welcome to the latest in the series of
Gifford lectures
again to Professor Mary be a lecturer
who I'll introduce for me in a moment so
those of you that know about the Gifford
lectures and I know many of you will be
regulars here know that the the universe
friend was very proud to host the
Gifford series here and one of my very
pleasant tasks as the principal the
University of Edinburgh is to host and
to sometimes chair some of these
lectures so I get to hear some very
interesting contributions so this
evening speaker in some ways needs no
introduction but that I always follow
that statement by saying I'll introduce
her so professor Mary Bailey's professor
of classics at the University of
Cambridge and a fellow of Newnham
College and her series is entitled the
ancient world and us from fear and
loathing to enlightenment and ethics and
this evening's lecture is the fifth of
her six lectures and I'll mention the
details of the sixth one at the end
there's a slight change in title so
tonight's lecture will be entitled
tyranny and Empire the the lecture and
the questions are as you see being
filmed the video will be available
online on the university's Gifford
lectures web pages and at the end we'll
have time for some questions and that
would also be films there will be an
opportunity for people who don't want to
stay for the question and answer session
to leave beforehand but we'll have time
for questions at the end and with that
with that and with no further ado please
let me hand over to Professor Mary beard
welcome
thank you very much and as Peter said
this lecture is now focused not on
tyranny and democracy but on tyranny and
empire particularly how the Roman Empire
has or has not been used to justify
imperial domination in the modern world
and I'm particularly going to be
thinking about the British Empire if
you've come to hear about democracy I'm
terribly sorry but it is already up
online so listen to it in the privacy of
your own laptop
I want you've got the confession and I
want to start by saying but for all
there inextricable interconnections
ancient Greece by which we often really
mean ancient Athens an ancient Rome have
often been presented to us as kind of
polar opposites in ancient culture sort
of non identical twins one goodie and
one body even though there have been
shifts over time as to which the good
years and which the body I did observe
yesterday and exaggerating just a little
that for several centuries from the
Renaissance up to the early 19th century
to at least the revolutionary politics
of the late 18th century Rome was the
culture to emulate it was the early
Roman heroes great great example of
these heroes such as those here who
deposed the monarchy after the death of
Lucretia who were in the minds of
American revolutionaries and French
neo-classicists who saw a model in the
principles of law citizenship freedom
and in some cases opposition to monarchy
that the Roman Republic appeared to his
spouse and it really wasn't into the
19th cent
that the table's turned and as we saw
yesterday Athenian democracy which had
previously generally been written off as
a pre disastrous experiment in mob rule
came to be seen as the preferential
model and Greek culture from theater to
art and philosophy came to be seen as
the Wellsprings of Western civilization
which I'm going to be talking about on
Thursday and there's your reminder of
Edinburgh Scotland to the admiration of
Greece at the same time as this growth
in in Helena philia was happening Roman
politics became characterized not so
much as virtuous republicanism but as
the corrupt political regime of the
Empress who followed the Republic after
the assassination of Caesar and Roman
culture in general at least in in many
imaginations became downgraded as a sort
of johnny-come-lately who pinched
basically everything that was worthwhile
from ancient Greece leaving only as
their own inventions the luxury the
excess the asses milk births the
excessive militarism the gladiatorial
games and all the other bad bits as
things that were variably Roman it's
very much a good cop bad cop kind of
routine between Greece and Rome and
that's reflected actually in how the
ancient classical world is presented to
kids here you'll see the Horrible
Histories fantastic series but it's the
groovy Greeks and the rotten Romans and
that absolutely sums it up no it goes
without saying I hope that this is a
rather silly binary
for a start as I think my lectures be
making it fairly clear none of the
inhabitants of the ancient world were
remotely nice in our terms and anybody
he thinks that Virgil or Ovid were kind
of cultural johnny-come-lately 'he's
after the greeks compared with homer say
or Euripides clearly hasn't read them
and I've discussed already the kind of
the only presence across both these
cultures of things yesterday like
slavery but Universal militarism would
be cut would be another case in point
what we would think of as trigger-happy
violence oppression and cruel
reparations were a major Lee major
hallmark of international relations
across the greco-roman world whatever
elaborate legal systems these cultures
might have invented internally
international law in antiquity was
rudimentary the communist way sometimes
it would have seen the only way of
settling disputes between states was by
fighting it out and power was
demonstrated by military force again in
our terms Alexander the Great was a
murderous young thug whom for some
reason I failed to understand we still
persist in calling the great right I
think that would be something we should
get rid of you know Alexander of Macedon
you know it was nasty piece of work and
and if you move to something which is
not quite it's not quite as violent on a
massive scale as Alexander's conquests
Athens exercised its own rule over other
states with what must have seemed a
terrifying rod of iron as we saw
yesterday it was only a second
referendum that stopped the massacring
the whole male population
of a town that had tried to break away
from Athenian control but if there is
given that overall similarity if there
is a single crucial difference between
the great world and the Roman world it
is in the idea and practice of
territorial Empire now Alexander of
Macedon that's what I call him conquered
swathes of territory but he hardly ruled
these ways before he died happily quite
quickly and the territory was divided up
and Athens as I've just hinted at
various points in its history had a
slightly longer lasting and hugely
controversial Empire but it was still
relatively small by imperial standards
what marked Rome out as different was an
empire that was both vast stretching
from Scotland to the Sahara and long
lasting in fact in the eastern
Mediterranean it lasted until the 15th
century we call those later phases of
the Eastern Empire the Byzantine Empire
but they saw themselves and called
