Reflecting History So after my little sojourn to the early episodes of this podcast to catch up on the Social Wars, here I am back again at Episode 60: The Fall of the Roman Republic Part VI-Death by a Thousand Cuts, the final one in this series. With the conflict between Pompey and Julius Caesar, politics was now a zero-sum game. Both men felt that they were saving the republic, and for both men their claims to legitimacy were a bit dodgy. In 49 BC Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon while Pompey's armies were all far away, and declared himself Dictator. However, he offered pardons and leniency, and when Pompey's head was brought to him, Caesar mourned his death. He then went on a tour of the Mediterranean as a bit of a victory lap and to reinforce his power. He undertook lots of reforms, and provided lots of public works and public games, in effect making himself indispensible to the Republic without actually having a lot of public support. Perhaps he was angling to become King?? This is what was behind his assassination by Brutus. In the wake of his death, the deputies became more important. Mark Antony (milking the occasion for all it was worth) read Caesar's will publicly, which named Octavian as his heir. Tension emerged between Mark Antony and Octavian, and Brutus and Cassius were off raising money as well, without authority. Octavian went to the Senate to obtain sanction to defeat Mark Antony which he did. Having defeated Mark Antony, they joined together to outlaw Brutus and Cassius, leading to the second triumvirate formed by Octavian, Mark Anhony and Lepidus (one of Caesar's generals). Out came the proscription lists again, leading to the deaths of prominent people like Cicero, 300 senators and 2000 equestrians. They divided up the empire with Mark Anhony controlling Gaul and the East, Lepidus controlling Africa for a while (until he was demoted) and Octavian controlling the rest. That left Mark Anhony and Octavian circling each other. There was criticism of Mark Anhony's relationship with Cleopatra, and Octavian issued the Oath of All Italy to everyone in Italy, Gaul, Spain and Sardinia. He presented his scheme for an imperial system to the Senate... and that's the end of the Republic.
History Extra Chaos and Violence in Country Houses. I'm a bit of a sucker for Country Houses and the whole concept of the Big House surrounded by bucolic countryside. American historian Stephanie Barczewski, who has written previously on the way that Empire affected the Country house, has published a new book called How the Country House Became English (Reaktion Books, 2023) which looks at how the Country House has changed over time, reflecting changes in English/British history. Country houses were destroyed as part of the violence of the Reformation and the Civil War, but when the French Revolution broke out, there was a fashion for 'peaceful' Palladian houses as a way of distancing from and expressing disdain for the excesses of the French Revolution. Empire influenced their architecture and objects, and led to the escape of exotic animals from their gardens- there were even wallabies on the Isle of Man! Post-war taxation changes saw many country houses moving from private to public or institutional hands. Interest in them has increased since the 1979s when their displays began emphasizing the servants (a huge labour cohort), capturing the interest of family historians whose forebears were far more likely to be servants than owners. Very interesting- I'm tempted by the book!
The Rest is History I've only read one Harry Potter book - and that was in Spanish- but that didn't stop me enjoying The Real Harry Potter: Magic, Empire and Beastly Bullies. Dominic Sandbrook, one of the presenters of this series, is well placed to talk about Britain's popular culture and its effect on the rest of the world, as he is the author of The Great British Dream Factory . He and Tom Holland talk about the influence of Tom Brown's School Days from the 1850s, which in effect constructed the template for public school fiction and its particular form of Britishness (i.e. public school in that anyone can go there if they can pay the fees - so, it's a 'private' school here in Australia). They talk about the influence of sport, fagging, headmasters, trains, 'houses' and hierarchy. Of course, the big difference was that Hogwarts had girls. I'm looking forward to the next episode.
Emperors of Rome I've forgotten where I was up to, so I just scrolled through until I found something republicanny as I'm still puddling around in the late Republic. There I found Episode CXXVIII (128) Cornelia Mother of the Gracchi (Is 'Gracchi' plural of Gracchus?) It was common for Roman women to be known by their father's name, but Cornelia was known at the Mother of Tiberius and Gaius, the radical Tribunes of the People who tried to introduce land reform into Roman society and were assassinated for their troubles. Mind you, she was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal, so it wasn't as if she was ashamed of her father. She came from an elite family, and was very highly educated. She had 12 children, only three of whom survived to adulthood and when she was widowed, she never remarried which gave her special status and a degree of autonomy that married women didn't have. We don't really know a lot about her, and what we do know is filtered through responses to her sons, but there might have been a statue erected to her, and some of her writings were reported (although they are a bit dodgy because they are critical of her sons, so they might be fakes created by her sons' enemies).
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