Podcasts about roman state

Depending on who you ask, Juno is either a NASA space probe studying Jupiter, or she's the Roman queen of the gods, wife of Jupiter, god of thunder. As the Roman counterpart of Hera, the wife of Zeus in Greek mythology, she's often characterised as a jealous, bitter, and vindictive wife, often punishing the nymphs or goddesses with whom Jupiter had various dalliances. That said, she does have some additional qualities that come with her absorption by the Roman state. These make Juno a much more interesting figure within Roman religion and daily life. Let's go and meet Juno and find out explain why she was so popular in ancient Rome in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore! Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/juno-queen-of-the-gods/ Harvest folklore talk: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/when-the-reaper-comes-around-harvest-folklore-and-superstitions-tickets-676171576387?aff=oddtdtcreator Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/ Become a member of the Fabulous Folklore Family for bonus episodes and articles at https://patreon.com/bePatron?u=2380595 Enjoyed this episode and want to show your appreciation? Buy Icy a coffee to say 'thanks' at: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7 Get extra snippets of folklore on Instagram at https://instagram.com/icysedgwick 'Like' Fabulous Folklore on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabulousfolklore/ Tweet Icy at https://twitter.com/IcySedgwick Find Icy on Mastodon: @IcySedgwick@mastodonapp.uk

Mike Isaacson: Rome gets sacked ONE TIME, and that's all these people can talk about! [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. Today we're talking with Edward Watts, professor of history and Alkaviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair in Byzantine Greek History at the University of California San Diego. He's here to talk to us about his book, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea. The book is an extraordinary scholarly endeavor that managed to give a detailed and engaging history of 1700 years of Roman history in under 300 pages. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Watts. Edward Watts: Thanks so much for having me. It's exciting to be here. Mike: All right. Now, you are one of the rare guests on our show whose book was actually directed at debunking Nazi lies. Tell us what you had in mind when you were writing this book. Edward: So the thing that prompted me to write this book was a recognition that the history of Rome, and in particular the legacy of Rome as it relates to the end of Roman history, was something that was being repeatedly misused across thousands of years to justify doing all sorts of violence and horrible things to people who really in the Roman context had very little to do with the decline of Rome, and in a post-Roman context, had nothing really to do with the challenges that people using the legacy of Rome wanted to try to address. And in particular, what prompted this was the recognition after 2016 of how stories about the classical past and the Roman past were being used on the far right and the sort of fascist fringe as a way of pointing to where they saw to be challenging dynamics and changes, critical changes, in the way that society was functioning. What was happening was people were doing things like using the story of the Gothic migrations in the 4th century AD to talk about the need to do radical things in our society related to immigration. And the discussions were just misusing the Roman past in really aggressive ways as kind of proof for radical ideas that didn't really relate to anything that happened in the past and I think are generally not things that people would be willing to accept in the present. And Rome provides a kind of argument when it's misunderstood,when Roman history is misunderstood, it provides a kind of argument that people are not familiar enough with to be able to refute, that might get people who think that a certain policy is aggressive or inhumane or unnecessary to think twice about whether that policy is something that is a response to a problem that people need to consider. And that's just wrong. It's a wrong way to use Roman history. It's a wrong way to use history altogether. And it's a rhetoric that really needs to be highlighted and pointed to so that people can see how insidious these kinds of comparisons can be. Mike: Okay, so your book discusses the idea of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which you say started before any such decline or fall in the late Republic. What was politics like in the Roman Empire before the myth of Rome's decline popped up? Edward: So this is an interesting question because the story of Roman decline actually shows up in some of the very earliest Roman literature that we have. So the very first sort of intact Latin texts that we have from the Roman period are things like the plays of Plautus. In one of the earlier plays of Plautus, he is already making fun of people for saying that Rome is in decline. And he's saying this at a time right after the Roman victory over Hannibal when there is no evidence that Rome is in decline at all. And yet we know that there are politicians who are pushing this idea that the victory over Hannibal has unleashed a kind of moral decline in Rome that is leading to the degeneration of Roman morals and Roman behaviors and Roman social structures in such a fashion that will disrupt the ability of Rome to continue. This is just not something that most people recognized to be true, but what we see when politicians in the third century and second century BC are saying things like this, they aren't particularly interested in describing an objective reality. What they're looking to do is insert ideas into popular discourse, so that people in the context of their society begin to think it might be possible that decline exists. So I think that when we look at Roman history before Roman literature, or before these pieces of Roman literature exist, we really are looking at much later reconstructions. But I think that it's fair to say that even in those reconstructions of stories about things like say, the sixth king of Rome, those stories too focus on how that particular regime was inducing a decline from the proper behaviors of Romans. So I think we could say that there is no before decline. Rome seems always to have been talking about these ideas of decline and worrying about the fact that their society was in decline, even when objectively you