, ruled under the Republic, served again under the emperors, only to fade away after the fall of the western empire, be briefly revived, then to disappear again by the early seventh century, this time for good:

The Curia Iulia at Forum Romanum in Rome, one of the traditional meeting places for the Roman Senate. The building was reconstructed under the Fascists between 1930 and 1936, based on an earlier reconstruction in the reign of Diocletian.
Wikimedia Commons.

It was members of this very assembly — which was soon to become the Senate of the future Republic — who staged a coup and expelled the last of Rome’s kings, the Etruscan Tarquinius Superbus. From that point on, the Senate became the undisputed center of power in Rome until the end of the 2nd century BC, when the socio-demographic crisis facing Italy led to a search for change and reform through other institutions, such as the tribunes of the plebs. The failure to resolve the conflict led to the rise of warlords such as Sulla and Julius Caesar, each waging their own civil wars. These wars deeply divided the Senate, solidifying two diametrically opposed factions: the Optimates and Populares.

The future split between the Republic of the Senate and the Empire of the prince or emperor is, in part, an artificial one that has given rise to a narrative in which the Senate is seen as increasingly diminished in the face of the emperor’s authority, to the point of becoming practically irrelevant and invisible. It is still there, but merely as another monument to Republican Rome. The truth is that Rome began to be an empire long before Augustus was proclaimed emperor, just as it did not cease to be a republic during the imperial era, with a Senate that remained a political actor, wielding more informal power than formal power.

I understand the periodization that divides the history of ancient Rome into the Monarchy, the Republic, and the Empire, but I believe that, above all, it serves pedagogical purposes rather than the actual objectives of historiography. The Romans themselves, even though they were ruled by an emperor, understood that theirs was a republic, and they never ceased to describe it as such.

The issue of the figure and concept of the emperor is one that may have a great deal to do with the marginalization suffered by the Senate during the so-called Imperial era. The Romans’ concept of an emperor is quite different from our modern one. To begin with, the title imperator, from which the modern word emperor derives, was not used by the Romans when addressing their emperors. Imperator was a title bestowed by the legions upon their commanders as a form of recognition, granting them imperium — that is, the authority to command and lead — over their soldiers. The Roman emperor was called princeps (the first citizen), and this recognition meant that he was the first among the senators, holding primacy over the rest. Logically, this implies that for there to be a princeps or prince, there must be a senate; and in that sense, the Roman Senate was an integral part of the political structure of what we classify as the Imperial era until the fall of the Western Empire in 476 AD.

The Roman Senate survived the deposition of its emperor, Romulus Augustulus, the total disintegration of the Empire’s western provinces, and the imposition of two barbarian kings: first Odoacer of the Heruli, and then Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Throughout that entire period, the Roman Senate continued to function. It had already gained some independence in dealing with local affairs following the permanent establishment of the emperor’s court in Ravenna, in northern Italy, and under the new barbarian rulers — who sought to maintain the imperial structure and institutions for the purpose of governing — the Roman Senate experienced a modest political resurgence.

Links added to my Roman glossary.

November 2, 2026

QotD: Organizing a Roman Republican army

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the recruits return on the appointed day and are reassembled, probably on the campus Martius (the field of Mars, just outside the city), which in any case is where the whole process will end up moved to in the first century (probably to accommodate the larger number of Roman citizens). Moving the process outside of the ritual boundary of the city, the pommerium, would have been important, because the power of certain Roman magistrates to command armies (imperium, a crucial concept we’ll deal with when we get to the series on the Republic) only exists fully outside this boundary. It also keeps them from being hassled by the Tribunes of the Plebs (a distinct and entirely different office from the military tribunes!), whose powers don’t exist outside the pommerium. That said, Polybius doesn’t tell us where this part takes place and I don’t myself know of any source that explicitly does.

I should stop to note that this phase gets short shift in the scholarship. Brunt, Italian Manpower (1971) 625ff somehow manages to miss it entirely, conflating it with the selection of recruits in Phase I, but it is clearly a distinct stage in the process. Polybius is not subtle here: after the oaths are taken, the [military] tribunes dismiss the recruits (Polyb. 6.21.6), designating a time and place for them to reassemble without arms and then when they show up then (Polyb. 6.21.7), they are divided into units, are ordered to get their equipment and then sent home again (Polyb. 6.26.1) to reassemble one more time (Polyb. 6.26.2) when the army is properly formed. That is three clear stages: selection, apportionment and mobilization, which occur on different days in different places.

