Episode 373 - The Battle of Abritus

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Hello, and welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast.

It's me, Joe.

With me is Tom.

There is no Nate.

We have eaten him due to the month of sieges that we've suffered under.

Yes, we have been under siege in this basement studio in London and we have had to resort to eating Nate.

We have turned him into a sort of a human chipotle chicken alpasseur bowl.

Yeah, it's very nice.

I always figured that Red Hats would get a good sear on the meat.

Yes, yes.

It's boiling hot because we constructed a fire pit on the ground.

Yeah, as tradition demands.

Yes.

We're in Rome.

It's the crisis of the third century.

Emperors are murdered, bought, and sold at the drop of a Praetorian spear.

Plagues ravage the land.

Natural disasters have destroyed everything that doesn't have plague, and barbarians at their gates here to steal our sweet, succulent boobos.

Not my boobos.

Those are mine.

Oh, no, not my boobos.

Night is gone.

We are still boobo maxing.

Bubo maxing.

We have cholera.

We have bugs on us.

We're all wearing togas.

The purple color has been taken because that's only the emperor's color now.

Yes.

This month has been full of sieges.

I wish I could sit here, tell him, and tell you I did that on purpose.

Yeah.

I really didn't.

Usually it's kind of like we record a now spread out by a couple of weeks.

Instead, we have siege maxed in the space of five hours.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, as long as we ignore Frank, then this whole month has been sieges.

And today's going to be a little different, though.

We are talking about the siege of Philipolis.

Okay.

Kind of.

Okay.

But as always, this shit did not begin with thousands of Romans, half of whom already have been emperor at one point or another, dying of plague and goths hacking them into pieces at the gates of a city that would today be in Bulgaria.

Yes.

We are going to the land of Irish-owned seaside apartments.

We're going to the ye old Bulgarian hot topic because we're talking about goths.

I forget, did that was hot topic a thing for you?

Not necessarily.

Well, definitely not for me because I'm a bit too young, but it definitely wasn't a thing in Ireland.

We used to go to HMV to buy Led Zeppelin t-shirts.

HMV?

Never heard of it.

So that's the place you'd go to get like band shirts, weird out-of-date Invaders and shit.

Yep.

Black jeans with chains.

Yes.

Okay.

Not necessarily the black jeans with chains on them, more so like specifically band t-shirts because it was like a record and CD shop.

Okay, that sounds more useful than a hot topic.

Yes.

It's actually really weird.

A couple of years ago, I went to a hot topic because it was back in the U.S.

It was like, I can't believe these things are still a thing, right?

And it's still exactly how I left it, which is all the weird goth stuff,

but also a sex shop in the back.

They've diversified their portfolio.

Well,

the time shifts what is a hot topic, and maybe now buying sex toys and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt is a hot topic.

I know I really want a cartoonishly large orange fake penis, as well as for some reason, they still sell Invader Zim shit,

a show that has not been popular in over 20 years.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe maybe the goths, if you're listening to this and you are like a goth/slash emo, is Invader Zim still important culturally?

Is Nightmare Before Christmas still a thing?

Oh, yes.

Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, all that sort of stuff.

Maybe I should feel lucky that I lived through that stuff while I was coming out of that.

You got the last chopper out of Saigon.

Goth Saigon.

Does that mean if Goth Saigon, what does that make the Viet Gong?

Like, are they

preps?

Yeah.

Ho Chi Minh with three popped collars coming down to fuck up Goth Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh in the fucking American Polo Association polo with three pop collars.

Instead, we have to talk a bit about what's called the crisis of the third century.

Now, this is not an exhaustive history of the period of Rome or any period of Rome for that matter.

In fact, there's a whole podcast called The History of Rome that you should listen to for that.

And said, this is more of a primer to better understand the context of this episode.

Generally speaking, the crisis, as you can tell from its name, Tom, maybe, was bad.

Many people are saying this.

Not many crises are good.

This is a good crisis.

Over the course of about 50 years, the Roman Empire was simultaneously tearing itself apart while caving under multiple different outside stressors, including a near-constant wave of plague with a tag team partner called drought.

The last two kicks in the teeth had a lot to do with the first.

The plague killed massive swaths of Roman life, but of course, it mostly impacted the lower class, who in turn were generally the ones feeding the rest of Rome due to their toil in the fields.

Suddenly, without enough people in the fields, there wasn't enough people to plant and then harvest their crops, a process that was made much worse by the fact they had the driest weather in known history at the time.

And that led to, in my opinion, one of our most recurring support characters on the show, famine.

Ah, yeah, like it's kind of, it is hard to push a plow when you are starving, your hands are covered in boobos, and you've really dry skin.

Yeah, the dry skin, like, I can't do this.

My elbows are, you know, kind of white.

Resorting to solely drinking a white monster because there's no water.

I love that all of the co-hosts are just pestilence.

Yes.

While this is happening, the Roman imperial institutions ran into a problem I'm going to assume you thought they had figured out.

There was no codified system of imperial succession.

Now, you would think it's an empire.

Someone's idiot kid is going to take over.

And that would have been better.

Not because someone's idiot kid is a good ruler, but because at least it's a system.

Yeah, like, you know, every, I suppose,

imperial nation or, like, I suppose, powerful kingdom pre-1700s was just handed down to someone's idiot kid.

For the most part, there's some times where, like, you know, the Byzantines, for example, elected their ruler and things like that.

And sometimes it's an idiot cousin.

And sometimes it was the idiot cousin and the idiot son.