themselves the Romans equally important
that Roman Empire has ever since been
crucial in defining at least in the West
and characterizing imperial domination
from the Holy Roman Empire to the
British Empire now as I've done before I
want to take a fresh look at this from
the ancient side before thinking about
the modern legacy of the Roman Empire
and what role it plays for us and how
far under its shadow
we still live now it will come as no
surprise if I say as I've said in almost
every lecture this time the Roman Empire
is actually more puzzling than it
sometimes looks
the conundrum that everyone always or at
least since Gibbon was worried about is
why did it fall why did the Roman Empire
end and as I showed you a couple of
weeks ago there are plenty of half-baked
modern attempts to search for lessons
for today in whatever might have caused
the Empire's decline I just repeat that
the Roman Empire did not fall because of
mass migration now in a way it's Gibbons
question why did the Roman Empire fall
but still rules you know in the popular
imagination on the Twittersphere and
elsewhere but for me the much much more
interesting and actually even more
puzzling question is not why the Empire
fell but how and why it ever got up and
running in the first place an empire
more or less political control that was
bigger in territorial extent than
anything seen in the West ever to put
this in the most basic simplest
historical terms how do we understand
how a second-rank small town which is
what Rome was in the 4th century BC how
do you understand how that second-ranked
small town became within 300 years the
ruler of such vast Imperial territories
and to give you an idea of the
territories they are those marked out in
white here pretty much at its biggest
extent Scotland to the Sahara Spain over
to Syria now this is actually a
carefully chosen image of the extent of
Rome's power because it's taken from a
series of maps that Mussolini put on
play in the center of Rome and they
currently taken down there I think good
to go back again to trace the
geographical development of Roman power
from its origins right through to here
uh and to project he didn't put that up
for historical merely historical
curiosity it was to project his own hope
for the resurrection under Mussolini of
the Roman Empire didn't get happily very
far can I just put in parentheses now
because it's something which is always
terribly puzzling in my terminology
might not always recognize this it's
absolutely crucial to grasp when you're
looking at histories of the Roman Empire
that Rome acquired its empire in a
territorial sense most of its empire in
a territorial sense when it was a
Republican democracy and the Emperor's
only came later that is to say the
Romans had an empire long before they
had anything that we call an emperor now
I think that's in parentheses but it's
it causes inordinate confusion in almost
everybody's a writing ant imagination so
just bear that in mind as I go on so how
did this happen how did Rome get this
Empire how did it take control first of
Italy and then far beyond it's very hard
to sustain but it's often said in this
kind of rotten Romans mentality that we
have that the Romans were just nastier
or more militaristic than any of the
other guys on the block know there is no
doubt that the prestige of the Roman
elite was always as far as we can tell
tied to military success the honour that
every Roman most lusted after was every
elite
when most lusted after was the so-called
triumph which we grips very briefly
yesterday the procession in which the
victorious general who killed a
sufficient number of the enemy was
transported through the streets of Rome
dressed up in the costume of the god
Jupiter himself he is Montaigne
reimagining the scene in the fifteenth
century
with Julius Caesar here on his rather
fantastic triumphal chariot I mean it's
pretty clear to that later on
every Emperor after we get to the one
man rule following Julius Caesar's
assassination that every emperor really
needed a victory to validate his own
rule even the decidedly unmilitary
Claudius had to conquer Britain conquer
I think in inverted commas to prove his
worth so giving the Romans a bundle of
trouble that lasted centuries it's often
said that Britain was Rome's Afghanistan
and it's not far from being the truth it
could never quite go particularly can't
conquer Scotland all that's true this is
you know Rome is a warrior state it's a
highly militaristic prestige ghost totem
with military power and military success
but there is absolutely no reason to
think that Rome was any more
militaristic than anybody else right now
occasionally sort of over optimistic
historians and archeologists have tried
to invent peace-loving civilizations in
the ancient world like the Minoan
civilization invented almost entirely by
Arthur Evans in prehistoric Crete with
it some innocent herb gatherers and bull
leapers but this was fantasy absolute
fantasy most of the famous paintings are
actually restorations restored into to
make this fantasy look true they're
nothing like
they appear to be and the truth is that
everywhere we have any clear evidence
whether that's fortifications or
military hardware used as grave goods in
people's graves everywhere in the
ancient world there is this hugely male
minute ristic ideology what
distinguishes Rome in other words is not
that it's militaristic but that it is
successfully militaristic or
distinguishes Rome is that it wins and
the big question is I think not were
they more militaristic than anybody else
but why did they win what accounts for
Rome's military success now this is what
I'm going to say goes down terribly
badly amongst sort of war gamers but I
think it is absolutely nothing to do
with superiority in tactics right now
there is a huge mystification of the
military genius of Julius Caesar who is
still for some completely mad reason
taught in modern war canopies like like
West Point as if he was the supreme
tactician of antiquity I mean I did get
into terrible trouble saying this but I
think that I would still stand by it and
I went through quite a lot of battle
descriptions and ancient battles and
they're pretty fun they're also pretty
fantastical but there seems to me that
the ancients have only one tactic for
winning which is go round the back right
you know
everything they do is some version of
going round the back you know and it's
not rocket science
you know you can you can you know get
people sort of put you know trapped in a
little gully or a ravine but basically
it's going around the back and I don't
think that anybody is working with
anything that leads for an awful lot I'm
talking about it but
don't think anybody's working in the
ancient world with anything better than
that so it's not about tactics it isn't
actually about better or more deadly
hardware occasionally there are