The function of this phase is the division of recruits into their constituent units. First the pedites (again, “infantry”) are split into four types: velites, hastati, principes and triarii. Polybius notes that the “youngest and poorest” are assigned to the velites, then the next to the hastati, and so on, creating a sliding scale by both wealth and age; one paragraph down he reiterates that the velites are mostly the youngest soldiers (Polyb. 6.22.1). In practice, we know that the centuries of the pedites were stratified by wealth and that wealthier soldiers were expected to bring heavier, more expensive kit (even Polybius notes this, Polyb. 6.23.14). The equipment of the velites, who were light infantry skirmishers that screened and supported the legion, would have been much cheaper than the equipment of the rest of the infantry (who were all armored, heavy infantry), so I think the right reading of Polybius is that the velites consist of both the young of all of the classes of pedites (putting green soldiers in a position to both prove their courage, but also one where if they falter it doesn’t cause the line to collapse; light infantry can retreat and advance freely) as well as the very poorest of the pedites who couldn’t afford heavier equipment even if they wanted to.1

The velites carry a sword (Livy tells us it is the same sword as the heavy infantry, the gladius Hispaniensis, Livy 38.21.13), a small shield (the smaller version of the parma; cavalry use a larger version of this shield), and javelins (Livy clarifies they carry seven of them; these are lighter javelins, the hasta velitaris, Livy 26.4) along with a modest helmet.2 The velites themselves emerge as a distinct arm of the Roman army during the Second Punic War, but an integrated light infantry skirmish force existed earlier; it’s not clear how the velites would have differed from earlier light infantry leves milites or rorarii. Perhaps not very much.

Meanwhile the heavy infantry (hastati, principes and triarii) carry a large oval shield (the scutum), a sword (the gladius Hispaniensis, a versatile cut-and-thrust sword), two heavy javelins (pila), and wear both a metal helmet (the ubiquitous bronze Montefortino-type) and body armor. Poor soldiers, Polybius tells us, wear what in Latin is a pectorale (and thus in English a “pectoral”); this gets represented as a single smallish bronze plate over the upper-chest, but our evidence for this equipment suggests a more complete cuirass consisting of a front and back plate joined by side and shoulder plates, with a broad armored belt protecting the belly, a sort of “articulated breastplate” […] Wealthier Romans were required to furnish themselves with mail. Once again, the fact that the tribunes are likely to have access to the census, and thus the self-reported wealth figures of the recruit’s households (tied to their century assignment) is going to facilitate these divisions.

Each class (except the velites) then elect ten senior centurions and ten junior centurions, with the very first fellow elected being the primus pilus, the most senior centurion of the legion. Centurions then handpick their supporting officers (the optio). We are given no clues as to how this election would be accomplished, but the numbers here we’re now dealing with are fairly small (1200 infantry per type, except just 600 triarii), so the procedures here don’t have to be that complex. The centurions then assist the tribunes in breaking up each class into maniples (120 men) and centuries (60 men), with the velites being attached to the maniples of the heavy infantry rather than getting their own, because they’re a supporting force. Meanwhile, the cavalry is being divided as well into ten squadrons, each with three officers (decuriones), who have their own optiones.

Once all of those divisions are complete, the tribunes instruct the men on how they are to arm themselves and then send them home (Polyb. 6.26.1). I should note here the Paton translation (rev. Walbank and Habicht, but I don’t think they change anything here) reads, “The tribunes having thus organized the troops and ordered them to arm themselves in this manner dismiss them to their homes” but a more strictly literal translation would run, “The tribunes, having made the divisions and given them orders concerning equipment then dismiss the men to their homes”. There’s an assumption worked into the translation that soldiers arm themselves; I think this assumption is correct, but it is not required by the text.

But of course the staging of this process only really makes sense if soldiers do self-equip. Otherwise, why send them all to their homes at this stage, when you have the entire army gathered and divided into units? If equipment was state issued, it’d be trivial to hand it all out right at this stage and then march off to war. Instead, soldiers are dispatched home with orders concerning their equipment.

Meanwhile, the process for the socii is running in parallel. We know basically nothing about this stage of their process, but it is certainly happening. All Polybius tells us is that “the magistrates [of the socii], choosing the men and administering the oath in the manner above described, send them off, appointing a commander and a paymaster” (Polyb. 6.21.5). The implication is that the socii have a similar process to the Romans (albeit in miniature as there are many communities of socii who collectively provide about as many troops as the Romans, so their dilecti – whatever name they really went by – will be much smaller). This is reflective of the Roman attitude towards the socii – they do not care how the troops are raised or paid, only that they are raised. So long as the socii show up at the appointed time with the right gear, ready to fight, the Romans are fine with the process.

But the system here mirrors the Roman one quite strongly. Each Roman army has a presiding magistrate (like a consul) and an assigned financial magistrate (a quaestor), just as each socii detachment has a commander and a paymaster. The commander of these socii units show up in our sources as praefecti cohortium and seem to have been drawn from the local elite of those communities (just like the Romans). So while the Romans are dividing into units and then heading home to buy, fetch or borrow their equipment, the socii are at work recruiting their own troops to the numbers and of the types demanded at the dilectus, arming them, making arrangements for their pay (the Romans supply food, but not pay, for the socii) and then sending them to the planned rendezvous.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: How To Raise a Roman Army: The Dilectus“, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-06-16.

  1. In Polybius’ day, there may have been significant overlap between these two definitions just because Roman military success was likely to put enough loot in the pocket of a seasoned veles to enable him to afford the equipment of the heavier infantry.
  2. Perhaps in some cases a leather or textile head-covering rather than a metal one; evidence here is very thin.

