Neil returns to discuss more about some of the major sites of interest in the regal period of Rome. We recommend his podcast Ancient History Hound to you. You can also find out more details about Neil’s work at his website: The Ancient Blogger.
Special Episode – Exploring Place in Regal Rome with Neil, The Ancient Blogger – Part 2!
When Life Gives You Lemons?
It’s time to take a tour of Rome’s most infamous subterranean chamber, the Tullianum, aka the Carcer.
- What did Livy know about the place? And what that might tell us about the site in its earliest history?
- Does the archaeological structure make sense with the historiographical timeline?
- Possible connections to Tullius Hostilius or Servius Tullius? Other potential etymological possibilities?
The Essential Precursor to Rome’s Success?
Of course, we’re talking about the Cloaca Maxima!
Water, human waste, rats, and methane – is the Cloaca Maxima just a little more dangerous than generally thought? We take a tour with Neil to find out.
The Circus Maximus – Older is Better?
There aren’t many flat places in Rome, so the natural valley that is home of the Circus Maximus marks it out as special. The natural contours shape the space and set the scene for how the Romans then adapted that space into an early sporting arena. Major sporting events included horse racing (in various configurations) and boxing, though in a very different style than you’d see today.
It wasn’t just about the sports though – it was also about being seen. Social standing takes on a new meaning when only some people get chairs.
Why Does Rome Need Ostia?
Well, a harbour can be a great asset to a developing city! Neil takes us through some of the important details associated with the site of Ostia, as the location of the early castrum, and the engineering modifications of the salt lagoons.
Horrea (storehouses) at Ostia Antica. Photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra via Flickr.
Sound Credits
Our theme music was composed by the amazing Bettina Joy de Guzman
Automated Transcript
Lightly edited for Latin terminology and to support our wonderful Australian accents!
Dr G 0:15
Welcome to The Partial Historians.
We explore all the details of ancient Rome.
Dr Rad 0:23
Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage, and when citizens turn against each other. I’m Dr. Rad.
Dr G 0:33
And I’m Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of this city.
Dr G 0:57
Hello, and welcome to this very special episode of The Partial Historians. I am Dr. G.
Dr Rad 1:06
And I am Dr. Rad.
Dr G 1:08
And we are really, really excited to welcome back, Neil, for what is part two of our extravaganza exploration of regal Rome in terms of its layout and what’s going on with like, the landscape and things like this. So as you know, Neil is the founder of the popular Ancient Blogger website, and is also the host of the Ancient History Hound podcast. So welcome back now.
Neil – History Hound 1:43
Hello, thank you very much for for having me back on again, you just don’t learn is what I’m getting at
Dr G 1:51
It is very few rare guests who get to come back for a second time.
Dr Rad 1:55
That’s true, that’s true
Dr G 1:56
Consider yourself in excellent company.
Neil – History Hound 1:59
When a teacher says when you meet up with a teacher later on in your life, and they say I remember you from school, and that’s rarely a good thing.
Dr G 2:08
Often, that is the presage of some nasty stories. Oh wow, I was that kid
Neil – History Hound 2:14
Oh, I thought I was quiet. But thank you very much for having my back on apologies to everyone listening, I’ve decided to I visited London recently to go to the British Museum to see an exhibition there, which had great fun out. And of course, I’ve picked up the lurgy or a cold or something. So if I’m sounding a bit sinusy that is, I’m fighting against it with rapid amounts of various lem sippy type things. So I’ll try and be as cogent and as clear as I can be, but stick with me if you can.
Dr Rad 2:44
I think you sound very smooth.
Dr G 2:48
I was gonna say as Australians we tend to like we really quite enjoy the English accent it does have a has a bit of a historical resonance for us. So you really can’t do any wrong.
Neil – History Hound 2:57
Well, I actually got some feedback on I get some occasional feedback on my YouTube channel. And someone give me feedback the other day. Couldn’t couldn’t last one minute with his voice. A fair enough. I just didn’t know my mom was on YouTube. A bit harsh.
Dr Rad 3:18
Like you can’t please them all. We’re constantly told our fellow laughing cackling and being immature so…
Dr G 3:24
How dare you do history and have fun at the same time. I take umbrage.
Dr Rad 3:30
This is very serious stuff.
Neil – History Hound 3:32
Yeah, I can very lightly I gotta be honest with you. I don’t have much in the way of criticism. I have nice comments, which is always nice. But I appreciate that people sometimes get some real unfair, unfair stuff come their way. Just remember if you’re listening to this, most people who do your podcast do it because their hobby. They do it because they love the subject. And all they’re trying to do is share that subject with you. They’re just trying to get ideas across topics across helping you think about a particular area. No one’s charging you necessarily anything. And so sometimes just bear that in mind because I always think of it like shops if I’m walking along a parade of shops. And I don’t need to go into a particular shop to buy an item. I don’t go into that shop and tell them they’re wrong for stocking that item. I just go past the shop. And I think with podcast sometimes we have I think it’s because culturally we’re not yet. fine tuned. We haven’t worked out to critique podcasts correctly. So you can go into these as I said, the shops and think about it again. I go past things all the time. I’m not interested in buying I do not go into that shop and go you know what? That those those size nine high heels you’ve got in the window? Useless. I’d never wear those or not. Not only that, I don’t even like them. I think you’re wrong for having them the shop window. People will be just looking at you going. “Yeah, okay. Do we Do you need some help?” But that’s the way sometimes.
Dr Rad 4:53
And ‘=they’d also be saying, Neil, come on. We know you want their shoes
Neil – History Hound 4:58
With those calves? Probably not? Yeah.
Dr Rad 5:03
Maybe Maybe wax first. Yeah, but no, you know, you’re very right. I don’t think everybody does understand podcasting, particularly for independents like ourselves. I’ve certainly talked to some very intelligent friends of mine who’ve never really put it together that we don’t necessarily get paid per se. Like, we’re very lucky to have patreon supporters as I think you probably are as well. But it’s still not like a paid job. And it’s certainly not enough that we can quit our full time paying jobs to you know, to go into the podcasting.
It’s
Neil – History Hound 5:39
It’s certainly one of the biggest misnomers most people do podcasting. In fact, they sort of 99.9% are doing it. It’s a hobby, they’re not making money out of it. And they’re just trying to create something that people like, so when you’re listening to it, if you can give back criticism, and I’m always up for constructive criticism, I’m fine with that. And people have come back and said, Actually, I’ve had some in the past, that might work better, or I enjoyed this. But you know what, that wasn’t so good. Great. It’s just that kind of mindlessness sometimes in the comment that What are you trying to do? What What’s the achievement value for you by submitting me that anyway, I apologize. But if you are listening, and you are listening to podcasts, currently, you know, sometimes it’s just nice to tell people that you really enjoy their stuff. And if you’ve got constructive, constructive criticism, give it but just just making constructive because, you know, we just, we just want to live our lives and go on with it. Because it’s pretty tough sometimes. So yeah. Anyway, there we go.
How
Dr Rad 6:30
How dare you refuse to change your voice for a listener, Neil?
Neil – History Hound 6:33
Oh yeah, you’re right. On another one, I did have someone call out that I was a bit heavy to be a hoplite. Because I was showcasing a shield.
Dr G 6:43
Ouch
Neil – History Hound 6:43
Oh no, to be fair, I was like, I didn’t have any color that I’m like, Yeah, you know what? I’m a bit overweight, and I’m a bit over age. I’m not a live 19 year old leaping around the battlefield.
