The Ancient Rome Iceberg Explained

Ancient Rome. Even to those who have never studied ancient Rome, the name Rome calls to mind spectacular architecture, gladiators fighting in the Colosseum, Julius Caesar leading armies in battle. Even today, everywhere you look, you'll see the legacy of ancient Rome. On our coins, But dig below the surface, dig deeper beyond what history class and pop culture can tell us about Rome. We find layers upon layers of mystery, intrigue, debate, and controversy. In a world full of misinformation, lies, propaganda. A world quite like our own in many ways, and quite strange and almost magical in other ways. It confounds us, and it fascinates us. I've already made videos that cover several of the topics on this iceberg, so if you want to learn more about anything I mentioned today, check out my other videos. And a big thank you to the iceberg creator, by the way. I didn't make this myself, I was too lazy to do that. I got this iceberg from a Reddit user, u slash eru underscore mewos. It's pretty well made, and I think it really covers the full spectrum of Roman history, from the super well-known stuff that ends up in movies and shows, to the super super obscure stuff that historians spend their lives untangling, and even some of that good ol' conspiracy shit that you gotta indulge once in a while. So with all that said, let's begin. This one's pretty obvious, I think. Most people have at least heard of this one. Essentially, Roman history can be divided into four periods. The first period traditionally began in the year 753 BCE, when Romulus founded the city of Rome, and it ended in 509 BCE, when the kings of Rome were thrown out and Rome became the world's first republic. The second period, known as the Republican period, started then and ended in 27 BCE, when the was given the titles of Augustus and Princeps, making him the supreme ruler of Rome and ending republican government. The third period, known as the Imperial period, started then and traditionally ended in 476 CE, when the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer. The Roman Empire, at its peak, controlled tens of millions of people and a territory roughly equivalent in area to the modern-day contiguous United States. The Roman Empire dominated its slice of the world for centuries, and its lasting legacy is still significant today. This is what historians call nowadays the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived after the year 476 for almost another millennium. I mentioned that Roman history can be divided into four periods, and this is that fourth period, which can be called the Byzantine period. The name Byzantine comes from the former name of the eastern empire's capital, Constantinople, which before the time of Constantine was known as Byzantium. It's referred to as the Byzantine Empire because this later incarnation of Rome was very, very culturally and politically different from the Roman Empire of ancient times. Also, calling the empire by a Greek name emphasized its Greek culture and heritage, which was particularly relevant in the context of rising Greek nationalism during the early modern period. It should be noted that the people living in the Byzantine Empire, they never called themselves Byzantines, and they always saw themselves as a continuation of the Roman Empire. The term Byzantine was actually not used to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire until a hundred years after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Caligula is one of the most famous and infamous Roman emperors today. He reigned for just four years, but in that short time he did a lot of things that pissed off the Roman elites, such as centralizing state power around the imperial seat and curtailing the authority of the senate. Historical accounts of the time, which are not exactly reliable, paint him as a bloodthirsty tyrant who spent lavishly, frequently executed people, and engaged in lewd sexual deviancy. His short and controversial reign came to an end when he was assassinated by a conspiracy of senators and court officials. Perhaps the most famous ancient Roman person ever, Caesar was born to a Roman noble family and he rose through the ranks of Roman highest office in the Roman Republic. After a series of political escapades that made him controversial in Rome, he became the governor of Rome's provinces in Gaul, and he launched a series of military campaigns that saw him conquer all of Gaul, visit Britain, and invade Germania. Upon concluding his conquests, he decided not to return to Rome in peace, but rather to go into rebellion against the Republic and start a civil war that he eventually won. He became the dictator of Rome for life, but was shortly after assassinated by enemies on the floor of the senate. However, the damage he had done to the Republic was irreversible and Rome became an empire within two decades of his death. His name, Caesar, became synonymous with autocracy and supreme power, and the title of Caesar was given to all future emperors of Rome. This term generally refers to the decades-long process of decline and collapse that Roman civilization experienced during its later history. Traditional history depicted this fall as a catastrophe for the human species, a civilizational collapse that set humanity back centuries in development and enlightenment. However, nowadays many historians argue that we should analyze this process not as a fall, but as more of a transition between two periods in history. The fall