would look around and say there is no reason whatsoever that you should be thinking this. Mike: Okay. Now your book argues that this political framing helped politicians shape the politics of the Roman Empire in particular ways. So how did those who pushed this declensionist narrative change the Roman republic? Edward: So in the Roman republic, there are a few things that this narrative is used to do. In the second century, early second century BC, this narrative is used to attack opponents of a politician named Cato. What Cato tried to do was single out people who had been getting particularly wealthy because of the aftermath of Rome's victory in the Second Punic War over Hannibal and then its victories in the eastern Mediterranean against the Greek King, Philip V. And what Cato saw was that this wealth was something that profoundly destabilized society because now there were winners who were doing well economically in a way that the old money establishment couldn't match. And so what he's looking to do is to say that when you look around and you see prosperity of that level in the Roman state, this is a sign that things are actually bad. It's not a sign of things are good. It's a sign that things are deteriorating, and we need to take radical steps to prevent this. And the radical steps that Cato takes, and that he initially gets support for, involves very onerous taxes directed specifically against groups of people that he opposed. He also serves as the person who decides who gets to be in the Roman Senate, and he uses that position to kick out a lot of people on the basis simply of him deciding that they embody some kind of negative trajectory of the Roman State. And there's a reaction to this and Cato eventually is forced to kind of back away from this. As you move later in the second century, the narrative of decline becomes something that first is used to again justify financial policies, and then later, actual violence against officials who are seen as pushing too radical an agenda. And so this becomes a narrative that you can use to destabilize things. It doesn't matter if you're coming from what we would say is the right or the left, the kind of equal opportunity narrative that can be used to get people to question whether the structures in their society are legitimately in keeping with the way the society is supposed to function. Mike: Okay. So a lot of people have this misconception that Rome kind of snapped from being a republic to being governed by an emperor, but that's not really so. What was the imperial administration like and how did it change? Edward: The Roman republic was in many ways a very strong constitutional system that had a lot of things built into it to prevent one individual from taking over. Not only did it have a structure that was based on a kind of balance of power–and the description of that structure was something that influenced the Founding Fathers in the US to create the balances of power that we have–but in Rome, the administrative office that correlated to the presidency actually was a paired magistracy. So there were two consuls who governed together and could in theory check one another. What the decline narrative happened or allows to happen is that these structures begin to be questioned as illegitimate. And you get, starting in the later part of the second century and going all the way through the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, a long set of discussions about how the Constitution is not functioning as it's supposed to, how the interests of everybody are not being represented by the representatives in the Senate and by the sorts of laws that are being put forward in assemblies. And you have a greater sense that there's an emergency, and an emergency that requires people to assent to an individual exercising more power than the structure really permits. And so this idea of decline heightens this sense of emergency and you have cycles every generation or so, where the sense of emergency gets greater and another constitutional structure snaps. Until eventually what you have is an individual in Julius Caesar, who is able to exercise complete and effective control over the direction of politics in the state. Mike: Okay. So for whatever reason, the assassination of Julius Caesar sticks strong in our cultural psyche, but reading your book it seems like assassinating emperors was kind of commonplace? Edward: It depends on the period. Yeah, there are definitely periods where the violent overthrow of emperors are somewhat common. I think with Caesar, what we have is the assassination. We're still when Caesar was assassinated in the final death throes of the Roman republic. And so it takes a while and a really brutal nearly 15-year-long sprawling Civil War for Rome to finally just accept that the republic as a governing structure is not really going to function in the way it had before. And the first emperor is Augustus. The first assassination actually occurs about 75 years after Augustus takes over. The first emperor that's assassinated is Caligula. Then you have moments of really profound peace and stability that are punctuated by these upheavals where, you know, in the year 68 the Emperor Nero commits suicide and this leads to a sprawling civil war in which four emperors take power in the course of a single year. Then things kind of calmed down. There's an assassination in 96, and no more assassinations for almost 100 years. And so you have these moments where the structures of the empire are very stable, but when they break, it breaks very seriously. It's very rare when an emperor is assassinated, that there's only one assassination and things kind of work out after that. And so generally, I think what this suggests is, if you have faith that the Imperial structure is working predictably, it's very, very hard to disrupt that. But if you have a sense that an emperor is not legitimate or is not in power or has taken power violently, there's a very serious risk that that emperor will in turn be overthrown violently, and something very serious could happen, even going so far as resulting in a civil war. Mike: Okay so one of the biggest myths surrounding the Roman Empire is that it fell in 476 AD, and that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, but this isn't really so. What happened in 476 AD, and how did it become the legendary fall of Rome? Edward: Yes, so 476 AD is one of the greatest non-events in history. Because when we look at our history and our timeline for the fall of Rome, this is the date that stands out to