Monthly Archives: October 2021

The History of Rome Podcast. Episode 60 No Better Slave, No Worse Master The six months between Caligula’s taking power and getting sick was just a breather before Caligula embarked on his four-year reign of terror and madness. He was only 28 when the Senate and the Praetorian Guard and courtiers arranged to have him killed. Even allowing for the prejudices of the sources, he was Rome’s first really terrible emperor. We meet Claudius in Episode 61 What, me Claudius where the rather embarrassing and scholarly uncle of Caligula is chosen as the next Emperor. Expectations were at rock bottom after Tiberius and Caligula, but he turned out to be what Mike Duncan considers to be amongst the Top Ten of Emperors. He introduced bureaucratic reforms and oversaw the invasion of Britain, something that Julius Caesar had not managed. However, despite his victory of Caratacus in Britain, he made several unsuccessful marriages, as seen in Episode 62 Take my wife…please. He divorced his first wife Plautia Urgulanilla for adultery; he divorced the second Aelia Paetina because, as Sejanus’ relative she was a political liability. He then married Valeria Messalina who married her lover Silius while Claudius was at Ostia, so she and Silius were executed. Finally, he married Agrippina the Younger, his niece and Germanicus’ daughter. Episode 63 A Farewell to Claudius sees Claudius off the stage, helped it is said by Agrippina who had been raised by Livia and imbibed plenty of her strategies. Like Livia, Agrippina had her son Nero adopted by the emperor, and like Livia she was very ambitious for her son. Mike Duncan notes that there is no hard evidence that Agrippina poisoned Claudius, but he leans towards it. As for Claudius’ long-term legacy, he increased the size of the empire, and reinvigorated the role of censor to control his enemies in the Senate. He also made the Senate more multicultural, reflecting the increased size and diversity of the empire- something that probably contributed to its longevity.

Because of Anita In this second episode The Aftermath, three African-American women speak about the effect that the Anita Hill trial had on them. Professor Barbara Ransby rallied Black women in a historic show of visible support that still reverberates today by organizing for the publication a full-page advertisement with the signatures of (black?) women. Carol Moseley Braun ran for office—and won, becoming the first Black woman in the Senate (which until 1991 had only 2 white women). Drew Dixon, a young record producer grappling with sexual abuse in her own profession, had to make difficult decisions with the long shadow of the hearings looming over her. Through Anita Hill’s experience, she learned that Black people (both men and women) were critical of Black women who ‘dobbed’, thus giving succour to the ‘black rapist’ trope that could be used against all Black people. But she also learned that it takes courage to actually stand up and speak.

The History Listen (ABC) The Illusory Life of Esme Levante. Born in 1920 into a show-biz family, Esme performed from the age with her father The Great Levante. An escapologist, magician and cabaret artist, she travelled the world, first with her family, and then with her own show.

Background Briefing (ABC) Reconciliation gets pointy when it is your own family who was involved in massacres. The narrator of The Ghosts Are Not Silent Sam Carmody, is part of the Bussell family after which Busselton in Western Australia is named. The family had taken great pride in their ancestor John Garret Bussell, but they gradually became aware of stories that a member of the Bussell family had murdered a 7 year old girl, and that the surrounding area was known as a massacre site. Sam decided to speak to traditional owners, many of whom were reluctant to be

History Extra podcast. Apparently historians now prefer to talk about the ‘South African War’ rather than the Boer War (which is certainly the way it is remembered in Australian popular memory). The Boer War: Everything You Wanted to Know is an episode based around listeners’ questions through social media, so its structure and organisation is a bit haphazard. Saul Dubow is the Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge and a Professorial Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. I hadn’t realized that the trigger for the war was the British government’s desire to federate the separate colonies, charged by the discovery of gold and diamonds. He points out that the impetus for the concentration camps was to deprive the farmers of the ability to draw resources (physical and emotion) from ‘home’

Travels Through Time 1549: The City at the Hub of the World. So which city do you reckon? London? Instanbul? Venice? Paris? Amsterdam? Nup- it’s little old Antwerp, which today is part of Belgium but in 1549 was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Even though it was ruled from Spain by Charles V, the city was fairly independent (for the time) and it’s not surprising that it was a haven for Protestants and Jews. An important trading hub with access to the North Sea and the river system throughout Europe, it became a market for everything, particularly art, which it turned into a commercial ‘product’. Historian Michael Pye, who has recently published Antwerp: The Glory Years has chosen 1549 as his year, with Charles V coming for a ceremonial visit; the King of Sweden sending Jacob Binck to Antwerp to check on the progress of a tomb he had commissioned and Italian merchant and conman Simone Turchi’s luck beginning to run out.