Dr G 6:54
But yeah, so also, we just have so much more access to food.
Neil – History Hound 6:59
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like the world feeds is very well, indeed. And it’s like your chances of looking like a hot plate from the ancient world. Slim to none, when they’re eating a very different diet. Well, actually, that’s one of the things that often comes up. So there was a point that came out recently about Roman soldiers. And this is the whole thing about this height requirement for Roman soldiers. And it gets bandied around a lot. And it’s, it works at a roughly five foot seven. And this comes from a source, which is late fourth century ideas for jetties who, who writes this treaties on the Roman army, he says, Well, you need to be this height. And people take from that, that was an absolute given out across all of the entire territory of the Roman army. And in fairness, I did see it when I went up to the Legion exhibition of the British Museum, which is great, and even at a photo taken at meet with of me next to the thing, not making the height requirement. People
Dr G 7:51
You’re out, I’m sorry.
Neil – History Hound 7:52
Yeah, I was out. And what people don’t realize is that I’ve had it sometimes people said, well, you know, everyone was just short about them. And it wasn’t people were shorter. I mean, yes, they probably were, it was just they didn’t have the ability to fulfill their, you know, they weren’t exposed to the kind of diet that we are. Many people are not everyone, many people are in the Western world, as it were now, or just across the planet where you can eat, you’re not starving, you’re not nutritiously deficient anyway. So you could have plenty of people who may have been over six foot kicking around ancient Rome, as it were, but they never had the diet when they were children to be able to reach that, you know, genetics can set you up in terms of your physiology, as I understand it. But what you do to achieve that doesn’t mean it’ll always happen. So if you can get somebody might be six foot two, but if you don’t feed them, right, they might, you know, their growth is going to be incapacitated in some way. You put blockers on that. But anyway, yeah, so there we go. We’ve brought it back to ancient Rome. So I’m happy.
Dr Rad 8:51
Indeed, I’m always happy to talk about the vertically challenged army of ancient Rome. All right, so let’s let’s go back to the geography of early room, if we may. And I’m going to kick it off with something that is quite near and dear to my heart, because I am going to openly admit, Dr. G, that I wrote the chapters on the kings Tullus Hostilius and Servius Tullius in our book, just in case there’s people hadn’t realized, just in case, somehow my unique style and never-ending popular cultural references were lost on you. And so that brings me to ask you about a particular building, the Tullianum, which may be named after either of those kings that we were just talking about. We’re not really sure which one so Livy claims that these may have been constructed by Ancus Marcius, but I don’t believe that Dr. G, because you wrote about him.
Dr G 9:55
No, I was gonna say that was my chapter.
Dr Rad 9:57
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now archaeologists have done their darnest, but the exact location of this structure is still a bit of a mystery. There has been a theory put forward that the Tullianum might be the ancient vault that was found under the Church of St. Giuseppe dei Falegnami. However, even the dating of this space seems to only go back as far as the second century BCE. So can you tell us what is the Tullianum? And what tales from regal Rome are connected to it?
Neil – History Hound 10:33
Well, I don’t incite chapter wars. But obviously, if anyone’s read the book, they can get back to both of the authors and tell them who wrote the better chapters. Don’t just, I’ll leave it there. But thank you very much about the Tullianum. Yes, the way to think about Tullianum and I did think about, the best way to understand it is almost starting at the wrong end of things. So we want to start around the time of Livy. And think what Livy was saying. So again, we’ll work on the premise that it is under that church that you mentioned. So we’ll take that, again, these all kinds of caveats of further things may give us more clues and more ideas. And we always have that. That’s why whenever I’m talking about anything, I’m always very, very delicate about given an absolute because, you know, two days after you released an episode, you’ve written something incredible discovery, scotch is everything. Now, when Livy’s was looking around, he would have noticed there was a structure and the structure by his point was quite famous this was and it’s known in the modern, more modern time is the moment I’m present. Now, that’s a much later reference to it. You had apologies, my pronunciation again, but you had two structures, the one above ground, which was the carcer or car-ker. And then you had one below it. And it’s the underground structure, that’s the one that interests us, Sometimes this is referred to as part of the carcer. But we also know it as already referred to as the Tullianum. Now for Livy, it made perfect sense, he had this structure above ground, so that must have come first. And the structure below ground presumably was was was later. So he retrospectively seems to apply the structure of the above ground structure to anchors. And then he sort of suggests that the second one was built later by, by Julius and and it makes sense, because after all, Look, Look, it’s called the Tullianum. So it must be linked, because, again, naming conventions in ancient Rome, very often things are named after a person, or they’re given that backstory, that’s something that can be easily attached to them. And he is writing a story, let’s never forget that with Livy. You know, he’s trying to make his reader interested in things that have happened in the past. And he’s also not going to conduct extensive archaeological interest or excavations into these buildings.
Dr G 12:39
Oh, come on, Livy. You got to work on your method.
Neil – History Hound 12:41
Yeah, get your trowel out, Livy. I’ve always said it. So what we’re looking at there. So the Tullianum, and I thought of another way of considering it, and I daresay both your good selves, and everyone listening here, would have walked around, and they would have seen a building that’s changed us. In the UK, there’s a sort of chain of development that seems to occur, suddenly, it used to be a bank that turns into a pub, that gets shut down many years later, that becomes a block of flats, or become something else. And so if you Look at some of these buildings and go, well hang on a sec, that, that must have been always, it’s just an odd looking building. But it must always have been an office or a block of flats, you actually know it’s been repurposed, it’s been rearranged. Originally, it was built like this. And there are famous examples, then it’s the Louvre, the museum in Paris, that was originally a palace, and then it got changed. And that’s not a huge, I suppose a huge leap of change for a particular building, particularly in France, where they didn’t really have many kings kicking around after a certain point to have buildings for. But with Tullianum, it’s really interesting, because what Livy’s trying to do is make sense of what he’s seen and retrospectively fit that but what we have is a bit of a bit of a curiosity. So the idea was that the to Leon was this underground or Livy’s, time underground, called I say, dungeon. I don’t like calling it that. But it was kind of a holding cell. And it was a holding cell for the famous peoplecert such as Vercingetorix. All of those people who were involved in the Catiline conspiracy were apparently held there. And after which they will they will be executed on sometimes there will be ritually strangled down there, such as I think it’s pheasant gettering. So if that occurs, too. But the issue with it is that that’s what Livy was saying, an archaeology and other sort of works. And again, with the caveat of more things will come out as determined there was probably a very different use. And this use seems to have been that of a spring or a system. And the rationale behind that is because it’s an odd structure. This is and it’s been changed a lot because in the modern, even in the Save the ancient Roman times, the later building of the car-ker or carcer, which I think dates to around the second or second century BC or there bout’s, that seems to have changed the structure below it quite a bit. So they think it’s several meters, two meters high. Also, circular building, I think it’s .about seven meters in diameter, or there abouts. And the premise seems to have been that this was a third last type design, which if you if anyone who’s listened or knows much about ancient Greek architecture, will immediately think of this as a circular thing with a dome sometimes. And it was a cistern. And not only was it a cistern, like many cisterns in ancient Rome, it was linked to a deity, it would have been sacred, it would have been given some religious provenance on some level, which is actually ironic, given what I’ll come to in a bit. And so that’s what they thought the original design was. And when they looked at a section of the walls, they actually came across the type of wall structure, where it seemed like ancient the way it was, was built, they said, This is archaic. This looks pretty much like a cistern, which has been found