us. But actually in 476, there's not a single person who seems to think that Rome fell on that day. What happens is in the middle part of the fifth century, the eastern empire and the western empire separated in 395. And in the middle part of the fifth century, the western empire has a very serious loss of territory and then a loss of stability within Italy. So that there are, in a sense, kingmakers who run the army and decide whether an emperor should be in power or not. And so you have a number of figurehead emperors, starting really in the 450s and going through 476, who are there, in a couple of cases at certain moments they do exercise real power, but much of the time they're subordinate to military commanders who don't want to be emperor, or in many cases are of barbarian descent and don't think they can make imperial power actually stick, and in 476, Odoacer who was one of these barbarian commanders overthrows an emperor in Italy and says, "We are not going to have an emperor in Italy anymore. Instead, I'm just going to serve as the agent of the eastern emperor in Italy." And for the next 50 years, there are barbarian agents–first Odoacer and then Theodoric–who serve in this constitutional way where they acknowledge the superiority and the authority of the emperor in Constantinople over Italy. And in practice, they're running Italy. But in principle, they are still affirming that they're part of the Roman Empire, the Roman senate is still meeting, Roman law is still used. It's a situation where only when the eastern empire decides that it wants to take Italy back, do you start getting these stories about well, Rome fell in 476 when these barbarians got rid of the last emperor and now it's our obligation to liberate Italians from this occupation by these barbarians. In 476, though, this is not what anyone in Constantinople or in Italy actually thought was going on. Mike: Okay. So both the east and the west of the Roman Empire eventually became Christian. How did this alter the myth of the declining Rome? Edward: So for much of Roman history, there is very much this idea that any problem that you have is a potential sign of the decline of Rome, and if you are particularly motivated, you can say that the problem requires radical solutions to prevent Rome from falling into crisis. But with Christianity, when the Roman Empire becomes Christian, there is no past that you can look back to say, "Well, we were better as a Christian empire in this time." When Constantine converts to Christianity, he's the first Christian emperor. And so it's very natural for opponents to be able to say, "Look, he made everything Christian and now things are going to hell ,and so Christianity is the problem." So what Christians instead say is what actually is going on here is we are creating a new and better Rome, a Rome where the approach to the divine is more sophisticated, it's more likely to work. And so for about 100 years, you have instead of a narrative decline, a narrative of progress where Christians are pushing a notion that by becoming Christian, the Empire is embarking on a new path that is better than it has ever been before. Not everybody accepts this. At the time of Constantine's conversion, probably 90% of the Emperor's still pagan so this would be a very strange argument to them. And by the time you get into the fifth century, you probably are in a majority Christian empire, but like a 50% majority, not like 90% majority. So there is a significant pushback against this. And in moments of crisis, and in particular after the Sack of Rome in 410, there is a very strong pagan reaction to this idea of Christian Roman progress. And Christians have to come up with evermore elaborate explanations for how what looks like decline in any kind of tangible sense that you would look at in the western empire is actually a form of progress. And the most notable production of that line of argument is Augustine's City of God, which says effectively, “Don't worry about this world. There's a better world, a Christian world that really you should be focusing on, and you're getting closer there. So the effect of what's going on in the Roman world doesn't really matter too much for you.” Mike: Okay. Now at one point, there were actually three different polities across Europe and Asia Minor all claiming the inheritance of the Roman Empire. How did this happen? Edward: There are different moments where you see different groups claiming the inheritance of Rome. In the Middle Ages, you have the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, which is a construction of Charlemagne and the papacy around the year 800. And the claim that they make is simply that there is the first empress of the Roman state who takes power all by herself in 797–this is the Empress Irene–and the claim Charlemagne makes as well that eliminates the legitimacy of the Roman Empire and Constantinople because there's no emperor. Therefore because there's no emperor, there's no empire and therefore we can just claim it. Another moment where you see this really become a source of significant conflict is during the Fourth Crusade when the Crusaders attack Constantinople and destroy the central administration of the eastern Roman Empire. After that point, you have the crusaders in Constantinople who claim that they are a Roman state. You have the remains of the Roman state that had been in Constantinople sort of re-consolidating around the city of Nicaea. You have a couple of other people who claim the inheritance of the Roman state inEpirus and Trebizond, and they all kind of fight with each other. And so ultimately, what you see is that the Roman Empire has this tremendous resonance across all of the space that was once Roman. So their empire at its greatest extent went from the Persian Gulf all the way to Scotland. And it went from Spain and the Atlantic coast of Morocco all the way down to the Red Sea. It's massive. And in a lot of those territories after Rome recedes, the legacy of Rome remains. So a lot of people who felt that they could claim the Roman legacy tried to do that, because it gave a kind of added seriousness and a more, a greater echo to these little places that are far away from the center of the world now, places like Britain or places like France or places like Northern Germany. And so you, in a sense, look like you're more important than you are if you can make a claim on the Roman imperial legacy. Mike: Okay. And so how do these would-be empires finally end up collapsing? Edward: So, each in their own way. In the case of the