The Rise of the Roman Empire

Summary

Dan Snow's History Hit – "The Rise of the Roman Empire"

Date: June 4, 2026
Host: Dan Snow
Guest: Dr. Simon Elliott (Roman historian, archaeologist, author)

---

Episode Overview

In this captivating episode, Dan Snow and renowned Roman historian Dr. Simon Elliott embark on an expansive journey tracing Rome’s transformation from a collection of humble settlements on the Tiber to the threshold of the vast Roman Empire under Augustus. The episode explores Rome’s mythic origins, the gritty realities of its Iron Age beginnings, its absorption and surpassing of neighboring rivals, and the unceasing adaptability and ambition that propelled it from obscurity to dominance. This is the first in a series, setting the scene for the Empire’s peak and internal turmoil, with future guests promised, including Mary Beard.

---

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Legendary Foundations: Rome’s Origin Stories

[05:31] – [08:28]

• Rome’s identity is deeply entwined with its mythic beginnings, primarily the stories of Romulus and Remus (raised by a she-wolf, city founded after a fratricidal conflict) and the Trojan prince Aeneas as recounted by Virgil.
• Simon Elliott: “It’s important to the Romans. It’s very important to the Romans… This is a very traditional society, and so they love grounding themselves in the narrative of their history.” [08:00]

2. Geography and Reality: The Layer Cake of Early Italy

[08:28] – [10:21]

• The Italian peninsula was a patchwork: north of the Po Valley lay the Gauls, followed by Etruria (home of the Etruscans), Latium (where Rome lurked among rival towns), and Magna Graecia (southern Greek colonies).
• Rome was only one of several growing and competitive towns in Latium. Its ascent to dominance was far from guaranteed.

3. Early Success Factors: Adaptability and Grit

[10:27] – [11:49]

• Romans distinguished themselves early by never accepting defeat on unfavorable terms and by their skill in adopting—and improving—other peoples’ technologies and ideas.
• Simon Elliott: “They had true grit, they always came back and they never accepted a peace agreement unless it was on their own terms… And the other one… is that they’re great at nicking other people’s ideas.” [10:57]

4. The Roman Republic: Political Stability Amid Violence

[14:31] – [15:52]

• Rome’s hatred of kings (stemming from the overthrow of Tarquin the Proud in 509 BC) led to a republic with two consuls, regular elections, and checks on power—features which brought flexibility and resilience.
• Political organization is spotlighted as a key Roman advantage over monarchic rivals.
• Dan Snow: “Their politics is part of the reason for their success.” [15:52]

5. The Wars That Forged Rome’s Power

a. Pyrrhic Wars

[16:06] – [17:43]

• First clash with Hellenistic kingdoms came with Pyrrhus of Epirus. Romans adopted anti-elephant tactics, innovated by necessity.
• Simon Elliott: “To counter the elephants, the Romans created anti-elephant wagons… Proper Roman ingenuity.” [17:23]

b. Punic Wars and Becoming a Sea Power

[18:55] – [20:06]

• Rome’s rise as a regional power is cemented with the First Punic War (264–241 BC) against Carthage—a leap from local to interregional significance and the creation of a navy “from absolutely nowhere.”
• Dan Snow: “They become a sea power… Extraordinary.” [20:02]
• The adaptive martial culture is compared to the Klingons: “A proper martial culture and losing is not appropriate.” [20:16]

c. The Second Punic War and Hannibal

[24:19] – [25:07]

• Hannibal’s invasion shakes Rome to its core, but defeat at Cannae and other disasters are met with resilience—Romans always come back.
• Simon Elliott: “The system is secure enough to take that kind of hit. And Hannibal’s system isn’t secure enough to fight a long war, and ultimately again he gets defeated at Zama.” [24:47]

d. Expansion into Greece and the Hellenistic World

[25:28] – [29:21]

• The intercepted alliance between Macedon and Hannibal draws Rome into the wealth and conflicts of the Hellenistic east.
• The Macedonian and Seleucid Wars highlight Rome’s military innovation and flexibility, especially against the more rigid pike phalanxes.
• Simon Elliott: “The Roman system’s more flexible. Full stop. Much more flexible, full stop. Which reflects the fact that Roman society is more flexible compared to a Hellenistic kingdom.” [29:47]

e. Marius & The Professionalization of the Army

[30:36] – [32:47]

• The threat from the migrating Cimbri and Teutones leads to Marius’ reforms: standardized equipment, recruitment from the poor, and the creation of armies loyal to their generals—a recipe for both military prowess and future civil strife.
• Simon Elliott: “He allows them to be recruited from the poor, okay? So they become ultra loyal to the warlord… and that’s why you effectively get these independent warlords.” [31:53]

6. The Wealth Trap: Hellenistic Riches and Republic's Downfall

[33:37] – [39:40]

• Newfound wealth from the east corrupts Rome’s political elite, fueling ceaseless competition, ambition, and a cycle of civil wars.
• Loyal armies become personal property of generals (Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, Octavian), the Republic is “stretched to breaking point,” and opportunistic warlords chase both wealth and power.
• Simon Elliott: “The access to Hellenistic wealth… was so great it bent the nature of Roman society at the very top.” [38:07]

7. Civil Wars and the End of the Republic

[39:40] – [41:18]

• Power struggles erupt: Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Antony, and Octavian (Augustus), culminating in centralization of authority under Augustus after decades of instability and violence.
• Dan Snow: “In the end, all these hyper wealthy, ambitious—what leaves that republic, so the empire’s grown and yet in the centre, in and around Rome, they’re just going after each other.” [37:39]

8. The Empire at Augustus’s Accession

[41:51] – [44:03]

• By Augustus’s time, Rome controls the Mediterranean basin: from Spain and Gaul to Greece and western Anatolia, northern Africa, and Egypt. Later additions include Britain, Dacia, and Judea.
• Simon Elliott: “It’s a Mediterranean Empire... and then there’s only one or two other Boltons that come along after that. You’ve got Britain, you’ve got Dacia, you’ve got Judea, et cetera. But broadly, it’s in place.” [43:56]

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Dan Snow: “Greatness is actually forged in defeat. That’s the truth, Simon. It’s easy to be great when you’re winning, but real greatness is when everything has gone disastrously wrong.” [11:52]
• Simon Elliott: “The legionaries kept butchering them, kept going and going and going. So they just did not get this Roman grittiness, this inability to accept anything other than total victory on your own terms.” [30:03]
• Dan Snow: “It’s astonishingly violent, isn’t it? I mean there’s just... You’re fighting foreign enemies, you’re fighting slaves within Italy and then you also start fighting each other.” [37:29]
• Simon Elliott: “Everybody’s nicking everything. Right?” [34:18]