Yeah, sometimes it's an idiot cousin brother, you know, we're we're talking about the Habsburgs.

Yeah, yeah.

Nobody wants an uncle-based government.

The government is not going unkmode.

A lot of this had to do with governing institutions in Rome, which was the Roman Empire at this point, still pretending to be a republic.

So instead of just having someone's idiot kid ascend to the throne after them, Instead of the death of an emperor, the next guy would need connections, senate approval, army approval, and some form of broad support from the population.

But none of this was an agreed-upon system.

It was all kind of whatever worked.

Vibes-based.

Yeah.

And of course, famously, failing all of this, the Praetorian Guard would just kill the emperors they didn't like.

They would sell the throne to guys who promised a benefits package and then change their mind a few weeks later and kill him too.

Yeah, it's like, who looks the best in purple exists to be emperor?

Yeah, you got to have the right drip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Famously,

Ridley Scott did not get this right.

Praetorian Guard didn't wear purple.

No, the purple was reserved specifically for the emperor.

Yeah, it's like, you know, the clergy, the pope is allowed to wear white, no one else is.

Interesting.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Is it because he's a virgin?

I think it's to do with the like a purity in connection to

God, but it's also like cardinals wear red,

bishops wear purple, and regular clergy wear outside of vestments wear black.

So it's, I don't know, it's like a hierarchical thing.

Yeah.

You need to get a pope that wears head-to-toe black, wears guy liner.

The goth pope.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

The pontifex of the black power.

I mean, that is just the absolute wet dream of J.D.

Vance to become the first eyeliner wearing Pope.

Oh, God.

Once again, adult converts are the worst people on the planet.

Always suspicious.

Yeah, you should form all of your beliefs in early childhood and then hold them steadfast for the rest of your life.

And as well, if your mother was going to like sell you for like a bottle of zannies, then maybe you shouldn't be Pope.

I'm starting to think that maybe his mom or his grandmother, I don't remember, got really ripped off when

she tried to sell him for like Perk Xerte's.

He's not worth that.

He's worth some ragweed at best.

I sold my son for some swag weed and now he's vice president.

So this turned into a chaotic system where during this period, various generals, politicians, and sometimes those two guys were the same guys, would get a fair bit of support from the armies that they were in charge of.

Those armies would declare him emperor.

And then he would try and take the throne.

This caused multiple civil wars, as you can imagine.

And that is obviously very bad for the stability of anywhere.

The politicians are unhappy.

The normal people are unhappy.

And the Goths are looking at Rome and feeling like, man, this looks like a really easy target right about now.

Yeah, it's, you know, the Roman Empire really descending into its own squabbles, leaving itself open to, you know, the wider world, the Goths, to some.

Well, no, actually, Julius Caesar has already conquered Gaul.

So, yeah.

They're about to get like completely fucked up by people in some fishnack gloves and typo negative shirts

God damn.

Oh, instead of wearing combat boots, they have like those Chuck Taylors that go up to the shins.

Yeah,

oh God, those would be horrible to march in.

I'm willing to bet that someone has walked way too far at a concert while wearing those or a fat.

Like I'm assuming it's a warp tour situation.

Yes.

And they've never worn them again.

Oh, like I wear a lot of boots, like kind of cowboy or motorcycle boots.

And let me tell you, your feet get quite sweaty in those.

If those went up to my knees, I think I would nearly develop gangrene in my toes.

Man, the sweat galosh.

They storm into a place called Roman Mosia, a region south of the Danube that roughly covers parts of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, and Kosovo today.

Famously, places that all like each other.

They're also joined by gangs of other barbarians to see how good they might be eaten if they attack Rome at that point.

And they're also just joined by groups of Roman soldiers who said, fuck it,

and joined in because their generals hadn't been paying them.

Yeah, and

the Balkans are all promising them.

It's like, we're going to invade Rome and make the world's biggest borek.

You can too enjoy.

I mean, that would get me for sure.

Yeah.

Give me the world's biggest borek.

If you want to buy Joe's favor, bring him a large borek.

Exactly.

This is how you get access to me.

Buying access to me is very, very easy.

It costs you about $5.

Yes.

Actually, it does cost literally $5 on Patriot.

Imagine how confusing this must have been for like a Roman villager who saw this army marching towards them.

And then, like, part of it is obvious Roman soldiers fully kitted out and still carrying their standards.

Like, come on, bro, you're supposed to be on our team.

The Goths pretty much freely laid waste to the area because, wouldn't you know it, constantly beefing over whose turn it is to sit on the fancy chair meant that armies at the border were not exactly in fighting shape.

The Goths stole so much shit from Rome during the raid in 248 that it caused other barbarian tribes who sat out the raid to get jealous and in turn attacked the Goths trying to steal what they had stolen from the Romans, causing something of a Danube region civil war of barbarians.

I think it'd be interesting to think about, and maybe someone who's listening has an answer to it.

Like, what does, you know, the Goth raids on the Roman Empire, what did that do to like the general economy in Europe?

Like, did it destabilize like trading goods because like suddenly there was such a big surplus of these expensive items?

Well, for the these you know, so-called barbarians, so to speak, it was really good for them, obviously, because this is also going through the time where they were starting to more

into feudal kingdoms rather than barbarians as we know them in our head.

So, it kind of jump-started a lot of economies and bolstered their trade because now they had something to trade that other people didn't have.

Uh, so yeah, hey, bro, you want to buy this walkman CD player,

stealing the pope's CD player,

opening up the pope's CD feels like this is just nothing nothing but Dracula Flow mixes.