October 27, 2026

QotD: The outer “zones” surrounding a typical pre-modern city

Filed under: Books, Economics, Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Diagram of von Thünen’s model from The Isolated State, after Morley (1996), 62. The agriculture ring is subdivided by intensity (intensive, long-lay and three-field), but here I have merged them for simplicity. The agriculture zone is wider because it did, in fact, tend to cover a larger area. The fade in the pastoralism zone is meant to indicate shifts from ranching to transhumance.

Once out of the innermost zone of very high intensity usage, we reach the middle zones of von Thünen’s model, which are devoted primarily to agriculture, falling in degrees of intensity as we move away from the city. This is where you should expect to see rolling seas of wheat and barley, as well as large scale cultivation of things like olives and grapes, as the climate permits. This seems to be what, for instance, Tolkien has in mind when he describes the Pelennor as fair and fertile townlands running down to the Anduin.

(I should note this this zone is subdivided into three groups: intensive agriculture, long-lay agriculture and three-field agriculture. We might discuss those terms further if future posts bring us to discussing how pre-modern farms work, but for now, I don’t want to get too – pardon the pun – deep in the weeds.)

Now, I noted before that for small cities, the horticultural zone might be entirely contained inside the city walls. The reverse is true as well – the larger the city, the further out these zones can get pushed – and this is especially true of the middle zone. As it extends, it tends to create miniature population centers within it (villages) – usually along roads (we’ll get to them).

But for very large cities, the area of grain cultivation can be truly massive. As I’ve noted in an earlier post, a city of around 500,000 would need to pull cereal production from an area of arable land close to the size of the state of Massachusetts. Rome – at nearly a million – imported grain from up and down the entire Italian coast, North Africa and even Egypt. A middle zone that large could contain not merely villages, but other towns and even large cities, whose own land-use patterns would be substantially distorted by the “pull” of the mega-city at the center. […] as a rule of thumb, if the cereal cultivation zone extends more than 20 miles out from the center, you should expect to see smaller market towns within it (because people want a market within a day’s walk).

What does this kind of zone look like? That actually depends a lot on terrain – expect villages surrounded by fields on areas of good, arable land. In a fairly wet environment (like Northern Europe), those villages might radiate out from the city. In arid environments like Egypt or Mesopotamia, the farmland (and thus the peasant population) is densely concentrated along the rivers, because water availability becomes a strong determinant of arability.

One thing Americans specifically tend to get a bit off here is that the farms are not likely to be evenly spaced over the terrain. We are very used to the agricultural landscape created by things like the Homestead Acts (1862-1930), which offered very large chunks of land (often as many as 640 acres) for purchase, creating a lot of very spaced out farms. Peasant agriculture in the pre-modern period doesn’t tend to organize like this.

Instead, peasant agriculture tends to cluster in villages, with fields radiating out from the villages (which in turn, often have their own micro-garden zone and local forests for wood). Part of the reason for this is that farmland within the village is typically not held as big, standalone farmsteads. Instead, it is either held communally, or else each family owns several small plots spread over different ecological zones (the better to be protected from the risk of a year being wet or dry or cold or whatever – if you have a little land everywhere, then probably something will grow somewhere every year. I’ll talk more about subsistence survival strategies in a future post).

In some societies, these peasant villages may also be mixed in with large elite-held (often slave worked) estates, but there’s an important caveat here. The grand estates – like Roman villas and latifundia – generally do not completely displace the local peasantry (in part because they rely on that peasantry to supply surplus labor). The role of the “big man” and these sorts of large market-oriented estates is complex and worth its own post. But in terms of land-use patterns, such estates generally exist within a landscape of smaller farmers, not in a vast sea of other large estates.

The outermost zone in the model is dedicated to pastoralism (“ranching” technically, but I’d like to be a bit more broad). Pastoralism can take the form of enclosed ranching, but can also be mobile in various ways. I won’t describe ranching too much – this human terrain is still much in evidence and well documented. But mobile forms of pastoralism are more foreign, I suspect, to most of my readers. Transhumance – the moving of livestock between seasonal summer and winter pastures (often up the mountain in summer and down the mountain in winter, for instance – this is “vertical” transhumance) is a common form of limited pastoral mobility.

Transhumant pastoralists do tend to have permanent homes at one end of the route (typically the lower winter pastures for vertical transhumance). These may cluster in villages and are likely to plug into the infrastructure network spreading out from the city. I bring this up mostly because this is how you do get the “rolling hills of empty grassland” terrain so common in depictions of fantasy cities: these areas aren’t empty at all, but merely transhumant pastures not currently in use.

(Side note: This fact about pastoralism is especially worth noting: pastures which are regrowing in the “off” season often might look empty and unused to an outsider, but trespassing on such grounds can bring lethal retaliation. Because these pastures are not unused, but in fact engaged in the vital task of regrowing to support the herd in the following season. This is also the case for true nomads as well, by the by. The reason, of course, is that if those pastures are not grown when the herds are migrated back, the pastoralist’s entire pattern of subsistence is disrupted, endangering his survival. This is a not infrequent cause of friction between pastoralists and agricultural peoples who neighbor each other).