elsewhere on the Palatine. And around that time, it’s a common pattern of the way that the wall was structured. However, when they looked at the stone, and I read a paper with incredible amounts of letters after numbers, because they did sort of various isotope stuff on the walls of the remaining structure where they could get to because again, it is a religious, it has a religious connotation now. So you can’t just go around and start chopping these things up and removing and excavating. They found that the stone dates to probably around the fourth century BC, is a particular type of stone that Rome doesn’t get access to around that time, seems to pop up a lot. And so the question is, why would you have an older structure with newer stone, and one argument which sort of appears is this, and I think works quite well is this wasn’t really important religious or spring that had religious prominence to it. And therefore, it had been reclad rebuilt, which isn’t an unusual thing. You’re just using more recent and better tools and better construction materials to rebuild it. And you do that because it was important. So the idea was that this, in fact, was, as I said, a spring sacred spring, that filled the cistern. And then you go, Well, hang on a sec, you know, you’ve both said, Tell us, you know, we got we got totally us there, you know, we’ve got Servius, and we got Hostilius. So, where does that link in? Well, it’s been argued that actually the word ‘Tullus’ is Latin or comes from the Latin to mean spring or jet of water. So again, this links into Livy trying to find a way to connect dots, which may not be there, but building a logical picture, and I’m not going to criticize him for it, because I think it’s a relatively good way of considering what he saw. There’s also another element to all of this. And that’s the power of there was a gate in the serving boards called the porta fontinalis. And this was a lead this allegedly gave access to a sacred spring. And it’s thought that this gate was near to where the current site is. So this might be the sacred spring that was linked to that gate. And that there is an I’ll finish up with what I finish up with actually three things of note. First of all, the Romans had some really, really, really, really cool, horrible stuff. But sometimes, as we’ll see later, particularly, they had some quite fancy festivals that just in kind of, yeah, that seemed like a nice thing. But October 13, at the Fontanella, which was where wells were adorned with flowers, and I think that’s really quite nice. Sort of, obviously, a celebration of how important these things were, and again, need to remember that flowing water often had this religious connotation to it springs are often where people I wondered actually, I couldn’t find anything linked this in, but numerous. The nymph Egeria, whether or not she was linked possibly, to this to this spring, again, I don’t know because she was said to hang around a spring, but I am now going to give you well, a bit of controversy and I can kind of see that the finger of Damocles is sort of hovering above the edit button on this one, because I’m going to say one thing, lemons. So there is quite a controversy in ancient Rome about lemons and when lemons became introduced. Now I know full well that there are some lovely frescoes from Pompeii. And they seemed to depict lemons or do they some people have argued that they depict the citron fruit as – I see Dr Rad looking around going, Hang on a second. I thought that was definitely a lemon is quite a controversial thing, believe it or not, because and again, things that you end up reading that you don’t necessarily you end up going down rabbit holes. There’s a whole there were various papers done on evidence of sausage from fruit now to identify some fruit particular lemons is really quite difficult because different pips you got to look at pollen, and it can be difficult to distinguish these and they have found evidence of citron pollen in and around Naples. Not enough apparently is in in quantities that are dense enough to suggest there was farming going on. But there was certainly citrons. And an argument has been lemons were around in the time of Pompeii. And that’s probably true, because the only piece of definitive or the earliest piece of definitive lemon lemons being anything in Rome is found in the Tullianum where they found lemon seeds. They were able – and this dates to the Augustan period – they were able to specifically date or not date them, but identify them because citron pollen, citron seeds can often look very similar to each other. And they had this so there we go, in case you’ve you’ve got that gap in your life, it’s now well and truly filled, you know that lemons were certainly a thing around Augustan Rome. And we know that from the Tullianum. The other thing is the fact that this whole idea of a spring and having religious connotations is shifted across. Because there is again, this is the I don’t know enough about the Catholic Church to know whether or not this is fully endorsed, but I suspect it is in some way. But you can apparently visit St Peters, it was a site rather of one of St. Peter’s miracles when he was held at Rome. He wanted to baptize a bunch of people. And guess what he’s struck the earth of the Tullianum and a spring emerged. And from that, he was able to baptize a bunch of people. So again, you have this link of a spring being based within the the Tullianum, and you can’t get away from that being a central function to it. It’s just interesting how Rome again, adapted and evolved, what was already there to possibly something very separate. It was a by the time of Livy, possibly a holding cell. And it may have been this whole sacred spring thing that was lost in the memory. And then again, it points to something I’ve mentioned we spoke about in the the first episode, where even within ancient Rome, things got lost things got remember, things got reinvented, it wasn’t this monolithic block of time where everyone is considering what happened in Oh, yeah, fifth century BC, that was just a week ago. You know, first century BC, nothing’s changed. Everything’s changed. So we always need to remember that, you know, there was within ancient Rome, there was an ancient or more ancient Rome that it knew of and try to work out. Anyway. So there’s my thoughts and some things about the Tullianum.
Dr Rad 22:15
Oh, Look, I’m very intrigued by the lemon seeds. It makes me wonder what on earth was going on in that holding cell? Was it something nice like them saying, Yes, I’d like some water with just just a slice of lemon, please.
Dr G 22:29
Well, I’m down here, I’m gonna make some lemoncello. Why not?
Dr Rad 22:32
Exactly. What was it more like? Yeah, you made too bad life decisions. Here’s some lemons, try and make lemonade out of them, I dare you!
Dr G 22:43
Classic Romans, I would say, Yeah, Look, I think that’s really fascinating. There are so many springs in and around Rome. It’s just the nature of the geography. And all of them are considered sacred in particular ways. So it’s interesting to try and tease out particular details relating to a singular one. But I think this actually leads in really nicely this idea of springs into my question for you. And I know this is a topic dear to your heart, the Cloaca Maxima. So thinking about things that might be watery, but in a less pleasant way,
Neil – History Hound 23:21
I’m actually gonna throw a question back to the both of you good selves, it’s more of a mental exercise. And for anyone listening, I suggest you do this as well. And the question is this, could Rome have developed and achieved what it did without the forum? So if it didn’t have access to the forum, could it have achieved what it did? It might have done. But if after considering that question, your your answer, your conclusion is, no, it couldn’t have done, then the Cloaca Maxima is possibly the most important structure in ancient Rome, certainly the early development of it, because without the Cloaca Maxima, you do not have the Roman forum. And I can get into the whys of that in a moment.
Dr G 24:02
Ah excellent, excellent, setting up the mystery.
Neil – History Hound 24:08
The mystery of something that I spoke about prior and this relates to flooding, and here we come with some numbers. So the problem that we have with the forum or the area that came to become the forum is it’s it’s in a in a valley, and it’s between the Capitoline and the Palatine Hill. Now, being in a valley, it was prone to flooding. The bigger problem was quite extensive flooding. At the time before it was developed. It sat at around 6.9 meters above sea level, which sounds quite high up. You think that’s not too bad, except the problem was that the seasonal floods from the Tiber could reach up to 9 meters above sea level. So what we seem to have at play then, and again, this is this is more identifiable through some of the archaeology that’s done because we can sort of see what the work has been able to see has been these layers of material that have been laid on the forum. And it raised it up by around three meters. And it seems this work undertook a lot of time between the seventh century was probably discontinued and then carried on. And the amount of material required was around 20,000 cubic meters. Now, I don’t know what 20,000 cubic meters Look like, I don’t know how big that is. But I did some basic sums. And if you’ve got a wheelbarrow in your garden, I can average wheelbarrow, it would take 235,000 trips with that wheelbarrow to move that amount of material.