inventions or weaponry but there's
nothing that the enemy can't copy you
know if you invent a really super spear
and you throw it into the enemy well
they're really dumb if they don't make
one - because you've given them the
model right for me the only remotely
convincing answer to why Rome wins and
there's still issues here is that the
Romans soon had insuperable manpower
because of their policy of forming
alliances with those they conquered and
sometimes incorporating them into
citizenship usual pattern in ancient
warfare is you go off and you bash up
the enemy you take a few cows and stuff
bash down their walls and say see you in
the next fighting season the Romans
apparently almost uniquely make that
conquest of next door territories and
further afield territories part of the
establishment of long-standing
relationships with those peoples who are
obliged to provide soldiers that gives
them a huge advantage numerically in
manpower its boots on the ground really
that the Romans have and it means but
the Romans do quite often lose battles
and they lose battles much more often
than we kind of allow but they didn't
lose Wars they always had more blokes to
put into the battle line and that's
really what ancient warfare depends on
its have you got more manpower than the
other side so this there's nothing
special here about their kind of
military genius they've just got more of
them
it's also worth pointing out that
there's no sign that Rome started out
with any idea of systematic Imperial
control over conquered territories you
can't mustn't imagine a group of
senators sitting down in the third
century BC with kind of one of those you
know Second World War maps because they
didn't have maps for a start so you know
we're gonna conquer we'll put you know
the legions here it's it is not a
systematic plan yeah even our modern
idea of an ordered set of Roman
provinces with governors and central
administration and that's always a bit
modest modernizing anyway but for
centuries it really didn't exist at all
and certainly up to the first century BC
first 200 years or so of substantial
conquest Rome's aim seems basically to
have to ensure that it got its own way
if the chips were down
it wasn't about hands on control and
that administrative hands on control was
relatively late in coming it's worth
remembering actually that the word Pro
winged Kea from which province comes
Roman Latin word per wing Kea originally
just means a job or responsibility for
Roman in the second century BC was sent
out to a pro ink here he was sent out to
do a job which might have been control
Spain but it was a job now John
Richardson he's going to be chairing our
seminar tomorrow has done more than
anybody to tease out some of these
complexities in Roman imperialism and I
hope he's not going to mind if I say
that there are some paradoxes and blind
spots
in the more general modern approaches to
this and to our understanding of Rome's
empire on the one hand I think we still
have a sneaking admiration for the Roman
Imperial
project as we talked about it as the
ancestor of modern globalization some
people talk about it as the ancestor of
the EU for example and we point to kind
of recognizable similarities in the
material culture of North Africa and
Hadrian's Wall as if it was a kind of
proto coca-cola style globalization of
culture with which in which we feel
somewhat invested are we talk also
endlessly about Romans connectivity and
their infrastructure by which basically
we mean roads and you also notice if you
just read almost any Roman history
textbook or listen to most TV
documentaries and go back to the word
great it's not just Alexander the Great
the word great creeps in every so often
when we are talking about the Roman
military machine how often have you
heard people talk about the greatest
Roman general or great a great Conqueror
heroism those men whom are equally well
perhaps better be dubbed genocide all
maniacs you know every time you read
great Conqueror see if genocidal maniac
will do instead very often it will and I
mean that quite literally because the
slaughter the scale of the slaughter
wreaked by Julius Caesar in Gaul has
been actually put on the scale of
genocide perhaps a million killed by
observers of this who are much more
moderate than I am and even some Romans
admittedly they're Caesar's enemies
thought that he was guilty of crimes
against humanity now I don't think we
should imagine therefore that the Gauls
were up to
innocent peace-loving victims of all
this right
the Asterix image of the quirky druids
and the magic potion and all that is
romantic but wrong I think if you want a
rather more accurate view of the flavor
of Gallic culture that was pretty much
annihilated by Caesar it's provided by a
Greek observer who visited Gaul
shortly before caesar's invasion and he
said words to the effect of it was quite
a jolt at first to see the heads of
decapitated enemies pinned up outside
their huts but after a while you kind of
got used to it so the fact that people
get defeated in the ancient world
doesn't mean that they were nicer than
the people who conquered them so we have
a far too systematic a far too much
planned image of Roman imperialism but
the other side of the coin that we tend
to downplay is this is a bit like
slavery yesterday if not Roman
opposition to Empire at least Roman
anxieties about Empire sure as I said
Rome is a warrior state and you can't
get away from that but when Roman
writers looked hard the dynamics and
that consequences of Empire they saw the
downsides of it as well as the upsize it
is a good rule of thumb I think any
period that the sharpest critiques of
Empire come as much from within the
Imperial States themselves as they come
from the victims of imperialism it is
I'm afraid the Imperial states and the
Imperial aggressors who know what they
get up to and that is certainly true of
Rome for a number of Roman writers it
was the acquisition of empire and
especially the year 1 4 6 BC when by
horrible coincidence Roman armies
annihilated both the Greek city of
Corinth and Hannibal city of Carthage
and what is now Tunisia for a number of
Roman writers it was that year of
enormous Roman success that marked the
beginning of Roman decline 146 BC note
you know we are hundreds of years before
Gibbon even started to think about Roman
decline we're a hundred years before the
assassination of Caesar in their view it
was from that period on when Rome had
effectively unchallenged dominance that
you saw the growth of luxury which
sucked
the Romans spirit and it was at the
terrible destruction of Carthage a
really brutal destruction of the city of
Carthage partly kind of in very belated
revenge for the fear of Hannibal but the
Roman general skippy Oh overseeing watch
standing and watching Carthage go up in
flames he was spotted crying him crying
but it's another version of him when he