of Rome is something we can keep asking questions about forever. Why did it happen? How did it happen? How bad was it? And did it even really happen? The city of Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, was conquered by the Ottoman Turks on the 29th of May in the year 1453. This date is seen as one of the contending dates for when Rome fell. Also one of the most famous Roman emperors, Nero was just 16 when he rose to the throne, and he was reportedly more interested in the performing arts than in the art of governance. He was fiscally irresponsible, spending lavishly on projects that included a massive golden palace in the heart of Rome, and a colossal statue of himself. He invested heavily in bread and circuses, which won him great favor with the lower classes, but resentment from the elites. He also probably did not fiddle while Rome burned, he actually responded to the great fire of Rome in a pretty admirable way, personally organizing relief efforts and restoration plans for the destroyed city districts. He committed suicide when a major revolt led his allies in Rome to desert him. This refers to the archetypal Roman citizen-soldier. The Roman legionaries were some of the ancient world's only career soldiers. They had lots of training, and most of them had years of experience. They were well-equipped, well-coordinated, and they were a lot of them. Some estimate that Rome had upwards of 100,000 career legionaries at its peak. The legionaries, and the Roman military in general, were the most important political forces in the Roman world all throughout Roman history. They ensured the defense of the Roman state, but they also decided who held power. These words were attributed to Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare in his famous play Julius Caesar. Apparently, these were the dictator's last words, right before he was killed on the floor of the Senate by his assassin. No ancient source gives the exact wording that Shakespeare does, but Suetonius and Cassius Dio relate that he said, quote, you too child, unquote, in Greek. The Colosseum, which was called the Flavian Amphitheater in ancient times, was built by Vespasian and dedicated by his son Titus in 80 CE. Funding for this massive public entertainment venue, which could hold over 50,000 people, came from the Roman ransacking of Judea that took place during the great Jewish revolt. During its centuries of operation, millions of people witnessed great spectacles in this great amphitheater, including mock naval battles, exotic animal displays, gladiator fights, and more. It was the greatest show in the world, and more people likely died there over the hundreds of years that it held shows than in any other place in human history. For the first hundred years of its existence, Christianity was a fringe religion within the Roman Empire, barely distinct from Judaism as religion in many regards. However, it grew in popularity despite regular persecution from Roman imperial authorities, and by the time of Constantine, Christians already composed a sizable portion of the Roman population. Once Constantine declared Christianity legal and even converted to Christianity, there was no turning back. Within a century, Rome was a Christian state. Christianity played a major part in Roman history, particularly during Late Antiquity, when emperors became involved in theological battles and had dealings and disputes with important religious officials. Julius Caesar had a famous relationship with the last queen of Egypt. Cleopatra was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek family that had ruled Egypt since the days of Alexander the Great. She spoke several languages and was a political genius. She forged an alliance with Rome through Caesar and the two had a child, Caesarion. Many Romans looked unfavorably on this relationship between their greatest statesman and a foreign queen of questionable loyalties to Rome. After Caesar was assassinated, Cleopatra became associated with one of Caesar's former allies, Mark Antony, who eventually lost a civil war to Octavian. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide together, Egypt became a Roman province, and Rome became an empire. Historians refer to the Roman state between 509 BCE, when the last Roman king was overthrown, and 27 BCE, when Augustus became Princeps, as the Roman Republic. During this period, Rome was governed by a republican system ruled by elected officials like consuls, praetors, aediles, tribunes, and others. There was also an informal constitution that laid out political powers, term limits, checks, and balances between various parts of the government. Now, this republic wasn't exactly representative or democratic, but the Romans certainly wanted to believe that it was. They thought of their government as a republic, a public thing. When the Romans conquered parts of the island of Great Britain, they mostly decided to stay south of what is now modern-day Scotland. In order to ensure the security of Roman Britannia's northern border, the Emperor Hadrian built a series of fortifications known as Hadrian's Wall. Parts of it still stand today. They most likely served not just for military defense, but also for the regulation of trade and exchange. Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, refers to the stability and peace that the Roman Empire enjoyed during a period of about 200 years during the 1st and 2nd century CE. During this time, Rome was politically stable, having to deal with few revolts or civil wars, was financially prosperous on account of lucrative conquests in a flourishing slave economy, and was safe from foreign encroachment. This period traditionally ends with the reign of Commodus and the rise of the Severans, and was shortly followed by the so-called Crisis of the 3rd century. This is exactly what it sounds like, the western half of the Roman Empire. Unlike the eastern half, which lived on as the Byzantine Empire, the western half did not survive late antiquity and was replaced by a variety of new kingdoms primarily ruled by newly-arrived peoples from outside of Europe. The western half of the empire was poorer, less politically stable, and more vulnerable to foreign invasions, which explains why it did not survive while its eastern half did. Spartacus was a slave during the late Republic period who started the largest slave revolt in Roman history. His slave army defeated several Roman armies before being crushed. I've always seen his story as a reminder that Rome was a brutal and violent society built and sustained by the labor of millions of oppressed slaves. In all the lionizing and glorification of Roman civilization, this aspect of Roman history is often neglected. The five good emperors were five emperors who reigned primarily in the 2nd century CE. They're referred to as good because the general historical consensus is that all of them performed well in their roles as emperors. They're grouped together like this because each of them adopted his successor. In order, they were Nerva who adopted Trajan, who adopted Hadrian, who adopted Antoninus Pius, who adopted Marcus Aurelius. People often say that the emperors were also all good because each emperor chose the best heir they could find through adoption instead of just allowing blood succession to happen. But it's also true that none of these guys save for Marcus Aurelius had direct biological heirs. I have my own thoughts about exactly how good each of these emperors really was. Nerva did very little in his short reign. Trajan brought Rome to its territorial peak but invested lots into vanity projects and a war of conquest that brought Rome nothing. Hadrian stabilized the empire and brought a renaissance of Greek culture to Rome but committed mass atrocities in Judea. Antoninus Pius effectively presided over a peacetime empire, helped give slaves and freedmen paths to becoming citizens, and had a generally uneventful reign. Marcus Aurelius spent most of his time fighting a major war on the Danube frontier and writing about philosophy. How are we to judge these men? Who knows? Regardless, they are known to have presided over the period of greatest prosperity and peace within the Roman world. The Punic Wars, there were three of them, were fought between Rome and Carthage, a state that controlled territory in North Africa and had a significant naval and trading presence in the Mediterranean. The first Punic War, which lasted from 264 to 241 BCE, happened in the aftermath of Rome's wars with Pyrrhus, during which they conquered the Greek territories in southern Italy. This brought the Romans into conflict with the Carthaginians over the flashpoint island of Sicily, on and around which the first Punic War was fought. A major theme in this war was the Roman acquisition of a real navy for the first time. Previously, Rome had only been a land power. Eventually, Rome emerged victorious in this war, taking Sicily as well as Corsica and Sardinia. The second Punic War, perhaps the most famous, took place a couple decades later, from 221 to 202 BCE. In between the two wars, Carthage established colonies along the coast of Spain. From there, a Carthaginian army crossed the Alps and invaded Italy under the famous general Hannibal, who dealt the Romans three devastating defeats on the battlefield. Despite these nearly existential threats, Rome held on and continued to fight until they conquered Carthage's Spanish colonies and then attacked the city of Carthage itself, forcing Carthage to surrender and essentially become a Roman client state. The third Punic War, which lasted from 149 to 146 BCE, was basically just Rome besieging Carthage and destroying the Carthaginian civilization for the last time. This final war was notoriously brutal, and when the Romans finally breached the walls of Carthage, they slaughtered everyone inside and razed the city to the ground. The Punic Wars were important because they saw Rome acquire an overseas empire for the first time. This broadened Rome's horizons, taking it from a regional power to a great power, and put its leaders in a position to control the entire Mediterranean. They also gave Rome a host of problems to deal with, like a military quagmire in Iberia, unpaid veteran soldiers, disgruntled Italian allies, and the increasing power of military warlords. These problems would all eventually lead to the end of republican government in Rome. Jesus was almost certainly not a Roman citizen. He was born in the region of Judea before Judea became a Roman province, thus he was probably just considered a citizen of his city. The biblical account of his trial actually supports this idea. Pontius Pilate reportedly asked the Jews to decide if they wanted Jesus crucified, implying that he was more appropriately judged under Jewish law and custom than Roman law. If he were a Roman citizen, he would have been entitled to a trial under Roman law, most likely in Rome itself, and he could have made an appeal to secure a trial in Rome, as Paul the Apostle did decades