---

Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Event | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:15 | Introduction to Rome’s humble beginnings and series premise | | 05:31 | Romulus and Remus/gritty mythic origins | | 08:28 | The “layer cake” of ancient Italy’s population and Rome’s neighbors | | 10:27 | Roman distinctive characteristics: grit and adaptability | | 14:31 | Overthrow of kings and republican government structure | | 16:06 | First wars with Hellenistic powers (Pyrrhus, anti-elephant tactics) | | 18:55 | First Punic War: Rome’s ascent and becoming a naval power | | 24:19 | Second Punic War: Hannibal and Rome’s resilience | | 25:28 | Involvement with Hellenistic east & Macedonian Wars | | 30:36 | Marius’s military reforms and rise of warlord politics | | 33:37 | Civil wars, personal armies, wealth, and the breakdown of the Republic | | 39:40 | Augustus: Pax Romana and the formal birth of the Empire | | 41:51 | State of the Empire at Augustus’s rise, and its Mediterranean scale | | 44:03 | Teaser for the next episode: Managing the Imperial Roman machine |

---

Episode Tone

Dan Snow and Simon Elliott strike an energetic, accessible, and wryly humorous tone. The discussion blends storytelling, expert commentary, and relatable analogies—comparing Romans to “Klingons,” referencing “Alien vs. Predator,” and tracing the “layer cake” of Italian peoples. Both emphasize the brutal, ambitious, and innovative spirit that propelled Rome's ascent.

---

Closing

Dan teases the second episode in the series, with Mary Beard exploring Roman governance at its height. The story, he sums up, is one of ambition, toughness, adaptation, and relentless pursuit of victory.

Dan Snow [44:19]: “As we’ve learned, the rise of the Roman Empire, one of history’s most extraordinary stories… built on that ambition, on that toughness, on that discipline, on that ability to adapt and innovate… In our next episode, we are going to find out what that winning really looked like in practice.”

---

Next episode: The Roman Empire at its zenith, featuring Mary Beard.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's name your price tool for years. Now, with the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and Coverage match limited by state law,

[Optum Healthcare Announcer]

healthcare can feel complicated. That's why Optum uses technology to connect the people and processes that make healthcare easier, more affordable and more effective. We're making it clearer for you to know exactly what your benefits cover and to help you better manage your health. We're coordinating care between your doctors and your technology. We believe better, simpler healthcare is always possible. That's healthy optimism vats Optum. Visit optum.com to learn more.

[Men's Wearhouse Announcer]

Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What? I won floor seats. You did? I've been calling for 13 months. Wait, Chris.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yes.

[Men's Wearhouse Announcer]

I finally did it. What are you gonna wear? Men's Wearhouse. They've got today's looks for any occasion. And I need to look like a celebrity. Don't want to stick out. Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abboud and a tailor at every store for the perfect fit. Congrats. You can stop calling now. Not a chance. Get any look for every OCC Men's Wearhouse Love the way you look.

[Dan Snow]

It's very hard to imagine early Rome knowing all that would come. It's very hard to imagine it as a smattering of little dwellings perched atop the now famous seven hills. Clusters of small farming plots, wattle and daub huts, the Tiber river running below. It's Iron Age people just sort of milling about, tending their crops, trading their livestock, harvesting salt and timber down at the water's edge. But then every great empire has to start somewhere. And roam started here. These little hamlets, villages, would become the epicenter of one of the greatest civilizations in history. You'll all be familiar with that joke that men think about the Roman Empire every day. And as a man who does, I say, of course we do. It's not hard to see why. At Rome's height, it encompassed parts of at least 50 modern countries and something like a fifth of the entire world's population at the time. The Romans laid down founding principles that still influences our societies, our law, our governance this day. They forged trade routes across Europe, Africa and Asia. They built the roads that connect us. They gave us a religion still worshiped across all continents. So how on earth did these little villages coalesce and grow to become a mighty empire, so powerful, so influential, so instrumental in building our modern world? Why did it thrive? How did it manage to see off all of those competitors? Well, for the next few weeks, every Thursday, we'll be answering some of those enormous, those important questions. Some of the greatest Roman historians we know. We'll be joined by the likes of Dr. Simon Elliot, Professor Peter Heather, and Professor Mary Beard. And our first episode, I think it makes sense to go all the way back to the beginning. We're gonna trace the rise of that empire from those little huts, that little settlement in the first half of the first millennia BC we're gonna go right from there to the cusp of Augustus taking power as the first emperor of Rome. We're gonna trace the key moments, the big battles, the extraordinary individuals who shaped the story. To do that, I am joined by the one and only, the force of nature that is Simon Elliot. He's a bestselling historian, archaeologist, author and broadcaster, an expert on all things Rome. This is our series on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Enjoy. Simon, thanks for coming on the podcast.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolute pleasure, Dan. It's always lovely to come and join you on History Hit.

[Dan Snow]

I'm always fascinated by empires that have the name of. Not of a sort of region, a province, country or state as we know it today, like the British Empire, Russian Empire, but which have the name of a town like this is the Roman Empire. It's not the Italian or that. Why do we associate it with this? Well, what must have been quite a small settlement back in the day, because

[Simon Elliott]

within a few hundred years of it being founded, it came to dominate its entire, entire known world.

[Dan Snow]

And it is true to say what you know, it being found. It was just that little township that was what conquered the surrounding countryside, then just went on and on and on.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely but also you get this really beautiful origin story, or I should say origin stories. So you have Romulus and Remus, who are the sons of a vestal virgin called Rare Sylvia, who is forced to abandon them on the backs of the Tiber. And then.

[Dan Snow]

I'll stop you there. Wait a sec. Vestal virgin is meant to be a virgin and she's a priestess, effectively.

[Simon Elliott]

Yeah. Right. But she has two sons, and the father is Mars.

[Dan Snow]

Mars, God of war.

[Simon Elliott]

Mars God of war, yes.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so that's more a mythological origin story, you'd say.