The History of Rome Podcast Episode 56: The King is Dead: Long Live the King. When he died, Augustus is said to have said that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. Not only did he do that. He established a bureaucracy, and set Tiberius up well to take over from him when he died. Near the end of his life, he visited his grandson Agrippa Postumus to check him out, adopted him so as to carry on the bloodline, but didn’t intend him to actually become Emperor because he was brutal and unsuitable. In the end Agrippa Postumus died anyway (was it Livia again? or Tiberius? or on the orders of Augustus himself?) just after Augustus himself died on August 17, 14 A.D. Although Mike Duncan is not completely won over by Augustus, he claims that he was one of the most important men in Western Civilisation. Episode 57: Germanicaus goes back to look at Germanicaus, Tiberius’ nephew and adopted son. He was married to Agrippina (Augustus’ granddaughter) and had several children, the youngest of whom, Gaius, he dressed up as a legion soldier, leading to his name ‘little boots’ (i.e. Caligula). Tiberius was becoming increasingly jealous of him, particularly when, after being sent to the Rhine, Germanicaus avenged to some extent the rout at Teutoberg. So what do you do with a rival? Have him die in suspicious circumstances of course, having clashed with Piso, the governor of Syria. Episode 58: Partner of My Labours sees Praetorian Prefect Lucius Sejanus take increasing power after Tiberius’ son Drusus dies. Drusus was Tiberius’ son and after Germanicaus died, he seemed to be Tiberius’ heir. But then he died too, apparently of natural causes, although some suspect Sejanus, to whom Tiberius had turned over the practical running of the empire. Mike Duncan backtracks a little here, to explain the praetorian guard, and how they came to have so much power. Sejanus seduced Drusus’ wife Livilla, and it is said that she introduced the poison that killed Drusus. Perhaps. But in the end, Tiberius turned against him, brought him to the Senate, and had him tried and executed and thrown down the Gemonian Stairs. Episode 59 To the Tiber with Tiberius sees Tiberius becoming even more tyrannical and paranoid, using treason trials to expunge all of Sejanus’ supporters. Mike Duncan mentions at the start of this episode just how bloody the politics of this time had become. When Tiberius finally died, people rejoiced, saying that surely things couldn’t get worse. Wrong. Caligula (‘Little Boots’) was really Gaius, Germanicus’ third son. Tiberius had adopted him, but his mother Agrippina and his older brothers were exiled, killed, or starved to death. When Tiberius died, Caligula was only 24 and he hadn’t been trained for the position at all. For the first few months, he seemed that he was going to be alright as an emperor, but then he got sick and when he recovered, the madness started.

History Extra Publicizing his new book The Story of the Country House: A History of Places and People, Clive Aslet talks about the history of the country house up to the current day. Although the episode is called From Roman villas to Downton Abbey, there weren’t many Roman villas in it, because he started his story in medieval times. At first, the value was not in the house, but in the land that surrounded it, and very wealthy landowners would progress from house to house, taking everything with them. Many houses were ruined during the English Civil War, and rebuilt later. I thought he would have made more of the Georgian/Victorian era and the renovations that reflected new wealth, and he acknowledged but also excused the influx of money through slavery. The low point for the country house came in the 1970s, after two world wars (the first of which removed many potential heirs from their heritage), the decline in agricultural wealth, and the oil shock that made heating the houses impossible. However, with Downton Abbey there has been a resurgence, as people have moved back into country houses as their principal residence, especially in COVID times. I wish that the quality was better in this podcast- the interviewer sounds like he’s on another planet. Here are his three favorite country houses. The big image is Chatsworth, which I have seen in nearly every Jane Austin film, Burton Agnes in Yorkshire which dates from the 1600s and Broughton Castle which I’ve seen in movies too.

