Thank you for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, sign up at restishistorypod. Com. That's restishistorypod. Com. There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and theirs on these conditions. The Romans and their allies shall not sail beyond the promontory just north of Carthage unless compelled to by storm or by enemy action. If any of them are swept by winds beyond it, they shall not buy or remove anything more than is required for the repair of the ship or for sacrifice, and they shall depart within five days. If any Roman enters the Carthaginian sphere of influence in Italy, he shall enjoy equal rights with others. As regards those Latin peoples who are not subject to the Romans, the Carthaginian shall not have dealings with any of these cities. Should they capture one of them, they are to deliver it up to the Romans undamaged. Should they enter the region bearing arms, they are not to spend more than a single night there. That might sound a little bit obscure, but actually, that is an enormously fascinating historical document because that is the detail of the very first treaty signed by the future superpowers of the Mediterranean, the great powers that have dominated the world's imagination for so long, and they are Carthage and Rome.

That was signed in the year 509 BC. The text comes from a bronze tablet kept in the capital in Rome. Tom Holland, I believe I'm right in saying that it's a Latin so ancient and obscure that nobody knows, well, somebody must know, but very few people know how to decipher Is that right?

It is an amazing, amazing text, and it's recorded by Polybius, who we've been talking about this Greek who writes a history of the great wars that are fought between Rome and Carthage. He reports, yes, that this text is very, very hard for people to decipher. But obviously, the Romans keep it because they know that it is an absolutely key historical document. It really is. It's amazing. All the stuff that we've been talking about in previous episodes about Carthage, we're dependent on Greeks writing stuff about two centuries before or whatever. But this seems to be an authentic record of the dealings between Carthage and this emergent power in central Italy, this city called Rome, which really has not intruded at all on the imaginations of outside peoples until this point.

So at this point, they're not the great superpairs, right?

They're absolutely not a great superpower. No, they're absolutely not. And it's fascinating because it does give an insight into what we were talking in the previous episode about how Carthage in the... So this is the sixth century, is maintaining its power. It's a commercial empire, and so it is trying to arrange treaties with all kinds of different powers. They don't have to be superpowers. They can be minor powers like Rome. Yeah.

So just Tom, to recap, because obviously this is a Monday episode, and lots of people might not have heard the series from last week. So remind us who the Carthageians are, where they came from, and where Carthage even is.

So Carthage is the most powerful and the richest city in the sixth, the fifth, the fourth century's BC. It's very near where Tunis is now. So it's a North Africa on that point of Africa, pointing up towards Sicily. Carthage, at this point, when this treaty is signed, its prime interest is in keeping the Greeks out of the Western Mediterranean. The Carthage Indians have lots of commercial interests. We know this, for instance, because not far north of Rome in this period, there's a town called Caeri, which belongs to a people called the Etruscans. They have a coastal settlement that is so full of Carthaginian merchants that it's actually called punicum. Punicus is the Latin word for Carthaginian. The Etruscans are mysterious, powerful people at this point. They have a famously indecypherable language. They have a tremendous genius for reading the future. They're experts in reading the entrails of animals and all that thing. They seem to have had a delightful domestic life. Women have a very high status, and there are all these wonderful funerary sculptures of husbands and wives sitting on couches having a lovely time as though they're sat down watching the TV or something.

They're simultaneously mysterious people. But when you look at the sculptures that the Etruscans did, you feel almost like you know them. In this period, Rome is not an Etruscan city, but it culturally, and some have argued militarily, it may be subject, certainly to Etruscan influence. For this reason, it makes sense for the Carthaginians. They're They're allied with the Etruscans against the Greeks, and it makes sense for them to sign a treaty with Rome as well.

At this point, what are we? The sixth century. In the last episode, we talked loads about the Carthaginians and the Greeks squabbling for control of Sicily. So by this point, the sixth century BC, they're expanding their influence into mainland Italy as well. Is that right?

But not in an imperialist way. They're trying to construct trade treaties. They're like Liz Truss going around. Global Carthage.

With a little bit more success, I think it's fair.

With a little bit more success, yes. So basically, they're trying to ensure that their sphere of influence is protected. So that's why the Romans are agreeing not, for instance, to go crashing into Africa. That's why there are requirements that their ships are not allowed to intrude into Carthage Indian waters. But equally, the Carthage Indians are saying that they will respect Rome's power. It offers a glimpse of Rome at the beginning of her career. This is fascinating because, of course, we know what is going to happen with Rome. We know that Rome is going to become the supreme carnival, the apex predator of antiquity. What we're seeing here is the infancy of this predator. I think that we are so attuned to the idea of the Roman Empire just existing, the idea that the Romans are this great military power. But the puzzle is, why are they so successful? What is it Rome that makes them the city that will emerge as the great rival of Carthage, and, spoiler alert, fight three terrible wars that in the long run will culminate in the utter destruction of Carthage. I think that there are clues here. Certainly, Rome is a significant regional power.