Holy Roman Empire, it actually lasts for very long time. It's created under Charlemagne in 800, and it lasts really until the time of Napoleon. And it collapses because it's sort of dissolved because in Germany there was a fear that Napoleon might actually use the hulk of the Holy Roman Empire and the title of Holy Roman Emperor to claim a kind of ecumenical authority that would go beyond just what he had as emperor of France. The crusader regime in Constantinople is actually reconquered by the Nicene regime in 1261. So the Crusaders take Constantinople in 1204, and then these Roman exiles who set up a kind of Roman Empire in exile in Nicaea reconquer in 1261. And they hold Constantinople for another 200 years until the Ottomans take it in 1453. The other sort of small Roman states are absorbed either by the state in Constantinople or by the Ottomans, but ultimately by the end of the 1460s, everything that had once been part of the Eastern Empire in the Middle Ages is under Ottoman control. Mike: Okay. And so despite all of the polities that could have contended for the inheritance of Rome collapsing, Rome's decline still played a large part in political considerations across what was formerly the Roman Empire but now as an instructive metaphor. How was the decline of the Roman Empire leveraged to influence politics leading into the modern era, and who were the big myth makers? Edward: Yeah, there's a couple of really important thinkers in this light. One is Montesquieu, the French thinker who uses a discussion of Roman history to launch into a much more wide and expansive and influential discussion of political philosophy that centers really on notions of representation and sets some of the groundwork for what actors in the American Revolution and French Revolution believed they were doing. Montesquieu is really, really important in understanding 18th-century political developments. And I think it's impossible really to understand what the American Revolution and the French Revolution thought they were doing without also looking at Montesquieu. But now I think the more influential figure in terms of shaping our ideas about what Roman history looked like and what Roman decline meant is Edward Gibbon. Gibbon is also an 18th-century thinker. When he started writing a history of Rome, he started writing in the 1770s when he believed that there was a firm and stable European political structure of monarchies that could work together and kind of peacefully move the continent forward. And while Gibbon is working on this, of course, you know, the American Revolution happens, and the French Revolution happens, and his whole structure that he was looking to defend and celebrate with his Roman history disappears. And so his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire becomes a book that is extracted from its historical context. And it seems like it is an objective narrative of what happens. It's not objective at all. What Gibbon is trying to do is compare the failings of one large single imperial structure and the advantages of this kind of multipolar world where everyone is balanced and cooperative. But everybody forgets that that multipolar world even existed because the book comes out after it's gone. So what you have with Gibbon is a narrative that seems to be just an account of Roman history, and a very, very evocative one. I think most of the people now who have Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on their shelf don't read it. But they know the title. They know the concept. This means that you have a ready-made metaphor for anything that's bothering you. You know, you can talk about the decline and fall of Rome. Just about everybody in the entire world knows that Rome declined and fell. And very few of them know much about why it happened or how it happened or how long it took. And so evoking the decline and fall of Rome allows you to kind of plug in anything, as my friend Hal Drake says, anything that's bothering you at a particular moment, you can plug in and say Rome fell because of X. And if you look at the last 50 years you can see lots and lots and lots of examples of X, lots of different things that bothered people that got plugged into the story of Rome fell because of whatever's bothering me that day. Mike: I am certainly guilty of having a copy of Gibbon on my bookshelf and not having read it. [laughs] So in talking about the modern appropriation of the memory of Rome, you of course talk about Fascist Italy. You reference Claudio Fogu, whom I absolutely love, check out his book The Historic Imaginary. How did Fascists wield the memory of the Roman Empire to justify their regime? Edward: Yeah, it's so, so seductive what is done in the city of Rome in particular. And there's a sense that I think is a very real sense that creating and uncovering and memorializing the imperial center of the Roman Empire makes real the experience of walking through it, and with the right kind of curation can make it feel like you're in a contemporary environment that's linked to that ancient past. And what Mussolini and his architects tried very very hard to do was create this, in a sense, almost Roman imperial Disneyland in the area between the Colosseum and the Capital line. So when we walk there, we see a kind of disembodied and excavated giant park with a large street down the middle running from the Colosseum along the length of the Roman Forum. But that was actually neighborhoods.  Before Mussolini, there were actual houses and shops and restaurants and people living there, and very, very long-standing communities that he removed with this idea that you were in a sense restoring the past and creating a future by removing the present. And I think that's a very good metaphor for what they were up to. What they were trying to do was create an affinity for the fascist present by uncovering this Roman past and getting rid of what they saw as disorder. And the disorder, of course, was real people living their lives in their houses. But the other thing that people, you know, when tourists visit this now, they don't know that history. They don't know that when they walk on the street alongside the Forum, they're actually walking on a street that is a 20th-century street created for Fascist military parades on the ruins of modern, early modern, and medieval houses. They just see this as a way to kind of commune with this Roman past. And the Fascists very much understood that aesthetic and how seductive that aesthetic was. Mike: Okay, so let's circle back to where we started with your