Pastoralism exists on the outer edge of the model for two reasons. First, it is very low density. While the goods it produces (wool, milk, meat) are important, it produces them at a very low density. Agriculture can support massively greater population densities than pastoralism, so high population density tends to push the pastoralists out. There’s a political/military dimension to this as well: the concerns of the farmers tend to dominate political thinking in the city (where, you will recall, the political and military elite are), and the farmer’s greater population density tends to allow them to “push” the pastoralists further from the city and onto marginal lands – either economically (buy the land) or militarily (fight the pastoralists and shove them off).

Second, pastoralism has very low transportation costs. This is because the goods produced by pastoralists can, by and large, walk themselves to market. This is called transporting them “on the hoof”, a phrase my students continue to find funny and are surprised to learn is a real term. Major cattle and animal markets are often still located within city centers, but a shepherd can simply walk his animals to market for sale. That greatly reduces transportation costs, which also tends to push pastoralism out to the edges of the economic network.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-07-12.

October 23, 2026

The Praetorian enforcer for Tiberius Caesar

Filed under: Books, Europe, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, an excerpt from Guy de la Bédoyère’s new book, Brief Lives of the Ancient World: Rulers, Rebels, and Robbers, on Sejanus, Praetorian Prefect for much of the reign of Tiberius Caesar:

The story of Sejanus is dependent on the accounts of Roman historians, in particular Tacitus, who indulged himself with an unforgettable tale of treachery and dissimulation. His main purpose was to portray Tiberius as a sinister and manipulative tyrant, but he also succeeded in creating an allegory of cynicism at the heart of power.

Shortly after Tiberius’ accession in AD 14, the son of praetorian prefect Seius Strabo — Lucius Aelius Sejanus (born Lucius Seius) — was appointed co-prefect. Like his father, he was an equestrian, Rome’s second aristocratic tier, but had been adopted into the senatorial Aelii clan, hence his name change.

The adoption entitled Sejanus to a senatorial career, but he must have decided that the prefecture of the Praetorian Guard offered him more real power and personal access to the emperor. It also allowed him to avoid the suspicion that surrounded ambitious senators. Tiberius chose a few trusted equestrians to form part of his most intimate circle.

Within a year, Sejanus held the position on his own when his father was promoted to the prefecture of Egypt. Enjoying a trusted pedigree, he quickly inveigled himself into Tiberius’ favour. Sejanus was the first of the praetorian prefects to experiment with the power and influence the position enjoyed, and thereby also with the potential power of the guard as a political force.

Detail from the Praetorian Relief, a Roman marble relief dated to c. 51–52 AD from the Arch of Claudius in Rome.

Sejanus was helped by chance, so often the principal agent in realising ambition. The huge theatre that had been built in Rome by Pompey Magnus in 55 BC burst into flames in the year AD 22. The fire was contained thanks to quick work by Sejanus, who used his position to tackle the emergency. Tiberius heaped praise on Sejanus for averting a catastrophe. The senate voted that a statue of Sejanus be erected on the grounds of the theatre.

In time, the career of Sejanus would expose how dangerous the commander of the guard could become. Tiberius ignored the signs, preferring to take as little interest as possible in the job of being emperor.

Sejanus made his first significant move in AD 23 when he installed all the praetorian cohorts in the Castra Praetoria, a fortified military camp in the northeastern part of the city. Under Augustus, they had been based at several locations in Italy, safely dispersed away from Rome, but may have already been brought into various barracks around the city under Tiberius. Their new dedicated fortress transformed the significance of the prefecture of the guard. The Castra Praetoria, which would remain a permanent feature until the guard’s disbandment under Constantine almost three centuries later, meant that the men were now directly and immediately under Sejanus’ control.

September 8, 2026

Sulla Seized Rome… Then Marius Returned for Revenge | Rome’s First Civil War

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Rest Is History
Published 7 Sep 2026

What shocking, unprecedented act did Sulla commit with his legions after having his ambitions frustrated once more by his bitter rival, the tribune Marius? How did Marius escape capture and death? And, would Marius retaliate …?

Join Tom and Dominic as they unfold the mounting rivalry between two Roman generals — Marius and Sulla — as they battle for ultimate control of the empire, and Sulla takes a fateful step that will change the fate of the Republic forever …

0:00 Sulla: The First Roman General to March on Rome
4:31 Marius Seizes Sulla’s Command
11:47 Sulla Marches on Rome
19:50 Mithridates: Rome’s Great Enemy in the East
23:25 The Massacre of the Romans in Asia
26:46 Athens Revolts Against Rome
30:34 Rome’s Generals Become Warlords
34:38 Pressure
35:46 Marius: Fugitive and Outlaw
41:02 Rome Descends Into Political Violence
45:13 Marius Raises a Private Army
48:15 Marius Returns to Rome
49:06 Marius’s Seventh Consulship and Death
51:44 Sulla Goes to War in Greece
53:40 The Siege of Athens
56:59 Sulla Storms Athens
59:51 Sulla Faces Mithridates’ Army
1:00:48 Sulla Makes Peace with Mithridates
1:03:33 Sulla’s Revenge on Athens
1:04:58 Rome’s First Civil War Looms

August 25, 2026

Rome’s annona civilis

Filed under: Europe, Food, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the late Roman Republic, the rapid increase among the urban poor in Rome itself eventually led to the Senate introducing food relief for the very poorest Roman citizens, the Annona civilis. It should be no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention that giving away free stuff attracts people happy to accept free stuff:

Rome handed out free grain to 40,000 citizens in 73 BC. By 46 BC, Julius Caesar found 320,000 people lining up for their monthly ration. That eight-fold expansion happened in under three decades, and it shows you how welfare states actually grow.