Dr G 25:34
Dear lord.
Neil – History Hound 25:35
Yeah, that’s a lot of movement. Now, of course, the problem with raising this is that you had the issue of drainage, because in this area, it suggested that there was a narrow stream, but also you would have the floods. Now, you can go about raising the level of that area. But the problem is minute floods, the minute you’ve got that stream running through the middle of the forum, what he just wrote everything, all your good work, and completely gone. So what’s been suggested that early on the Cloaca was simply a way of redirecting that drain. And as they raised the level of fluid, so it grew, so you build up beside of it. So what you seem to have had was a double channel. So we had parallel channels of a parallel channel, about three meters wide, or just over three meters with a wall in the middle. And three meters high by the time it was finished. And this seems to have done the job and be unable to redirect water away from the forum. So you then you could pave it over. The big kind of controversy over this is whether or not it was open or paved, because again, this wasn’t a sewer, I’ll get to that in a moment. This wasn’t assuming that sewer in the conventional sense, this was just a way of draining the area. So it’s been argued that the the fact that it was uncovered at one point with just some areas that were being covered, so you could move across it. Others say this didn’t happen till the second century BC Some have said no, actually, this was from day one was always covered. And that was the standard because we can see drainage channels elsewhere. In fact, there was an interesting drainage channel that seems to have occurred a bit later on in Cumae. And that’s funny enough, where the last Roman king ends up in exile. So this idea is that there’s, there’s this the technology is well known about. And it’s something that people are quite proud of having. In fact, it’s something you showcase, it was a mark of distinction to have this kind of engineering fee, because that’s what it was within your city within your, your well, the city that you boasted of. So this is what this did. And it’s it’s quite, it’s quite fascinating thing, because people and I’ve had chats with people since on this in the later Roman imperial period, it’s really quite difficult to get across just how much surface water there was kicking around in the Cloaca Maxima. By the way it gets expanded. I mean, it gets really expanded it by the time of Livy, you had I mean, again, the the analysis and modern analogy I’ll give is, think if you’re old enough, like me, you can remember when the internet was about four websites. And you can remember when there was Ask Jeeves, and Netscape or whatever it was, that was the pre-Google times and all of this kind of thing. And obviously now you see, it’s completely different. This was a very basic advanced in itself, but very basic structure that was then added to so now what you have is you have when people Look at it, and they excavate it, you’ve got these different parts of it that much newer than other parts of it, because it’s had to be developed and changed, rebuilt, extended everything in subsequent periods, which can make things more difficult because how do you see what the original bid was? So that’s what you have with the Cloaca. And it’s, it’s absolutely, I’d say absolutely fascinating, particularly in regards to how it functioned as a sewer because it was generally there to take away surface water. You’ve got by the time of the imperial period, you’ve got a lot of water that’s coming from fountains, off rooves. There’s been extensive repaving. So you’ve got this runoff, all this stuff. One of the big things that come out, and again, I was talking to kids in schools always loved this is the idea that they weren’t. The toilets might have been connected, but largely weren’t based on the evidence that we have, particularly at Pompeii, where there’s quite a lot of surviving structures that you can see that toilets weren’t connected to the sewer. They weren’t connected to the Cloaca Maxima. Did did human waste end up there? Yeah, yeah, it did. But the thing was, we think of it slightly different for a Roman was certainly the Roman period. The idea of using water to flush away human waste wasn’t really the most obvious way of dealing with it. Because human waste can be used in a number of ways. A main one was as fertilizer and you had people who would come along and collect it and actually buy it from people. Now imagine if you’re someone who lives in a if you’re a poor Roman, so the majority of Romans probably and you live in an incident live in a small building where you probably have a chamber pot, and your chamber pot with tea into a larger, I suppose larger pot or some container, that container might be taken, taken away, dumped outside, that seems to be the case at Pompeii, but also, the owner of the instalay might have a deal, and you might be selling it as fertilizer. If you were someone who had a house with a, with a toilet in it, it wasn’t a toilet, this was a sort of waste disposal, often in the kitchen as well. The idea would be that solid waste would be put in there, it could then drain through the rock, and people would then come around and they would buy it off you you would have slaves if you had a toilet. I mean, most people had slaves anyway. But you’d certainly have a suite of slaves as it were, if you had a private home with a sewing home with a private toilet. And that will probably be one of the jobs, one of the things you wouldn’t have occurred to Romans would be to use water to flush it away. Because why would you now this there’s a separate arguments you made in the case of bards and things like that, but you got to think about Roman bards is quite an unusual, even though there are a lot of them. This is where later sort of Imperial time, when Roman Baths really become a thing in ancient Rome. Obviously there are summer, Pompeii, and there are some that day a bit earlier than they did we think that Rome in either case, just flushing and having that as the equation of dealing with waste just didn’t make sense to Rome on many levels. And you know, you could do other stuff with it. And there was fine one final story. Well, actually, there are a couple reasons why you wouldn’t want your toilet connected. If you did live in Rome to the sewer. The first would be well, if the type of floods you’ve got a lot of fun coming your way. The second one was rats, you’ve basically got a super superhighway for any kind of rats or anything to come back up through the toilet. And the other one and please don’t laugh at this when I say the words gas traps. So you’d have a lot of methane building up. You’ve both been put on mute, but you’re laughing like children I’m I’m disgusted, I thought distinguished academic discussion, Stop having fun, we’ll get complaints. And the idea was that if you had buildup of methane in it’s gonna come back up through that particular receptacle. And it’s in a kitchen. Well, you know, Romans are quite big on candles. So you got to watch out for that. And one final one is one that I get similar reaction from telling kids is that do adult and it is a very much an outlier. Very much an outlier. So don’t take this as a reason. But Elian gave a great story on animals. And I know if you’ve either of you heard this, it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s this merchant who owned a stockroom or a storeroom or something. And it wasn’t in Rome. It was on the, he was a Spanish merchant and I think it’s I forget so it was somewhere in Italy, but it was near the coast. And he had he had his stock room and one day he goes into the sock room and his pickled fish have been raided. There’s bits of pot everywhere. And he’s he’s just baffled by it because the locks no one’s going through the door. The locks fine. What’s happened there? Well, he then hires, or he takes one of his slaves, and says why you’ll stand up tonight. I just wanted to see anyone comes in, scare them off. Here we go. So he did. Slave come back the next morning slaves absolutely terrified, terrified, can’t get many words out of him. Invariably they do because you know, he’s a slave. And he talks about the fact that early in the morning, he was looking over in the corner, and the toilet was connected to the sewer. And out of the sewer came this huge octopus, who then continued to help himself to the all the pickled fish and everything else. And then went back. Yes, yeah. And unfortunately, they they end up getting octopus doesn’t end too well. And it’s one of those stories which you think sounds good, doesn’t it? Until more recently when there was those number of those stories of octopus escaping various aquariums and ended up you know, getting into a you an Uber and going downtown having a good time event coming back home for in the morning. Oops, got to go back home. It they were just incredible. And perhaps something
Dr Rad 34:02
And telling the future as well.
