Monthly Archives: May 2022

History of Rome Podcast Episode 138 The New Rome looks at the transformation of Byzantium from a small town with a population in the tens of thousands into the New Rome (‘Constantinople’ was a nickname, and it was only adopted formally later on). Many emperors had based themselves in places other than Rome, and Byzantium had the advantages of water on three sides (and thus difficult to besiege) and no religious baggage of other pagan gods. Just as in the early establishment of Rome, Constantine needed to augment its population, so he welcomed both the poor and the greedy as immigrants. It took six years to build. Quite apart from his building activities, though, Constantine embedded his power by killing off his own son Crispus. It’s not clear why, but his stepmother Fausta seems to have been involved. Then, Constantine executed his wife Fausta by locking her in a steam room. Realizing that killing your wife and son was not a good look, he sent his mother Helena on a tour of the East to identify important Christian sites. This was a very popular pilgrimage. In terms of policy and ideology, Constantine’s reign was an extension of Diocletian’s policies in terms of Divine Right of the emperor, the separation of the military and civil arms of government. Unlike Diocletian, he welcomed the role of the Senate but increased its size from 300 to 2000, thus diluting its power. He introduced a new solid gold coin which maintained its value for centuries, although there was runaway inflation with silver coins. He introduced a new and unpopular tax, payable four years in advance and embarked on an empire-wide building program involving both churches (e.g. The Old St Peters Basilica) and secular buildings. Episode 139 Wash Away Your Sins looks at Constantine’s military activity and succession plans. He continued the policy of Germanization of the empire and the army, and the failure of the Germans to integrate was to be one of the causes of the downfall of the empire. At this stage, his legions were successful against the rebellious tribes of the Rhine and the Danube. After killing off Crispus, he seasoned his remaining three sons by putting them in charge of the army. For some reason, he decided to pick a war with the Sassanids on the pretext of protecting Christians under their rule. But he died in Nicomedia, just after embarking on this battle, and got baptized just before he died. You might have thought that he would have been baptized earlier, but this could be because he wanted to be able to sin until the last minute, or more charitably, because he wanted to be pure as the driven snow when he actually died. His succession plans were messy: he left it to his three sons and two nephews. In assessing Constantine, he was certainly a transformational emperor and one of the most important historical figures in Western history. But he had his darker side too: the assassinations, the messy succession plans etc., so it’s a mixed record. Episode 140: My Three Sons. Well, three sons and two nephews isn’t going to end well. Constantius II started things off with the Massacre of the Princes at his father’s funeral, killing off most of his cousins and uncles from his aunt Theodora’s line over two days. Then the three boys (all named very similarly) Constantius, Constantine II and Constans began fighting among themselves, and getting involved on different sides of the doctrinal battles going on in the Christian church,. In the end Constantine II died in an ambush, leaving just two, Constantius in charge of the East and Constans in charge of the West.

Australia If You’re Listening. Episode 7 The Countdown on Coal Fired Power was a cracker. It starts off with the South Australian tornado in 2016 that saw electricity pylons scattered like pick-up-sticks and which was instantly blamed on renewable energy. In fact, whenever there is a power blackout, politicians in Australia and around the world tend to blame renewables. The reality is that it is the old coal-powered stations that are falling over, with near misses and disasters like the Callied Turbine failure outside of Biloela in Queensland, and the Hazelwood fires that blanketed the La Trobe Valley in smoke in 2014. This was a really good episode.

Conversations (ABC) In A History of War, Richard Fidler (who is such a good interviewer) spoke with historian Gwynne Dyer, who has recently released The Shortest History of War. I was going to give this book a miss because I thought that it would be all about military strategy, but good historian as Dyer is, he takes a much broader approach, integrating history, technology, sociology and psychology. Interesting.

Australian Book Review Frank Bongiorno on enlarging our diminished sense of political leadership looks at the elevation of the political operative and the breakdown of the party system. He points to the Australian of the Year award as an alternative form of political leadership, where in recent years the winners have been ahead of paid politicians. This was recorded prior to the election, and Frank Bongiorno is always worth listening to.