[Simon Elliott]

Well, let's go through it. Cause the key thing is it's important to the Romans. It's very important to the Romans. So Rhea Silvia goes to a sanctuary of Mars and then she leaves and she's pregnant and she's got two sons who are born Romulus and Remus. And she's forced to abandon them on the banks of the River Tiber. And there they're saved by the river God Tiberinus, of course. And then they're raised and suckled by a she wolf, of course. But later in life, they become aware of their origins. They realize that they should have been players in their own world. But then they fall out because they alight on a place where they want to found a city. And this is the city of Rome, and it has seven hills, famously. And Romulus wants to found the settlement on the Palatine Hill, which later becomes the site of the imperial palace. Remus wants to use the Aventine Hill, which later becomes one of the fabulous sort of districts for people to live in. So all well and good, but they fall out. And ultimately Romulus kills Remus, of course. So there's a first learning experience there about the Roman world. It's gritty, it's violent. It's gritty and it's violent. And they know it. They know it.

[Dan Snow]

And they're raised by wolves.

[Simon Elliott]

They're raised by wolves, Right.

[Dan Snow]

So these guys are tough. Okay, well, that's the origin, that's the mythological story, one that the Romans believed. What do we know from the archaeology? What do we know from other texts? What was there before Rome? Were these Greek peoples, Greek settlers coming in? What's going on here?

[Simon Elliott]

But, Dan, there's another mythological story as well.

[Dan Snow]

Let's do that one.

[Simon Elliott]

It's never ending in the Roman world. So the second mythological story is Aeneas, who's a refugee from the Trojan Wars. Then Aeneas lands somewhere near Anzio, so a precursor of the Second World War invasion.

[Dan Snow]

And he's a brother of Paris and Hector, so royal prince, escapes from Troy, okay. Lands Angio, like the Second World War.

[Simon Elliott]

And then his son is the one who actually in this mythological story founds the town Alba Longa where Rhea Silvia came from. So it's all very confusing. It's confusing for me, I'm sure it's confusing for you and Alice as well. It was confusing for the Romans. So we have the great Virgil coming up with the aid his astonishing poetic narrative where he ties them together. And from the point that's written, that's what the Romans go with.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, interesting.

[Simon Elliott]

That's what the Romans go with. And it's important for the Romans, right. This is a very traditional society, a very traditional society. And so they love grounding themselves in the narrative of their history. And this is what they go with.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so they think that they descended from a mixture of wolf raised brothers, Trojan princes who've come from the East. What do we think? I'm sorry to be a bit skeptical about that, but what is an Italian place, a Greek place? They settle, Are they Phoenicians? Where are they coming from?

[Simon Elliott]

I'm going to talk to you about the great Roman Bake Off. So it's all about layer cake. So I'm going to give you a geographical slice through the Italian peninsula. We're looking at about 500 BC. So at the very top, Cisalpine Gaul, north of the Po Valley, you've got the Gauls living Cisalpine Gaul, funnily enough, Transalpine Gaul is the other side of the Alps. That's where the other Gauls live. But the Roman relevant Gauls are in Alpine Gaul. Below that you have Etruria, so the Etruscans, who are heavily influenced by Greek culture because they're a mercantile maritime nation. Then you have Latium with a variety of different towns and cities. Rome is only one of them. So it's astonishing that Rome comes to dominate Latium, let alone everything else. Then below that you've got Magna Graecia, sort of where you have the Greek settlements through the Bay of Salerno, through towards Sicily.

[Dan Snow]

So just like New England is in, on the east coast of North America, you have Greater Greece, which is sort of Greek settlements in southern Italy.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely right. But then to confuse things, through the spine of Italy, through the Apennine Mountains, you have the Oscar speaking peoples, which is a very old language actually. And it's from the Oscans that later you get the likes of the Lucanians, who were the founders of places like Paestum. And also you get the Samnites who are one of the later Roman major enemies in the Italian peninsula. So it's a layer cake. So at the point when Rome is founded, however it's founded, whenever it's founded, it's one of number of quite powerful growing towns and cities sort of in the Tiber area which we call Latium.

[Dan Snow]

So when Rome was founded and the traditional date is what, 753 or something? Yeah, 753. Do you think there's any truth to that?

[Simon Elliott]

No.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Simon Elliott]

No, got no way of knowing.

[Dan Snow]

Okay. So but when it's founded, so roughly speaking, 500 B.C. 600, it was just what a little mercantile community, people gathered together and the nearest one could have been a few miles away. Their sort of, you know, nearest competitor or neighbors.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely. And the interesting thing there then is how the Romans came to dominate the rest of the towns in Latium.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Simon Elliott]

Because they're the same people speaking the same language. So there's something different about the Romans from early on. And then if you go back to their origin stories which they believed, there is a grittiness, there's almost a darkness there actually. The willingness to do whatever it takes to win. And this later plays into the psyche of the Roman Republic. Later. And then the Roman Empire pre incubated dominate phase where I say the Romans had two things which gave them advantage over every other people we're going to talk about today. They had true grit, they always came back and they never accepted a peace agreement unless it was on their own terms and that's a big deal. Actually when we talk about the Hellenistic kingdoms, they just didn't understand that at all. They just completely were wrong footed. And the other one, Dan, is that they're great at nicking other people's ideas.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Simon Elliott]

So if we run through a little bit further before we go back, if you look at the classic Caesarean legionary, he's got a Gallic helmet, the clues in the name, he's got lorica, hamatochain, mail, that's from the Gauls. He's got a Gladysis spaniansis, that's from the Spaniards. He's got pilum javelins, they're from the Spaniards. He's got a scutum shield, that's from the Samnites, everything's nicked. But the Romans are very good at nicking ideas and technology. Especially if they lost, if they lose, they almost always come back and they're better.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. That is the interesting thing about the Roman Empire is they're not invincible. They get shooed all the time through their history. But the point is they come back

[Simon Elliott]

and we're going to talk about some of the biggest shoeings on this pod.

[Dan Snow]

Greatness is actually forged in defeat. That's the truth, Simon. It's easy to be great when you're winning, but real greatness is when everything has gone disastrously wrong.

[Simon Elliott]

Exactly right.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so they're a town in latium. I'm thinking 500 BC. So you've got Athens and Sparta, a magnificent building, great big site. Rome would have been what, a collection of mud huts during that Athenian golden age. What are we thinking?