It clearly has control over... There's this reference there to Latins. Latins are Latin speakers, cities around Rome. There is a sense in this treaty that Rome has established a regional dominance over them. That's fascinating. But I think even more intriguing is the date of this. It's 509 BC. This is the date that's given by Polybius. This is the date that traditionally the Romans saw as being the great change in their city's history from a monarchy to a Republican system of government.

This is when they kicked out Tarkwin the Proud.

Tarkwin the Proud. The story goes that they've had seven kings, descended from Romulus, the founder of the city. Tarkwin is the seventh. He has a son called by Macaulay, the great Victorian writer in the 19th century, Fulse Sextus. Fulse Sextus.

Fulse Sextus.

Fulse Sextus. He rapes a noble Roman virgin. She kills herself in front of her father. The Roman aristocracy and the people are so appalled by the crime that Sextus has committed that they throw both Sextus and Tarkwin out of Rome. There's an attempt by an Etruscan king called Lars Pucena to try and take Rome back, but The Etruscan ranks are kept at bay by Horatius and two of his friends who stand on the bridge. The bridge.

Love Horatius on the bridge.

While the other Romans hack it down, two of the defenders scarpe her back. Horatius stands there. The bridge comes crashing down. Horatius in full armor, jumps into the Tiber. Is he going to drown? No, he makes it to the Roman side. Even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce for bear to cheer. So all very dramatic. Yeah, I love it. Very novelistic, possibly not entirely true.

But Tom, don't do this. Don't do this. You're better than that.

But Dominic, but the fact that this treaty is signed in 509 suggests that the traditional dating is probably accurate, that something radical did happen in 509.

Because otherwise, the Carthaginians would not have needed to regularize their relations at Rome.

Yes. Probably this is an attempt to reset relationships after what effectively has been a revolution. Now, in later generations, and so particularly the time when the Romans are fighting the Carthaginians and they are trying to make sense of their own past, the story they tell about how the Republic comes into being is that the king is expelled and his powers get divided up between two elected magistrates called consuls. You remember We talked in the previous episode that the Carthage Indians actually have something quite similar called suffites.

Are the Romans ripping off the Carthage Indian system, Tom?

Well, also the marker of a council is that he wears a purple bordered robe. And of course, the dye comes from Carthage.

Molusks, Carthaginian mollusks, crushed mollusks. Oh, my word. You can tell I've been paying attention to the last two episodes.

Having said that, I think the Carthaginians are not influencing this at all. It's being instituted for very Roman reasons. The idea being that the consuls are elected for one year, they each keep an eye on the other. It's this whole idea that no one man in the wake of the expulsion of the monarchy should be allowed to seize absolute power. This is the great principle of the Republic. According to the Roman traditional accounts of what happens in the century after the founding of the Republic, it works. Roman historians, they say that there are social convulsions, that there are demands from the mass of the people for improved civic rights, lots of constitutional reforms. But the Republic, according to Roman historians, does not implode into civil war, into revolutionary activity. This is because the Romans will demonstrate a genius for being simultaneously very Very innovative, but very, very traditional.

You said this is very Roman reasons and all that. Isn't it possible that you only think that because Rome is so successful? So this could be a widely practiced thing, or it could be something because you said in the last episode that we knew very little about Carthage's constitutional arrangements, and Carthage is far more influential than Rome at this point. Is it not possible that the Romans took this from Carthage? Then Rome became tremendously successful. So we say, Oh, well, of course, this is a very Roman keeping competition within bounds, all that thing. So Roman, the predatory ruthless of it, very Roman. But we're only thinking that because we're projecting backwards, as it were.

I think you are absolutely right that there is a problem with taking what the Romans said about the first century of the Republic as being historically true. But I think that what they believed matters for understanding how they will behave in the wars against Carthage, because they do have a sense of themselves as being distinctive. It's evident that in their ability to project violence and their refusal ever to accept surrender, there is something very, very strange about it. In that sense, I think it's worth just looking at how the Romans, in the period when they are fighting the Carthage Indians, how they understood their past and how they explained what they were about. Polybius, for instance, this Greek historian who we've been talking about, he is trying to make sense of this puzzle. How is it that the Romans have defeated Carthage, have on to overthrow the various Macedonian Kingdoms. How have they done it? His explanation is that the masses are basically incredibly superstitious, that the elites are very cynical. But I think that this is a very Greek perspective, because just as the Greeks don't really understand Carthage. They don't really understand Rome either.