History of Rome Podcast Episode 135 Brothers in Name Only sees Constantine and Licinius dividing up the Empire following the death of Maximinus Daia in 313. It was similar to Octavian and Anthony, way back in Episode 47. Licinius was engaged in a contest with those ever-troublesome Sassanids over Armenia, and Constantine was involved with the Christian church which faced its own questions over what to do with the bishops who had collaborated with the Roman authorities during the Persecution. Bishop Donatus from Africa believed that they should not be admitted back into the church because they were ‘traditors‘. The Donatists (as they came to be called) were often over-ruled by those in the church who took a more forgiving line, so they repeatedly appealed to Constantine to intervene on their behalf. However Constantine emphasized unity over doctrine, as we will see at the Council of Arles. Meanwhile Licinius’ wife (who just happened to be Constantine’s sister) gave birth to a son, so the question of succession arose again. Constantine championed his own son Crispus. Eventually Constantine and Licinius met in battle. Constantine won, and restored the Tetrarchy by appointing two junior emperors- VERY junior, because two of them were babies. Episode 136 Let This Be Our Final Battle sees Constantine’s wife Faustus giving birth to more sons, while Constantine was becoming increasingly overt in his Christianity. Licinius and Constantine met in battle again in 324 CE and this time Constantine triumphed and for the first time in 40 years, Rome was ruled by just the one emperor. Licinius had ruled for 16 turbulent years, and he died in suspicious circumstances in exile. Constantine’s son Crispus came to a bad end in 326CE too, executed on his father’s orders (did he have an affair with his step-mother? Or was it the Wicked Stepmother’s Revenge -again?). Episode 137 The Christian Emperor sees Constantine stepping into his Christianity. He banned pagan worship, and returned property to Christians who had had it confiscated (but this time he didn’t recompense the people who had bought the confiscated goods- he only offered to pardon them). All Constantine wanted was a united church

Australia If You’re Listening Episode 6: Can We Keep Digging for Energy? (ABC) punctures the idea that CCS is going to solve our problems. The irony is that CCS and nuclear power will only ever be feasible if there is a price on carbon- which of course the Liberal/National government has made such a toxic topic. Gas, meanwhile, has been and will continue to be only a small part of our energy mix. However, back-tracking away from an available power source is something that humans have never done before.

In Our Time Early Christian martyrdom. (BBC) With Candida Moss (Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham), Kate Cooper (Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London) and James Corke-Webster (Senior Lecturer in Classics, History and Liberal Arts at King’s College London). This episode fits in quite well with my History of Rome podcasts. By 300 CE, about 10% of Romans were Christians when The Great Persecution started with Emperor Diocletian in 303 AD and lasted around eight years. Much of this persecution sprang from an idea that Roman society had to get back to a good relationship with its own Roman gods. It is probably more correct to speak of “Christianities” (plural), and until about 90 CE, as far as the Romans were concerned, Christians were indistinguishable from Jews. Particular attention is paid to Ignatius and Polycarpus, two bishops, and the female Perpetua of Carthage.”Dying for a good cause” was an important idea in Roman society (after all, lots of Roman worthies committed suicide to avoid disgrace), and the idea of a “good death”, especially for a Christian slave, involved just a few hours of pain for the promise of eternal life.

The History Listen (ABC) Buried Treasure: the story of Lake Pedder. Fifty years ago, despite protests, Lake Pedder was flooded to provide hydro-electric power as part of Eric “Electric” Reece’s grand hydro-electric plan. This episode features Rima Truchanas, whose own life is deeply tied to Lake Pedder, after her parents Melva and the photographer Olegas Truchanas joined the campaign to stop it being flooded. Olegas’ photographs were shown at slide shows around Australia, as a way of increasing awareness of this amazing sand-fringed glacial lake. But flooded it was, and six years later there were plans to build another dam on the Franklin River – and this time the protests were heeded. Amazingly, there are now suggestions that Lake Pedder could be rehabilitated as part of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. I don’t really think that it will happen, given the emphasis on hydro-electricity today.

Things Fell Apart (BBC Radio 4) Episode 5: A Scottish Jewish Joke takes us back to the very early days of the internet in 1988 when a software designer, Brad Templeton, uploaded onto a message board a joke in poor taste. The joke was chosen randomly from jokes that were sent to him, and as it turned out, it appeared on the anniversary of Kristalnacht. An MIT academic complained about the joke and tried to get him sacked and banned from Usenet. Stanford University, through which he was able to gain access to the internet, banned the page, explaining that they wanted to value people over caricatures, even if that was at the expense of free speech. John McArthur, a professor of Artificial Intelligence started a petition, arguing that we find the limits of free speech by running into the walls. And this is the Internet as we know it today.

Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know The ‘State’ of Hawaii: Union or Occupation On Foreign Correspondent the other night, they had a program ‘Keep Hawaii Hawaiian’ about the struggle of native Hawaiians for land, language and culture (that sounds familiar). This program gives a really good analysis of the 1893 coup d’etat against Queen Liliʻuokalani by predominantly white landowners in Hawaii, overseen by the U.S.S. Boston which just happened to be moored nearby. The coup was opposed by President Grover Cleveland but a joint sitting of Congress approved it. As recently as 2018 it is still being questioned at UN level. Very interesting- I wonder how many American school kids know about it?

History of Rome Podcast. Episode 129 Abdication. Well, Diocletian had done all that he wanted to do and now all he had to do was work out a transition plan, so that there would be a stable tetrarchy in place to cover the whole of the Roman Empire. Really, although it was called a tetrarchy, it was really two Caesars (junior emperors) and two Augusti, one of whom took the lead- in this case, Diocletian. In Diocletian’s plan, each Augustus would rule for twenty years, then abdicate, the two junior emperors would move up to be Augusti and two new junior emperors would take their place. Simple, eh? Problem was, if he was going to keep the 2X2 structure, he would have to persuade Maximian to retire at the same time, which he managed to do. Galerius and Constantius stepped up, but who was to take their place as junior emperors? Episode 130 Lost in Transition Everyone expected that Constantine and Maxentius, as sons of reigning emperors would be placed in the vacancies, but Diocletian wanted to break the idea of hereditary emperors. So he looked elsewhere. Instead of the hereditary sons, Severus and Maximinus Daza were declared junior emperors. Then Maxentius (the son of Maximian) revolted; Maximian arranged for Severus to be killed; Galerius had to slink out of Italy, and Constantine was lurking up in the north. This is all very confusing- all these Maxes – the names are too similar. Anyway, it’s a stuff-up. Episode 131 The New Game in Town. When Severus was killed, Galerius arranged for his friend Licinius to be appointed and catapulted him up to be Augustus without serving the requisite time as Caesar. Old Man Maximian argued with his son Maxentius, and ended up seeking refuge with his son-in-law Constantine. It was such a mess that they even asked Diocletian to come back, but he said that he was happy tending his cabbages. But then Maximian mounted a come-back against Constantine, who defeated him and was very angry, exhorting him to ‘do the right thing’ and kill himself- which he did. Even though Maxentius and his father weren’t talking, Maxentius vowed to avenge his father’s honour. Then Galerius got sick and smelly and died. This is just getting silly now.

Rear Vision (ABC) The Greens- politics and the environment. I was really impressed by Adam Bandt’s address to the Press Club, and I’m uneasy about the talking-out-of-both-sides-of-your-mouth about the fossil-fuel industry from the ALP. This is the history of the Greens, starting from its roots in the Nuclear Disarmament Party. It put up two candidates for the Senate: Peter Garrett (who was expected to win) and Jo Valentine (who wasn’t). But it didn’t turn out that way, and when Valentine won she distanced herself from the NDP who wanted to tell her how to vote. In the 1970s, Greens parties arose across the world, especially in Europe, and there was an international network of Greens parties. Up until now, the Greens were state-based parties but in 1992 the Federal Green party was formed, after it had sorted out some thorny constitutional problems. It adopted consensus decision making (which was found to be very unwieldy) , the right of a conscience vote for MPs and proscription (i.e. members couldn’t belong to another party). The state parties continued, each with a different flavour. In NSW there were links with the BLF and the socialist parties and an emphasis on environmentalism and conservation; in Tasmania it was about wilderness, damming the Franklin and opposing the Wesley Vale pulp mill, and WA kept its anti-nuclear movement links. Milne rejected Rudd’s climate policy because it locked-in failure: a big judgment call that has embittered many ever since. When the Greens supported Gillard’s minority government, they provided stable support in Senate which contributed to the heavy slate of legislation that the government actually passed.

Australia If You’re Listening (ABC) Episode 4: the decade when climate change became a culture war. This episode picks up on Judith Brett’s contention in The Coal Curse that the mining industry and its lobbyists cut their teeth on the indigenous land rights issue. Hugh Morgan, former CEO of Western Mining Corporation seeded right-wing think tanks like the IPA which, after de-fanging land rights legislation then turned their attention to casting doubt on climate change. When Al Gore came out so strongly for climate change in An Inconvenient Truth, the link was made between Democratic/Labor/Progressive politics and calls for action- and the converse Liberal/Republican/Conservative calls for skepticism.