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely, yeah. Let's run through to 323 BC when Alexander the Great dies in Babylon. So the great things happening in the world building up to the real rise of the Roman Republic, which actually takes place probably as you get into the third and second centuries. The great things are happening in the east. So you're having the Greco Persian wars, you're having the Peloponnesian War, which involves Sicily. You're having the various campaigns of the Greek states against the Persians. Later you're getting the rise of Macedon. Then you're getting Alexander the Great. And Alexander the Great literally conquers his entire known world. Truly astonishing feat. That's all happening. So in a way, what's going off in Italy is a backwater. It's almost irrelevant. When Alexander the Great dies, the contemporary sources don't say his next offensive is going to be against Italy. It was going to be Arabia, you know, so why bother with Italy? So in that sense, in actual fact, you can almost see that the Romans with their grittiness and with their ability to osmos other people's ideas and technologies and culture are given a free hand. And so we'll run through to 323. They're fighting various wars against the Etruscans to the north, and they're losing, but then win. They're fighting various wars against the Magna Graans to the south, south, but losing and then win. They're fighting their own Latin city neighbors and they win. They're fighting the various tribes in the Apennine Mountains and they win. They're losing and winning and losing, but they're always coming back, always coming back. So as you get towards the time when Alexander dies in 323, they're more or less beginning to dominate, certainly central Italy. And looking towards the south, Alexander the

[Dan Snow]

Great might have heard of them. Someone might have said, you know, there's a new lads on the block there in Italy. They're not doing too badly.

[Simon Elliott]

I have to say that's a really good question actually, Dan, because I wouldn't personally definitively say he would think that Rome is important at all. There are much more important cities in the Italian peninsula. So, for example, when I'm leading to in Campania, the place we go to first is Pacedon, which was Poseidonia, which was an amazing sort of port with three of the best classical temples in the ancient world. You'd have probably heard of Poseidonia, maybe not have heard of Rome. That's a really good question.

[Dan Snow]

And again, you said the Romans are adaptable. Great. Is there anything else you can identify in these early days? Are they better at mobilizing their citizenry? Have they got. But why are they taking the fight to these other neighbours and why are they winning?

[Simon Elliott]

They don't like kings.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Simon Elliott]

They really, really, really don't like kings. So the last Etrusco Roman king, Tarquin the Prow, was overthrown in 509 BC, and that's when the Roman Republic begins.

[Dan Snow]

So 509, 509.

[Simon Elliott]

And that runs all the way through to 27 BC, when Augustus is acclaimed the first emperor by the Senate. So that is the Roman Republic that we're talking about there. And they don't like kings. You can see by analogy the same thing happening in the states today, where you have campaigns saying, no. So it's intrinsically threaded through Roman psyche from the point Tarquin's discarded that, no more kings.

[Dan Snow]

And that's quite energizing because you're taking on kings elsewhere. So it must be quite cool to me that, yeah, we're the guys now

[Simon Elliott]

have a king and they're quite clever at sharing power. So let's quickly run through Roman society. Bottom slaves, then freed men who are manumitted slaves, then free men who had never been slaves, and then three classes of aristocrat, curial, so the middle classes, equestrians, the knights, and then the senatorial class at the very top, which is a tiny percentage of the Roman population even into the empire. Now, the important thing is there that the senatorial classes, although they were at teachers of throats all the time in terms of political unity, for most of the time, they actually worked in the best interests of Rome. So you have two consuls all the time, so there's always someone who can go on campaign as someone who can run things. In Rome, you have regular magisterial elections, so everybody gets a say in that kind of thing.

[Dan Snow]

And so their politics is part of the reason for their success.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

So you come up against problems with Inherited monarchy, you just the consul system, you're electing probably people that are reasonably decent at the job. Whereas you might be fighting a group with a useless king who's completely incompetent.

[Simon Elliott]

It provides the stability you need when things go badly. So things do go badly frequently for the Roman republic. So let's look at examples. We'll move into the third century bc. So the first time the Romans fight a Hellenistic kingdom, it's piracy of Epiparous. When Pierre Seviparus invades in the 280s and you have the Pyrrhic victories and ultimately a Roman victory, the Romans are fighting pike phalanxes for the first time. They're fighting. They don't like it. They're fighting lance, arm shot cavalry for the first time and they don't like it. And they're fighting elephants for the first time and they don't like it. But they're Romans so they learn and ultimately they win the conflict. Now the interesting thing is there we know that Pyrrhus main objective, he was brought over by the Tarantines from the southeast coast of Italy.

[Dan Snow]

So these are Greek descended colonial settlements in southern Italy. They've brought help from home from Greece to take on these Romans.

[Simon Elliott]

Yeah. So for the first time the Hellenistic kingdoms in the form of Pyrrhus are sort of in this back of the Hellenistic world. Which is an interesting way of looking at it because I think there's a degree of truth in that from a Hellenistic point of view that doesn't go well for the Hellenistic kingdoms. But we'll hold that for later. So Paris is actually basically trying to pair away the various Roman allied states from Rome. But the Romans win. And again, let's go back to true grit and the ability to nick other people's ideas. There's a line in the contemporary sources that to counter the elephants, the Romans created anti elephant wagons which had a ballista in the front of the wagon and then two flaming poles against a catapult. Yeah. And the sides on the end of poles to hamstring the elephants. Wow. Proper Roman ingenuity.

[Dan Snow]

And okay, and you're right, the stability of that political system. So if a king loses a battle, his brother knives him, the whole country collapses as the court all turn each other and you know, nephews emerge and take over. In the Roman system, the consul finishes, he hasn't been a success, someone else takes over the following year. There's a constitutional process.

[Simon Elliott]

And also within that constitutional process, if the consul isn't any good, you can get rid of him before the end of his term by voting to install somebody else to replace him as well. So it's a really, really. Compared to the fairly inflexible kingdoms that the Romans are now dealing with, it's actually a much more flexible system. So it gives the Romans an extra string to their bow. They've got the grit and now they've got the flexibility as well.

[Dan Snow]

If your king keeps losing battles, you can't get rid of them constitutionally. So you either have to kill him and precipitate a kind of domestic crisis, or just let him keep losing battles

[Simon Elliott]

or let him lead a charge from the front.

[Dan Snow]

Well, yeah, that's ideal. Yeah. Then you get one of his incompetent sons. That's the problem. O, that's interesting. So Rome is. So it's expanding through central Italy, it's pushing to southern Italy and, well, pushing throughout Italy. When would we say, yeah, Rome is a regional power. This is interesting. We need to keep an eye on this place. What year would that be?