No Roman senator stood up and announced a plan to addict a third of the city to government bread. It happened incrementally, through political competition. Each magistrate who wanted votes expanded eligibility. Each expansion normalized the next one. The citizen who once considered the dole shameful eventually expected it, then demanded it, then organized politically to protect it.

This is the core mechanism free market thinkers have identified across every era: once you create a transfer program, you create a constituency for that program. Recipients vote. Administrators build careers. Grain merchants who supply the state develop a stake in keeping the contracts flowing. The political economy locks in.

Caesar, to his credit, actually cut the rolls back to 150,000 through verification audits. It was one of his more economically coherent moves, though the Senate still murdered him. His successors quietly let the numbers climb again.

What did the dole require? Massive grain imports from Sicily, Sardinia, and Egypt, organized through state logistics at state expense, funded by taxation and conquest. When the conquest revenue dried up, the obligation remained. Rome had written a check against future military success, and future military success eventually failed to arrive.

The lesson is not complicated. Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution. The grain dole didn’t weaken Rome overnight, but it made every subsequent reform politically impossible.

The simple-but-not-easy-fix is to only allow people not accepting the free stuff to vote. You can imagine just how well that would go down in an election campaign at any level, can’t you?

August 23, 2026

Julius Caesar’s will

Filed under: Europe, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

At SteynOnline, Tal Bachman continues his study on “The Art of Translation”, this time touching on the unlikely and unlooked-for rise of Caesar’s grand-nephew and eventual successor Octavian — better known to history as Caesar Augustus, the founder of the Principate:

Augustus of Prima Porta
Currently in the Chiaramonti Museum of the Vatican Museums (image from Wikimedia Commons).

You’d think someone who’d just won as much power as the 32 year old Octavian would appreciate a best-selling epic poem in praise of himself. Only fourteen years earlier, in 44 BC, the then-obscure teenager still expected to live a quiet life in his hometown of Velitrae. True, he did have family connections to the political big leagues 25 miles up the road in Rome; but as things stood, a lower-key path looked a lot more likely for the frail, bookish student.

Alas, a quiet life was not to be. On Tuesday, March 15, his great-uncle, Julius Caesar — ruler of Rome — had just seated himself in the senate meeting hall when dozens of senators stabbed him to death. In the assassins’ minds, they’d done something noble: they’d protected the republic — the Roman people — from a future tyrant-king. Surely, they thought, ordinary Romans would now rise up and hail them as republican heroes.

Ordinary Romans, it turned out, thought much more highly of their favorite war-hero than the treacherous senators who’d killed him. Whatever his flaws, Caesar had at least imposed some long-overdue order on Roman life. Now that he was gone, the terrible troubles of former times would return, and probably in a form far worse than before. Shock, anger, despair, and fear filled the city.

It didn’t help that as the hours bled into the next day, it became clear the senator-assassins had no plan for what to do next. They’d eliminated the energetic, enterprising man who’d led Rome the previous five years, but the senate itself was deeply fractured, with a number of the assassins now second-guessing what they’d done. The senate wasn’t stepping up. No one was. As a result, in that moment, the city and empire had no functioning government.

Sensing the possibility of violent conflict, Caesar’s colleague Lepidus quickly ordered troops into the city to keep things stable. It worked. But a possible trigger appeared the next day in the form of Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Piso, who stepped forward as the custodian of Caesar’s will and informed the senate he was ready to settle Caesar’s affairs as duty demanded. The senate panicked. Not knowing what the will contained, the now-rattled group begged Piso to keep it confidential for fear its contents would provoke riots. Piso refused: Caesar was a public official, and the public deserved to know, come what may. He demanded a day be set for revealing the will.

Surveying the precarious situation, Caesar’s right-hand man, Mark Antony, called a senate meeting to figure out what to do next. In that Friday meeting, the senate and Antony agreed to let the assassins escape punishment, while still enforcing all of Caesar’s policies. This compromise, they hoped, would appease both the pro- and anti-Caesar factions, and keep Rome from convulsing in violence.

This, and much more, all happened within three days of the assassination. But what happened on the fourth day — Saturday, March 19 — would prove just about as shocking as anything else: it was on that day that Lucius Piso appeared before the senate to open up, and read aloud, the will left by his murdered son-in-law.

To put that moment in perspective, I note that by the time of his death at age 55, Julius Caesar was one of the richest men on earth. Moreover, he had no legal descendants: his daughter, Julia, had passed away at the age of 22 during childbirth, along with her child. The Egyptian queen Cleopatra claimed Caesar had fathered her son, but Caesar never felt certain the child was his, and never acknowledged him under Roman law.