The truth is that the Republic, like Carthage, is not a Greek state. Greek states are regularly being shattered by civil wars, by revolutions, by social tensions. Rome genuinely seems to be impervious to these disasters. You do not see the blood of its citizens being spilled on the streets in civil strife. That is because I think the Romans authentically have an ideal of shared citizenship. It's incredibly, well, I might say sacral to them. Our word Republic comes from res publica. It means public business. Every Roman, by the time that the wars against Carthage being fought. Every Roman has this ideal that his sense of self-worth exists in the context of what his fellows think about him. The Romans have this word 'onestas', which means moral excellence, but it also means reputation. The two are indistinguishable. The Romans don't separate the two out. There are basically two corollaries of this. The first is that this stuff about the consuls, these rival magistrates who are simultaneously working together. This is what every Roman wants, and this is the supreme honor. Every time that there is a a civic convulsion in Rome, more magistracies are given, meaning that there are more prizes, meaning that there are more opportunities for Romans to rise up through the ranks, to gain honor.

The effect of that is to channel the ambition for glory that Roman society seems to have encouraged and keep it within civic bounds. It works for the benefit of the whole mass of the people for the reis publica, for the rather than fragmenting outwards and setting powerful men against powerful men. That's one corollary of it. Every Roman, right from the lowest, right the way up to the top, is keen for the glory that is judged by your fellow citizens. It gives an incredibly powerful civic identity. But of course, this is terrible news for the Roman's neighbors, because how do you obtain glory? Basically, by going out and fighting and conquering your neighbor. And so every citizen is expected to fight. So the word legion, a legio, is a levy. Every citizen is expected, when war is summoned, to go out into the campus marsh as the plane of Mars, which stretches outside the walls of Rome and to be enrolled in a legio, in a legion. This commitment never to accept disrespect, never to accept dishonor, is manifest in what to their enemy seems a terrifying commitment to violence. So When the Romans capture a city, it's not just that has resisted them, that has refused to surrender or has committed some perceived crime against Rome.

The legions will not only take the city by storm, but they will kill every living creature within it. So dismembered dogs. Dogs? That's very harsh. The heads of cattle and horses littering the streets. It's terrifying. But they're not barbarians. They're fighting in a coherent civic body. It's just that this is an utterly lethal predator.

Not convinced that's much consolation to the dogs. But anyway, there you go.

No, no consolation at all. I mean, you would not want to be a dog in a city that has offended the Romans. No. I mean, absolutely terrifying. With those who resist them, they are terrifying. But there is also, again, and this is something that contrasts with the Greeks, you think of a city like Sparta that is so xenophobic that they won't even allow strangers into their city. The Romans are very, very generous with their citizenship. Again, this bewilders the Greeks. According to legends, you think of Athens, the story there is that people rise up from the soil, that the Athenians are born from the earth of Attica. The Romans freely admit that when Romulus founded the city, he summoned people from all around, criminals, escape slaves, whoever, it didn't matter. These are where the Romans come from, according to their own legends. Even the most powerful of dynasties in Rome are perfectly happy to celebrate their immigrant status. You think of one of the most famous political dynasties in Rome, the Claudians, which the Emperor Claudius is descendant of them. According tradition, this is founded by a guy called Attaus Clausus, who migrates to Rome from the hills beyond Rome, six years after the founding of the Republic, so in 503.

A decade later, he's become council. From that time on, the Claudians absolutely dominate the lists of consuls. There will be Claudians taking a part throughout the history of the Punic Wars. It's not just powerful people or immigrants coming into the city. The Romans are also very good at integrating cities that they've defeated. In the 350s, this is 150 years after that peace treaty that the Romans signed with Carthage. Rome is still the dominant power in central Italy. But then in 340, all the Latin cities rebel against Rome. Basically, they're annoyed at being treated as subjects rather than allies. The Romans defeat this rebellion, but they draw a from it that what had previously been a a League of the Latin cities, a Latin European Union, this is no longer acceptable. Every city is going to have to be treated individually. The Romans divide and rule with the Latin cities. Some are enrolled as Roman citizens. Others are given a subordinate citizenship. Cities that had been inveterately rebellious are treated very harshly. Their walls are raised, their elites are sent into exile. One of them has its entire fleet confiscated. The Romans take the prours of the fleet, which they called Rostra, and put them up in the Forum, the great central space in Rome, to be a place where orators will go and stand.