Because of Anita During the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanagh, many people remembered the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. This four-part series revisits the testimony- which so many of us (myself included) think of being the trial of Anita Hill, instead of Clarence Thomas. In Episode 1, The Testimony, I was disturbed to hear Joe Biden overseeing the pile-on of questions, many of which were really offensive. There were other women prepared to testify, but the senators just ran down the clock and their testimony was just attached as written statements.

Rear Vision (ABC) Who/What is this Tigray Liberation Front that I keep hearing about? Rear Vision’s recent episode on Ethiopia refers back to an earlier podcast from August 2018 Peace: Ethiopia and Eritrea when the new elected Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed reached out to his counterpart in Eritrea and began a peace process that people hoped would bring the 20 year civil war to a close. This newer episode Hopes dashed- Ethiopia ripped by ethnic violence from July 2021 returns to the same commentators three years later to see how it all worked out. Not well. Abiy Ahmed used the COVID crisis to postpone elections indefinitely, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which had been instrumental in overthrowing the military junta in 1991 but sidelined when Abiy Ahmed took power, announced that it was holding its own elections in the Tigray region. The Ethiopian government, with its army, said that this was illegal and hostilities broke out in November 2020 when the rebel TPLF attached an army base. And so it goes….

I´ve been watching all those streams of Haitian refugees streaming towards the US-Mexico border. I read about a man who had been forcibly returned to Haiti after spending about four years in Chile before embarking for the US. “Why would anyone want to live here?” he asked, and he’s right. I listened to Mike Duncan’s series about the Haitian Revolution, but knew nothing of Haitian history from the early 19th century to the present day. Haiti- the background to an assassination highlights just how duplicitous the US has been in interfering in Haiti’s politics.

Some Unitarian listening. Those of you who know me know that I attend a Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship here in Melbourne. But I enjoy listening in to services from other UU groups as well. This week I listened to an address by Jennie Dyster from Adelaide Unitarian Church called Now I’m a Believer which provides some of the context behind biblical verses used as exemplars of ‘love’ – Corinthians 13 and the Book of Ruth. She then goes on to pay tribute to Bishop John Shelby Spong, who died recently, who stressed the importance of ‘context’ when using inspirational quotes and readings.

Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 In Episode 3: The Bomb, the World Trade Centre suffers its first, bungled bombing in the basement (I’d forgotten all about it- in fact, did I even know?) NYPD Detective Louis Napoli and FBI Special Agent John Anticev manage to get their mole Emad Salem to infiltrate the Blind Sheik’s terror cell again, and now he becomes the personal assistant of Omar Abdel-Rahman (a.k.a. the Blind Sheikh) himself. This series is based on the TV series of the same name.

Travels Through Time I recently read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century and I’m on a little bit of a medieval kick as a response. Helen Carr has recently released a book on John of Gaunt called The Red Prince and she features in a couple of podcasts as part of her publicity campaign. I listened to this podcast after the History Extra one, but because this podcast is longer and more detailed, you’d be better off listening to this first. John of Gaunt suffered ‘3rd living son of a King’ syndrome, being the son of Edward III, uncle of Richard II, Father of Henry IV and progenitor of the Tudor dynasty. Carr chooses 1381, a year when the Peasant Army blew up his home the Savoy Palace, and when his nephew Richard II rejected his assistance.

History Extra Podcast also had a session with her in John of Gaunt: prince without a throne. It is a bit shorter, and I felt that it didn’t go back and start from the beginning as well as the Travels Through Time podcast did.