In addition to all this, Caesar commanded the loyalty of tens of thousands of Roman soldiers, active and retired, along with the admiration of tens of millions of residents and citizens around the Mediterranean. Among these were many of Rome’s most influential movers and shakers.

In short, Caesar had a lot to bequeath. (This was especially true in a world in which the lifelong loyalty of others easily transferred from a deceased person to his named heir.) Surely, in the senate meeting hall that Saturday sat a number of figures who expected to receive extraordinary gifts from the man they’d served—Mark Antony in particular. Antony, after all, had fought with Caesar for years, worked side by side with him in government, and been his closest confidante and colleague.

So you can imagine the humiliation, shock, and indignation around the room as the bereaved father-in-law Lucius Piso stood reading a will which named not Antony, not Lepidus, not any of Caesar’s other comrades, but Caesar’s eighteen-year-old grand-nephew, Octavian, as his adopted legal son and heir to nearly everything he had. Octavian—whose biological father had died when he was five—would receive Caesar’s name, most of his incalculable fortune, his lands, the benefit of his status and loyalties, and the automatic approval of all those who trusted the judgment of the great-uncle who’d adopted him.

By all accounts, Octavian had no idea about any of this. Yes, he’d spent some time with his great-uncle, even visiting him during his Spanish military campaign the year before. But Caesar had kept his will entirely secret.

When Octavian — away studying in Apollonia, in present-day Albania — heard about the assassination and will a couple of weeks later, he found himself facing The Mother of All Crossroads. He could either travel to the now violent, dangerous, nearly-anarchic Rome, risking his own assassination in demanding all Caesar had left him (and accepting all the attendant obligations), or he could decline and pursue the safe, quiet life he’d always imagined for himself.

July 7, 2026

Carthage at the Gates – The Second Punic War | EP 1

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Rest Is History
Published 2 Feb 2026

Our whole series on Rome vs Carthage can be found here: • Rome Vs Carthage

[NR: Last year’s animated episode on Cannae is here — The Bloody Battle of Cannae]

Did Hannibal march on Rome after his legendary victory at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC? How could Rome fight on after losing so many men? And, where would their next cataclysmic clash take place …?

Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss the beginning of the end for the once mighty city of Carthage, and her masterful general, Hannibal Barca.

00:00 Cold open
02:02 After Cannae
05:20 Carthage vs Rome: the long backstory
12:44 The Barcid dynasty
15:37 Hannibal’s invasion route
18:37 Why Hannibal doesn’t march on Rome
21:30 Roman morale collapse (and recovery)
25:01 Rome’s “Lord Halifax moment” that never happens
28:00 Fabius Maximus takes control
31:06 Early heroes and hard choices
33:39 The Fabian strategy returns
34:26 Italy fractures
36:10 The Capua turning point
37:07 “Hannibal at the gates”
39:40 The war becomes a stalemate
43:08 Syracuse at its peak
50:14 Archimedes’ war machines
51:15 Syracuse switches sides
52:06 Marcellus besieges Syracuse
56:20 The fall of Syracuse
57:25 Death of Archimedes
58:40 What Syracuse means for the wider war
(more…)

December 31, 2025

QotD: The cloth trade in the ancient and medieval world

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Fabric as a finished product is somewhat different from the other products (grain and iron) we’ve discussed in this series so far. Bulk grain is a commodity – which means that one kilogram of grain is pretty much like the next. When grain gets traded in bulk it is because of differences in supply, not generally because grain in one region or other is particularly tasty. Consequently, you only get bulk grain trading when one area is producing a surplus and another not producing enough. The same is more loosely true of iron; Iron wasn’t a perfect commodity in the pre-modern world since some ores produced better quality metal than others and some trade in high quality ores or metal (like wootz) happened. But for every-day use, local iron was generally good enough and typically available. Iron could be – and often was – treated as a commodity too.

Fabric is not like that. While the lower classes will often have had to make do with whatever sorts of cloth is produced cheaply and locally, for people who could afford to have some choices the very nature of textile production produces lots of regional differences which incentivized trade. Almost everything about textile production is subject to regional variations:

  • What fibers are being used. Major wool and linen producing regions tended to be separate, with wool (and sheep) in colder climates and uplands while (as noted) flax tended to be grown in warmer river-valleys with rich alluvial soil. Meanwhile, the cotton-and-silk producing regions generally (with some notable exceptions, mind) did not overlap with the wool and linen producing regions.
  • The nature of the local fibers. We’ll get to some specific examples in a moment but ancient and medieval writers were well aware that different growing conditions, breeds of sheep or flax, climate and so on produced fibers of subtly different qualities. Consequently, even with the exact same processes, cloth produced in one region might be different from cloth produced in another region. But the processes were almost never the same because …
  • Local variation in production processes. Again, we’ll have some examples in a moment, but the variance here could be considerable. As we’ve seen, the various tasks in cloth production are all pretty involved and give a lot of room for skill and thus for location variations in methods and patterns. One might see different weaving patterns, different spinning techniques, different chemical treatments, different growing or shearing methods and so on producing fabrics of different qualities which might thus be ideal for different purposes.
  • Dye methods and availability. And as we discussed last time, available dyestuffs (and the craft knowledge about how to use them) was also often very local, leading to certain colors or patterns of color being associated with different regions and creating a demand for those. While it was often possible to ship dyestuffs (although not all dyestuffs responded well to long-distance shipping), it was often more economical to shift dyed fabric.