Neil – History Hound 34:04
Yeah, they could do all sorts of things predicting elections, they can do pretty much everything.
Dr Rad 34:10
Yeah, yeah, he was gonna be anything, I believe that it was an octopus.
Neil – History Hound 34:14
I would, I would definitely be definitely a fan of that. So with the Cloaca Maxima, what you’ve got there to go back to it is originally this would have been built as the form has been developed. Because again, as this as you’re raising the level of the forum, you’ve got to keep this drainage ditch intact and to do its job and to take away that surface water. You don’t have the forum. Simply you do not have a forum because you do not have the ability to reclaim that land, which is a huge thing. Because when you walk around Rome now, you don’t quite realize how different it was. And I don’t mean the obvious things. I mean, just the topography. So I think the not the archaeological level for ancient Rome as it was around 10 meters below the current level or there abouts and obviously it’s going in different places. Since, but it was far higher and far lower in certain areas than it is now. In fact, you’d be quite surprised if you could do that there is a model, I believe in Rome, which I’ve, I’ve seen a few times. And it’s absolutely fascinating, where they’ve, they’ve got archaic Rome. And it’s just a place of these hills and just hills and valleys. You don’t get the sense of that as much now, but it would have been back then. So drainage was really important. And as such, the Cloaca Maxima was really important.
Dr Rad 35:28
And I definitely believe you, Rome does have a reputation for being a bit swampy at times.
Neil – History Hound 35:34
Well, that was one of the reasons they didn’t all Rome had real problems with the Campus Martius. You know, they had this issue around there. It was really swampy. And it was they did have a big problem with drainage and Rome, certainly in the early early stages of it.
Dr G 35:50
No, I always think of Campus Martius. And I know it’s named after Mars, but I always think what Marsh is in its name as well.
Dr Rad 35:57
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the marshy Martius.
Dr G 36:01
Exactly.
Dr Rad 36:02
So switching gears, a little bit from gas, and all sorts of delightful things that you might find in a sewer. Let’s talk a little bit about the Circus Maximus. So it’s not necessarily the thing that springs into people’s minds when they think of Rome that usually goes to the Colosseum, which is now seen as a symbol of ancient Rome in the city. However, the Circus Maximus is much much older than the Colosseum, and therefore definitely worthy of our attention. So what made the Circus Maximus so special? And why is it an important structure to think about when were exploring the geography of the regal period?
Neil – History Hound 36:42
Okay, so I explained my boo to start with, I liked the Colosseum, I’ve been there, I’ve walked around, I’ve gone in it. But for me, I’m old school. I’m Circus Maximus. In fact, I thought about my dream job. And my dream job would have been marketing consultant for the Circus Maximus around AD 80. And it would have I would have had things on the wall saying, Yeah, Circus Maximus, but the clowns are at the Colosseum, that kind of thing I would have gone full in there would have been hashtags everywhere. So the Circus Maximus is actually linked in before I before I go in even more circus maximum is linked in to declerck maximum because it’s thought that says similar technology that was being exchanged there because this is in a valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills. So if you’re walking, again, we used our clock analogy. In the previous previous episode, if you’re looking at Rome, and you’ve got the the forum Boarium at the center of the clock, you’re looking at sort of between four and five o’clock here. And that valley is between, that valley runs sort of south, southeast or east southeast that that in that kind of general direction. It was prone to drainage. And there are elements of it, which seemed to have been forgotten, but sort of remembered in some of the rituals and associations I’ll come to in a moment. But the initial problem they had was, how do you how do you get hold of this really nice piece of land again, Rome as it’s trying to develop and expand, you can’t just live on hills you need flatland to do stuff on and what you have in what is not I think it’s a Mercier – Mer-kier Valley is actually the technical term for where the Circus Maximus is, is you have an alluvial plain, apparently, which was seems to be like an old flooding on the flooding plane or used to be a river there or some some such, and what you have two channels, and you have a sort of buildup of material between those two channels. And so what Rome does is it takes those, that physical topography and amends it slightly and creates the creates the Circus Maximus, those two channels become the tracks, that central buildup of material becomes the Spener, that bit in the middle of the track, where in later periods, you have all those fancy statues and whatnot. And so what they’re doing is they’re taking advantage of what’s already there, but they’re slightly rebuilding it. And it’s also involved, by the way, drainage, it’s thought that there was a drainage channels, either side of that central bank, and going around the edges of the tracking. If you were to Look at, Look at it above, think of a cartoon where you have a magnet, you know that it’s like that big C shape, that elongated C shape, that’s what you have sort of Circus Maximus. Now, obviously, at the time of the Regal period, you’ve got to get rid of any any thoughts of how it looked like when you probably think about it in its heyday, when it’s got 250,000 people allegedly been able to turn up there. And all of this kind of thing. It was simply a track where you could run various events and there was one particular event that they they had there. And what they what they did was they took the track and they started to understand that you can have let’s say contest there things which people like to watch. So what I found really interesting is a niche Surely, you have this social standing literal. So social standing, because early on, you’ve got Livy and Dionysius both explaining that you have temporary seating allocated. But you’ve got only only certain classes could do this. So you’ve got a space in Rome by which people can be seen. And they can be marked out as distinguished. So it’s really important early on, because people get to show how important they are, because they can have temporary wooden seating. But if you’re really poor, you don’t get that. And there’s in terms of dating it, we’re looking at the, I’d say we’re looking at the legal period, certainly, the earliest piece of that was a physical evidence, there is a stepping stone seat, which dates to 494 BC, and apparently was for Manius Valerius Maximus. So we have a definitive date there of something being and of course, you won’t have a stone seat just overnight, that had to be as a result of further development. The early games they had there were horse racing, and boxing, both very important and very popular. You think of the funeral games at metropolis. You think of the Olympics, you know, these were events which which were central to both of those, both of those things. And these are also apparently from Etruria. So again, these this seems to be an important thing. And it was also it also was apparently the location of the Sabine women, the instance involved in the Sabine women. So I don’t probably need to go over that I’m not sure that people will realize or understand that. One of the things Romulus arranged was a sort of mass abduction, hijacking and worse of women from the Sabine group at an event. And this event was said to have occurred at the Circus Maximus or the site of the Circus Maximus, and apparently it was the Consualia, which was a, in itself, a really nice festival. So to distance what happened at it, it was a really nice festival because the Romans as I said, as an animal level, one of the reasons I could never go to ancient Rome, and people How would you like to go about that? No, I couldn’t. Most people, I think, wouldn’t they say, I’d love to go to the Colosseum and watch. No, you wouldn’t. Because most people, and I say this with a big caveat of most people haven’t seen the sort of horrors that you’d see that you’ve seen it in films, not seeing it in real life, you’d be traumatized. I would be equally as traumatized by the way that animals are treated in certain instances. I know there’s a recent thing that they found at Pompeii, where you had mules that were basically just walking around in circles for their entire lives. So yeah, there was there, this element of horrible treatment of animals, which I’ll move away from, but this is a really nice instance of animals being treated nicely, because the Romans recognized how nice horses and mules were. And they decorated them. They gave them garlands, they had a kind of little My Little Pony festival for them, and they had little races for them. And all that all that sort of thing. And there’s actually what’s interesting is later on the Olympic Games, I’ll just bring the Olympic Games in, because that’s the other big famous games, that becomes the Olympic Games, incorporates equestrian events, because they’re primarily about wealth. Originally, Olympic games weren’t Olympic Games, they were a single foot race for I think it’s a good few 100 years, or variations of it raises the question events start occurring a bit later on. And they’re there purely because people realize that it’s a really good place where they can showcase their wealth. So this is a good way of again, showcasing your wealth and everything else. And they did have events for horses, we always think of the big chariot races, but they used to have like mule races and little carts and traps, I think trap racing that sort of similar similar events to that they used to go and they even had one where you went, the last lap, you ran. So you would you would you would go on your horse around. And this again, is gonna make games. And the last event you get off and you’d run with your horse.