Yeah, I stole it.

It just has like an Ildivo CD in it.

It's not really my thing.

Dracula Flow did say he keeps his Glock in the Vatican.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In Rome, the raid was again even worse.

People and soldiers living in the region rose up and deposed their governor, who in turn was replaced by the emperor by a man he thought to be loyal, a man named Trajan Decius.

As soon as Decius showed up to Mosia, the man who led the rebellion was immediately turned and murdered by the other guys in the rebellion, who then turned back to Deceas and were like, hello, commander.

We didn't rise up.

He's dead.

Everything is fixed out.

Yeah, they didn't believe in magic until they saw their dogs turn into snakes.

There you go.

The men were so impressed by Deceas, who, you know, because he treated them well, he made sure they got paid.

They made sure they got food.

that they just promptly declared him the true emperor of Rome.

Yeah, it's as we have covered on the show, many, many, many times it is important for your soldiers to be fed, paid, and for them to have water.

It's never a good idea to have a whole bunch of bored, heavily armed men, unpaid and hungry, sitting around somewhere.

Yeah, just standing around picking their boobos.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't want to pick boobos.

No, the way the story is told is Decius is like, oh, I can't possibly march on Rome.

And then his men were like, well, if you don't, we just declared you emperor, which means we're in rebellion.

So if you don't become emperor, we're going to have to kill you.

So Decius is like, well, wouldn't you know it?

It's time to march on Rome, boys.

So Decius and his men went to war against the sitting emperor, Philip the Arab.

Now, sometimes in Rome, obviously, there's like, they get titles.

Famously, like Scipio Africanus got the nickname Africanus because he conquered Africa.

Philip the Arab was an Arab.

He was born in Syria.

That was not a nickname that he had earned, but that's just how Rome worked back then.

Race didn't really matter in Rome.

Roman culture did.

So, you know, we've talked about this before.

There's really no purpose of going in again and even less of a reason to go into it because Decius pretty much immediately kills Philip and now he's emperor.

Okay.

Philip the Arab, gone.

Okay.

Philip the Arab is like the nickname that like someone would be called in like your Daz WhatsApp group chat.

Yeah, the two names you don't expect to go together.

It's like, oh, this is like Harvey, the Japanese guy.

Now, in order to solidify Decius' rule, the Praetorians shrugged, turned around, and killed Philip's kids.

Which, again, is very funny because they had no claim to the throne.

Yeah, fuck them kids.

While all this is happening in Rome, the Goths smashed their jealous barbarian counterparts.

Many tribes were absorbed.

Others were driven away.

But in the end, this is the process of how the Goths became the uncontested power other than Rome in the Danube region.

The legendary Gothic king that had done all this, Austro Gotha, died off, leaving the crowd to Sniva.

I should point out here, because this is the kind of episode we get to do this, because it kind of leaves an opening.

that the barbarians at Rome saw a little more backward savage,

always had a significantly smoother power transition than than they did.

The gots, like, oh, well, okay, he's king now.

It's fine.

Like, this is how this process works

because we have a process.

But King Sniva saw the writing on the wall.

Rome was on shaky ground.

Decius had not solved any of the countless problems that were tearing the empire apart because there's really no quick fix to be had.

Even if Decius was like suddenly the best emperor Rome would ever have.

But yeah, I think it's like very

congruent with like, I suppose, conversations about like what constituted the fall of rome is that like there's so much conjecture about it because it's not just like one thing it's all of these like internal legitimacy crises power crises power with the military power with the you know the regular citizens and it's just like things compounding and snowballing and like people taking advantage of that weakness etc etc and like this is something that is going to contribute to the overall fall of Rome.

Yeah, as Dr.

Patrick Wyman has often puts more like a death by a thousand cuts situation.

Or one of the easiest ways he's ever explained, which is something that I have taken to use to explain to people the fall of Rome.

It's like Rome existed because if you didn't live in Rome proper and you lived far away, you were part of the Roman Empire because you paid taxes.

And at the end of the day, if something broke, like a bridge down the road broke, someone was going to come and fix it.

But eventually, people stopped coming to fix the bridge.

Yeah.

So over time, your ties to the empire slowly wear off.

And that happens in a chain reaction down the line over the course of generations.

So almost like living in Britain for the past 25 years.

Meanwhile, life for your regular Roman soldier on the frontier had changed somewhat over the years.

You know, it's often talked about the era of constant Roman conquest that are always expanding, always expanding, but we're not there anymore.

Life as a Roman soldier on the frontier is one of permanence.

Yes.

And these are probably not frontier posts you're picturing in your head, like a remote, destitute border fort manned by bored soldiers who busy themselves exploring each other's bodies and carving dicks into the wall.

I mean, the last two part is still true.

Yeah.

I mean, there's literally evidence of that.

But for the Roman soldier of the day posted to the border, that would be where they would stay for the duration of their service, which would be over 20 years.

And after they, you could say, got out of the Roman army, generally they didn't move far away because their whole life is there now.

Yeah.

Their entire lives were built around there.

And as such, like a small town would build up around these border forts filled up with the same people that live around military bases today.

They run businesses that the people inside the camps benefit from and they have a constant supply of people with a paycheck.

Yes.

It's a whole ecosystem.

Yeah, it creates stability in the sense of like there is an economy that exists around these border forts, but also like there is a almost constant influx of people, new people being supplied to the area that also have regular pay coming in.

to then be spent on goods and services.

And the Roman government wants this to happen as well, because each one of these border forts turns into a village, turns into a town, possibly turns into a city at some point.