Added on top of this, fabric is a great trade-good. It is relatively low bulk when wrapped around in a roll (a bolt of fabric might hold fabric anywhere from 35-91m long and 100-150cm wide. Standard English broadcloth was 24 yards x 1.75 yards; that’s a lot of fabric in both cases!) and could be very high value, especially for high quality or foreign fabrics (or fabrics dyed in rare or difficult colors). Moreover, fabric isn’t perishable, temperature sensitive (short of an actual fire) or particularly fragile, meaning that as long as it is kept reasonably dry it will keep over long distances and adverse conditions. And everyone needs it; fabrics are almost perfect stock trade goods.

Consequently, we have ample evidence to the trade of both raw fibers (that is, wool or flax rovings) and finished fabrics from some of the earliest periods of written records (spotting textile trade earlier than that is hard, since fabric is so rarely preserved in the archaeological record). Records from Presargonic Mesopotamia (c. 2400-2300) record wool trading both between Mesopotamian cities but wool being used as a trade good for merchants heading through the Persian Gulf, to Elam and appears to have been one of, if not the primary export good for Sumerian cities (W. Sallaberger in Breniquet and Michel, op. cit.). More evidence comes later, for instance, palace letters and records from the Old Babylonian Empire (1894-1595) reporting the commercialization of wool produced under the auspices of the palace or the temple (Mesopotamian economies being centralized in this way in what is sometimes termed a “redistribution economy” though this term and the model it implies is increasingly contested as it becomes clearer from our evidence that economic activity outside of the “palace economy” also existed) and being traded with other cities like Sippar (on this, note K. De Graef and C. Michel’s chapters in Breniquet and Michel, op. cit.).

Pliny the Elder, in detailing wool and linen producing regions provides some clues for the outline of the cloth trade in the Roman world. Pliny notes that the region between the Po and Ticino river (in Northern Italy) produced linen that was never bleached while linen from Faventia (modern Faenza) was always bleached and renowned for its whiteness (Pliny, NH 19.9). Linen from Spain around Tarragona was thought by Pliny to be exceptionally fine while linens from Zeola (modern Oiartzun, Spain) was particularly durable and good for making nets (Pliny, NH 19.10). Meanwhile Egyptian flax he notes is the least strong but the most fine and thus the most expensive (Pliny NH 19.14). Meanwhile on wool, Pliny notes that natural wool color varied by region; the best white wool he thought came from the Po River valley, the best black wool from the Alps, the best red wool from Asia Minor, the best brown wool from Canusium (in Apulia) and so on (Pliny, Natural History 8.188-191). He also notes different local manufacture processes producing different results, noting Gallic embroidery and felting (NH 8.192). And of course, being Pliny, he must rank them all, with wool from Tarentum and Canusium (Taranto and Canosa di Puglia) being the best, followed more generally by Italian wools and in third place wools from Miletus in Asia Minor (Pliny NH 8.190). Agreement was not quite universal, Columella gives the best wools as those from Miletus, Calabria, and Apulia, with Tarantine wool being the best, but demoting the rest of the Italian wools out of the list entirely (Col. De Re Rust. 7.2).

In medieval Europe, wool merchants were a common feature of economic activity in towns, with the Low Countries and Northern Italy in particular being hubs of trade in wool and other fabrics (Italian ports also being one of the major routes by which cottons and silks from India and China might find their way, via the Mediterranean, to European aristocrats). Wool produced in Britain (which was a major production center) would be shipped either as rovings or as undyed “broadcloths” (called “whites”) to the Low Countries for dyeing and sale abroad (though there was also quite a lot of cloth dyeing happening in Britain as well).

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part IVb: Cloth Money”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-04-09.

October 10, 2025

Feeding the Papal Conclave

Filed under: Food, History, Italy, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 6 May 2025

Marinated baby back ribs served with a garlic and sapa sauce and roasted onions

City/Region: Italy
Time Period: 1570

We actually know a fair bit about what was served at the 1549 papal conclave thanks to one of the first celebrity chefs, Bartolomeo Scappi, who was in charge of the food. In his incredible book, Opera dell’arte del cucinare, or Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi, he includes not only recipes that would have been served to the cardinals, but illustrations showing the many steps for preparing and transporting the food.

Dishes like these ribs would have been tested for poison, inspected for secret messages, put in special containers, and delivered via a sort of turntable.

A lot of hassle, but these ribs would be worth it. They’re so tender and the flavors of the rub and sauce are complex and delicious. It’s not as sweet as a modern barbecue sauce, but strikes a lovely balance between the sweetness of the sapa (reduced grape must) and the sharp and savory flavors of the vinegar, garlic, and coriander seeds. You could certainly make more sauce, but I think this amount is really nice.