Dr G 43:59
We’ve got – I’ve got to buy myself some advantage by getting the horse out the front real quick. So…
Dr Rad 44:05
That also sounds like a fast track to being trampled.
Neil – History Hound 44:07
Well, the origins of this that it’s thought that this is actually related to cavalry covering engagement. That’s because one of the things that sometimes, again, isn’t fully realized is that we think of cavalry engagements in antiquity. And there’s some confusion exactly how they undertook. So you think of Alexander the Great, and you think of knights and you think of people charging around on horses, fine people? Well, that that didn’t happen, but earlier on, certainly, it didn’t. And there was definitely a school of covering engagement, which seems to indicate I think it’s Livy who mentioned in one engagement where people would get off so it’d be like dragoons I think it is you draw you use your horse to get to the location neutral and then you fight on foot. Very often, you’d be you’d be using the horse to chase down or where you had full advantage needed mobility, but the idea that everyone was charging around and the horses fighting horses and not necessary, not necessarily the case, for a number of reasons. And when you look at some of the Equestrian Games in the Olympic Games, you see that there’s a lot of I mean, there are other ones where you’ve got the dancing in the running Racing, racing armor, at the Olympic games and things like that. So there’s a lot of sort of military virtue exposed there. And I suspect, that’s a similar thing that’s going on Circus Maximus, you’ve got boxing, which was brutal. If it went by the rules of the Olympic Games, then there weren’t rounds, you just basically punched each other until, and there was some horrible stories of people swallowing their teeth, so they wouldn’t Look like they’ve been hit too hard. And I even remember reading one instance was when when if it went on too long, they just had a punch off. So it’s the case if you punch me, I punch you and whoever it thinks. So it was pretty brutal. But again, it was highly, this was a highly, this is a high cultural moment, which occurred at the at the Circus Maximus early on, and you’re getting you’ve got that you’ve got the involvement of, of the horses, you’ve also got a bit of a and this is what I refer to earlier, with a mixture of things going on, because you have the mystery altar. So at the end of the other one in the turning points, the terme – so you had a simple track, if you’re in you’re in Rome, at this point, you’ve got a simple track with drainage channels on it. And you’ve got some people are able to stand on wooden seating. And of course, you wouldn’t have wouldn’t you wouldn’t have anything permanent up, why would you have something permanent up, when it could flood when it could rock the rest of it now just put up when you need to. And there seems to be a god associated here called Consus. And Consus was apparently god of the grain and harvest. But he apparently also had an altar underneath that final turning point. And it was buried. And the way it was, it was unearthed and it seems to be of a secret nature, and it’s interesting. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, actually, and I’ll quote here that he says, “the subterranean altar was erected later to a certain divinity whose name may not be uttered, who presides over and is the guardian of hidden counsels.” Now, this might be because he can’t say Consus, because apparently weren’t meant to. If you consider he’s the god of secrets. Not a very good god of secrets if you tell everyone your name, but even so there’s something going on there. And people thought, well, what’s the association with wheat and grain there, and it’s the or perhaps prior to the prior to the Circus Maximus being being established there, it could have been a location where wheat was grown, which we also have possibly again, at the Campus Martius, you know, have these low lying areas where you can grow, you can have some agricultural projects going on, because again, Rome doesn’t have many flat places. So it needs to find its growing things anywhere that it can do. And of course, by the time of living dynastic Vanek analysis, they’ve kind of mixing things up. So originally the Consualia is meant to be for Neptune, who is Poseidon for the Greek or he’s a version of him, I should underline that heavily a version of him in the Greek pantheon is beside always associated with horses. So again, it’s this weird crossover. So possibly, there could have been something earlier there involving concepts involving wheat, which apparently could also be stored underground, which is why they may have had this auditorium underground. And then later, it’s absorbed and rolled into this wider festival that’s held there at the Consualia, which is then allocated to a particular event with the sidelines. And this wouldn’t be the first instance that Rome does that Roman religious system, which is quite ironic given how small c conservative Roman religion could be in some instances, loves, loves accommodating other elements to it. With it with the you have the Saturnalia, which incorporates the Lectisternium in the end of the third century BC, which was a Greek Festival. They there is this often enrichment of the Roman religion with other elements, so they quite happily repackage and roll things up.
Dr G 49:07
They certainly do. Yeah, so I think the this idea of the Circus Maximus is being part of a multipurpose space, I think, is really useful to think about, particularly for this early period. So there’s the theory that is put out in some of the written sources that the Circus Maximus was kind of created by the Etruscan King par excellence Lucius Tarquinius [Priscus] and that may or may not be just a bit of a story trying to connect that cultural element. But the fact that we’ve got all of this sort of layered meaning over time, I think is really key and crucial for appreciating what is happening as Rome progresses through its own history, as you say, and also thinking about what might have been the touch points for the really early stuff as well.
Neil – History Hound 49:56
Just one final thing on there and I’ve just because I want to sell it even more. If something big happened in ancient Rome, it happened at the Circus Maximus. That’s where most likely you had gladiator fights. That’s where you had ceremonies. People think of the Colosseum, as being this big centralized it almost until Rome had a Colosseum. They just didn’t put anything on. No, all the stuff used to go on at the Circus Maximus again later on. But if you’re a general and you’ve got a you’re looking to have a big ceremony or a big pomp and you know, triumph, that’s where it’s going on. Julius Caesar has big fights there between various sort of sections of his arm, or not his army, but kind of gladiator fight things going on there. It was a major, major cultural event. And it’s weird, because when you go to Rome, you don’t see it as prominent as other sites, because again, other sites steal the eye a bit more, because when you go to it, it looks a bit more like it does now was done back then. So flat piece of ground, but when you go to it just know that is real, old school, Roman.
Dr G 51:06
Yeah. And I think I think one of the things to keep in mind for people who are traveling to Rome and seeing it today is that the Circus Maximus retains some of its amazingness simply because that space continues to this day to be utilized for big events. So if there is a big concert happening, and a huge band comes to Rome, they will often be performing at the Circus Maximus, it is the perfect location for giant events where you want lots of people, the way that it’s laid out, the way that it has this gentle sort of sloping area to it allows you to accommodate a whole bunch of people who are able to still have a view on whatever it is that’s been put on. So it is actually continues to be a really multifunctional space for Rome in that sense. So leading to thinking a little bit further outside of Rome now. Ostia so austere is the spot that crops up at the mouth of the Tiber River as it hits the Mediterranean Sea. So Rome, as we know, is a little bit inland. It’s even more inland today than it was in the ancient period, because ancient Ostia is about six kilometers inland now from where the mouth of the river is now. So there’s that whole shifting way in which soil moves around because of river movements, means that austere is now inland. But I would highly recommend anybody go to Ostia Antica, it is incredible. I don’t think I’m done exploring that site. But it becomes pivotal to Roman power, and pivotal to thinking about power in the region, in this early regal period, as well. So there are some traditional stories associated with Ostia crediting the founding of it to the fourth king Ancius Marcus. And this sort of initial colony seems to be based around control, but also maybe the potential for harvesting salt as much as anything else. But Rome is not the preeminent power in the region, when we’re thinking about the Regal period. So I’m interested in your thoughts on why Ostia is important? And what sort of conflicts they may have faced trying to come to grips with controlling this region?