This is where we get our word Rostra from. This provides the blueprint that will be followed throughout the entire history of the Roman Empire, that you go in hard against your enemies, but those who are defeated or surrender or submit, you treat them very, very generously. Perhaps you enroll them as citizens. More citizens mean larger armies. Larger armies mean more conquests. More conquests mean more citizens.

Can we draw a contrast with Carthage? So while the Romans are doing all this. What's that? Fourth century BC. Carthage is top dog in the Mediterranean. But does Carthage do anything like this, Tom? Because Carthage obviously has colonies, doesn't it? It has trading stations, it has forts. But has it got any similar history of incorporating? Are the Romans unique in that regard, would you say?

I think they are unique. Carthage has mercenaries. The mercenaries obviously do not have any civic sense of belonging to a single body, a reis publica. And that is a real difference between the Carthaginian and the Roman way of making war. And in the long run, the Roman way of making war will show itself to be much more successful. But war between Rome and Carthage in the middle of the IVth century is still a long way off. In 348, a decade before that Latin uprising that I was talking about, there's a second treaty between Rome and Carthage, and it's almost identical to the previous one. In fact, actually, it's slightly more favorable to Carthage because they specify that Romans are not allowed to, for instance, go and found a colony in Sardinia, and the Romans have to accept this. You may wonder, well, if the Romans are this predator in waiting, this great carnival, how is it that basically in the space of 150 years since the founding of the Republic, they haven't done better? I mean, what's going on there? I think that the answer to that is pointing to the point you raised earlier, which is that actually it's not the founding of the Republic that changes everything, but another event.

Because I think that the great event, the great turning point happens actually in 390 when Rome is sacked by a great army of Gauls.

So the geese.

Absolutely, the geese. The Romans go out to meet this great warband of Gauls. They get annihilated at a battle. The anniversary of it will forever be commemorated as the darkest day in the Roman calendar. The Gauls then lay siege to the capital. They're climbing up the side of the capital. The watchdogs don't bark. The geese hisse. The capital is saved. From that point on, every year on the anniversary of that, the geese on the capital will be taken down into the Forum to witness the crucifixion of the guard dogs. Wow. So all very odd. But this story doesn't disguise the fact that it was a humiliating defeat, that Rome has to buy off the Gauls. They hand over all their treasure. The Gauls demand more. The Romans object and say that this wasn't in the treaty. The goals famously say, vivictis, woe to the defeated. This seems to have affected the Romans as the most terrible shock, the most terrible humiliation. They seem to have resolved that from that point onwards, they would never again accept anyone disrespecting them. There are a number of brilliant scholarly studies that try to make sense of this by saying that essentially the story of their being, this common civic identity that had existed since the Republic, is actually not true.

That really it's with the defeat by the Gauls that you start to get this integration of the aristocracy and the mass of the people and this sense of a aggressive, common civic identity and purpose. It's in the decades that follow the sack of Rome by the Gauls that you seem to see the emergence of a citizen army.

So actually before then, is this not Jeremy Alexander's brilliant book, Tom?

It is, yes, which I've been talking to you about.

This is the argument that he makes that Rome was far more divided than we think. Actually, it's the trauma of defeat. Yes. That means they have to bind themselves together into a common civic culture, martial culture, and say, never again. Well, actually, it's that classic thing of people being brought together. It's the foundation of so many nationalisms, the external threat that provides the Yeah.

So the book you mentioned, War and Society in Early Rome: From Warlords to Generals, and that's by Jeremy Armstrong. And his argument essentially is that the elite, so people like Klausus, this ancestor of the Claudians, that these are like superstar Galacticos who drift around from top club to top club and don't have any particular loyalty to the club that they're in. What really matters is their own status, their own profile.

They're Jordan Anderson, Tom.

They're Jordan Anderson. And that The mass of the Roman people, therefore, feel a disconnect from these Galacticos, but that the sac of their city by the goals changes that. And the aristocracy, as well as the mass of people, start to have a shared identity of being Roman. This is where you get the emergence of the aristocracy as a common group of people called the Senate. The mass of people, they have their assemblies, they have their voice. These are the people who will elect the consuls and the various other magistrates. You have the of this citizen army. You can tell from archeology that armor is starting to become less showy, which in turn means that it's more affordable, so the mass of people can now afford it. The walls around Rome are renewed and improved. Basically, Rome has become a mutant state. It's a state like no other. The mutant quality is its absolute refusal ever to suffer humiliation. No Roman, from this point on, is willing to tolerate a loss of face. Rather than endure humiliation, a Roman will go to any length, basically, to ensure that that doesn't happen. Rome, in the wake of the Sack by the Gauls, has become a state that is uniquely lethal, but from the point of view of the Romans, uniquely glorious.