later. The Gracchi brothers were two Roman politicians who lived during the late republic. They claimed to campaign on behalf of the people, advocating for the redistribution of ager publicus, public land, to the urban poor. Tiberius was first, holding the office of tribune before being assassinated by his political enemies. Gaius, who also held the office of tribune, went further and even more radical with proposed reforms and even brought mob violence to Roman politics, but he too was eventually killed. The two remain controversial figures today, particularly in the context of comparisons to modern politics. They certainly practiced a form of demagoguery, courting the goodwill of the people in opposition to the wealthy elites. Their advocacy for radical land reform inspired later reformers such as Gracchus Babouf. He advocated for the abolition of private property during the French Revolution and he ran a newspaper called Tribune of the People. Antonine's Wall is a bit of a misnomer. The emperor the wall was named for, Antoninus Pius, didn't actually do much fighting and was never in command of a military campaign. However, he did order the expansion of Roman power in Britain. Military units pushed past the frontier established by Hadrian's Wall and built a new wall in modern-day Scotland. However, this wall proved pretty indefensible and the newly acquired territory proved pretty difficult to control and so the wall was abandoned pretty shortly after it was completed and Hadrian's Wall would remain the Roman frontier in Britain until the Roman legions left in the 400s. Ab urbe condita is a Latin phrase that means from the founding of the city. To the Romans, it was how they dated their history to the date of the founding of the city of Rome by the mythical Romulus. I suppose it's important though to note that the Romans didn't generally use a numbered year system to refer to their years. Instead, they would simply name the years by which consuls had been in power during those years even after the Republican government effectively ceased to have any real authority. The crisis of the third century was a 50-year period of political instability within the Roman Empire. During this time, political crises, economic crises, and military crises effectively overlapped and their effects compounded on one another. Civil wars, foreign invasions, rebellions, financial insolvency, plague, the increasing power of independent warlords, all of it seemed to spell the end of the Roman Empire as a unified state. However, at the right moment, there came strong leadership that allowed the Aurelian was one of the greatest Roman emperors ever. He came to the throne and saw a Roman Empire that was split into three political entities and by the time he was assassinated just five years later, he had already reunified the empire and set it on a course for future political stability. He was a great general and also a magnanimous conqueror, doing his best to appease and help the empire reunify. Lots of people nowadays love fanboying and dickwriting him though, which is kind of annoying. Diocletian, I think, ultimately deserves more credit for transforming the Roman world into its late antique form, for better or for worse. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul between 58 and 52 BCE. Now this was certainly one of Rome's greatest conquests and it was also one of Rome's worst atrocities. Caesar wrote a famous account of his wars in Gaul, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, but it is pretty unreliable and biased in his favor. Modern historians also agree that he exaggerated the numbers of enemies that he fought in most of the battles. Regardless, there was plenty of wanton brutality and slaughtering of unarmed civilians. Caesar frequently ordered the destruction of farmland and villages in the spirit of total war, undermining a society's ability to sustain itself by attacking it at its roots. Whether one should consider this a genocide is an open question, of course. Caesar's conduct, although it took place on a large scale and over a remarkably short period of time, was not exactly out of line with how the Romans generally practiced warfare. Remember, genocide is a modern concept and it would not have been known to the Romans. Back then it was not an issue to kill or rape unarmed civilians or destroy the very foundations of an enemy society through total war. In fact, it was often seen as just and perhaps even as impressive. I mean, why else would Caesar not downplay but rather embellish his army's brutal conduct in Gaul? Roman heating systems were called hypocoths, systems of central heating for buildings that the Romans pioneered and used for a variety of structures from public baths to private residences. Essentially, a fire under the floor would heat air that would then circulate throughout the space under a building and through pipes in the walls which would heat the whole interior space. The hypocoths were the forerunners of modern central heating technology and were certainly far ahead of their time. They reflect the practical bent of Roman engineering as well as the stunning achievement of Roman governance in providing good public services. The Pan-Di-Dakterion, which Emperor Theodosius II founded in the year 425, is a contender for first university. The Pan-Di-Dakterion was a center of higher learning in the city of Constantinople that operated throughout the existence of the Byzantine Empire. Some consider it to have been the first university, although