Neil – History Hound 53:30
Yeah, well, thanks. I think that you’ll see some that you’ve hit across a number of really important points when you’re considering Ostia. So the first thing is that you mentioned is about, again, I keep saying typography, but it is quite inland is four or six kilometers, or there abouts inland from where it would have been. And when again, when you’re considering the ancient world, consider coastlines consider how much they changed. If you’ve been to Pompeii, it’s it was thought that Pompeii was by the coast, a few I went to Richborough in Kent last year. And Richborough was a beachhead for the Roman invasion, or the Claudian invasion. It’s around, it’s a good couple kilometers inland. But if you look at how it was when Claudius it was, it was this little island, this little island of just on with a with this narrow connection to the mainland, and Ephesus, places like that these are places which would look very different. And when I spoke about how the Tiber moved as well, again, the Tiber does move in this instance as well, which kind of confuses things, or makes things more difficult to understand what really went on. So the points that you make about it being strategic are pretty much the rationale if you wanted to boil down. Why does Rome need Ostia? Well, it needs it for three main reasons. The first is that it has access to salt. There are a couple of salt lagoons there which are really important, very nice resource. It means that it can get access to wider trading networks. Because if you’ve got a port that sits just just inland that you mentioned, I think you described it really well, that this wasn’t a port on the coast. This was a was a river port, but it was just in the mouth. In fact, Ostia, I believe comes from mouth of it’s sort of association of that word, meaning that it was the mouth of the river. And it sits or would have sat just as you came in the river would have sat on the south bank. It was a natural harbor that they developed into a port, which makes perfect sense. And the the final reason why this is the third reason why why Rome needed this was because if you’ve got access to who comes in and out of the Tiber, then you’ve, you’re far more secure, because after all, you are downriver of it, or up river or whichever way the tide goes, you needed it for three main reasons really security, you needed it for commerce, and you needed it for a second reason for commerce. So and again, I know we spoke about Civilization [the game] and the importance of salt. So yeah, this was really important for, for Rome, the difficulty with it all is putting together anything, which really builds up a picture of what osteo could have lived before the fourth century BC, mainly because there’s one main building at Ostia that dates to that period, it’s the earliest building to be dating, it’s known as a sort of tower. It’s the castrum, though that said, there is debate about what it did. And the reason I say that is because the the Tiber River changed its course, between the I think it’s between the eighth and sixth centuries, or there abouts it changed its course quite heavily. And so where we think of the castrum being located now to the river, but then it would have been about 600 meters away from the river. So the idea that it was this defensive tower, protecting the river doesn’t really seem to add up. So it’s, it’s not confused, but it’s unsure, perhaps the classification of that building initially, may not be what it was originally intended for. So there’s a bit of debate over as to what that was. But the the central to this is you have these sorted lagoons, you have these lagoons, which become enclosed by natural processes. Now, these obviously can get soaked from sorts very important. Determining, again, determining activity, human activity, there’s quite difficult mainly because there isn’t greater archaeological evidence that goes back. However, there again, there was a paper which I read and looked at some of the drainage channels that were dug, but connecting the salt lagoon to the sea. And it’s, it seems strange that there had been a couple of drainage channels that are made maintained, or no one maintains channels naturally, they have to be done by people and the dating of this maintaining of these drainage channels to ensure that the canal, the canal is connected to salt lagoon, to the sea could date as far back as the ninth century BC up till the sixth century BC. So what I think we probably had, if we were, if we were forced to come up with a speculative suggestion about what’s going on here is that you probably had peoples who were using that lagoon for salt. And what Rome did was early on, it seemed to have got hold of that resource. Exactly when we’re not sure. But again, we got the earliest building as fourth century BC, but prior to that, it’s highly probable that you had something there because again, stone buildings when it comes to Roman fortifications, stone buildings for the latter, you don’t rock up and just build a stone thing. Generally speaking, that is crazy.
Dr G 58:35
You telling me the Romans didn’t come fully formed out of the womb as world dominators?
Neil – History Hound 58:42
Nah nah, you’re mixing it up because it’s Swed- it was the Vikings who had IKEA so they could just have flat pack everything over to build it Romans didn’t have that didn’t have they didn’t have there. Although they did do obviously that when I say flat pack, I’m immediately I’m thinking of the the Punic Wars where they make the boat design from the Phoenicians. But anyway, from Carthage anyway, that aside, what generally happens developments and we see this I did some work and I did a podcast with Dr. Andrew Tibbs. And he was speaking about Roman fortifications in Scotland. And what people don’t realize is most of the time, due to drone technology, you can see these things far easier now because you see the pattern on the ground. Because otherwise from a you could be walking across one and not realize it’s there. Because they would have been originally would the anti wall. A wall never got past the turf stage. It was just originally made of earth. It never is you’d make something of earth or word. And then you’d build it up if you needed to. Because again, sometimes fortifications were temporary. What seems to have happened the Tiber is it’s changed course. So again, you don’t have access to perhaps the areas which would give us evidence. So again, it’s not that we don’t have the evidence there. There could be some fantastic archaeological evidence to determine which day activity around this area. Problem is because the Tiber has moved course it might be directly under the Tiber now, or it could be under some houses near the Tiber. But locating exactly where everything was at this period is still a bit speculative. It’s not where necessary, it is now, what you have now with Ostia, again, it doesn’t suffer so much because it is a site which I’d love to visit, and I’ve heard is wonderful. And it annoys me that I haven’t been there. So stop bringing it up is that you have a much more modern, and by that you have later Republic period, they go all in on Ostia because it’s such an important location. It’s so integral, particularly I think it’s that’s where the fleet for, again, Punic Wars, it’s with the fleet space. So it’s so important to have that developed. So you look at it then and think, yeah, but that probably wasn’t what it looked like 400 years before fact, it might have been in a different place. And Roman port design on way that Roman linked up. Eventually Ostia is – not abandoned, because it’s still kept there – but then move it you have Claudius who sort of redevelops the site. And then you have the basin, the famous basin, which is this – I think it’s an octagon [hexagon], you can actually see from from the sky, if you look, apparently, if you’re flying into one of Rome’s airports.
Dr G 1:01:09
Portus
Neil – History Hound 1:01:09
Yeah, the Portus you can actually see it, it’s there. It’s this perfect, again, I don’t know If it’s an octagon, it’s got a lot of sides to it. And it’s not a circle, but it looks like a circle. That’s my maths for you, you can actually make that out. And that was on the changing. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it has lighthouse as well, which is very nice, if you like that kind of thing. But anyway, going back to Ostia, again, it’s one of those places which we know is strategically very important to Rome for a number of reasons. But our hands are tied somewhat in understanding more about it because of the way it sits now. And because the structures that are on it now. And this is always a problem. Because if you’ve got a site in antiquity that becomes really popular. It’s usually popular for a reason that that resonates, and later ages. So again, you don’t have that you have that issue. I visited Bath, Roman Bath, good few years ago, and under under it, you can go up, go downstairs, and you look around the Roman remains. And they got the I think was this front of this temple. It looks amazing. And they said we can’t, can’t excavate it. We’ve got this fantastic [building], but we can’t excavate it, because that will probably bring down Bath Cathedral, which would be I understand a bad thing.