    Different ways to cook the back ribs of a domestic pig
    If the pig is young, the ribs can be roasted on the spit with the rind, or without, and with onions split in the pan, which are cooked with the fat that drips from the meat as it cooks … and before it is put on the spit, it is sprinkled with salt and ground coriander seed. You could also let the ribs stand in a marinade of vinegar, grape must syrup, garlic cloves and coriander, and then cook it on the spit in the above way, serving it hot with a sauce on top made of the same seasoning …”
    — Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi, 1570

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September 15, 2025

HBO’s Rome – Ep 11 “The Spoils” – History and Story

Filed under: History, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 23 Apr 2025

This time we look at episode 11 — and only this episode as there is more to talk about when it comes to the historical background. Some of the plot doesn’t fit too well to the actual history, but there are some nice details that crop up and make it worthwhile. In the main, I get excited about a coin and a court.

August 30, 2025

HBO’s Rome – Ep 9 “Utica” and Ep 10 “Triumph” – History and Story

Filed under: History, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 26 Mar 2025

This time we look at Episode 9, which begins with the aftermath of the Battle of Thapsus in 46 BC and also Episode 10 which focuses on Caesar’s Triumph — one rather than the four he celebrated over the course of several weeks in 46 BC. There is less history and more character-driven elements in these two episodes, so to make the video the same sort of length as the others in the series, I have combined the two.

00:00 Episode 9 “Utica”
19:48 Episode 10 “Triumph”

August 14, 2025

“Sound of Silence” cover in Classical Latin (BARDCORE)

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

the_miracle_aligner
Published 29 Mar 2025

What Marc Anthony sang after he gave an epic speech at Caesar’s funeral.

One of my favorite songs and one I was supposed to upload on the Ides of March this year but got late. As punishment, I will do one for dearly departed Julius every year from now. RIP Caesar.
(more…)

August 4, 2025

HBO’s Rome – Ep 8 “Caesarion” – History and Story

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 19 Feb 2025

Continuing series looking at the HBO/BBC co production drama series ROME. We will look at how they chose to tell the story, at what they changed and where they stuck closer to the history.

July 30, 2025

QotD: Meetings of the Roman Republican Senate

Filed under: Europe, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Meetings of the Senate were formal affairs, but unlike modern legislatures the Senate did not stay in session over long periods. Instead, it met in specific venues – they had to be inaugurated – when called by a magistrate with the power to do so.

We may begin with place: the Senate had no single fixed meeting spot, though the curia in the Forum was the most common location, however the place the Senate met had to be religiously prepared via inauguration (the taking of the auspices by the augurs) and by sacrifices in order to make sure the gods approved of the proceedings and its results. Consequently, the Senate always met in a templum in the sense of a consecrated space, but also it tended to meet literally in temples, with meetings in the temples of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the temple of Fides, the temple of Concord, and so on. Notably, two locations, the temple of Bellona and the temple of Apollo were also used and these sat outside the pomerium, enabling the Senate to meet with magistrates who, because of their active command of an army, could not cross the pomerium; they were also sometimes used to meet with foreign dignitaries the Senate did not wish to let into the city. Later added to this number of sites outside the pomerium was Pompey’s theater, which included a temple of Venus Victrix and a curia as part of the overall complex.

In order to meet, the Senate had to be called or more correctly “driven together” (cogere, often translated adequately as “summoned”, but as Lintott notes, it has an element of compulsion to it) by a magistrate. There were a few standard dates on which this would effectively always happen, particularly the first day of the consular year, but beyond that it was expected that magistrates in Rome could call the Senate at any time to discuss any issue on relatively short notice. There was initially no requirement that Senators live in the city of Rome, but it was clearly assumed. Early on in the second century, we get regulations requiring Senators to stay close to Rome unless they had an official reason to be elsewhere, though Senators might be permitted to leave if they needed to fulfill a vow. In the Late Republic it seems to have been common also for Senators to leave the city during the spring res prolatae, a sort of recess from public business (literally “the deferring of business”), but these informal breaks did not mean the Senate was truly “out of session” and it could still be summoned by a magistrate.

Generally, meetings of the Senate began at dawn, though they could begin later, and they proceeded either until the business was concluded or to dusk. Because of the ritual preparations required, no meeting of the Senate could last more than a day, much like the assemblies, so if the business was not finished, a new meeting would need to be called and the process begun from scratch. While it seems that magistrates generally tried to avoid calling the Senate during festival days, dies nefandi (days unsuited for public business) and meetings of the popular assemblies, there was no requirement to do so and the Senate might be called for any day for most of the Republic, with laws restricting the Senate’s meeting days only coming midway through the first century.

Beyond this, Senators were expected to show up and we hear of threats of fines or other censure for failure to show up, but it also seems like no meeting of the senate was ever very close to the full body and quorums for the Senate were fairly low, 100 or 150. For the Sullan Senate, notionally of 600 members, the highest attendances we know of, as noted by Lintott, are 415, 417 and 392. Of course some significant number of Senators will, at any time, have been active magistrates overseas, or serving as military tribunes, or as senatorial legati, but it seems clear that even beyond this attendance was not universal even if it was in theory supposed to be.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: How to Roman Republic 101, Part IV: The Senate”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-09-22.

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