I think technically the term university is more properly used to refer to educational institutions with the bureaucratic and administrative structures that typify modern institutions of higher education, blah blah blah, and all this arose in medieval Europe typically. This was not the case with the Pan-Di-Dakterion, which was more focused on producing civil servants for the empire's administration. Romulus and Remus were the legendary brothers who would go on to found the city of Rome. The legend goes the two were twins, grandsons of King Numitor, king of the city of Alba Longa. Their mother, Rhea Silvia, was a Vestal Virgin and only conceived the twins after a visit from the god Mars. Divine births are pretty typical of religious or political founding mythologies, so does this surprise anybody? When Numitor was overthrown by another king named Amulius, the new king ordered the twins killed as they were related to the old king and were a potential threat to his rule. They were put in a basket and set adrift on a river, the Tiber river, but they were able to survive and were nursed throughout childhood by a she-wolf and a shepherd. When Romulus and Remus grew up, they learned of their family history and they helped Numitor regain his throne from Amulius. They then went off to found their own city, but they had some disputes over where they would begin building the city. Eventually, this dispute led to the death of Remus, leaving Romulus to give his name, his administrative wisdom, and his life to the civilization of Rome. The Rape of the Sabines is another part of the founding mythology of Rome. Essentially, Romulus led the men of Rome on expeditions to raid the surrounding settlements of a people called the Sabines, take their women, and ensure the continued progeny of Rome. This was necessary because Rome's initial population was composed of a motley crew of vagabonds, criminals, wanderers, and exiles, people who were primarily male. This story has been much examined by both Roman writers and modern historians. However, it's generally agreed that this story didn't really happen, most likely, at least not in the way that it's traditionally told. Hibernia was the Roman name for the island of Ireland, which they knew of and traded with, but never attempted to conquer. The island was actually known to the Greeks as well. The geographer Ptolemy described the island as being inhabited by 16 major tribes. And although the Romans never invaded or established a direct colonial presence, contact with Rome certainly had a heavy influence on Ireland. For example, Ireland's rich Christian tradition was a product of this contact with Rome. In Irish mythology, St. Patrick, a semi-legendary figure who helped convert the island to Christianity in the 400s and is now the patron saint of Ireland, was actually from Roman Britain, and he wrote a confession in Latin. Even back then, the world was smaller than it seems. On this island that was then on the edge of the explored world, Roman influence remained potent. The Sibylline Books were collections of prophecies kept by the Roman governmental and religious authorities. They were considered sacred and were only consulted in the most dire of times. They were apparently purchased by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and kept closely guarded in Rome for centuries afterward. The books were consulted, as I said, in times of devastating crisis, such as after the devastating battle of Cannae against Hannibal and during the Great Fire of Rome. They survived throughout Roman history and were consulted intermittently until the general Stilicho ordered them destroyed in the early 400s. Their origins and contents remain mysterious, but what is not in question is that the Sibylline Books and the ceremonies surrounding the consultation of the books were heavily intertwined with pagan religious traditions and rituals, meaning they fell out of favor along with a variety of other pagan institutions like the Vestal Virgins and the Eleusinian Mysteries with the rise of Christianity. Several small military expeditions led by Romans made it through the Sahara Desert and explored as far south as modern Nigeria. Travel through the Sahara Desert, while it was limited due to the inhospitable climatic conditions, was certainly possible and was known to the people of North Africa. Also due to climatic shifts in the last 2,000 years, the Sahara in Roman times was likely not as dry or as big as it is today. These expeditions were undertaken primarily for the purpose of establishing commercial contact with peoples in and beyond the Sahara. They generally failed to establish any sort of long-term trading contact or Roman settlement, but they are fascinating to study. It's just crazy to think that the ancient Romans made contact with people in Nigeria. This refers to a theory that the lead typically used in Roman pipes had a negative impact on the health of the Roman population and contributed significantly to the empire's collapse. Now this almost certainly is not true. Roman plumbing simply wasn't nearly widespread enough across the empire to have a significant impact on the health of the Roman population. Alternatively, lead poisoning is said to have contributed to the depraved and violent conduct of many of the worst Roman emperors such as Caligula or Nero. However, this too is in dispute because it's not exactly clear which emperors actually were depraved and violent and which of them had the stories of their lives twisted and