The result is that with the suppression of that Latin uprising in 338, Rome now has incredible reserves of manpower because it's enrolled the people of these defeated cities into its own citizen body. That gives it a resource that has elevated it from The level of a regional power, pretty much to the level of Carthage, a level with the Greek Kingdoms in the East.

Carthage is rich. Carthage is trading all the time. Carthage has loads of money. Does Rome have loads of money?

Yeah. Rome is rich because it's a It's a base society, so that's how it gets its wealth. It's not a trading society. At this point, it doesn't have a fleet. It doesn't have a maritime tradition at all. But of course, what it has that Carthage doesn't have is manpower. It is manpower that is what you need in this world. The Carthage Indians can pay people to fight for them, but the Romans don't need to do that. They have lots of people who are desperate to get out and fight. When Carthage signed that treaty a decade before, before, Rome was a secondary power. Now it isn't. The consequences of that for the peoples of Italy, and in the long run for the Carthage Indians, will be devastating. And for the world. And for the world.

Okay, come back after the break to find out what happens next in this absolutely swashbuckling, blood-drenched story of the rivalry between Rome and Carthage. Now, in general, the Romans rely upon force in all their undertakings, and consider that having set themselves a task, they are bound to carry it through. And similarly, that nothing is impossible once they have decided to attempt it. Tom, I know that's your personal motto, isn't it? That's from Polybius.

Absolutely. Well, it's the motto of the podcast, isn't it?

You absolutely believe both in the use of force and that nothing is impossible when you set your mind to It's a bit different. That's Polybius talking about the Romans. That's taking them very much of their own estimation, isn't it? It is. That they're incredibly hard and nothing is beyond them.

But bear in mind that Polybius, he's a Greek who's been taken as a captive to Rome, so he's in a position to appreciate it.

But is that true? I mean, let's be honest, are they invincible? Are they peerless, all those things?

Let us look at the evidence. If we accept the thesis that was posited just before the break, that the great turning point is 390 BC, the sack of Rome by the goals, and the determination of the Romans from that point on, never again to risk such a humiliation. Maybe it takes them a few decades to forge this new society, one in which the drive for honor is something that can be turned against Rome's neighbors. Well, by the 340s, all the Latin cities around Rome have been utterly subordinated to Roman authority. Lots of them have been enrolled within the citizen body of Rome itself. What happens next? How does this reliance upon force that Polybius identifies, how does it manifest itself in the context of Italian politics? South of Lacium, of the land of the Latins, there is Campania, which is Naples, Capua, both of them Greek cities, Pompeii, sheltering under Mount Vesuvius, rich, prosperous, civilized. But up in the mountains, you have a people called the Samnites, very hardy warriors, whose ancestors supposedly were led there from not far from Rome by, depending on who told the story, a bull or a wolf or a woodpecker.

God, you wouldn't want to be led by a woodpecker, would you? I'd choose the wolf.

I think I would. I was thinking about this. I think I would choose, because at least you wouldn't lose him, would you? I mean, you'd always be able to hear him knocking on a tree.

Yeah, but it's so demeaning. I think a bull, fine, but a wolf is better, and a woodpecker is definitely You're third. Anyway.

Okay, so you're not team woodpecker? No. Anyway, so these are people who are viewed even by the Romans as being very, very savage. They're notorious for practicing witchcraft. They wear great heavy rings of iron around their neck, and they're supposedly given to shaving their private parts in public.

Again, this is the woodpecker issue, isn't it? I mean, this is what happens when you go down that road.

And they will live long in the Roman imagination for centuries afterwards because they are given to wearing very thick belts and helmets with great bobbing crest. And this is a style that will become very popular with gladiators. So you think the classic image of the gladiator with its bobbing crest and its great big belt. This is Sam Knight armor. And so they are viewed by certainly the people down in the plains of Campania with contempt.

Not unreasonably, I would say, Tom.

The Greeks, particularly. And so the very hostile relations between Samnites and the Campanians. The Samnites are always coming down, trying to bully and intimidate the Capuans or the Neapolitans, go off with their cattle, that thing. In the second half of the IVth century, the Romans, who are now the great power in central Italy, get sucked into this. They come in on the side of Capua. They start fighting against the Sammonites. They then get distracted by the Latin uprising. When they resume hostilities in 341, the Sammonites immediately come to terms. The Romans patch up an alliance with the Sammonites. The Campanians are now siding with the Latins. It's all very confusing. But I think what is obvious from this whole confusing melange of Romans fighting Samnites on behalf of the Campanians, and the Campanians are then fighting with the Latins against them. It's all incredibly Balkan. What's clear is that the Romans are basically going to be going to war with the Samnites. And so it turns out, because in 326, war blazes out again. And this will last for 22 years. And the Romans carry it on despite the fact that they suffer one of their most humiliating defeats when they get trapped in a narrow valley called the Cordyine Forks.