[Simon Elliott]

Middle of the third century. So here's our layer cake. And the Romes are gradually taking slices from the layer cake to the north and to the south.

[Dan Snow]

250 BC. Ish.

[Simon Elliott]

I'm gonna go 250. Yeah. The reason is because it's in the middle of the First Punic War. The First Punic War begins in 264. The Romans come into conflict with the Carthaginians.

[Dan Snow]

Right. These are North Africans. So there's a regional power power in North Africa starts crashing into the regional power in the Italian peninsula.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely. And the regional power in North Africa, the Carthaginians, who are originally from the Levant, settled Punic, Carthaginian, Punic Wars. They're gradually expanding their own empire across the western Mediterranean. So you're looking at the Balearic Islands, Spain, Spain, Sicily, Sicily, crucially. And by this point the Romans are more or less controlling all of Italy. So they're now crossing into Sicily. This shall not stand in the Roman world. So you get the first puny war 264 to 241.

[Dan Snow]

And so the first Punic War is their first sort of inter regional war. When they're sort of going beyond the sea, they're taking on enemies from quite different linguistic and cultural groups.

[Simon Elliott]

The wars against Pyrrhus are international, but they're in the peninsula, right?

[Dan Snow]

Yes.

[Simon Elliott]

Whereas now we're outside the peninsula. So they're now going out of their comfort zone. But again, this is a very lengthy war. But again, that Roman ability To learn from your mistakes. And then nick, your opponent's ideas is absolutely nailed on here.

[Dan Snow]

They become a sea power.

[Simon Elliott]

They do. From absolutely nowhere.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. Extraordinary.

[Simon Elliott]

And they witness.

[Dan Snow]

What is that culture of learning. Is there a mechanism as a sort of bureaucracy? Why are they. Is it something about not having a king that makes you more open to those ideas of politicians? Go, let's adopt this. And I mean, what's going on there?

[Simon Elliott]

I think it's been led by the military. This is a very militaristic culture, a very, very martial culture. If you used to use a modern analogy in popular culture, you'd say they were the Klingons. Right. A proper martial culture and losing is not appropriate. Yeah. So if you lose, you're gone. But the person who comes up makes sure that they don't lose. Give you a great example as well. Marching camps. Every Roman military campaign in enemy territory involves the building of marching camps every night. Every night. And it begins. It begins in the Pyrrhic wars because the Romans learned it from Pyrrhus of Epirus.

[Dan Snow]

Right? And they're like, that's good, we're doing that.

[Simon Elliott]

So you've got two examples there within 30 years, haven't you? You've got the marching camps, which are great for me as an archaeologist because it means I can trace their roots for most of their campaigns. But also they become a naval power as well. Now that's important as well, becoming a naval power and winning the first Punic War. Cause it drags the Romans now properly away from the Italian peninsula into the western Mediterranean. And suddenly their sites are sort of, you know, going, oh, this is interesting. And you can imagine the Hellenistic king who's over there. So who's that?

[Dan Snow]

Not. Yeah. What are they doing? So you've got north, they're into North Africa, they're into Spain. They're okay. Interesting. Dance knows history. There's more on this topic coming up.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years now, with the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited.

[Optum Healthcare Announcer]

By state law, healthcare can feel complicated. That's why Optum uses technology to Connect the people and processes that make healthcare easier, more affordable, and more effective. We're making it clearer for you to know exactly what your benefits cover and to help you better manage your health. We're coordinating care between your doctors and your technology. We believe better, simpler healthcare is always possible. That's healthy optimism. That's Optum. Visit optum.com to learn more.

[Men's Wearhouse Announcer]

Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What? I won floor seats. You did? I've been calling for 13 months. Wa. Chris. Yes. I finally did it. What are you gonna wear? Men's Warehouse. They've got today's looks for any occasion. And I need to look like a celebrity. Don't want to stick out. Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abood, and a tailor at every store for the perfect fit. Congrats. You can stop calling now. Not a chance. Hit any look for every occasion at Men's Wearhouse. Love the way you look.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly, in the the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history. With me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcast. Podcasts brought to you by the award winning network History hit.

[Dan Snow]

Right? 250. What's next? The Second Punic War. So the famous one where Hannibal crosses out the biggie, this generational struggle against the Carthaginians, Alien versus Predator. Whoever wins, everyone else loses. Is that the next big stage?

[Simon Elliott]

It is. It's an absolute classic example of a war of survival. From a Carthaginian perspective. In particular, this is not a war of choice. They know the Romans are in a position to beat them on land and sea unless they seize the initiative. So you have the great Hannibal Barker doing his Hail Mary invading Italy. His three great victories in 218, 217 and 216 at Trebia, Trasimen and Cana. The losses at Cana are astonishing.

[Dan Snow]

One of the bloodiest days in history.

[Simon Elliott]

And yet the Romans come back. Yeah, the Romans come back. So the system is secure enough to take that kind of Hit. And Hannibal's system isn't secure enough to fight a long war and ultimately again he gets defeated at Zamma. And that's it. That's it for the Carthaginians at the end of the second Punic War. Third Punic War doesn't really matter because after that point they've absolutely won a

[Dan Snow]

little operation to capture Carthage again.

[Simon Elliott]

But something happens in the second Punic War which is then very relevant to the next part of the story and

[Dan Snow]

what date second Punic War.

[Simon Elliott]

Second Punic War ish. 218. 202. Right.

[Dan Snow]

We're so almost 2100 B.C. now. Yeah. They're fighting across the hot western Mediterranean. So they burst out of Italy and they're really. Yeah.

[Simon Elliott]

Now the East Mediterranean.

[Dan Snow]

Oh okay.

[Simon Elliott]

Because there's an idiot in Macedon. Ah. And this idiot is called Philip V who is the king of Macedon is the latest of the Antigonid dynasty founded by Antigonus the one eyed and then with his son Demetrius the procedure. So Philip V at the height of the second Punic War while Hannibal is winning in Italy, thinks it's a good idea to side with Hannibal. So it looks like.

[Dan Snow]

So he's aware of Rome, he's thinking actually we do need to get rid of these Romans.

[Simon Elliott]

I think he's after loot.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Simon Elliott]

I think basically they all think that the Roman world's about to collapse so that everyone wants to pile in. But his embassy to Hannibal gets intercepted at sea by the Romans. So the Romans now have in their sights the Hellenistic world for the first time the Greek world. There's a difference here Dan. It's very important for the rest of Roman history. When Alexander the Great defeated Darius iii, the last Achaemenid Persian king, he inherited the wealth of the Achaemid Persian Empire which is an astonishing amount of money and it dwarfs anything you would get in the western Mediterranean or Italy backwaters. This is effectively in this known world, all the wealth.