It's just an expanding footprint of Roman cultural life in these weird, faraway places.

I mean, nowadays, this is mostly used car dealerships outside of U.S.

military bases, but back in the day, I assume it was just someone selling like a horse to a Roman soldier at like a 20% interest rate.

Ye old Roman strip club where a junior enlisted can marry the dancer.

Actually, that did happen.

I mean, there's brothels everywhere.

Soldiers marry local people, whether that be strippers, brothel workers, or other people.

They start families.

Those families start families.

And before you know it, a soldier on the Roman border, that's all they know.

They're generational border people.

And also, as well, it exports Roman culture to the periphery as well.

Because like we said, Rome was not a...

ethnic kind of empire.

It was a cultural thing.

Oh, yeah.

And the further they, this is the best way they had to expand at that point because they're really not expanding at the point of a sword anymore.

Yes.

And that sounds kind of nice if you happen to be a legionnaire, I suppose.

Like, rather than it would be before.

Like, you're not stuck out in the middle of nowhere, constantly going on campaigns.

Campaigns still, of course, happen.

Yes.

But you kind of are just at home most of the time.

However, I should point out another issue here, specifically regarding the border on the Danube.

You see, when Decius marched to Italy to make himself emperor, He took with him the veteran legions that were stationed there.

They had not come back.

That left Roman Roman auxiliaries and newer legionnaires who saw little to no combat up until that point doing their normal border guard duties.

So in King Sniva, and I should point out here, I'm not sure if it's Kniva or Sniva, or maybe it's Snivim.

I'm going with Sniva, led an army over the border and began wrecking shit.

Soldiers manning the border were terrified and absolutely not prepared for this.

Also, to make matters worse, remember, like we pointed out, their whole family, their whole life, is in that town.

So Sniva rocks up to town by like, you don't have to go down like this.

Just move aside and we'll leave you to chill.

We won't even rob your shit.

Yeah.

So most of the border forts like, we have a new king.

And of course, a lot of them just join in because like, oh, well, I'm not going to get my Roman paycheck anymore.

Yeah, like, I mean, like, if you're working on the border and like you are, because like, well, when was the, how many years ago was the last like proper invasion of Rome?

Um, in this area, they've, they've been dealing with steady, let's call them invasions or raids every couple of years.

But normally they're better prepared because remember Decius took off the legionnaires with him.

The Roman border rapidly fell apart as tens of thousands of Goths, barbarian allies, and once again, thousands of Romans simply joined in and began to pour across it.

Soon the Goth forces split in half, some going with Sniva down the Danube, while tens of thousands more marched to Thrace.

and put the city of Philipolis under siege.

Romans in the region sent panicked word back to Rome, begging for reinforcements and wondering why they hadn't already been on their way, because that's where the legions were supposed to be.

Well, that's because Decius, using those same veteran legions, had busied himself brutally persecuting the Christian population of Rome.

Ah.

Well, you know what?

The Romans at the time, Decius in particular, blamed this horrible foreign religion for the decline of Roman values.

Yes, it's the decline of Western civilization for once being caused by the Christians.

That will certainly never happen again.

No.

Decius dropped the mass murder, gathered his men, and went on the march towards the border, joining the Roman army that was already on its way under the command of Gaius Gallus.

Sniva and his army are the furthest into Rome, outside the city of Nicopolis, a place we've actually talked about before, and a different siege.

Sniva decided he liked his odds and went into battle, and he got his teeth kicked in.

Thousands were killed on both sides of the battle, but the Goths were forced from the field.

The Romans throw all of their dead into mass graves and leave thousands of dead Goths to rot outside in the sun, which in general you shouldn't do.

Because this causes a wave of disease to go through Nicopolis, which up until this point had not been the victim of the plague.

Yeah, creating human soup outside your city is not the best idea.

Yeah, yeah.

Suddenly, you know, your water is a bit spicy with the plague juices.

You're getting the boobos.

You're getting the boobos.

At the bottom of your

tea, you're getting boobo tea instead of boba tea.

Your hands just look like the back of a Keyrig pawn.

Sniva and his soldiers broke away and were still in the open.

Rather than making for the Danube and out of Rome, which is what Deceasth,

Sniva took his men further and further into Roman territory, and Decius decided to chase after them, leading them on a foot race through the Shipka Pass, which you might remember we've talked about before.

Oh, no.

This is like the greatest hits of places where thousands of people have died.

If the Roman army is known for one thing, it's all of like the dick drawings.

But if they're known for two things, it's their economy of movement.

And since this is the imperial era, this means they could march very fast and very long with very little rest in between, to the point that like it makes any foot march I've ever complained about seem like absolutely nothing.

For example, they're expected to be able to march 20 Roman miles per day.

And when they were done, they would have to do the manual labor of building their camps and fortifications.

Next day, they would tear that shit all down pack it up march 20 roman miles more

that's about 30 kilometers

and they're supposed to be able to do that every single day for a week sometimes more jesus christ that was just a normal day on the campaign that was like a normal campaign step but they were also forced to be capable of doing double that when called for so these guys could hoof it yeah and this isn't to make the common roman soldier seem like some kind of fucking superman like people tend to do this required a ton of training and, of course, proper nutrition to be able to, you know, refuel for the next day.

But it did break them down over time.

Like a campaign cannot go on like this for very long.

They got injured, they got sick, they got tired and hungry.

And this is, you know, the era we're talking about.

So people would get sicker and sicker as the campaigns went on because as always, it's never a good time to go camping in the woods with a thousand of your homies.