And the Sabines, rather than massacring them, they play by the rules because there are accepted rules in Italian warfare. If you capture your enemy, you force them to submit. So you make a yoke, you have two spears stuck in the ground, and then you put another spear across it, and the defeated army has to thread beneath this yoke. They have to agree to end the war, and they have to accept the terms of the conqueror. In this context, after the defeat of the Caudine Forks, two Roman consuls who had been in charge of the army agree that they will withdraw what the Romans called 'colonial', which are colonies, the English word comes from, which are plantations of Romans in enemy territory. The Romans have planted 'colonial' in Samnium, and the condition of their army being allowed to go is that they will withdraw this, and they swear this to the gods and all this thing.

But what about this thing about the Romans would endure any suffering rather than be humiliated?

Exactly. When the defeated legions come down from Samnium into Campania, they're too humiliated even to show their faces in Capua. They're so embarrassed. They feel they've let the Capuans down, they've let the Romans down. But worst of all, they've let themselves down. When they get back home to Rome, they just go and lock themselves up in their homes and won't come out. The shame of this is something that is It's clearly insufferable. One of the consuls who has agreed to the terms stands up in the Senate and says, Look, guys, it was me and my consul colleague who agreed this. You, the Roman people, did not agree this. So you can carry on the war. Of course, this will require me and my colleague to be handed over naked and shackled to the Samnites. But because we are patriotic Romans, we are willing to accept that. And so this is what happens. The Romans return to war. The consuls are given to the Samnites. The Samnites don't know what to do with them, so send them back because they're still playing by the traditional rules. And the Romans embark on a total war, endless, grueling sequence of campaigns.

But by 304, the Samnites, they have no choice but to sue for terms. There's another cycle of war that breaks out in 298. But by 290, the Samnites have been decisively defeated. Roman colonies are planted across their land. The The Samnites themselves are forced to become allies of Rome. Much of their land is annexed. Essentially, the Samnites are now being absorbed into the apparatus of the Roman war machine. Meanwhile, even as the Romans have been fighting the Samnites, they've also been going northwards, attacking the Etruscan cities, conquering them, absorbing them into their framework of alliances. Even the Gauls in the north of Italy are being forced to submit. By 285, so this is within the lifetime, since that treaty with Carthage was signed, the Romans have conquered pretty much the whole of Italy. All that remains really independent is the Greek cities in the south, so Magna Greca, as the Romans called it.

To just pause a second and look to Carthage. The Carthaginians, at that point, do not have colonies and territories on the mainland of Italy, and never have.

Is that right? They have trading colonies, so they're like- The Hong Kong and Singapore type places. Not exactly, because they're not at Ministry by the Carthaginians. But there are colonies of Carthaginian merchants within all these various cities, and that is what the treaties have agreed to.

But they haven't been conquered by the Romans, or they have?

They have been conquered by the Romans, yeah.

But the Romans are just letting the Carthaginian in emergency in those places crack on with it.

Yes, because the Roman's Treaty with Carthage provides for cities that are dominated by Rome. Okay. So the provisions of the Treaty with Rome now governs the whole of Italy.

Understood.

So Rome and Carthage are still allies at this point. Actually, the fact that Rome is now gearing up to attack the Greek colonies in the south of Italy, the area that had been settled, much as Sicily had been, Southern Italy also had been settled by Greek colonists. The Greeks are the enemies of the Carthaginians. The Romans are now having a crack at the Greeks. So there's every reason for the Carthaginians and the Romans still to be allies. And the most powerful Greek city in the south is Tarentum, founded by the Spartans many centuries before and preserving that military tradition. But the Romans are clearly too powerful for the Tarentines on their own to resist. And so they look around for an ally. And fortunately for the Tarentine, such an ally is there just on the other side of the Adriatic in the mountainous Kingdom of a Pirus, a down Albania, that area. And its king is a guy called Pyrus.

I hope he doesn't win a Pyrrhic victory, Tom.