Things Fell Apart. A Miracle. Tammy Faye Bakker was a wildly successful tele-evangelist, who along with her husband Jim ran the Praise the Lord Ministry. In 1985 she conducted an interview on her ‘Tammy’s House Party’ program with Steve Peters, a man gravely ill with AIDS. Although Tammy Faye’s questions were clumsy and bordering on offensive, for many evangelical Christians it was the first time that they had been exposed to the human face of AIDS. In a twist of fate, after the fall of the PTL empire, Tammy Faye became a gay icon.

War on Truth (BBC). My Son is the Snake Island Hero has an interview with Tetyana, the mother of the Russian soldier who told the Russian warship Moskva to go fuck itself (an interesting visual image). At first she was told that all the Ukrainian soldiers had died, but the Russians accused Ukraine of misinformation as they were, indeed, alive and part of a prisoner swap. Then the Moskva itself sank – Russian say because of fire; Ukrainians say because of attack. The Snake Island soldiers are now depicted on a stamp.

The Explanation (BBC) Understanding the rise of Boko Haram. The journalist Mayeni Jones explains that Nigeria is geographically and politically divided into two parts. The South is wealthy, Christian and humid: the North is poor, arid and Muslim. From 1960s with the granting of independence through to 1999 Nigeria was led by a military dictatorship, but the corruption continued under democratic government. In July 2009 Boko Haram burst onto the scene. Led by Muhummed Yusuf, ‘Boko Haram’, literally means ‘Western Education is forbidden. He was arrested and killed by the police, which just made him a martyr. He was replaced by Abubakr Shekau in 2010, and Boko Haram executed a car bombing inside the UN compound. The first school kidnapping was almost by chance. They were actually looking for a brick making machine, and the girls were there and they took them. In 2021 Abubakr Shekau blew himself up when surrounded by West African Islamic State fighters. Whether it is Al-Qaeda IS or any other terrorist group, there is a huge disaffected young population in Nigeria to draw upon, and the structural problems remain.

Revolutions Podcast Having listened to Mike Duncan talking about the History of Rome (see above), it felt strange to tune back into his Revolutions Podcast, where he’s up to episode 95 of the Russian Revolution. I have no intention of listening to the rest of them (although I did start, years ago), but Episode 95: Russian Empire, Soviet Empire is interesting in light of the Ukraine situation today. He looks at the year 1921, when Russia saw its western regions peeling off into independent (although still heavily influenced) countries like Lithuania, Finland, Ukraine etc. The trade treaty that Russia signed with Great Britain in 1921 conferred de-facto recognition, although US held out until 1933 before recognizing the Soviet Union. Meanwhile Trotsky suggested that because it was clear that the revolution wasn’t going to spread throughout Europe, the Soviet Union turn to Eur-Asia and foment revolution as an attack on colonialism. He goes through the -stans, and Russian involvement, and interestingly spends quite some time on Georgia, where the Mensheviks had been very strong. (I watched a Foreign Correspondent program last night about how, since the Ukrainian invasion, many Russian dissidents have gone to Georgia where the people have no great love for Russia, although their government in ambivalent). As Duncan says, 1921 is almost a potted summary of the whole revolution (and it saves you listening to the 94 preceding episodes)

Start the Week (BBC) An interesting episode in The Age of the Strongman Leader, featuring Gideon Rachman, author of The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World, Judy Dempsey who has written a lot on Angela Merkel, and Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Lion House: The Coming of a King about Suleiman the Magnificent. This last title might seem a bit out of place, but this discussion talks about the phenomenon of the ‘strongman’ across history. One of them (Rachman?- the two male voices were similar) identified four qualities of the strongman 1. Cult of personality 2. Nostalgic nationalism, looking backwards 3. Contempt for the rule of law (although at first, they might have championed the rule of law to obtain power, but then subverted it) 4. Gender- mainly men. Merkel doesn’t fit this pattern, but other powerful women in politics are often the wives or daughters of strongmen. The modern strongmen they discuss use the democratic system, but then subvert it by encouraging polarization. The use of history by these strongmen is selective- for example, in December 2021 Putin’s courts put an end to the Memorial Project which documented the atrocities of the Stalin era. They also spoke about the strongmens’ need for large rallies – and no doubt May 9 will be such an occasion for Putin this year.