The History of Rome. I’m about a quarter of the way through! Maybe I will finish it in 2021! Episode 50 The Donations of Alexandria sees Mark Antony having another crack at Parthia, but he had to withdraw. After that he went back to Egypt, and Cleopatra (even though he was still married to Octavia, Octavian’s sister). He started putting his own children in positions of power. Meanwhile Octavian was off fighting in the Balkans, something that redeemed his pretty shonky reputation as a general. His friends and advisors were Maecenas and Agrippa, and together they plotted war against Mark Antony. The 10-year old Second Triumvirate was dissolved, and after Octavian got hold of Mark Antony’s will that was stored with the Vestal Virgins and learned of Mark Antony’s plans to put his family into power, war was declared. Episode 51 Actium starts off with Mike Duncan reflecting on how people during the 1century BC kept being forced to take sides in a series of civil wars. Mark Antony and Cleopatra escaped battle at Actium in 31BC but by now Octavian was determined to annex Egypt completely. The suicide pact between Mark Antony and Cleopatra veers into Romeo and Juliet territory, although she ended up outliving him. Octavian insisted on having Alexander the Great’s mausoleum opened. Even though most people were humbled by how much the 33 year old Alexander achieved, in the case of Octavian (who was also 33) he used the example of Alexander to promote his sense of destiny. In Episode 52 Caesar Augustus, the victorious Octavian was determined to completely expunge Mark Antony’s name. He embarked on a marketing campaign, with Virgil writing The Aeneid and the construction of two temples, one to Apollo and the Pantheon. When he threatened to retire, the Senate begged him to remain, and the Senate bestowed upon Octavian the title Caesar Augustus during the constitutional settlement of 27 BC. Four years later Augustus and the Senate altered their power sharing agreement. He changed his name to Augustus (meaning ‘revered one’) but even he realized that ‘Princept’ (i.e. first citizen) might be a better title. In Episode 53 Reigning Supreme, we see Augustus with 90% of the power he needed. First he turned his mind to foreign affairs by neutering (although not actually defeating) Parthia, then he turned to internal matters. He tried to reduce the size of the Senate from 1000 to 300 by increasing the wealth requirement (not completely successful in this) , he had the Praetorian guard under his control, and he instituted pro-family, anti-adultery measures. As the wealthiest man in Rome, he personally bankrolled roads and communication improvements. Episode 54 All in the Family sees Augustus looking to his grandsons through Julia and Agrippa to continue the line. But they were too young so he appointed his stepsons, Livia’s sons Tiberius and Drusus to high office long before they were technically eligible. He had a plan that the Elbe and Danube Rivers form the boundary of the Empire, and he sent them off to fight there. His friend Agrippa died, and he forced Tiberius to divorce his wife in order to marry the widowed Julia- neither Tiberius nor Julia wanted this marriage- and so Tiberius went into self-imposed exile, and Julia embarked on a series of adulterous affairs. His friend Maecenas died too, then his stepson Drusus died from a horse-fall. Episode 55: Teutoburg Nightmares. Augustus was having a rough time personally: his daughter Julia was exiled as a punishment for her promiscuity, and both his grandsons Lucius and Gaius died, leaving Tiberius the last one standing. He was getting a bit tired of exile, so he came back. Mike Duncan just teases with the question of whether Tiberius’ mother Livia really did kill off all the opposition to smooth the way for her son- he says that there is no real evidence beyond the fact that she did promote her sons (which any mother would do). Meanwhile, there was an uprising in Germania and a severe loss for the legions in the Teutoburg Forest, which Germans in the 19th century used as a historical high point. This marked the end of expansion on the Rhine- Augustus was happy to let the German tribes squabble amongst themselves.

C-Span Podcasts in History Edward Ball has written two books springing from his own family history. The first, Slaves in the Family seems to have disappeared completely, even though it won the National Book Award in 1998. His most recent book Life of a Klansman was published in 2020, and it looks at another branch of his family where, as with his estimate of 50% of white Americans alive today, he has a white supremacist ancestor. There are 2 podcasts in this long (1 hr 50 min) episode Edward Ball: Slaves in the Family and Life of a Klansman. The first one, dealing with Slaves in the Family seems to be a Zoom-based symposium with students who have used his book as a text, and the second one, which has much better sound quality, looks at his most recent book.

Conversations (ABC) Jimmy Barnes: A Broken Homecoming One of the joys of lockdown has been watching Jimmy Barnes perform in his kitchen/lounge/bedroom with his wife Jane. I just loved his Working Class Boy (which I was sure that I had read, but could only find my response to the documentary here). This interview traverses some of the same material from Jimmy’s early childhood, but then extends later into the time dealt with in his later books (which I must read). Gees- he could talk the leg off a chair, this bloke!