was asked by an eyewitness why he was
crying he replied to the effect of the
same thing would one day happen to Rome
and he's doing that can 1 4 6 no I have
to say I think it's a pretty long story
really in a virtuous skippy oh who is
just completely trashed this city then
it has a scintilla of conscience you
know and says happened to us one day but
it leads I think no doubt that anxieties
about the Empire begin from the moment
that he's at its greatest success there
is however nothing cloying in the
analysis of the Roman historian Tacitus
in the biography that he wrote of his
father-in-law
who was for a time the governor of
Britain in scripting a speech to put
into the mouth of a Caledonian freedom
fighter by the name of Cal mcus you can
see a local version of him
Tacitus discusses the very nature of
Roman imperialism what do the Romans do
he asks answer they make a desert and
they call it peace now
it is often fondly imagined that this
was really uh tered by some early
Caledonian but I'm afraid 99.9% certain
that Cal gigas did not speak Latin and
that he probably didn't exist he's a
figment of Roman imagination which is
now beautifully reconstructed for you
here what you get in that phrase they
make a desert and call it peace is a
homegrown Roman analysis of empire put
into their mouths of a barbarian and
it's probably the most powerful and
sharpest critique of empire that was
ever written by anyone it goes without
saying I think that modern empires are
still making deserts and calling them
peace and there aren't enough Tacitus
around in the world to call them out I'm
afraid
ok so what I mean trying to do is
capture some of the ambivalence is that
hover around the Roman Empire from the
way our own language can somehow situate
us on the same side as the Romans proto
global culture to the critiques and
anxieties about imperialism found at the
center of Roman Imperial culture I might
have if there'd be more time just to go
back to the triumph for a minute I might
have added something about kind of Roman
descriptions and discussions you get of
these very frequent victory parades are
very frequent because the Romans are
often winning very frequent
victory parades in the Republic here
Caesar and it is the generals finest
hour this is what every general wants it
was also the triumph is a poisoned
chalice uncomfortably often it was
always said disaster lurked just around
the corner
for the successful general it certainly
lurked just around the corner for Caesar
it was about to be assassinated and
sometimes and again it kind of adds I
think to this picture of sort of
ambivalence sometimes writers explain
that the general lost his spot in the
limelight walking past the crowds and
they all looked and cried for the
prisoners they did not clap the general
they were back in the Coliseum with the
elephants and people feeling sorry for
the elephants what I want to do now next
20 minutes it sort of build on that and
to think harder about how the Roman
Empire has somehow replayed in modern
imagination and politics and in
particular how it's been used to justify
Imperial regimes because one of the
charges that is very often thrown at
classics and the study of the Romans in
general and Roman archaeology is that it
has provided it has been linked to and
provided a justification for Empire and
certainly through the late 9th and 22nd
19th and 20th centuries it was a
peculiarly powerful vindication of the
British Empire now that's not to say it
was a practical driver of imperialism in
Britain the British didn't get the idea
of having an empire from reading Roman
writing but it provided a kind of
historical and symbolic legitimation a
kind of symbolic ancestor of what the
British were all about now up to a point
that is true.i the leading figures of
british imperial expansion
as you see here could present them cells
quite literally in Roman guys here's
Lord Cornwallis looking very fetching in
his Roman armor and there were many
cases where the Imperial the newly built
Imperial capitals of the British Empire
were forged in the likeness of ancient
Rome and there you get lodgings
buildings in New Delhi and that's only
the tip of the iceberg it's also clear
that the Roman Empire or even the
ancient world in general gave the
British a language with which to talk
about their own Imperial enterprise
gunboats the names of gunboats are
always absolutely different ways and
gunboats were very frequently named
after the gods and heroes of classical
myth and in the Crimean War you find HMS
Agamemnon HMS Ajax HMS Neptune serving
alongside slightly less classically
resonance HMS Edinburgh and the HMS
James what so so if you have James Watt
and Agamemnon going in together to fight
the Crimean War right and there are all
kinds of direct parallels drawn between
classical history and British successes
and failures it's actually something of
a nineteenth-century cliche to compare
the Boer War to the disastrous invasion
of Sicily by Athens towards the end of
the fifth century BC but more than those
kind of off the peg easy sort of Boris
Johnson style comparisons there were
strong assertions from leading scholars
at the time but the practices and
principles of Roman rule through useful
light on British rule and vice-versa
ancient Rome
helped you understand Britain and
Britain helped you understand ancient
Rome 1956 John Collingwood Bruce one of
the leading lights of the study of
Hadrian's Wall drew very close parallels
between the campaign's in Scotland
against catechist
of the Roman governor Agricola the
father-in-law his biography Tacitus
wrote and the fighting of liberties in
yet again the Crimean War or rather he
criticized British leaders for not
having learnt the lessons that Agricola
had to teach particularly in the sphere
of infrastructure and transport it's one
of the classic pieces of blurring
between the British and the Roman
Empire's just going to read you a little
bit what Colin would Bruce had to say
unfortunately our Prime Minister was too
busy to study antiquities it was not
until after our army had suffered the
Severus calamities that a road was made
from balaclava to the camp again we
should probably have taken him to some
of our stations on Hadrian's Wall and
shown him the care with which a Roman
army was entrenched even when it rested
for just a single night right so the
British messed up the Crimean War
because they didn't have Roman
infrastructure and half a century or so
later in 1911 Frances have a field
professor of Roman history Oxford and he
was actually founding the National
Society for the promotion of Roman
studies had words on broadly the same
theme which were published in the very
first issue of the journal of Roman
studies he has this to say the Roman
imperial system alike in its differences
and similarities lights up our own
empire for example in India at every
turn the methods by which Rome