motivation for the book. How are people invoking the fall of Rome now, and what are they getting wrong? Edward: I think that we see, again, this temptation to take what's bothering you and attaching it to Rome. And I think even if you just look over the last 50 years, you can almost trace the sorts of things people are anxious about in a modern context based on the things that are advanced for what possibly made Rome fall. So in the 70s and early 80s, there's lots of concern about environmental contamination and the effect that this is going to have on people's lives. And we get the story of Rome fell because of lead poisoning. I mean, it didn't. It's just ridiculous that you would think Rome fell because of lead poisoning when there is no moment that it fell, the place was active and survived for well over 1500 years when it was using lead pipes. There's no evidence whatsoever that this is true. In the 70s, Phyllis Schlafly would go around and say that Rome fell because of liberated women. I think that would be a very big surprise to a lot of Roman women that they were actually liberated, definitely in the 1970's way. In the 80s, and even into the 2010s, you have people like Ben Carson talking about Rome declining because of homosexuality or gay marriage. Again, that has nothing to do with the reality of Rome. There are other places where I think people come a little bit closer to at least talking about things that Romans might acknowledge existed in their society. So when you have Colin Murphy and others in the lead up to the Iraq War talking about the overextension of military power as a factor that can lead to the decline of Rome, yeah, I mean, Rome did have at various moments problems because it was overextended militarily. But most of the time it didn't. To say that the Romans were overextended militarily because they had a large empire ignores the fact that they had that large empire for almost 400 years without losing significant amounts of territory. So comparing Roman military overextension and US military overextension could be a useful exercise, but you have to adjust the comparison for scale. And you have to adjust the comparison to understand that there are political dynamics that mean that places that in the first century BC required military garrisons, in the third century did not. And so you're not overextended because you're in the same place for 400 years. At the beginning, you might need to have an extensive military presence in a place that later you won't. So I think that what we need to do when we think about the use of the legacy of Rome, is think very critically about the kinds of things that Rome can and can't teach us, and think very clearly about the difference between history repeating itself–which I think it doesn't–and history providing us with ideas that can help us understand the present. I think that's where history is particularly useful, and Roman history in particular is useful. Because it's so long, there are so many things that that society deals with, and there are so many things that it deals with successfully as well as fails to deal with capably. All of those things offer us lessons to think with, even if they don't offer us exact parallels. Mike: Okay, so we've talked a bunch about the fabricated history of Rome and the popular memory of Rome. What does the actual history of Rome and fears of Roman decline have to teach us about the present? Edward: I think the biggest thing that we can see is if somebody is claiming that a society is in profound decline and the normal structures of that society need to be suspended so the decline can be fixed, that is a big caution flag. What that means is somebody wants to do something that you otherwise would not agree to let them do. And the justification that they provide should be looked at quite critically, but it also should be considered that, even if they identify something that might or might not be true, the solution they're proposing is not something that you absolutely need to accept. Systems are very robust. Political systems and social systems are very robust and they can deal with crises and they can deal with changes. If someone is saying that our system needs to be suspended or ignored or cast to the side because of a crisis, the first step should be considering whether the crisis is real, and then considering whether it is in fact possible to deal with that crisis and not suspend the constitutional order, and not trample on people's rights, and not take away people's property, and not imprison people. Because in all of these cases that we see Roman politicians introduced this idea of decline to justify something radical, there are other ways to deal with the problem. And sometimes they incite such panic that Romans refuse or forget or just don't consider any alternative. That has really profound and dangerous consequences because the society that suspends normal orders and rights very likely is going to lose those rights and those normal procedures. Mike: All right. Well, Dr. Watts, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about the myth of the Roman Empire. The book, again, is The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome out from Oxford University Press. Thanks again, Dr. Watts. Edward: Thanks a lot. This was great. Mike: If you enjoyed what you heard and want to help pay our guests and transcriptionist, consider subscribing to our Patreon at patreon.com/nazilies or donating to our PayPal at paypal.me/nazilies or CashApp at $nazilies [Theme song]

Welcome to the twentieth episode of “We Effed Up,” where we discuss the dire consequences of impatience.SourcesBurns, Thomas. Barbarians Within the Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, Ca. 375-425 A.D. Bloomington, Indiana U. Press, 1994.Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford, Oxford U. Press, 2007.Lee, A. D. From Rome to Byzantium: The Transformation of Ancient Rome. Edinburgh, Edinburgh U. Press, 2013.Lenski, Noel. Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D. Berkeley, U. of California Press, 2003.Marcellinus, Ammianus. Res Gestae (Book 31). Translated by C. D. Yonge, London, George Bell & Sons, 1911.Panello, R. J. The Private Orations of Themistius. Berkeley, U. of California Press, 2000. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the end of our tale draws near, the conflict of Antony and Octavian finally turns to violence. Antony decides his future is with Cleopatra. Together, they begin to plan for war; a war which will ultimately decide the fate of the Mediterranean.