Well, so Pyrus, he's very much an Alexander the Great Wannabe. He's stuck in this mountainous sub-Macedonian kingdom, and he wants scope for glory. And he's a very, very proficient general. He's been swaggering around the Eastern Mediterranean, scoring all kinds of victories. But he does have links to the West because he's married to the daughter of Agathocles, who's the tyrant of Syracuse, who we talked about in the previous episode. So when the invitation from the Tarentines come, Pyrus looks over, he thinks, Yeah, Southern Italy, Sicily, scope here for glory. And so he crosses the Adriatic with an enormous army that features for the first time in Italian combat, war Elephants.

Okay, can we stop talk about the Elephants for a second? Because I love an elephant on the rest of his history. The Elephants he has presumably got because as king of Eparus, and part of the Macedonian Hellenistic world, he presumably has got those from the Salukids, from the Greek Empire in Asia, I'm guessing.

Yeah, they've come from India. There's a great deepwater port on the Red Sea where where vast ships come with elephants. Basically, you can source elephants from there, or you can source elephants from the kings in Syria who have access across the land channels. So yeah, this is how you get elephants. Or there's a particular elephant that is now extinct that is in North Africa. So this is where the Carthaginians get their elephants. Is that so? Yeah. So elephants are available if you want them. Right. And why wouldn't you? And Pyrrhus does want them. Quite right, too. Because, of course, horses are terrified of elephants. Cavalry charging along an ancient elephant, and they all go screaming off in reverse. And of course, they can go crashing into a line of infantry, stampede them.

Terrifying. The issue with elephants, Tom, I know we're not the rest of military history, but I believe the issue with elephants is that elephants can easily be frightened and will stampede their own side.

That is constantly a risk.

So they can be a tremendous liability.

They can be. But if you're a top general like Perris, you know how to control them. And so Pyrus in 280, he lands in Italy and he brings a whole load of war elephants He brings his cavalry, Macedonian cavalry is famous. And of course, he brings his Phalanx, enormously long spears, the instrument of war that had enabled Alexander to conquer the Persian Empire.

Tremendous innovation.

So the Romans are now in the big league, I mean, again, to pursue the football analogy, this is the Champions League. They are now facing the most terrifying way of making war that exists in the Mediterranean. How are they going to do? Well, they meet at a It's a place called Heraclia, the Romans, and Pyrus's army, which is in Southern Italy. The elephants are brought out. The Roman horses are terrified. They scarper. The Romans lose. But it's a very bloody victory. The Romans inflict a lot of casualties on Pyrus. Pyrus is also playing by the rules. He doesn't want to conquer Rome and destroy it. He assumes that having won his victory, the Romans will now negotiate. He sends an embassy to Rome, and he offers a very reasonable term. He says, I'll free the prisoners that I've taken. I'll help you with the subjugation of the rest of Italy. All you've got to do is give immunity to Tarentum. The Senate is tempted to accept these terms. I mean, they seem very good. But then you have this terrifyingly craggy old senator who is a Claudian, Appius Claudius. He is the guy who builds the Appian way, the great road that runs from Rome down to the heel of Italy, and which is like a chain that has been cast over the mountains of Samnium, enabling the Romans to strike where they want.

He is blind, so he's called Kikus, the blind. He stands up and he basically says, Never surrender. We are never going to negotiate with an invader of Italy. He has this famous line, Every man is the architect of his own destiny, with the implication that every citizen has it within him to be the architect of Rome's destiny. So Did the Romans carry on the fight. The following year, 279, there's another battle, another victory for Pyrrhus. But again, his phalanx, his cavalry, his elephants are very, very badly maimed. It's at this point that he makes the famous comment, Another victory like this, and it will be the ruin of me. So this is- Pyrrhic victory. Exactly where the phrase Pyrrhic victory comes from. And he decides he had enough. He thinks, I don't want to keep fighting the Romans. I won't have anybody left. And so he goes off to Sicily to fight the Carthaginians. He's invited there by the Sicilian Greeks. They want another Greek to help them have a crack at the Carthaginians, which they're always doing. Pyrus is keen to install his grandson, who is Agathocles' grandson as well, because Pyrus has married Agathocleus, his daughter, become king of Syracuse.

Basically, he's trying to establish his dynasty in Syracuse. He goes off and does that. But Pyrus, unfortunately, behaves in such an arrogant manner that all the Greeks get pissed off with him, and they switch sides and team up with the Carthaginians. Pyrrhus and the Greeks have split up. Pyrrhus now finds himself fighting both the Carthaginians and the Greeks, and he thinks, They've had enough of this. So he heads back to Italy. But there he finds that the Romans have built up their forces, inevitably. There's another battle. Again, it's indecisive. Again, the Romans inflict devastating casualties on Pyrrhus, and he decides that he's had enough. So he packs up and goes home. That basically is the last that Pyrus is engaged in Italy. In 272, he goes off into Southern Greece, into the Peloponese. He gets involved in a street battle in Argos. He's fighting with this guy. The guy's mother is up on the roof, sees her beloved boy fighting Pyrrhus, reaches for a roof tile, hurls it at Pyrrhus, brains him, and it kills him. That's the end of Pyrrhus.