incorporated and Deena
lized and assimilated more than half its
wide dominions and the success of Rome
unintended perhaps but complete in
spreading its greco-roman culture over
more than a third of Europe and a part
of Africa concern in many ways our own
age an empire Rome in other words
offered a lesson in empire for the
British and it was partly because of
those perceived links between Rome and
the British Empire but men like Benjamin
Jowett the master of Bailey or College
Oxford in 1870s and 80s thought that the
Empire should be run by classicists
particularly classes from Oxford and
particularly classes from Bailey or
College and you see him here in a kind
of amazing mixture I think utter
overweening self-confidence and total
corrosive self-doubt really but whether
confident or doubting he played a large
part in constructing what's often seemed
like a magic circle joining up people
who knew about the ancient Roman Empire
and governed the modern British one
classics it being said and classicists
being the natural in rota Commerce
Imperial administrators now that's a
Magic Circle captured in a rather more
amusing way here in what was then
already a rather nostalgic cartoon from
a 1950s Britain's children's book how to
be top which starred as his antihero one
nigel Molesworth aloud who even though
he'd been sent to a very expensive
private prep school some custards
refuses to be moulded into proper elite
shape no matter how much Latin he is fed
this cartoon parodies moulds worth much
lessons and his grappling with one of
the trickiest parts of Latin grammar
there is the gerund now those of you who
have spent their years up to this point
blissfully free of the gerund A count
yourself lucky B it is what we call if
you will know what it is it is what we
would call a verbal noun often in
English marked by the word in singing
walking etc and it's a slight more
complicated in Latin now this cartoon
features the author of the most famous
Latin grammar in the UK at the time and
still in print
Kennedy's Latin primer first published
in the late 19th century and this guy
here is Kennedy yes seen in the guise of
an imperial Explorer or exploiter who
has trapped down this Porter sorry she's
important in this story he's tracked
down this poor little verbal noun here
the gerund and is taking it back in
captivity to his grammatical zoo in the
UK now whatever they kids aged 10 or so
who read this in the 50s it's pointing
pretty clearly and memorably at the
links between imperial expansion here
seem as exploration and the teaching and
the learning of in this case the Latin
language is pointing to the connection
between Empire and classics now let's
get the lady on because I should say
that just in there's not enough women in
this talk so we're going to have one
Christopher Strait has proved that
although Benjamin Hall Kennedy's name
appears on the title page of Kennedy's
Latin primer and I just called him the
author just now this grammar book this
most famous of all gråvik's and in the
British Isles was actually ghost written
by his daughter's Marian and Julia and
here's Marian that you see we know very
little much more about this and it's
another story but we can't mention
Kennedy without mentioning the truth so
it's absolutely clear that there are
really important connections between
imperialism an ancient to modern between
British Imperial exploitation and them
seeing links with Roman exploitation but
I think any two common caricature that
somehow imagines the British sort of
simply symbolically or literally
reclosing their imperial ambitions in
togas and testudo neighs and things well
back home battalions of classical
scholars were hard at work kind of
underwriting that Mirage that is
oversimplifying a picture of what's
going on as the picture of Kennedy and
the gerund was it puts a very crude
image of the Roman Empire center stage
and even more fundamentally it ignores
the debates and disagreements about the
Roman Empire and the modern Empire that
were raging in the late 19th century if
you look more carefully at this apparent
linkage between the British and the
Romans you will find that it always
proved impossible however much they
might have wanted to quite align Britain
and Rome and the issue one of the big
issues in the 19th century was not the
display of Rome as the ancestor of
modern imperialism it was how to wrestle
with the fact that you couldn't quite
make it the ancestor of British
imperialism now this is one of my key
witnesses to that and it's perhaps the
most vivid symbol of the lack of
fit between ancient and modern empires
it's the early 20th century statue of
Buddha koror Boadicea the rebel against
the Romans in the first century AD the
reign of Nero in the sixties that still
stands on the Thames embankment outside
the houses of parliament
Boadicea was the British queen who rose
up against the Romans when they reneged
on in green on agreements that they made
with her husband after her husband's
death he had been basically a Roman
collaborator
there was a brief bit of warfare
described by Roman writers in highly
colored tones
Boadicea is supposed to have won some
very nasty victories quite how nasty we
don't really know because we've only got
the Roman accounts and inevitably it
ended in the suppression of the
rebellion the abuse and death of
Boudicca and her daughters
now strikingly this vast bronze of a
British rebel against Rome is perhaps
the most aggressive monument to British
imperialism in London I mean or at least
it runs Nelson's column pretty close
second I think and it's really
aggressive partly because of the words
described on its plinth
which basically say don't worry Boudicca
your descendants will conquer and rule
more territory than the Romans ever did
and you see it in the poets exact words
here regions Caesar never knew thy
posterity shall sway now that points to
two things that disrupt any simple
equivalence between oh I'm putting this
inverted commas our Empire and the
Romans first there's a real awkwardness
in looking at the history of Roman
Britain there is a real awkwardness
about wandering in the late 19th and
early 20th century
whose side the observer or the reader is
supposed to be on are we on the Roman
side or are we on the British side was
Boudicca a rebel against the legitimate
authority of Rome or was she a valiant
freedom fighter like calgis and it goes
a long way beyond
Boadicea some of the most jingoistic
literature of the 19th century turns out
to be much more ambivalent about Roman
imperialism especially in Britain than
you'd expect I'm thinking here of the
among other things the children's books
of G a Henty with their earthly giveaway
titles like the dash for cartoon or by
right of conquest with Cortez in Mexico
there's no doubt we are not on the
Sudanese side in the dash for Khartoum and
we're not in the Mexican side in with