Dr G 1:02:20
That would be a shame.
Neil – History Hound 1:02:21
I’ve been to Bath because lovely building it is I think it’s a cathedral, I’m pretty sure. But it doesn’t have great foundations. So you’ve got this. And you’ve got this in modern, modern Rome now and again, with the Tullianum. It’s a great example, if I wanted to go and excavate the Tullianum now, it’s probably not going to happen, because it’s now sitting above a church. So how do you go about that it’s got all of these not restrictions, but blocks to me being able to do that. So we have to go on what we know, which is again, limited, but frustrating. But yeah, Ostia,
Dr Rad 1:02:55
Ah, it’s the curse of regal Rome.
Neil – History Hound 1:02:57
Yeah, they just did it too well. So you almost sympathize. And again, we’re in a so this is great, because we’re in a similar place to Livy. We’re trying to work things out. It’s just that we’re a bit more responsible to our methods than Livy was, though he was obviously a very nice guy. He he’s quite happy to say, Yep, it was named that. Stick it to a king who can reallocate it. Pick a number, any number, oh, you’ve had-
Dr Rad 1:03:21
The best kings, naturally.
Neil – History Hound 1:03:24
Stick to that and then we could talk about how great the Republicans in terms of you know, reshaping it. But these were important spaces, both culturally, and early on in Rome’s development, they were they were developed early for a reason. There was a great importance placed on efficiency. You didn’t just go, you know, fancy developing that area, because it’s nice. And in a few 100 years, 800 years, 900 years, 1000 years, well be worth quite a few quid. People want to build flats? You’re doing it because the immediate generation requires that that resource.
Dr Rad 1:03:57
We’d like a little less malaria, please.
Neil – History Hound 1:04:00
Yeah, a bit less.
Dr G 1:04:03
These hills are nice and all, but man, the mosquitoes
Yeah, too much. It’s too much.
Well, thank you so much, Neil, for sitting down with us and taking us through some of these fascinating details, because I think it’s always a useful exercise to go into that sort of exploratory space, like the intersections between what we can possibly know from an archaeological perspective, what we cannot possibly know because of the limits of that sort of understanding with continuous habitation and just our own inability to get come to grips with the changing nature of the topography over time, which is a natural process and also a human interference process, the further you go along, and to keep in mind that maybe we are all a bit like Livy, I really quite like that.
Neil – History Hound 1:04:57
Yeah, we’re trying to make the best of it. It’s a bit like when you have these detective, they they retrospectively find a detective in, you know, the medieval period or whatnot. And you’re like, okay, they’re working to the same methods, it’s just different technologies. And okay, they may not be doing the same way that we would do it. So I forget the name of there’s a, there was a brilliant show, Cadfael. So there’s Cadfael kicking around. And if anyone’s watched Cadfael, you know,
Dr G 1:05:25
I loved Cadfael.
Neil – History Hound 1:05:27
He’s not got CSI Miami, you know, he’s not, he can’t do a zoom into someone’s genetics on a Coke can or anything. But he’s applying a simple metric that sort of works. And that’s what Livy ultimately is doing. Because there is a lot of pride here. But also, I think the other tricky thing we need to remember. And it’s something which, again, you cover and touch upon in your book – dunno which chapter though – and it’s about – I’m still stirring – and it’s just about how we how we think of the spaces back in antiquity, and how we understand what we can possibly know about them. And I said, that’s something that I’m always I wouldn’t say, tortured by, but you live in hope that something’s going to pop up, that’s going to give you a bit more of an understanding, you know, these are people trying to make decisions. And we’re just going back to the point I made earlier, with Livy, I think there’s a tension there, because how can you have all these great, fantastic things that were built by kings, who were the worst. I mean, one of them was okay. But they were the worst.
Speaker 1 1:06:35
Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, only one of them was really terrible.
Neil – History Hound 1:06:40
That could have been that could have been, this was the sort of bit of your book ‘Rex’ the worst, just the worst. Because actually, again, it is an internal tension within the whole narrative of the regal period is this that yeah, so and so started it, and they built it. And Livy often takes potshots at people going oh, yeah, but they will you know, they it did for them. But you know, there were uncouth. They didn’t mind their manners and the rest.
Dr Rad 1:07:06
Uncouth, my goodness. Shots fired, Livy.
Neil – History Hound 1:07:08
Absolutely. Livy’s dead, right? He’s dead. He’s not coming for me. I’m gonna get someone pop
Dr Rad 1:07:13
Well, you’ve certainly given me a lot to think about. I know that I’m definitely going to go to sleep tonight imagining how Livy’s history be different if he’d had access to drone technology.
Neil – History Hound 1:07:25
Yeah, and if nothing else, think of the My Little Pony show at the Circus Maximus where they dressed up their horses and and paraded them around and made them feel special.
Dr Rad 1:07:35
Well, listeners we hope that you have enjoyed listening to Neil’s absolutely mind blowing knowledge of the early geography of Rome. As you can tell it is well worth listening to Ancient History Hound, if you haven’t already started already. And Neil, thank you so much for joining us. It’s actually a very special episode, not just because it’s a part to a sequel, which we don’t often do, but because it’s actually technically Dr. G’s in my 11 year anniversary today.
Dr G 1:08:04
Oh, today!
Dr Rad 1:08:07
It’s actually on the first of March, but it’s almost the first of March in our time, and it is also a leap year.
Dr G 1:08:11
Oh that’s true.
Neil – History Hound 1:08:13
And if you hear a knock on the door, and there’s someone with a present, that wasn’t me, that’s purely coincidence. But I just want to say thanks very much. I really appreciate you having me on and been able to talk and I hope the listeners have really enjoyed it. Feel free to blame me.
Dr Rad 1:08:31
Oh, the pleasure is all ours.
Neil – History Hound 1:08:32
If you haven’t enjoyed it, If you haven’t enjoyed it, you can find me on social media.
Dr Rad 1:08:38
I think we’ve established that we don’t appreciate these sorts of comments.
Dr G 1:08:42
Five star reviews only.
Dr Rad 1:08:43
Thank you. Yeah, yes, exactly.
Dr G 1:08:46
Yeah, you can write whatever you want in the comment – five stars.
Dr Rad 1:08:49
You want to take your rage out anyone aim at the podcast on the massive networks. We’re independents.
Dr G 1:09:08
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Partial Historians. A huge thank you to our Patreon supporters for helping make this show spectacular. If you enjoyed the show, there’s a few ways that you can show your support. You can write a review wherever you listen in to help spread the word. Reviews really make our day and help new people find our podcast. Researching and producing a podcast takes time. If you’re keen to chip in, you can buy us a coffee on Ko-Fi or join our fantastic patrons for early releases and exclusive content. You can find our show notes, as well as links to our merch and where to buy our book wrecks the seven kings of Rome at partialhistorians.com Until next time, we are yours Ancient Rome.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Be First to Comment