Yes.

Their commanders were, of course, normally riding horses over the same distance rather than suffering along next to them because officers have always been cunts.

But by the time Decius and his army got into the Balkan mountains, he'd started to realize that, oh, wow, those guys look like they're pretty tired.

So what was common for after this burst of speed, they'd have a couple days of rest.

And that's what he wanted to do.

He would rest for a couple of days.

And his idea was that, you know, and it's not a bad idea.

That is, if you're chasing someone that hard and that fast, They have to be busting their ass to keep away from you in a way that they're not capable of sustaining.

And normally a Roman commander would be right.

He believed that Sniva and his men would break down and have to rest as well.

And he was right.

Sniva's army was getting very tired.

And Sniva knew if they kept going, he wouldn't be able to push them any longer.

And most importantly, if your men are that beaten down, remember at the end of the day, you're going to have a battle.

Yeah.

You need them to be well-rested and mostly healthy for that.

I mean, they had just gotten beaten in that battle as well.

So, you know, those clove-cigarette-smelling goths with their chains on their pants and their cannibal corpse listening assholes would have been slowed out i can think of another goth band uh

susie and the banshees typo negative um

bauhouse uh the damned

those ones yeah you can you can hear them because of like the clinking of all the jewelry and the the chains yeah

that that is the goth war playlist yeah but the thing is the goths hadn't kept going instead they'd hidden in the mountains resting as death sinuses his men caught up to him

the goths inched into position, high in the Balkan hills, watching and waiting for the Romans to build their encampment.

The Goths actually waited for hours.

And what has to be the biggest, like, subtle fuck you to me in this entire situation?

They let the Romans tire themselves out digging and building their camp before launching their attack.

Like, man, you couldn't do this before I put up my tent.

Do you know what?

That is incredible tactics.

And it must have been so fun being a Goth soldier, watching like all these Roman soldiers, like schlepping, you know, all this stuff in and setting up their tents and you're just like

I'm gonna fuck them up yeah man they're gonna they're gonna hate me so much because like they they put their weapons down they take their armor off they pile it all up yeah so when the goths come running down the hill they got nothing they had switched out for like digging tools and stuff so you have to run and try to get their shit together but what followed was pretty much a slaughter yeah Decius runs, leaves his soldiers to die, fleeing back towards the town of Nove with only part of his army still with him.

That pretty much just being the the only part that saw him running and decided to try to keep up.

With Decius' army scattered and the road open once more, Sniva could do whatever he wanted to do.

Again, most Romans thought he would make a break for Goth territory to get the fuck out of Rome, but instead, he marched his army towards Philipolis to join the other Gothic army in the siege of the city.

For the defenders of the city, seeing another Goth army show up at their gates made them hopeless.

They were hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

They knew this army would be the end of them.

So the soldiers that made up the garrison turned to their governor, Titus Julius Priscus, and told him, you need to make a deal with the Goths.

Now, Priscus ended up being the brother of the dead Emperor Philip.

So it's not like any loyalty to Decius.

Though he's also known for being a brutal fucking tyrant.

So he doesn't really fall into his personality type to surrender to anybody.

Yeah.

However, his men and advisors told him, if you make a deal with the Goths, Decius is clearly not long for this world.

Yeah.

And I'm sure Sniva would probably help you become emperor.

Yep, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the enemy of the previously killed emperor is also my friend.

Yeah, exactly.

This sounded awesome to Priscus, of course, because it ended with him becoming emperor of Rome.

And he sent an envoy out to meet the Goths.

The envoy was immediately murdered, and the Goths launched a massive attack against the city.

I can't imagine the prospect of being emperor of Rome is that appealing at this point because they're constantly getting killed.

Yeah, I really feel like it's a chronic attitude of like, yeah, well, that won't happen to me.

I'm built different.

Yeah, I got that Imperial grindset.

Emperor of Rome mindset grind set.

Yeah.

I got that fucking, that leaf on my head grindset.

I'm reading, you know, David Goggins.

I'm listening to the high performance podcast.

I'm listening to Stephen Bartlett.

I'm, you know, I'm on, you know, ye old TikTok, which is, I suppose, like...

Just swiping up on a rock.

Yeah, swiping up on a rock, watching like, you know, motivational videos about from guys telling me not to come.

I'm sunning my butthole.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm covered in so much olive oil.

Why did the emperor die?

Oh, he was waking up at 4 a.m.

every day to run 10 kilometers and died of a heart attack.

Yeah, like obviously like jogging as leisurely pursuit really only became popular in like the late 60s, early 70s.

So it's kind of like, if you're the dude who like is out running and you're you're not doing like literally the first marathon, aka the marathon that established the marathon, you're probably, yeah, you're probably like, why is this guy okay?

Is he like convening with the gods or something?

Why is he walking all weird like that?

So the goths burst through the city gates and massacre somewhere between 10 and 50,000 people.

Then when Sniva and his men march into the governor's palace, he looks around.

He's like, oh yeah, we got your message, by the way.

You should name yourself emperor and we'll support you.

At which point I imagine Priscus is like, well, you didn't have to do all of that.

Yeah, why did you have to kill my guy?

You know, he was the fastest runner out of everyone.

He was the craziest walker of them all.

He was like Hal in that episode of Malcolm in the Middle when he gets into speed walking.

Exactly.

So Priscus did just that.

Sure, he would ride to the Imperial throne.

in a short time with his new goth allies.

However, winter was coming.

And back in that era, that meant armies just don't move.