Cortez in Mexico his novel set in
Britain as the title beric the Britain
and it takes an unexpected line because
it deploys the innovating effect of
Roman rule on the native population
whose True Grit British True Grit is not
restored until the Normans came along in
1066
so the hemti who you might have expected
given you know what else he writes to
have been very Pro Rome yeah the Henty
the ancestors of British imperialist
power are really the Norman French
they're not the Romans at all but second
causing problems there was a really
worrying for many commentators in
convenient geographical and geopolitical
disjunction between these empires as the
poem on the plinth shows those regions
Caesar never knew or what the British
are going to rule now interestingly
before the dismemberment to the autumn
Empire the only territories that were in
both the British and the Roman Empire or
Britain itself Cyprus and Gibraltar and
as one early twentieth century historian
was forced to conclude when he tried to
compare what he called greater britain
and greater rome echoing this poem I
think he said the whole of the British
Empire is in parts of the world which
Rome never knew and which never knew
Rome which was to say that the triumph
of Britain for him was not the
continuation of the Roman Empire but an
up turning of that world order by what
had been the most marginal province in
the whole empire Rome's
Afghanistan now you get a sideways
glimpse of that in one of the most
popular and indeed cliched Victorian
images of all an etching by Gustave doré
a of 1872 which illustrates a bomb oh by
thomas babington macaulay who in a
prophecy skippy on it like in a prophecy
about the future of london what would
happen when london had collapsed in
centuries to come referred to some
traveler from new zealand there he is
in the vast and the midst of a vast
solitude taking his stand on the broken
arch of london bridge just there in
order to sketch the ruins of some paul's
it's exactly what you see it was a real
real victorian cliche punch was only one
of the many magazines to satirize a
whole new zealand idea saying that this
bloody awful sketcher should be retired
because he was blocking the transport on
London Bridge in it feeble joke but a
check but what's the classical
connection here well partly as I
suggested there's a back reference here
to skip you
ping at the destruction of Carthage you
know well rome was going to be destroyed
London will be destroyed and it plays
with the idea of the young British grand
tourist who now sketches the ruins of
ancient Rome here being replaced in a
different Imperial context but I think
also it points to the disjunction and
the different territorial context of
these two empires it's not by chance
that this is a New Zealander from the
other side of the world what we're
seeing then are the symbolic problems
never mind those colonial administrators
in their togas of trying to constrict
the Romans choose the British cause but
the dispute went further than that I
just referred to Jowett Benjamin Jowett
who was the spokesperson for the
centrality of classicists in public and
imperial administration and for the
knowledge of Latin and Greek and ancient
Greece and ancient Rome being correlated
with a capacity for imperial government
now it's particular concern was entry to
the British government of India known as
the Indian Civil Service the popular
joke at the time was it was neither
Indian nor civil nor a service and it's
now often assumed that jao its
ponderings about the links between
classics and Empire were typical that he
was expressing a loud official ideology
of the legitimating power of antiquity
in Imperial exploitation but we need to
be a bit careful
jarett's was certainly one view and he
was an influential voice among those who
wanted to put Oxford first and actually
offered at the center of the global
Empire but do you think it's worth
remembering that when people shout as
loud as Joe it did it's usually because
not everyone agrees with them not
because they're stating the bleedin
obvious and what is clear here is in the
19th century there was a big debate
going on some people fell
very strongly that Java was wrong and in
fact the terms and conditions for doing
the Indian civil service exams became
something of a battleground because they
were repeatedly changed sometimes to
make it easy for Oxford classicists you
do other times to exclude them from the
competition by putting different age
ranges so you behind all this there is a
debate about how far Rome helps you but
there's more to it than that this is
where I'm coming to the end the classics
was in the 19th century conscripted into
both sides of the debate
the irony is at the same time as Jaret
was trying to recruit his Oxford
classicists to serve the Empire CP Scott
you see here also in Oxford classicist
who went on to be editor of the
Manchester Guardian which was the most
powerful anti imperial paper in the
country Scott was trying to Hoover up
the same classicists to come and work on
the Manchester Guardian to denounce
Empire alright and he won't chinos
classicists because they read their
Tacitus and they knew all about making a
desert and calling it peace and that's
what he wanted in the paper now my point
here is not to deny the legitimating
force of classics in British Imperial
discourse or in other Western empires my
point is to underline that the influence
of classics was always a matter of
debate
it was disputed argued over and denied
and for me and it is leading to what I'm
going to say in my last lecture and
perhaps it's an even bigger point to
which reflects I think quite directly on
the themes of these lectures the
classical world in us we have all of us
a terrible tendency to want classics and
the classical tradition to be pretty
mono valent to mean just one thing and
to support a single position usually
a reactionary one but actually the real
contribution and the classical tradition
is to provide us with some of the tools
with which we can argue about this
classics was neither for or against
Empire but it influence was debated and
contested and that is a lesson the even
professional classicists need to learn
but I'm going to finish with just one
final example which rather turns the
tables and some things I've said 15
minutes ago I quoted a bit of an article
by Collingwood Bruce arguing how
important the lessons of the Roman
Empire should have been for the conduct
of the Crimean War the article is
entitled the practical advantages
accruing from the study of archaeology
and it is been hailed as a prize
specimen of Imperial archaeology it's
one book recently summed it up
Collingwood Bruce was making an explicit
argument for the direct significance of
Roman military planning in the
organisation of the British Army now
when I read that quote out I noticed
some of you smiled and you were