[Dan Snow]

That's it.

[Simon Elliott]

That's the divvied out when he dies in 323 BC amongst all of his various commanders who then found the various kingdoms of the Hellenistic world. So you have the kingdom of Macedon, the Antigonids, you have Ptolemy in Egypt, Ptolemy the saluted kingdom in in Syria and Iraq etc they're dripping in wealth. They're dripping in wealth and suddenly they've tapped on the Roman show and said hello mate, the Roman's gone. Oh that's really interesting. That is. And that's it. That's the point. That's the point when the draw happens, and that's that ultimately, I think, leads to the end of the Roman Republic,

[Dan Snow]

for reasons we're going to discuss. So the Romans, they finish off the Carthaginians. So by about 200, they're dominating Southern France, but lots of Spain, all the islands, a chunk of North Africa, what we'd now say, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, that sort of coast, and they start expanding, as with empires, that's what you do. You have a town on the coast and you get a bit of trouble with the tribe in the interior. You'd conquer them and there's someone else and you've got to keep going. Right. So sucked into that whole area. So tell me about when do they first march east?

[Simon Elliott]

Very shortly after. Okay, so you get a series of four Macedonian wars. The first Macedonian War happens almost immediately after the end of the Second Punic War. Then you get the Second Macedonian War

[Dan Snow]

and they're marching, what, through what is now the Balkans into northern Greece.

[Simon Elliott]

Yeah. Basically, if you're in Rome, you go down the Viar Appia to Brindisi and then go across to.

[Dan Snow]

Sail across.

[Simon Elliott]

Yeah, go across to modern Albania.

[Dan Snow]

Albania. And then you're in.

[Simon Elliott]

Yeah, okay, that's right. And so you go. Albania is a Pyrrhus. And then you're into Macedon itself. So the Macedonian was a biggie because it's when Philip V leads his field army, his pike phalanxes and all the other sort of glamorous entities of a Hellenistic army.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. These are the successors of Alexander the Great.

[Simon Elliott]

The Romans hammer them at the Battle of Carnosophile, the Battle of the Doghead, which is the name of two hills, and the Romans absolutely hammer them. And it's a shock to the Hellenistic world because at that point, the pike phalanx is thought to be the bee's knees, unstoppable. And now. Now it's not. I mean, it's a proper hammering. Then we end up with a third Macedonian War, and the Third Macedonian War, the son of Philip V also picks a fight with the romans. And in 168, he fights the battle of Pydna, and he gets flattened as well. And I mean flattened, flattened. And that's effectively. There's a fourth Macedonian War, but that's effectively the end of the kingdom of Macedon, gets broken up into territories and eventually becomes part of the Roman world. So you get two major battles there. Carnosoft Leophil at the Pydna against Perseus, and that's it. The Romans have done in the middle of that. In 190, the Romans also fight the Roman Seleucid War and win another battle against pike phalanxes at the Battle of magnesia around 190, 189.

[Dan Snow]

Where's that? Is that.

[Simon Elliott]

That's western Anatolia.

[Dan Snow]

Okay. So they've moved through Mastun into what is now Turkey. Western Turkey.

[Simon Elliott]

And you know what's over there? All that money.

[Dan Snow]

Loads of cash.

[Simon Elliott]

Loads of cash. So I have to say, actually, I'm a Roman historian. I love my Romans. I still want the pike phalanxes to win.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Simon Elliott]

All those great battles, I still want them to win. But you know what, Dan? They never do.

[Dan Snow]

Right. And just while we're here, why is that? Because from my storybooks when I was a kid, it was because those Roman short swords could get in through that hedge of spears and actually get up close to the pikeman.

[Simon Elliott]

The Roman system's more flexible. Full stop. Much more flexible, full stop. Which reflects the fact that Roman society is more flexible compared to a Hellenistic kingdom.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, because all those pike men with their big, very, very long spears, sharp tips, it's great. But they're like a hedgehog. There's not much they can do about it. You can't suddenly reform them and point them in a different direction.

[Simon Elliott]

And going back to my earlier points as well, Dan, about the fact that the Hellenistic kingdoms really couldn't wrap their head around the way the Romans fought. So one of the things that the Hellenistic pikemen would do if they'd lost was they'd lift their pike up and that will be their sign of surrender. But the legionaries kept butchering them, kept going and going and going. So they just did not get this Roman grittiness, this inability to accept anything other than total victory on your own terms.

[Dan Snow]

Do the floodgates open? So what we're now in the sort of 1 90s, 180s, 170s BC and is that now just Roman conquest just starts to really push east.

[Simon Elliott]

There are other things that are going to happen. So you have, towards the end of the second century, the Cimbrian wars, when you get Germans from the far north of Germany, Jutland Peninsula, Frisia, places like that, who come down en masse and actually almost get themselves into the republican center. Okay. And the Roman armies there lose multiple times before the great Marius comes along, completely reforms the Roman legions in a new form. This is very important. In a new form. And then ultimately is victorious. And here we can start talking about. About the emergence overtly of the two major political cultures within the Roman Senate. You have the optimates of the pro senate reactionaries and you have the populares who are the radicals. So Marius is on a popular side. Later Caesar's populares sulla an extreme example of somebody who's an optimalities. And actually it's the grinding between those two political classes from the time of the Cimbrian wars through to the end of the Republic in 27 B.C. that actually sets the scene for what's gonna happen. But the key thing with Marius is this. He changes the nature of the Roman legions totally. And he increases the number of legionaries in the Legion to 6,000. And the Romans have probably got about 30 at this point. But they're all equipped the same. They're all equipped the same way. Two pilums, gladius, banyansis, lorica, hamata, Gallic helmet, scutum shield. All equipped in exactly the same way. 1800 of them are engineers who do things like they're woodworkers, they are stonemasons, they can do everything. And they're soldiers as well, okay? And in addition, every legionary is also trained to engineer as well. So you have the experts fighting and the Roman legionaries who can be engineers fighting. You don't need a siege train behind you, you don't need a supply chain. It's all within that one unit. And he allows them to be recruited from the poor, okay? So they become ultra loyal to the warlord. I call them warlords in my books, the warlord who recruits them. So Scylla recruits his own legions, Marius recruits his own legions, Caesar recruits his own legions. They are ultra, ultra loyal. And that's why you effectively get these independent warlords as you cascade into the the 1st century BC who basically they can do whatever they want.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so but as you say, it's so interesting so that Carthaginians get to the gates of Rome, these Germans almost get to the gates. I mean even at Rome now as a big Mediterranean power, it's still flirting with disaster quite regularly. Killy.