You have winter camps, you winter in cities, whatever it might be.

You don't go on the campaign.

And Philipolis was a beautiful, nice city full of corpses to camp in.

So that's what they did.

So the goths spent the winter in Philipolis, and Priscus disappears.

He vanishes.

Nobody's entirely sure what happened to him, but it's generally agreed that Sniva got sick of him and just killed him at some point over the winter.

Like, I don't want to do regime change anymore.

This is fucking lame.

I'm doing the goth think tank to

read a policy piece.

I'm doing a regime change in Rome.

The goth think tank is like, you know, we need to look at the futures on shares on like eyeliner.

We're investing in like Rimmel.

We're investing in NYX NYC, you know.

I feel like Jinko jeans are going to make a comeback.

Yeah, Jinko jeans have made a comeback.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah.

They've been back for like the past couple of years.

It's like

anytime I go to a gig, it's like, oh, anyone under like the age of 25 is wearing like massive jeans.

Not necessarily Jinkos, but Jinko adjacent.

Jinko style.

Yeah.

Busting it down Jinko style.

Over the winter, Decius, Gallus, and Decius' son, Etruscus, all wintered together a short ways away in a place called Osius.

Decius spent the time rebuilding his army and training a ton of new recruits under kind of if he got all the other ones killed.

He still had a small corps of veteran soldiers, many with years and years of service, some over the required 26 years to retire.

And he believed that, you know, these guys would be the ones keeping this new army together that was mostly made up of children, which was normal.

16 and 17 year olds were normally

the average age for induction to the Roman army.

And I cannot imagine being allowed to join the army when you're 17, am I right?

Yeah, yeah.

That seems like a bad policy to have.

Yeah, it definitely

affects how your brain develops and, you know, the fusing of your prefrontal cortex.

I can't believe all these guys are eventually going to get out of the Roman army and start a podcast.

Roman podcasting.

It should be pointed out that Gallus' army was entirely untouched at this point because so far he had refused to march into battle.

Roman podcasting would be like, oh, you're cooking your food in Garum?

You're using Garum?

Don't you know that increases your estrogen?

Everybody knows you have to use seed oils.

Yes.

It should come as no surprise that Decius and Gallus fucking hated each other.

Though there's really nothing Decius could do, even though he was emperor.

He was an emperor who came to power on the back of the army, and then he just led half of his men to die in the mountains.

So he and his son, they still had something of an army between them, but it was smaller than Gallus's.

So Gallus was allowed to pretty much do whatever he wanted due to Decius not having the power that he originally had to seize the throne.

And it turned out that Gallus wanted to do nothing.

He was really, really hoping, it seems, that Decius would go get himself killed and he would be able to become emperor.

Spoiler alert, that is kind of what happens.

But spring, 251.

Sniva inside the city walls had a rough go of it.

It turns out this is not a great place to winter.

His army had spent the last several months slowly dying of disease, you know, because this was a city they pretty much put to the torch and the sword.

And then the city stores that he was pretty much depending to live on end up having been one of the things caught up in the flames.

And the surrounding Roman countryside was not enough to feed his army.

So people were slowly dying from one thing or another.

And by the time spring comes around, they march out of the city mostly looking like skin and bones.

Or your average goth.

Well, you know,

there is like some jacked goths.

Yeah, jacked goths.

Yeah.

Inventing a new guy.

Yeah.

That's literally just Peter Steele from Typo Negative.

I mean, I feel like Danzig falls into that too.

Yeah, true.

I mean, his music

may have not been goth, but that man was goth.

This is a song about the Romans and also werewolves and how I love my mother.

I assume most of them come shambling out of Philipolis looking mostly like Marilyn Manson does these days.

No, Marlon Manson's fat now, so.

Really?

Yeah, Marlon Manson's been like big-boned for a while.

Also, fuck Marlon Manson.

Oh, yeah, I mean, for sure.

I mean, the reason why I was comparing that to is because they have similar pastimes, and by that I mean horrible crimes.

Yes, yes.

So at this point, and remember, he's in Roman territory.

He's not getting reinforcements.

When spring comes, Sniva is the weaker of the two sides.

And he decides it's time to get the fuck out of Rome and get home.

However, they find that Decius and his son had camped their army directly in their way.

Sniva decided the last thing he needed right now was try to lead his diseased and starving men into battle against a well-rested enemy, and sent out an envoy.

He offered to hand over all the loot they took from the city, which included several Roman nobles they planned on, you know, getting some payouts for in exchange for free passage.

Decius refuses.

saying that he would only accept unconditional surrender, which Sniva, of course, knows is like, okay, you mean at best I'm going to be enslaved for the rest of my life.

Yes.

So Sniva turned his army around and went back on the march, heading into the swamps of De Brugia, with Decius once again rushing to keep up with him, trying to go in for the kill.

Now, longtime listeners of the show, history buffs, you might be aware of a little thing that we've talked about before called the Battle of the Tudiberg Forests, where a Roman army was completely convinced they were going to win and gave chase to a large, well-prepared ambush in the woods in a place that would constrict the traditional Roman military movements of the manipular legion, an environment that was much better known by the ambusher.

Well, yeah,

it happens again.

Yep.

The Romans marched into the swamps and the Goths let them.

When they got all their way knee-deep into the swamp, the Goths opened fire with a storm of arrows.

Roman soldiers tried to hide behind their shields as they normally would, but this didn't work for a few reasons.

For starters, they were completely surrounded, so you could hide behind your shield, you just get hit in the back of the head with an arrow or whatever.