absolutely spot on
the fact is Collingwood Bruce's article
is a joke it is all very well to extract
that little passage about roads about
Agricola and the road from balaclava to
the camp but if you read the rest of it
and I come to the reluctant conclusion
that most people who talk about this
article have not read the rest of it it
becomes boring Dingley obvious that it's
a send-up Collingwood Bruce let me tell
you what happens in the rest
Collingwood Bruce also recommended
underfloor heating Roman underfloor
heating for use in the Crimea
he claimed that Roman Malta would have
been much better in the construction of
Durham Jail and he observed that Roman
kitchen equipment was infinitely
superior to the modern he particularly
praised a gravy strainer from Pompeii in
the collection of the Duke of
Northumberland
Romans didn't have gravy and that is one
indication that this is a joke right
yeah he told a cock-and-bull story about
how the Dukes master cook was shown the
gravy strainer and quotes pronounced it
better than any he had the peculiarity
of it consisted rim being turned
slightly inwards so that it can be
slightly shaken over the joint without
the risk of any unstrained gravy coming
over the edge now nobody could have read
this and said that this was an example
of Roman Imperial archaeology unless
they had no sense of humor whatsoever to
be sure
joking comparisons between Rome and Rome
Roman Empire and Cretan practices
they're still comparisons and they're
obviously the whole article is obviously
reacting to something but I think the
Dukes gravy strainer is a great reminder
of how careful we have to be when we
confront the legacy of Rome in our own
culture sometimes we all the people are
writing about it or actually having a
laugh right thanks
so thank you very much Mary
that was excellent as always and I
learned some new words helena philia
Alexander the not-so-great and and the
fact that we're now in the northern part
of Rome's Afghanistan so that was great
and those of you that that are leaving
before the questions that you're welcome
to do so just to fill that gap the the
fifth and final sorry yes the sixth and
final lecture of the series will be on
Thursday evening at the same time in the
same place at 5:30 p.m. entitled
classical civilization with a question
mark with a question mark question mark
yes I'll get ridiculed who doesn't have
a question all right okay that question
was very important and we are holding an
online discussion throughout the
fortnight of the series and this is on
our Gifford lectures blog led by Andrew
Johnson of New College so to follow and
contribute to that discussion please
visit the dressers at the back of the
leaflet and also on the gifford lecture
web pages so with that and a good number
of people left to answer you ask you
some questions Mary I'm going to open it
up for questions
we've got about we're supposed to have
about 15 minutes but little bit behind
schedule but we'll try and make it as 15
minutes if we can there is a roving
microphone so if you'd like to ask a
question please try and attract my
attention and then wait for the
microphone to arrive right at the very
back I really enjoyed your lecture and
learned a great deal about ancient Rome
and its methodology of acquiring an
empire if you were unwise enough to try
to build a new empire now would we come
to you for lessons on how to do it we
have recent examples of the British
building their empire and there's no
doubt that some of us might think that
that's what Israel is doing at the
moment so my question is you're a
classicist do you think your fellow
historian at least not a classicists
William Papas idea on settler
colonialism is that a new idea or did
the Romans practice settler color
there was a lot more space in the
ancient Roman Empire which i think is
absolutely key here that there is no
land hunger and nobody wants to
particularly go anywhere so what what
you find is all kinds of what they would
have called colonist veteran usually
Forex soldiers but not always colonists
all across the Empire who fulfilled you
know the role of being little mini
Rome's in whether it's on the borders of
the Sahara or you know in southern
Britain but there is no no let me I
would we do not know of course the
reaction of the locals next to whom
these colonies were set off because we
do not have their voices
however broadly speaking what we can see
is a really Britain is not actually
squashed you know it's not squashed full
but I think you know what I would say
you know in terms of lessons you know I
don't think it's about stopping the
colonists if you think about some of the
things that I was saying at the
beginning you know I don't usually like
the idea there being lessons from any
bit of Rome I think is normally their
judging and a bit silly but one of the
things that Rome provides some kind of
model for isn't in cooperative rather
than an inclusive Empire and so you get
to the second century AD and you
discover that you have Emperor's who
come from Spain example and later on in
the century and pres you come from North
Africa so for me the model of the Roman
Empire
I don't want to make it sounds as if
it's a kind of very liberal one it's
still the nasty brutal jealous title
Empire run by maniacs but they're
maniacs who decide whatever reason and
we don't understand this the extending
the privileges of being the ruling
rather than keeping
people out is the best way to go why the
hell they built Hadrian's Wall we don't
know but it cannot possibly have been to
keep the Scots out I mean the
Caledonians up unless the Caledonians
were really stupid hi there and thank
you very much for your lecture again um
just to quickly follow on one point the
last speaker said I think we should also
remember that many Israelis were
returning from their homeland that they
were kicked out off by the Romans 2,000
years before so it's a lot more nuanced
than that but my question is as you
mentioned there is a huge debate in the
in the 19th century around what rule
classics should play and classist issue
play in a influencing our Empire of the
time and do you think perhaps if there
was more engineers and more scientists
that had been involved in that debate
that perhaps at the Indian Civil Service
may have been it may have been more may
been more useful to the Indian Civil
Service and what role did classicists
play now in our own society since were
we in terms of influencing government
and policy I suspect it's a bit hard to
track this I suspect that those who were
very opposed to Jarrett who somehow
thought that all of the world should be
run by Oxford it's really what he
thought and he was pretty much in league
with Gladstone in that thought it was
not you know it was it wasn't you know
they were a small very vociferous group
but they were not some they were he
wasn't the only one I suspect very