[Simon Elliott]

It's probably because it's quite thinly stretched. And also remember at the same time the drawer of the East. So they've been drawn into Anatolia already. They're going through Asia, they're taking out the various kingdoms now sort of Bithynia and Pergamine, which are in Anatolia. And every time they take one out, whoever the warlord is becomes incredibly rich and his troops become incredibly rich. So if you're in Rome and you're an upcoming Senate, you can say, I want to Go at that. Can I have a go at that, please? And there's a scramble between the populari champions and. And the optimate champions all wanting to have a crack at making a name and fortune, absolute fortune.

[Dan Snow]

And then also you might return to Italy. You've got troops loyal to you, which

[Simon Elliott]

is an issue because soldiers need to be kept busy. Say you end up with sort of a really vicious series of civil wars beginning again and again and again as you cascade all the way through the first century bc. The best known ones are obviously the civil wars of Caesar, but there are many plenty more plenty.

[Dan Snow]

And so as the Roman Empire expands, the opportunities making wealth just blow everyone's mind. And that competition for the spoils starts to tear the Republic apart.

[Simon Elliott]

It's a bad time, Dan, to be a classical statue in Athens because you're not gonna stay there very long. You're gonna end up in Rome in some posh senator's house.

[Dan Snow]

Everything's nicking everything.

[Simon Elliott]

Everybody's nicking everything. Right?

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history hit the best is yet to come. Stick with us.

[Optum Healthcare Announcer]

Healthcare can feel complicated. That's why Optum uses technology to connect the people and processes that make healthcare easier, more affordable and more effective. We're making it clearer for you to know exactly what your benefits cover and to help you better manage your health. We're coordinating care between your doctors and your technology. We believe better, simpler healthcare is always possible. That's healthy optimism. That's Optum. Visit optum.com to learn more.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Simon Elliott]

States.

[Dan Snow]

And then people like, so Marius, he defeats the Germans, but he then he will face a warlord who he ends up fighting it out with.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolutely. Yeah. So you can go through the list. There's Marius, there's Sulla, there's Pompey Magnus, there's Caesar, there's Mark Antony, there's Octavian later, and many others as well. And at one stage or another, the populares are in charge at one stage or another. The optimates are in charge at one stage. Or somebody's leading a campaign in Asia making vast amounts of money. Another stage, somebody else is doing it. And the whole Roman system is being to breaking point.

[Dan Snow]

So when a guy like Pompey conquers Great chunks of Asia. He comes back, he's unbelievably rich, he's got loyal troops. So he briefly, he will sort of dominate the politics in Rome, almost a dictator in all but name until Julius

[Simon Elliott]

Caesar arrives, crossed a Rubicon and he'll exit, right?

[Dan Snow]

Exactly. So Julius Caesar though, does the same. He conquers what is now France and bits of Belgium into Germany, all that kind of stuff. So he gets loads of money and loyal followers and he comes back to Italy. So it's just inherent that the system becomes unstable.

[Simon Elliott]

Hugely unstable. Hugely unstable. It's interesting with Caesar, when I was doing my research for my biography of Caesar, basically it's called Julius Caesar, Rome's greatest warlord. And I came up in the book with a series of traits that all these warlords had to a greater or lesser extent. So the ability to communicate with people high and low, true bravery, leading from the front when you need to. Tactical and strategic acumen, various traits. And Caesar's the only one for me who has them all, the whole package. And that's why he becomes so, so

[Dan Snow]

dominant, we should say, apart from foreign enemies almost toppling Rome. Just quick shout out for Spartacus. The slave revolt. People have heard of that. I mean that shakes Rome to its foundation as well. What date is that?

[Simon Elliott]

That is early in the first century B.C. and it's the third servile revolt. So it's the third major slave revolt actually.

[Dan Snow]

So gigantic slave revolts that require total mobilization of the Roman state to defeat all these enslaved people.

[Simon Elliott]

The Romans are absolutely terrified all the time of slave revolts. It's a big deal. That's why in the Roman world it's very, very rare to get a ratio of slaves to freed people of any more than about 20%. Because they're terrified of slavery bonds.

[Dan Snow]

It's astonishingly violent, isn't it? I mean there's just. You're fighting foreign enemies, you're fighting slaves within Italy and then you also start fighting each other.

[Simon Elliott]

Klingons.

[Dan Snow]

Klingons, right, Klingons, yeah. In the end, all these hyper wealthy, ambitious what leaves that republic. So the empire's grown own and yet in the center, in and around Rome, they're just going after each other. Sulla arrests, executes opponents, Pompey does the same. Julius Caesar will famously do the same and become almost a king in all but name. Why is there that astonishing breakdown at the heart? Why does the system break down?

[Simon Elliott]

Money. It's the Hellenistic wealth, I think the access to the Hellenistic wealth which Alexander the Great captured from the back of near Persia, Persians was so great it bent the nature of Roman society at the very top. Because suddenly if you were able to capture a fairly small kingdom in Anatolia.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Simon Elliott]

Then you're going to be a multi trillionaire and anybody associated with you, so your troops are unbelievably loyal to you. No one's going to argue when you get back home unless they are also a multi trillionaire as well. So the whole nature of the top of Roman society has been bent and changed by this wealth.

[Dan Snow]

And then your loyal legions, their loyal legions.

[Simon Elliott]

They do, they do. And often what you find is that when the legions are defeated and usually the leader Pompey as an example, are killed, a lot of the legionaries will move over to fight for the new guy because he's got all the money, you know, and it's an issue, to be honest, because if you think about when Octavian becomes the last man standing after the battle of actium, he inherits 60 legions. 60. And that's 6,000 men legions, which even with the amount of wealth the Romans have got now, they can't afford. He inherits hundreds and hundreds of Polyrhene galleys in the Mediterranean and they've got no opponent anymore, so they're useless. So this is why one of the great things Augustus does is he's the next great reformer of the Roman military after Marius. Because of that, as you cascade, you go past Caesar being assassinated in 44, you then end up with another round of civil wars. Another round of civil wars and finally the last man standing is Octavian.