And the space we have to work with, they don't don't have the room to form up a legion.

So they're all just kind of broken up into smaller pieces.

They're unsure as what to do, as everyone around them gets killed.

Within probably a few minutes or maybe an hour, any cohesion of the Roman force was mostly destroyed.

And now, instead of one army to deal with, Sniva had small pockets of Romans pinned down.

Then, as Decius stomped through the swamps, trying to rally his men, his son Etruscus got dropped by an arrow straight to the throat.

Oh,

that is a bad way to go.

Just gurgling in the mud with your homies.

Yeah, sounding like Mistus Love the Mute.

Yep.

Then, as Decius stood watching his son die in the swamp, the Goths charged the Roman lines.

Deceased, to his credit, ran back and forth trying to rally his men, leaving his wounded son behind to get finished off through.

By eyewitness accounts, a whole lot of spears to the face.

Yeah, a whole lot of spears to the face is

not ideal.

Yeah, my doctor told me not to get spears there.

Decius is screaming, rallying his men into a shield wall of some kind, kicking and punching his officers and other nobles to get the fuck up and get them in back into line, because it was very clear if they didn't, they would all die there.

He tried to order his cavalry to protect his flanks because, remember, Decius is surrounded.

But the swampy ground swallowed the horses' hooves, slowed them down, and in some cases snapped their legs in half, pitching the riders into the swamp or slowing them down so much that the riders simply got pulled off by gothic infantry and drowned.

Fucking hell.

But the Romans were holding.

This is normally where I would point out the Romans get overwhelmed, but they're not.

They're holding them off.

They're fighting the Goths back and sniffa sending more and more men in and even their own cavalry who they had just watched the same thing happen to the Romans and just said, fuck it, go in.

And the same thing happens to their cavalry.

But one element was changing in favor of the Romans.

So many men were dying, Goths, Romans, it didn't matter, that the swampy ground was being covered with corpses, which were more solid to stand on.

Corpse infrastructure yet again.

And the Romans had the Goths on the back foot, and the Goths looked like they're about to break and run away.

And Desius orders his men to advance to once again chase them.

As they advanced, the swamp got nastier and nastier.

What was a thin sheen of water quickly turned into like knee-deep mud.

And they also began to be assaulted by swarms of mosquitoes yes nature's alloy mosquitoes you're never sure which side the mosquitoes are going to be on but it's normally the side that wins yeah mosquitoes very mercenary the romans who had been fighting for hours already are now being slowed down by mud by their own exhaustion by the weight of their armor and they're being slowed down enough that sniva used this small gift of time to rally his forces.

He called in the very last of his reserves and once again set an ambush for the Romans as they stomped through all of this bullshit.

The tired, thirsty, and wounded Romans were hit by a storm of javelins.

Romans went down by the dozens, by the hundreds, some so tired by hours of fighting that they couldn't even get their shields up in front of them in time before they were impaled.

Wounded men went down face first, drowning in the swamp.

The soldiers that could broke into a charge, desperate to try to finish the Goths off and have this be over with.

But the Goth javelin men simply broke contact and fled deeper into the swamp, leading the Romans further and further in.

Then another group of Goths would pop up, launch more javelins, shoot more arrows, sometimes just slings with rocks in them, whittling down the Romans bit by bit.

And finally, when the Romans broke down entirely, Sniva ordered the final assault.

And we don't know how long the Romans lasted here, but it wasn't long.

In the midst of the killing was Decius, who had become the first Roman emperor to die in combat.

But certainly not the last.

Nope, certainly not the last.

When the news got out of Decius' death, Gallus, who had still just been sitting around and chilling this whole time, was declared emperor by his men.

Sniva, emboldened by victory and reinforced by other barbarians and Rome deserters, no longer wanted to go home and simply continued wrecking shit throughout the region, forcing the newly proclaimed Emperor Gallus to cut him a deal, which boiled down to, look, you can just keep all the shit that you stole, and we'll give you a yearly payment.

And will you please leave us alone?

Yeah.

This caused taxes to be raised.

It was wildly unpopular in Rome.

The economy tanks even harder.

Soldiers and nobles rebel and Gallus would be murdered by his own men within two years of taking the throne.

In case you're wondering, King Sniva remained king of the Goths for several decades longer and died peacefully in his sleep.

Hell yeah.

The end.

Once again, never go

into the woods with tens of thousands of your homies.

It generally doesn't work out in your favor, I will say.

And if you're getting like flicked in the nose by a dude who then runs off into the woods or the swamp or the mountains or the desert or any other environment we've ever talked about, it's never a good policy to be like, hmm, I should probably chase him.

So we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask us a question, you can support us on Patreon.

You can ask us on Patreon or...

In our DMs on Discord, there's also a channel on Discord where you can drop your question and we will answer it on the show.

And today's question is: What is your go-to karaoke song?

Oh, so I love karaoke.

I enjoy doing a duet of Islands in the stream.

Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Celine Dion's, it's all coming back to me now, but I have to be really drunk to do that.

I love doing Roy Orbison, Pulp's Common People.

Yeah, like karaoke is honestly what, I think, for me, like one of the funnest things to do.

I'm not not a big karaoke guy, I must admit.

I don't think I have a go-to karaoke song.

You're not very comfortable with being perceived in general.

That is true.

Yeah, it's actually kind of a surprise that I do the live shows.

When we started doing live shows, we're like Joe broached the question of like, can I just perform behind a veil?

Yeah, do it like was at a Maynard James.

Jim Keenan

will just stand in the back with a wig on.