strongly that there is a that it's in
that the enemy Forge Alice if people
precisely like what what you say but
that there are a kind of practical
things that are required and this is of
course is the time that I and I can't
speak for Scottish universities are
usually better than British than English
ones in this respect but in Oxford
Cambridge in London at the time it is of
course the moment when University
syllabus
isn't curricula being vastly expanded
you know to things like agricultural
science and things like this I think Joe
it would probably benefit feeds in a
degree in agricultural science so I
think what you what you're seeing if you
put this in a different context not an
imperial context but you're seeing it in
terms of a question about higher
education what is taught to people with
what we would call tertiary education
and how that relates to Britain's role
overseas and they I imagine are trying
to Jarrett's opponents are trying to to
Hoover up people who have what they
would think of as practical knowledge
there's a lot of debate about what in
Cambridge em was called oriental studies
because the oriental people in Oriental
Studies who were feeling a bit of the
backlash from gelatin Oxford so their
job wasn't to teach Indian civil
servants you know they you know they
they like Sanskrit love poetry you know
and the idea that they were kind of
teaching it's supposed to be teaching
they hadn't maidens of empire was not
what they want to know I think it's very
easy to kind of somehow see is totally
antediluvian idea that you know you only
have to have read about Skippy Oh
conquering carthage and you can go and
you know you'll be great on the northern
frontier i think that was a you know a
really minor element actually a bit of a
parity yeah victorian age we kind of
know we're terribly used to kind of
thinking it's all like joe it not all
frightfully stuffy you know it's busy
inventing almost everything that we know
like you know university syllabuses
university terms transport trains time
so they're not dim
it's somebody at the but I can't see cuz
of their life yes in the middle there
yes things yeah hi thanks very much for
your lecture so you mentioned at one
point that the key to Roman imperialism
was this policy of conscripted cities or
people's that the Romans had encountered
rather than sort of destroying and
pillaging and I was just curious you
know do we know whether this was
radically different from how other
city-states behaved in their sort of
military relationship and was there a
turning point or was this distinctive of
Roman imperialism from the beginning was
there some Emperor who said you know I
have this great idea let's let's do this
what's interesting is that it's you know
it's not that nobody else in the ancient
world made a treaty with somebody they
with demands for military service after
conquest what's interesting about Rome
is it's absolutely embedded as far as we
can see from the very beginning of
knowledge of 5th and 4th century BC Rome
is pretty hazy but it looks like and how
it happened we don't know it looks like
that their model of conquest is very
quickly not hit-and-run which is
basically what other archaic
militaristic models are but it is
forming a relationship of some long-term
nature almost always apparently
requiring military service now sometimes
that is the incorporation into Roman
citizenship sometimes its alliances at a
different level what we have no clue
about is what the you know impetus to
that is you know we again you know you
go back and it's back to a load of
Romans in togas sitting around and
somebody say do you know I've got a
brilliant idea you know let's let's not
just take the animals let's let's make
them serve in our armies you know
whatever we have no idea but it's you I
can never remember the figures John will
remember the figures much better than me
but you
get to a point that by by the Hana
ballot wall you know the Romans are
nearly knocked out but they just got
always more people there's always more
that they can put in and that does seem
to me the bottom line of their success
but this is all happening in you know
the 5th and 4th centuries BC about which
we know so little but you can see that
that's the pattern
maybe time for one more yes I would take
two more and then we'll be but maybe you
can't make your questions relatively
quickly so on the end on the end there
first please
hi there and I was very taken with your
rebranding of great generals into
genocidal maniacs and and I was
wondering whether that rebranding
exercise and is an attempt to rebrand
our current batch of genocidal maniacs
certainly asks us to reflect a little
more pointedly on our own military
activity let me put it that way
you know I think yeah really quick one
since we apparently cannot rely on the
positive example of the Roman Empire are
we then safer with the anti imperialist
parallel that focuses on ROMs decline I
think it's I think it's very interesting
and I think that it gives you much more
food for thought I think the issue is
symbiotic and then I think that there's
a bit like what I was saying about
slavery yesterday that these
exploitative cultures breed within them
the critiques of their own exploitation
and they're often more interesting I
mean critiques then sadly you know what
the poor victims have to say because
they're bred from because they know
there were no more sharp analysts of
well that's a minute there's a beautiful
example but
white South Africans knew exactly what
was going on in apartheid South Africa
and they often produce much as we load
them some of the shoppers critiques of
it and I think that's the same for you
know Tacitus hazardous was not a
peace-loving guy you know none of these
guys I didn't sit at home saying oh I
really would rather not fight you know
he was probably in his time as
jingoistic as the rest of them but he
saw what the logic of it was because he
knew what their not drink of it was and
I think that's I've often wanted to do
series of radio programs so now I can
tell you maybe someone will be listening
but it would be called on the wrong side
of history and it'd be listening to the
analysis that was on the that was
offered by those people who we dismiss
because you know they're Roman
imperialists or they were anti women's
suffrage or whatever and he actually say
what do we learn from listening to the
guys and they're most they are guys who
who were brought up but could reflect on
this and I think that's what Tacitus to
some extent solaced offers you when it's
a corrective and I'm sure that's what
when Dora was drawing New Zealand you
know he knew exactly that he was fitting
in to a tradition which we imperialist
one thing we know is it can't last
that's what we met so you heard it here
the next radio series will be on the
wrong side of history so please join me
in thanking professor Mary Beard