exaggerated by biased historical propaganda. Overall, the idea that lead poisoning was a major factor in the Roman empire's collapse is mostly a myth. Renovatio imperii means renewal of imperial rule in Latin. The phrase renovatio imperii and variations of it were used by the Carolingian Franks and the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire to state an intent to claim and restore the authority of the Roman Empire. Other rulers like Theoderic of the Goths and the Emperor Justinian, while they did not use this exact phrase, molded their political programs around an idea of restoring the Roman Empire. Ever since the end of antiquity, the concept of renovatio imperii, the restoration of Roman imperial authority, whether invoked directly or indirectly, has been massively influential on European history. Flavius Stilicho was a general in the late Roman world who played a crucial role in responding to the crises that struck the Roman world in the early 400s. Notably, he fought campaigns against Alaric and his Goths, forcing them out of the Western Empire. He also faced the migrating horde that crossed the Rhine in the year 406, but due to the scale of the migrations and the insolvent state of the Roman military, he was unable to prevent various Germanic tribes from raiding the Roman countryside. These military failures led to his overthrow and execution in 408. Stilicho was, by the way, himself of half-German descent. De consentes is simply the name for the ancient Roman pantheon of gods. The gods were Jupiter, or Jove, Juno, Neptune, Mercury, Minerva, Venus, Mars, Apollo, Diana, Vulcan, Vesta, and Ceres. The Romans inherited the template for this pantheon from the Greeks, from whom they inherited much of their religious tradition. They also possibly borrowed heavily from the Etruscan religion. This was a system of fortifications built in Thrace and named for the emperor Anastasius I at some point in the late 5th century. These fortifications spanned the width of the Thracian peninsula at a distance of 40 miles from the city of Constantinople. Anastasius' wall was most likely constructed in response to the Hunnic invasions of Thrace in the 440s. The Huns under Attila were able to make it all the way to the walls of Constantinople itself after defeating Eastern Roman armies, which likely was too close for comfort for Eastern Roman emperors. This was a very long line of fortifications, however, which made it very difficult to defend, and it was abandoned by the 7th century. The Donation of Constantine was a document supposedly given to the bishop of Rome by Constantine that granted the popes of Rome the temporal power of the Roman emperors in perpetuity. The document was frequently used by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages to prove that they had not just supreme spiritual power, but also supreme temporal power. It's full of pro-Catholic Church propaganda designed to give the popes supreme authority over even the patriarchs of Constantinople. It's also full of historical inaccuracies and anachronistic language, making it impossible that the document was actually composed during the time of Constantine. The forgery of the Donation was proven as early as the 1400s by an early Italian humanist. This helped undermine the Catholic Church's doctrines of Caesaropapism, which saw them combine the spiritual power of the popes with the temporal power of the Caesars. Flavius Aetius was a prominent general in the last days of the Western Roman Empire. He served as magister militum, or supreme commander, of the armies in the West during the mid-400s. During his time, various foreign peoples were living within the territories of the Roman Empire as federate tribes, alternately allying and fighting with the Roman state. Aetius' task was to preserve this delicate political balance between the gradually waning Roman imperial authority and its client peoples, upon which it was becoming more and more dependent. He did this admirably for more than two decades, including mustering an army to fight off Attila's Huns in 451. Despite this loyal service, his emperor Valentinian III personally assassinated him on suspicion that he was plotting to take the throne. The informal title, Last of the Romans, has been given to various individuals throughout history to signify that, with this specific individual, dies the essence of Rome as a concept and a value system. The debate over who was truly the last of the Romans reminds me in a way about the debate over the fall of Rome, because it's kind of difficult to draw parameters on words like Roman and Rome that are open to interpretation. Anyway, some of the people who have been called last of the Romans are Marcus Julius Brutus, Aetius, Majorian, Justinian, among many others. The Donation of Pepin was a document endorsed by Pepin, king of the Franks in the year 756, that assured the independence of the Roman papacy and gave the popes control over several cities in northern Italy. This document was the end result of a political and religious crisis that saw the Lombards in northern Italy attempt to assert military and political authority over the city of Rome, and with it, obviously, the papacy, the seat of western Christendom itself. The pope at the time, Stephen II, appealed to Pepin, the king of the Franks, for assistance, and the Franks did indeed come to the aid of the papacy, defeating the Lombards in battle and then issuing this document that guaranteed political independence to the papacy. The document gave