FB Removes Pro-Israel Page & 77M+ followersGregg Roman, Director Middle East Forum joins us to talk IsraelBill Barr & State-Run ReligionFollow Debbie Georgatos!WEBSITE: http://americacanwetalk.orgFACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/AmericaCanWeTalkAmerica Can We Talk is a show with a mission — to speak up for the extraordinary and unique greatness of America. I talk about the top issues of the day facing America, often with insightful guests, always from the perspective of furthering that mission, and with the goal to inspire listeners to celebrate and embrace the liberty on which America was founded.

At 31, Octavian becomes the owner of the Roman State! Finally, the civil wars were over; with them, not formally but certainly in fact, also the history of the Roman Republic had come to an end!

Much of the success of the Roman Legion, and by proxy the Roman State, was due to the intricate level of organization within every level of its military fighting force. On the battlefield, every individual was keenly aware of their place within the myriad clockwork of the overall strategy. No movement wasted, nothing left to chance or confusion, this was the way of Roman Warfare. In this episode, we examine the underlying structure of this legendary fighting force. Support our Patreon! www.patreon.com/theartofwargaming Email: artofwargamingpodcast@gmail.com Facebook: @theartofwargamingpodcast Instagram: @artofwargamingpodcast Check out more of The Art of Wargaming at www.taowargaming.com Check out more earVVyrm podcasts at www.earvvyrm.com

Today on a special edition of The Drive at 5 pm w/ Roman. My in-studio guests is State Representative Emmanuel Chris Welch and Lashawn Ford. The topic of discussion is the latest racial tension regarding George Floyd, potential state policies being in force, police misconduct and what's the next chapter in the Black community. Only on Intellectualradio.com/ I-Heart Radio Station. Join The Drive Live on Facebook Live.Here is the link to today's show.On Intellectualradio.com w/host Roman Morrow!Or join us on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/Driveat5withRoman#thedriveat5withroman#hopecommunitychurch #chicagointernetradiostations #oakparkrotaryclub #chicagoradiostation #maywood #chicagomidwestemmys #robertfeder #blackexcellence #chicagotelevisionnews #chicagowestside #blacklivesmatter #blackbusinessmen #blackbusiness #blackamericamedia#leadersnetwork #29thward #stoptheviolence #blackunity #repchriswelch #blackbusinessmedia #blackamericanweb #broadviewillinois #blackownbusiness #maywood #oakpark #forestpark #cityofchicago #allinthistogether #blackbusinesswomen #covid19 #nationofislam #thenation #thefinalcall #blacknationofislam #blackamericawebmedia #blacknews

In this bumper edition we visit the land of Canti, and while we are in the Kingdom of Kent, we visit the haunted towers of Reculver. For your writing project, we analyze — in depth — the different types of P.O.V. that you might want to use for your fantasy fiction project and we talk about their advantages and disadvantages. And continuing the series on Rome, we look at the expansion of the Roman State.

October 24 2018 Baked and Awake 57 Hunter's Moon Halloween Special   Intro and Disclaimer:  Baked and Awake is a show about Cannabis that is recorded in a legal region. You will encounter the use of cannabis as a member of the audience. Fortunately there is no second hand smoke. All content is presented by a responsible adult, and listeners should be the same. Take responsibility for your own actions, be safe and more importantly, smart- when listening to this podcast.     Strain of The Week: AC/DC By Gold Line Concentrates, scooped at Have a Heart in Skyway WA, because it was beautiful and inexpensive, and we should all be dabbling (and dabbing on!) some high CBD strains.   NOTE: Next episode we will pick up where we left off on the Saga of Jesus, with an exploration of Joseph Atwill’s “Caesar’s Messiah” and a theory that  Jesus of Nazareth was a creation of the Roman State.   As scary as that notion is to some folks, and we’re not here to judge- This week, in celebration of the spookiest time of year, I thought we would change things up, and have a bit of good old fashioned storytime. For that true, vintage, horror vibe, we are reaching deep into the stacks of dusty old stories, to an era when a person could pen a 3800 word poem, and amidst its circumlocutions, enounce a tale of woe to last the ages. A story destined to become a legend, woven into the very fabric of reality in the form of memorable lines that live on as permanent memes of the english language, for who among us old enough to grow (wanted or unwanted) whiskers on our bodies does not know and has not wittily quipped once upon a thirsty but rainy hike, boat ride, etc- “Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!”, probably to the hearty groans and eye rolls of any companions. Or, perhaps just as well known, yet equally obscure to most in its origins, the universal oath of a lamented but inescapable burden, or blame to be borne- “It’s an albatross around their neck”. These classic zingers and more are to be discovered today, as The Baked and Awake Show presents to you, faithful listener, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”   A few points of interest about the author before diving in, that we may better appreciate them.   Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772, almost 246 years ago to the day of this recording.  