What a depressing end for Pyrrhus.

Yeah, very sad.

Very rich for the lineart.

But meanwhile, back in Italy, the moment he goes, the Romans move into Tarentum, take it. Basically, the conquest of Italy is complete.

Just one thing on Pyrrhus. All that stuff about the Romans being invincible and brilliant and stuff. I mean, they didn't be Pyrrhus.

Pyrrhus won. No, they didn't. But Pyrrhus, yes, he does effectively win three battles, but he doesn't win the war because the Romans keep coming back. It's not that the Romans expect to win every battle, but they expect to win every war.

Because of their manpower, Tom.

It doesn't matter how many battles they lose, they will always come back. This, of course, will be a key theme in the wars that Rome goes on to fight with the Carthaginians. It's like the Hydra. You chop a head off, another one sprouts back up. But at this point, with the whole of Italy successfully pacified, with Pyrosine off, conditions between Rome and Carthage remain stable. The Carthageinians are not opposed to Rome conquering Italy. In fact, 348, so this is right when they're just about to embark on their great series of conquests and they've started fighting the Samnites, the Romans win a particular battle over the Samnites, and the Carthaginians send them a tremendously lavish golden crown, which the Romans then keep on the capital as a a memento. There are definitely Carthaginians in Rome at this point. There's an entire area of Rome that's called the Vecus aficus, the African quarter on the Esquiline Hill, named after the Carthaginians. The Latin word for market, which is machellum, seems to derive from the Phenitian. There are even vague hints in later Roman writers that there's a betel, which is a sacred stone erected in the fruit market in Rome.

So there is a Carthaginian presence. As per the terms of the treaty, Carthaginian merchants are moving freely around Rome and the cities that are subordinate to Rome.

And just one last thing on Carthage, what have they been doing all this time? So there's just been, presumably, a succession of people called Mago and Hanno and stuff, just interchangeably making loads of money.

They have been fighting the Syracusians.

Okay, which we talked about in the previous episode.

In the wake of that, they've been licking their wounds. They've been trying to rebuild their forces, hire more mercenaries, build up their fleet. So this is why when Paris comes, a Greek king, the Carthaginians assume that Pyrus is the major enemy, and this is why they're happy to be in alliance with the Romans. They don't think of the Romans as being a threat comparable to Pyrus, essentially because the Carthaginians, like the Greeks in Sicily and like everybody in Italy, it takes time for them to work out what they are facing in Rome. There are rules of combat that everyone in the Western Mediterranean has accepted. It can be very brutal, cities can be destroyed or whatever. But by and large, that doesn't happen. By and large, it is like a brutal form of sport that every year you go out, you have a battle, you have a war, whatever, but then you sign treaties. You're not going out there to exercise total domination. But of course, this is what the Romans are about. But the Carthaginians are not really... They haven't had their noses rubbed in that particular fact yet. You might think with the withdrawal of Pyrrhus in Carthage, you'd think, well, great.

We've seen off this Macedonian king. The Greeks in Sicily are now allied with us. We're Allied with Rome. We have our sphere of influence in Western Sicily. Everything's great. But Pyrrhus had recognized what was to come because it is said that while he was in Sicily, just before he leaves to go back Italy. He looks around him and he says, What a beautiful killing field we are leaving here in Sicily for the Romans and the Carthage Indians. He's not wrong, Dominic, because within 10 years of his departure from Italy, Roman Carthage will be at war.

Oh, my word, Tom. What a cliffhanger.

As Chris Morris would say, It's war.

Do you know what? This is like the ancient world podcast equivalent of Laurence Olivier's The World at War.

You're too kind.

With you as Laurence Olivier. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Incredibly exciting. Listen, I can't believe there's anybody who would happily wait for three days to hear the final episode of this series, which is World War between Rome and Carthage. And if you're in that position where you are going to have to wait, you can actually listen to it right now, because all you have to do is go to therestishistory. Com, a couple of clicks. You'll be in the Restishistory Club, which is brilliant. And then you can listen to that episode. If not, I'm afraid you'll have to wait several days, and who knows what could happen in the intervening period. So don't take that risk. Join the club, listen to the episode, and then join the throngs of people going through the streets, cheering Tom Holland's name. They've enjoyed it so much. And on that bombshell, goodbye.

Goodbye.