I feel like I've gotten more comfortable on stage, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe I look comfortable.

Inside, I am not.

Yeah, I remember the before the first one, I think, is the most nervous I've ever seen you.

I believe I consumed an entire four-pack of Red Bull before going on stage.

Yeah, you did.

And you were surviving on like nothing but like sugar-free Red Bull and like Lost Mary Vapes.

That is

and Sainsbury sandwiches.

Yep.

I mean, just like this trip to London, I have been living on mostly Tesco sandwiches.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like to keep the cost low.

Yeah.

But like karaoke, I think there's like a couple of things that like I think people, it pet peeves, obviously because I'm an annoying person.

It's like people who pick songs that are like too long.

I know I did just name a song that is like seven and a half minutes long.

To me, the perfect karaoke song is three minutes tops.

It's like Eurovision rules.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like sweet and short.

And also like if you're going to do like a real deep cut song, like

maybe do it a little earlier on so like it doesn't ruin the vibes later on, you know.

And also, think of like, you're performing for the crowd, you know, it's not just about, oh, I enjoy doing this song.

It's like, what can song can you enjoy with your friends?

Go up on stage and sing the Johnny Cash version of Hurt.

I've seen someone do that.

I have as well.

And it really brings the vibe down.

Yeah.

Also, if you are in the Philippines, do not sing my way.

I say you should go for it.

See what happens.

Let's make some friends.

You'll end up like someone trying to visit North Sentinel Island.

I I will say I don't have a go-to karaoke song, but I do have a vivid memory of a guy who had not only a go-to karaoke song, but a go-to karaoke set.

Oh, no.

And it was in Yerevan, Armenia.

There's a little place called the venue that did karaoke.

I think it was like every Wednesday.

And there was a Russian guy who did not speak English that would go on stage and sing like the top five Metallica songs.

But they call me Mr.

Bombastik.

Really fantastic.

He would sing sing like those five Metallica songs that everybody has heard of.

Okay.

And Metallica songs are all long, especially from the era.

It was like he'd sing like half the black album.

The doctor's imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror.

And he did not speak English.

So it was obvious he knew the song by heart, but he did not understand what he was singing.

You know the type of thing I'm saying.

It was really funny at first.

But then after you go, because I would go with my friends, I'd get really drunk.

I'd probably end up seeing Karaki once or twice, but like he would be there every week and sing the same songs.

And he would get up there for every single one of his songs.

And it was really funny because everybody took that as universal, like there's a light above the stage that smoke break.

Yeah, yeah.

And the whole bar would leave.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't want to be that guy.

Don't sing Queen.

Not because you can't do it.

I don't care if anybody sucks at karaoke.

They're all too long.

Yeah.

I did karaoke for my birthday in April.

And you've never seen as many fat guys fighting over who's going to sing Creed, me included.

And it was just like a chorus of large men all singing, Can You Take Mine?

Sometimes the arms should not be wide open.

Yeah.

I do have my favorite kind of karaoke person, though.

And that is the person who's up there and they swear to God they're acting like they're trying to get a record deal.

Yeah,

it's giving a bit too much.

Yeah.

Like you took singing lessons to get better at karaoke and you're up there with like one ear plugged.

It's like, like, please stop.

Yeah, like I, you know, I think there's different types of karaoke.

If you're doing it like in a private rented room, kind of go ham and like do whatever you want with your friends.

But like if it's in an open bar, if like if you're not good at singing, you can do it convincingly by being a good like show person.

Yeah, nobody cares that you suck at karaoke.

Everybody sucks at karaoke.

There's no song that's hard to sing at karaoke because everybody sucks.

That's the joy in it.

Yeah.

I remember years ago I was in New York and it was in this like bar in I think it was Astoria and like there was just like it was my first time like ever experiencing like the American way of doing karaoke like in a bar and the bar was packed full of people.

Do you normally do it in like a private setting?

Sometimes yeah.

Oh yeah.

Ours is almost always just like an open bar.

Yeah.

Everybody suffers through your performance.

But

this guy just he did a Hottin here by Nelly or

it was so good and the whole bar was jumping.

It was so much fun.

It's really fun going to a place that doesn't speak English for karaoke because they'll sing songs like hip-hop music that has like the N-word still in it.

And they just plow right through that with full confidence of like, it's like, oh boy.

Maybe don't do that.

Yeah, never do that.

Don't do that.

But it's funny because it's like A, it means absolutely nothing to them in context and they don't realize what it is.

Just like, oh, fuck.

All right.

But that is an episode of this podcast, Tom.

You host other podcasts.

Plug those other podcasts.

Beneath Skin, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing.

You can also buy my photography or art books from beneath skin shop.com.

And also, as well, we have a live show coming up in Glasgow on the 4th of October in the Flying Duck.

Tickets should be available now, if not soon.

Um, check the link.

Tickets will definitely be available.

The link will be in the show notes.

Sick.

And this is the only show that I host, but you probably already know that.

Uh, you already listened to it, so thank you for that.

Consider leaving us a review and wherever you listen to podcasts, but also supporting us on Patreon.

$5 a month gets you absolutely everything from years and years of bonus content, e-books, audiobooks, Discord access, every regular episode a week early.

It gets you one boobo mailed to you in a Ziploc bag.

Yeah,

a boobo from one of the hosts, but you will not know which.

Yeah.

And until next time,

I don't know.

I already talked about boobos.

I feel way too much.

Get stabbed in the face by a spear.

Yeah, gets stabbed in the throat by a spear and die in a marsh.