Happy Birthday, Mister Coleridge, may you rest in peace. Coleridge was British by birth, and had a fascination with and a desire to create and live in a reformed, communal lifestyle in the “New World”, whereby people would live under “Equal Governance by All” or a Pantisocracy, which took its inspiration from Coleridge’s affinity for Plato’s Republic. Coleridge never realized this dream, as his co-creators of the vision for the Pantisocracy eventually matured, and took their rightful places amongst the elite of British Society. Coleridge was well known to have had financial troubles all his life, living a lifestyle of an affluent Creative mostly at the expense of his family and friends. In other words, he was your typical starving artist in his time, though somewhat respected nonetheless, due to his obvious brilliance and prolific bibliography. Coleridge was close friends with and strongly influenced by the well known author William Wordsworth, under whose’ sphere of influence Coleridge’s writing style evolved from exuberant and light hearted, to the compelling voice that would eventually cement his place amongst the leaders of the European Romantic movement of his era.   Amongst his many works of poetry and fiction, Coleridge also penned a ten issue Progressive Political Journal in 1796 called “The Watchmen”. This of course reminds me of my recent episode where we discussed Conspiracy and Occult Disclosure in Comic Books and Movies,  available in the podcast RSS feed, and with an accompanying video presentation on my YouTube channel, where we mentioned The famous Comic Book from the 80’s of nearly the same name. A bit sadly for me, we come to know that Coleridge struggled with Opium addiction for his entire adult life, and though he sought treatment for it a number of times, he never was able to kick the habit.  One wonders if he had only had access to as much Cannabis hashish as Opium, perhaps he might have been able to free himself of the need for that powerful and somewhat consumptive (of its user) narcotic. It doesn’t take much imagination on the part of worldly readers of The Rime, to see the influence of Coleridge’s struggles with the drug within the lines of the poem, rich with language and symbolism of the classic tropes of sin and the consequences of our actions, judgement from on high of an omnipotent God, but also Karma, and the simple forgiveness of our fellow Man for what evils we have done. Finally, one more interesting work by Coleridge, for those of you for whom this episode sparks some interest in learning more about the man who gave us such a legendary story as The Rime- an unfinished but illuminating (as illuminating about the author itself, as in its inherent wisdom) essay entitled “Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life”, written later in the artist’s life and not published until 1848, a full fourteen years after his death on July 25th 1834. In addition to my reading of the story in full, I am including both a link to, and a downloadable mp3 of, a radio adaptation of The Rime, performed on an older radio show called The Hermit’s Cave and presented by a troupe called The Weird Circle that was a lot of fun to listen to.  I invite you all to listen to that version of the story as well, and decide for yourselves if the original work is superior, or is the interpretation of a modern Playwright perhaps more digestible to our ears today, for as you will soon hear, the language and poetry of Coleridge’s time was quite distinct from the present.. Steve’s Introduction: We join the tale of the Ancient Mariner with a young man, innocent of the accosting he is about to be subjected to- standing outside a wedding celebration, of which he is a close relative of the Groom himself. Our guest, taking in the evening air and dare we speculate, perhaps packing his pipe bowl- He prepares to enjoy a moment of quiet before joining the festivities in earnest.  Alas, the Celebrant’s reverie is soon interrupted by an approaching stranger, the wizened figure of an old, old, Man of the Seas.. PART ONEIt is an ancient Mariner,And he stoppeth one of three.'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,And I am next of kin;The guests are met, the feast is set:May'st hear the merry din.'He holds him with his skinny hand,'There was a ship,' quoth he.'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'Eftsoons his hand dropt he.He holds him with his glittering eye--The Wedding-Guest stood still,And listens like a three years' child:The Mariner hath his will... SC… I hope you’ve enjoyed this reading of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a wonderful work of horror AND poetry that I hope is new to more than a few of you, as I believe it certainly deserves its place in the annals of the greatest stories ever told. One can’t help but notice, when reading these words from two centuries ago, that at the time, the written and especially the printed word represented what 4K HD TV’s do to us today- the absolute zenith of entertainment and educational technology!  Coleridge clearly crafts the words on the page in numerous places not simply to rhyme, but to make the reader smile, almost chuckle in the midst of the dismal events of the doomed mariner’s adventure, because of the at times hilarious visual gag on paper between two words. It’s completely lost in the spoken performance, and for that I sincerely apologize. One last observation that came to me unbidden, but which inspired a quick web search investigation that quickly revealed that indeed, this question has been asked and answered- but nonetheless I pose this to you, dear listener:   Was The Ancient Mariner who accosted the Wedding Guest a Zombie?  The answer is in today’s show notes, in the form of an insightful essay discovered at Wordsworth.org by  Rebekah Owens.   Alright returning friends and first time listeners, you have my thanks as always for joining me for another show.  You can find links to all the sources cited in the show notes, along with links to references for additional reading, and the radio adaptation of The Rime of The Ancient Mariner by The Weird Circle. As always, music for the podcast is generously provided by Antti Loude and various artists from the freemusicarchive.org. All artists and contributors receive detailed attribution in the show notes.   Producing the Baked and Awake podcast is like doing a book report every week or so and presenting them to the class.  