the pope control over territory that was formerly controlled by the Roman Empire in Italy. This territory, which included the important city of Ravenna, had been under the imperial rule of Constantinople since the reconquest campaigns of Justinian in the 500s. This was very, very important in establishing the symbiotic alliance between the papacy and the Franks, which would later lead to Pepin's son, King Charles, more famously known as Charlemagne, being crowned emperor of the Romans in Rome a few decades later. The donation of Pepin, along with the forged donation of Constantine, provided the popes of Rome with a legal basis to inherit the mandate of imperial Rome. The Caledonians were a people who lived in what is now Scotland during the Roman era. The Romans fought a couple major conflicts with them throughout the centuries that they were present on the island of Great Britain. Aside from these periods of major conflict, plenty of constant low-level violence like raiding and skirmishing took place on this frontier. Thus, the Romans came to call that territory beyond their border, Caledonia. The Romans briefly flirted with control over this region under the general Agricola, who invaded and established a presence in Caledonia before being recalled by the emperor Domitian. Antoninus Pius also ordered a foray into Caledonia, but this venture was abandoned shortly after. The Romans never engaged in a systematic conquest campaign of Caledonia, because it would simply have been too difficult and costly. The land was not productive, particularly not with the limited Roman agricultural technology, and the people were fiercely independent. The Roman Republic never actually ended, even though historians consider the Roman Empire to have begun in 27 BCE. Turns out that the old Roman constitution was never formally abolished or replaced with anything, it just became gradually more irrelevant to the history and politics of the Roman world. However, the custom of referring to the Roman state as lasted even after the fall of the empire in the west. It's important to note that the Roman Republic was never formally ended, it was just relegated to convention and irrelevance. Translatio imperiae is Latin for transfer of rule and refers to a historiographic concept that frames history as a series of transfers of supreme imperial power between various imperial authorities. Basically all of history can be explained by which empire or emperor is holding power at that moment. This is not a very historically sound concept because history is like a lot more complicated than that, but translatio imperiae is certainly a very useful concept if you are say an autocratic ruler trying to reify your power by appealing to history for When applied to ancient Rome, the concept of translatio imperiae is closely tied to ideas of third Rome, which is basically the idea that some empire or institution has or had a claim to be the next incarnation of Roman imperial authority. It's all about who gets to claim this mantle of supreme imperial power and lots of people tried. The Goths, the Franks, the Ottomans, the Russians, and many many others made direct claims to be the third Rome. Others made indirect claims, never saying they're the third Rome, but always using elements of Roman authority, or culture, or architecture to establish this conceptual connection to Roman imperium. This Latin phrase directly translates to, Cicero popularized this phrase by using it in a few of his orations, most famously his oration before the senate against Catiline, who had conspired to overthrow the Roman republic. Cicero used this phrase to criticize the values of his time and try to urge the senate to execute Catiline. Roman empire abolished 1922 is a reference to the idea that the Ottoman empire was the third Rome. Various entities have made the claim to be the heir to the Roman legacy after the end of antiquity, but the Ottoman empire was perhaps one of the strongest claimants. The conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmed II, also known as Mehmed the Conqueror, was really really invested in this idea of Ottoman Turkey as third Rome. He called himself Caesar of the Roman Empire, implying that by conquering the old seat of Roman imperial power, he had not extinguished the imperial flame, but actually kept it burning under a new mantle. Toward the end of his reign, he even went so far as to try and invade and conquer Italy. He did die while these campaigns were underway, but at the time Italy was divided politically and the great powers of Europe were mostly occupied with other affairs. So it's not unlikely that Mehmed and the Ottomans could have actually reached Rome itself. The Ottoman sultans claimed to be Roman emperors for centuries after conquering Constantinople, but eventually they pivoted more towards their Islamic heritage as a source of political prestige and legitimacy. However, if one does accept that the Ottoman empire was the third Rome, then the Roman empire was in fact abolished in 1922 when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished. The Romans probably did not have knowledge of Iceland. The best information we have on this comes from Greek geographers and there is no undisputed mention of the island of Iceland in any Greek or Roman source. However, because the Romans had settled Britain and were trading with Ireland, the Romans were sailing around in the North Sea. It's definitely possible that some Roman sailors stumbled upon Iceland at some point throughout