[Dan Snow]

Octavian, who is Caesar's great nephew. Yeah. So Octavian defeats the people that assassinate Caesar, all these other warlords. Then Octavian finally turns on his brother in law, Mark Anthony. The final clash. The two great warlords for control of the Roman world. Octavian wins and he becomes the emperor Augustus.

[Simon Elliott]

It's also more importantly, control of the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt.

[Dan Snow]

Right.

[Simon Elliott]

So it's the last vaguely independent Hellenistic kingdom which is fabulously, fabulously fabulously wealthy.

[Dan Snow]

And it's where all the bread for Rome comes. Comes from.

[Simon Elliott]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Simon Elliott]

Okay, so it's a big deal. And then that's it. And everyone just goes, you know, God, that was tiring, wasn't it?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. Because you've now had civil wars rocking the Roman republic since sort of Marius.

[Simon Elliott]

Yeah, Right.

[Dan Snow]

So, well, most of that first century bc. Yeah. You've now got one warlord left standing. And do they deliberately say at that point, look, we've just got to change the system here? This is Bonkers. Effectively going to make you Emperor for life.

[Simon Elliott]

They do, because he's in such a powerful position. So he's brought peace to the Roman world. And with all that sort of tribulation and the fighting and everything, even though you've got the wealth coming over from the Hellenistic world, it's not good for business. So what the political classes want is stability. They're being assassinated and they're losing all their wealth and they're being outpaced and outplayed by the Novo riche, who themselves are leading their campaigns in the East. So the political classes in Rome, the senatorial class, they want basically some stability. And so you have the Pax Romana brought in by Octavian, and the senator claim him Augustus, and say, okay, we'll leave it to you. Crack on, on. And then he begins his reforms of the military. So that's the beginning of the story of the Roman Empire.

[Dan Snow]

What's weird is that during that first century bc, Romans are at each other's throats the whole time. They're at each other's throat because the empire's still expanding. Did they get lucky? There were no massive peer competitors at that time. I mean, if the Persians had sort of reemerged or the Germans in the north, or presumably they're a bit vulnerable when they're all fighting each other constantly.

[Simon Elliott]

The warlords are picking their fights. They're picking their fights. So, for example, example, if you're one of these warlords, we'll say Crassus or Mark Anthony. You will not choose to pick a fight with the Parthians. Right. Because they did and they lost. And in fact, Crassus actually lost his life and his son got killed as well. And Mark Anthony, his reputation as military leader was broken by the Parthians. So I think these guys were quite canny at picking fights. And it only becomes brutal when they have to fight. So Caesar forcing the issue, crossing the Rubicon in 49 as an example. Pompey can't ignore that. Can't ignore that. And actually that's when he bottles it and flees to Greece. But usually they're very good at picking fights. And you look at Caesar as an example. Caesar fights the Fourth Misfodatic War. That's where Veni, Vidi, Vici comes from, etc. But there's effectively no opponent there whatsoever. Very shrewd.

[Dan Snow]

Right, okay. So they, while they're having these internal fights, they're careful not to poke anyone on the border who might take advantage.

[Simon Elliott]

No. Or recruit them. Or recruit them. So Cassius and Brutus, for example, for their army, which fought against Octavian and Mark Anthony.

[Dan Snow]

So these are two of the leading people that assassinate Julius Caesar. They're now fighting Caesar's successors. Yeah, yeah.

[Simon Elliott]

And they recruit lots of Eastern horse archers into their army as an example. So you can either neutralize them, ignore them, or recruit them.

[Dan Snow]

We're now into the Roman Empire proper, the imperial phase of it. But in terms of the red on the map, had most of the conquering taken place by the time Augustus comes to the throne. So what proportion of Rome was yet to be conquered by the time it reached its peak under the Emperor Trajan? 100 years or so in the future.

[Simon Elliott]

Right, so the Roman Emperor Empire is a Mediterranean empire. That's the first thing to remember. And it becomes a Mediterranean Empire, I would think, from it's all about North Africa, natural fact, because after the end of the Third Puny War, the Roman elites really didn't want Africa to recover. And it's only in the leaders like Caesar, where people start reinvesting in the region. So it's as you come into the first century B.C. that the bits of North Africa start getting joined together again. And then ultimately Egypt joins them. And that's it. That's your Mediterranean Empire. By then, Caesar has already bolted on Gaul.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Simon Elliott]

Okay, so that's more or less it. And then so it's the sort of.

[Dan Snow]

The people can imagine, it's just the whole red strip all the way around the Mediterranean, including Greece and Western Turkey, down in, what, Lebanon bits, Jordan, Israel, Palestine. I think that's where we are when Octavius turns into Augustus and becomes emperor.

[Simon Elliott]

And then there's only one or two other Boltons that come along after that. You've got Britain, you've got Dacia, you've got Judea, et cetera. But broadly, it's in place.

[Dan Snow]

So for next episode, we're looking at that Roman Empire as it reaches its territorial maximum extent and just ruling over that empire and how effectively they do it. But in the meantime, Simon, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast.

[Simon Elliott]

Absolute pleasure.

[Dan Snow]

So, folks, thanks so much for listening. As we've learned, the rise of the Roman Empire, one of history's most extraordinary stories. Journeys, transformations. It was built on that ambition, on that toughness, on that discipline, on that ability to adapt and innovate. Innovate. And their unshakable belief that they would eventually win. In our next episode, we are going to find out what that winning really looked like in practice. We're going to be joined by the wonderful Mary Beard to hear about what happened when the Empire reached its height, what it took to run a sprawling empire successfully, always with barbarians knocking on the gate. A big thank you to Simon8 for joining us. This is the first episode in our series, so make sure you hit follow in your podcast player. Don't miss the next episode coming next Thursday. And if today's episode gave you a different perspective, you got any questions about Rome and the ancient world, then we'd love to hear from you. Leave us a comment on Spotify or better yet, a review wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states Healthcare can feel complicated.

[Optum Healthcare Announcer]

That's why Optum uses technology to connect the people and processes that make healthcare easier, more affordable and more effective. We're making it clearer for you to know exactly what your benefits cover and to help you better manage your health. We're coordinating care between your doctors and your technology. We believe better, simpler healthcare is always possible. That's healthy optimism. That's Optum. Visit optum.com to learn more.

[Dan Snow]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week week and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.