If you love book reports but don’t have time to do them yourself, one awesome way to have the report you need worked on by Yours Truly is to support the show as a member of our Patreon community. Find me there and join the small but growing group of wonderful humans who, for as little as $1 per month are helping shape the future of the Baked and Awake Podcast! The address for the Patreon page is https://www.patreon.com/bakedandawakeshow, which as I verify this link and read it aloud into the mic, I realize I have been telling people WRONG pretty much the WHOLE TIME. Y’all be good now, have a super Spooky but not too scary Halloween, and remember to smoke some indica, and trick or treat anyway..   MUSIC USED WITH PERMISSION AND GRATITUDE Intro Dab Session Music generously provided by Antti Luode, as posted to reddit:   https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/6y699a/i_have_released_my_1363_songs_free_under_creative/ Selections from WITCHY, BATTY, SPOOKY, HALLOWEEN IN SEPTEMBER !! by Loyalty Freak Music is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License, and can be found at the freemusicarchive.org   Selections from Pondering Waltzes by Dee Yan-Key is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, and can be found at the freemusicarchive.org   String Quintet No. 10 "Solemn" by Dee Yan-Key is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, and can be found at the freemusicarchive.org.   How The Night Came //

Greetings to all the 9Mind Sacred Sisters out there and tho we be a small Klan of intelligent, powerful and virtuous women. Our dislike of Pale Barbaric Patriarchy makes us a threat to men as a collective and a threat to them as individuals, Therefore I must always greet this very small and sacred group of enlightened women with peace, protection, prosperity and indeed Wisdom to we and those we express love for. African American blk males often put forth unfounded and illogical arguements under the label of consciousness or scholarship that the Sad and oppressive life most of them exist under here in the USA is a all Female Black Matriarchy which if it was true would not be a negative culture. However these opinions are not true so to argue an untruth and then blame or point fingers of accusations at a racial group of women who have never been collectively FREE  since the coming and conquest of the Americas by European Barbarians now having reposiitioned themselves as Business men and as powerful political Heads due to immense wealth that was acquired during their ungodly barbaric period of Humane Trafficking of Free Black Bodies they renamed SLAVES. Black women have yet to address the fact that their Blk female Ancestors never where set free at any time in this land. Not by law, legislation, man or civil rights. To think SWIRLING will somehow put all BW born under this awful legacy in a better State is erroneous and lacking the long term SOLUTION to their real COMPLAINTS, which is the denial of their rights to have under PATRARCHY what white women have under same system which is PROTECTION and the sharing of resources. Roman Patriarchy is a system where only Roman women are allowed the protection of the STATE. Non Roman women are viewed as nothing but property to be exploited and monetized by the males of society. Patriarchal Marriage is used to afford a women the protection that Roman Law otherwise will not

Description: After the Council of Constantinople in 381AD, the Orthodox movement should have been poised to consolidate and spread massively. The Orthodox had the power of the Roman State behind it and had for the most part marginalized all other groups. Instead of consolidating, the Orthodox movement was about to splinter over theological and political issues. The School of Antioch: Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ibas of Edessa, John Chrysostom, Nestorius, among others School of Alexandria: Cyril of Alexandria, Dioscurus of Alexandria, Origen, among others. You can learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe at all these great places: http://atozhistorypage.com/ email: steve@atozhistorypage.com http://rss.acast.com/historyofthepapacy Agora: www.agorapodcastnetwork.com https://www.patreon.com/papacy The History of England with David Crowther http://historyofengland.typepad.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Roman politicians needed much money to win the vote. As a result, each one was overindebted. Part of the Roman Empire is based on the money crunch of Roman politicians.

Roman politicians needed much money to win the vote. As a result, each one was overindebted. Part of the Roman Empire is based on the money crunch of Roman politicians.

The Arian controversy continues to rage in the is episode. The Popes of Rome are caught in a roiling theological battle over not only the nature of Jesus Christ in the trinity, but also how the secular Roman State and Christianity would interact and relate to each other. The Pope of Rome Liberius would be banished for his beliefs, but then possibly return because he capitulated on those beliefs. The politics of Christianity and the Roman Empire are going to become their own character in this story. You can learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe at all these great places: http://atozhistorypage.com/ email: steve@atozhistorypage.com http://rss.acast.com/historyofthepapacy Agora: www.agorapodcastnetwork.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fr. John delineates the various ways in which Constantine contributed to the Christianization of the Roman state.

In this episode we begin a series on the religious situation in the Roman Empire during the first years of the Christian Movement. We will take a look at the Roman State religion, personal religion and the Cult of Sol Invictus. The early Christian movement did not develop in a vacuum. Instead, it developed in a rich religious and cultural environment. We will look at how the various religions of the time helped shape what Christianity will become. You can learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe at all these great places: http://atozhistorypage.com/ email: mailto:steve@atozhistorypage.com http://rss.acast.com/historyofthepapacy Agora: www.agorapodcastnetwork.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.