the centuries that the Romans were present in Britain. However, the archaeological record tells us that what we now know as Iceland was almost certainly not inhabited during the Roman era, not by Romans nor by any other humans. This is a fringe theory that much of what we know about Diocletian's reign and the whole era of the Tetrarchy is actually the product of some pretty successful pro-Tetrarchy propaganda. The idea is that Diocletian and the rest of the Tetrarchy sought to position themselves in the official narrative as the restorers of old Roman prosperity and in the process minimize the achievements of previous emperors like Gallienus, Aurelian, Probus, etc. in bringing Rome out of the crisis of the third century. I will say that in its weaker form this theory definitely has some merit. Many of Diocletian's reforms, especially his fiscal and economic reforms, were either failures and or had unintended consequences. For example, his edict on maximum prices, his attempt at setting a price ceiling on various goods, was almost completely ignored, and his laws that locked people into pursuing the same professions as their families accelerated the development of the guild system and of feudalism. In light of his policy failures, the idea of Diocletian as a revolutionary and visionary reformer is pretty squarely propaganda. Flavius Aspar was a Roman general of Germanic descent. He was a major figure in Eastern Roman politics during the 5th century, leading a federate army that was ostensibly loyal to the Roman emperor in Constantinople but really only answered to him. He exerted significant influence over the Roman imperial court through the reigns of the emperors Theodosius II, Marcian, and Leo I, who was pretty much only on the throne because Aspar supported him. Aspar's military record against the empire's enemies, on the other hand, was pretty mixed. The empire was dealt several decisive defeats by Attila the Hun while he was in charge, for example. But because he was the power behind the throne, he was untouchable until a rival faction of Isaurians in Constantinople succeeded in getting him overthrown. His time in power embodied the political realities of the late Roman world, so-called barbarians like Stilicho in the west, leading independent military units and becoming the power behind the Roman throne. This isn't exactly the most controversial theory on this iceberg. It's generally the historical consensus, actually, that the traditional founding story of the city of Rome is a myth and that Romulus and Remus didn't really exist. It is really, really interesting to examine the founding story as myth, though. Myths represent which values and traditions a society wants to reify by retelling itself again and again. For example, Romulus perpetrated the rape of the Sabines, which saw Rome's men raid surrounding towns for their women in order to ensure that future generations of Romans would exist. Why would Romans centuries later tell themselves this horrible origin story? The Bagaudae were peasant rebels that operated from the crisis of the 3rd century onwards. They looted and raided the countryside and generally defied Roman imperial authority as well as the local authority of elite landowners. Many connect the revolts of the Bagaudae with the slave revolts earlier in Roman history, as they both represented oppressed laborers using violence to escape oppressive economic systems. One could see the Bagaudae as fighting a pre-modern form of class warfare. Agnostos Theos, or unknown god in Greek, was an unknown god that the Greeks supposedly worshipped in addition to their main pantheon of gods. This god was not a specific god, but rather a representation of all other divine authorities that the Greeks were not yet aware of. This theory referenced also has the idea that the Greeks were actually worshipping the Christian god in the form of Agnostos Theos. This idea comes from the book of the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible, in which Paul the Apostle gives a speech in Athens that invokes Agnostos Theos. He claims that the Greeks, by worshipping Agnostos Theos, are already worshipping the Christian god without knowing it. Many ancient writers dealt with the idea of a divine power that was distinct from the power of all the named and known gods, and later Christian writers such as Petrarch enjoyed reading into these ideas and seeing prefigurations of the Christian god. This honestly shouldn't be the lowest entry in the whole iceberg, I don't think, but oh well. This probably refers to a variety of theories that state that the modern world is headed in the same direction that Rome was. A lot of these theories focus on the modern United States, drawing parallels between the fall of Rome and the projected fall of America. I won't take time to engage these theories today, but I will say that there are a lot of useful things we can learn about our modern world from studying ancient Rome. I hope you enjoyed this little deep dive into Roman history, it's something that I've wanted to do for a while. If you're new to the world of ancient Rome, I hope this was a good introduction to the fascinating stories that keep us coming back to this long lost era of history. If you're a Rome history buff, I hope I talked about at least a couple things you hadn't heard of before. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let me know if there's any topic I mentioned today that you'd like to see me make a more in-depth video on. Thank you for watching.