Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome

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Speaker 1 It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.
And today, well, we're keeping on the Roman Empire and the real stories of characters that feature in the new epic movie Gladiator 2.

Speaker 1 Now in the last episode, I interviewed Dr. Alex Imri from Edinburgh University about the real Roman emperors Caracalla and Geta that have a star role in the new Gladiator film.

Speaker 1 That was a fantastic chat exploring the terrible relationship that these two brothers had and how it ultimately ended with Geta's brutal murder in his mother's arms at the hands of Caracalla.

Speaker 1 But alongside Caracalla and Geta, there is another central figure in the new gladiator movie who is based on a Roman emperor, a North African-born knight who toppled Caracalla and took the throne for himself.

Speaker 1 That man's name was Macrinus, played by Denzil Washington in the new movie.

Speaker 1 And in this episode we're exploring the real Macrinus' story, who he was, his background, his rise to power, his rule, and ultimately, his demise.

Speaker 1 Now for this episode, it only felt right to bring back Dr.

Speaker 1 Alex Imri to continue the story from where we left off in the last episode, covering the reign and fall of Caracalla and then the rise of Macrinus.

Speaker 1 However, we know how much you love it when we spice things up a bit and to have not one but two guests.

Speaker 1 So joining Alex, we also have another good friend of the podcast, Matilda Brown, a final year PhD candidate at Edinburgh University whose main interest is what happens after Macrinus' reign and the extraordinary women, these severan empresses, who rise to the fore and also play a big role in the downfall of Macrinus.

Speaker 1 These two, Alex and Matilda, they have worked together for many years at Edinburgh. They have great rapport, they're brilliant speakers and we all know each other very well.

Speaker 1 So no surprise, this was a really fun episode to record and I'm excited to now share it with you. Sit back and relax as we wrap up our Gladiator 2 episodes with the story of the real Macrinus.

Speaker 1 Alex, Matilda, what a pleasure. Who thought that the stars would align and that this could happen? It is great to have you both on the podcast.

Speaker 15 Thank you you for having us. Fantastic to be here and to share a space with Matilda, who probably dating myself, I knew first when she was one of my students.

Speaker 15 And now she has become an extraordinary scholar of the third century.

Speaker 14 Well, it's wonderful to be back, Tristan. Thank you so much for having us both.
And of course, I know you from my uni undergrad days. This really all is coming full circle.

Speaker 14 I've had the pleasure of having Alex as a colleague now for years, in addition to being taught what I know on the third century by him. So, you know, I'd like to push that compliment back.

Speaker 14 Any excellence I have is purely due to him.

Speaker 1 Look at us. Look at you guys.

Speaker 1 Who'd have thought it, not me, but here we are. And what a great episode we have in store today.

Speaker 1 And I also want to highlight something straight away, because I can see this, but you listening to this episode, you can't.

Speaker 1 But Alex and Matilda, they're both dialing in from Edinburgh, but they're in the same room together.

Speaker 1 So during the course of this fun chat, you guys are always going to be seeing each other's reactions to questions and answers. So no pressure on you both because you've got another added level there.

Speaker 14 Yeah, hopefully, we'll manage to stay cool. We've got this.

Speaker 15 I'll just look for Matilda frowning at me over my answers and hope to goodness that I keep myself right.

Speaker 1 What better test than an ancient podcast together. Now, our topic today is this figure of Macrinus.

Speaker 1 And of course, with the release of Gladiator 2, but I mean, I feel straight away for both of you guys, of all the Roman emperors, seeing Macrinus in a Hollywood epic, this was not on my bingo card.

Speaker 1 He certainly feels like one of the less, well, known Roman emperors, particularly outside of academia.

Speaker 14 Certainly. I mean, I think that Macrinus is sort of the meeting point of my and Alex's work.

Speaker 14 Alex is really a Caracullin expert, and I have, you know, done my work really beginning with the later severin empresses. And so we kind of meet in this middle ground.

Speaker 14 And for me, at least, this was sort of the last person I would expect to see dramatized on the silver screen.

Speaker 15 But, you know, there's so much to do with him because we don't really know that much about him, except for what we'll tell you today so yeah that's a really good point that he is in some ways a bit of a blank slate that's just ripe for Hollywood to put in something where the evidence drops off for us I mean yeah like you Tristan and Matilda when I looked at Macrinus or when I read about Macrinus I would not immediately assume that he was going to be the subject of a Hollywood epic certainly not cast by somebody as Titanic as Denzel Washington.

Speaker 15 I should get right off the bat.

Speaker 15 I am already starstruck and yet struggling to kind of square away what I read about Macrinus, short-lived that he is, with this major Hollywood star who's going to make him into this character, I think, that people will come away.

Speaker 15 Well, maybe.

Speaker 15 I think just from the trailer, I already am intrigued and kind of already predisposed to admire what he's doing with this character. So it will be interesting.

Speaker 1 And as you guys have highlighted there, so Alex, you focus more on Caracalla and that period before Macrinus and Matilda that period after.

Speaker 1 Alex, we have had you on the podcast very recently because the episode before, we've been talking all about the story of Caracalla and Geta.

Speaker 1 And we finished that episode with Caracalla's brutal murdering of Geta and the removal of Geta's image across the empire. So I feel we've got a few years to do before we reach Macrinus.

Speaker 1 So shall we summarise over the next few minutes or so, what are the main achievements of those years of Caracalla when he's ruling alone? Get us in the mood.

Speaker 15 Okay, so, well, shall we start with Geta laying on the floor in the Imperial Palace, absolutely brutalized by his older brother or by a bunch of centurions that he ordered.

Speaker 15 After that, Caracalla runs to the guard and the army and tries to secure his regime with those constituencies very quickly, which he does relatively successfully.

Speaker 15 Now, interestingly, the historia Augusta gives us a little bit of a hint that there might have been some discord for Caracalla, inasmuch as they have the Second Legion Parthica that's based at Albanum, close the doors on him because they swore allegiance to both brothers.

Speaker 15 And what is this he's coming to them with about...

Speaker 1 Sorry, where Albanum, did you say?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 1 Where's that?

Speaker 15 About 20 miles outside Rome. Okay.
Which is interesting in as much as it's called the Second Legion Parthica.

Speaker 15 You would think it was stationed in the east, but for all intents and purposes, and hugely oversimplifying, it becomes something of a kind of mobile reserve, a mobile field army that the emperors can take with them.

Speaker 15 Usually on campaign in the east, it has to be said. So Caracalla secures the support of the army.
He has less success maybe securing the support of the Senate.

Speaker 15 He certainly gives a couple of speeches where he decries Geta as this villain, this enemy of the state, and shores up his own regime.

Speaker 15 But it's quite clear that he is never going to enjoy life in the capital. And so about six months, no more than eight months maybe after the murder of Geta, he's already gone.

Speaker 15 He's already outside Rome and he is on a journey that will be predominantly military. He will do multiple campaigns and he will never return home from.

Speaker 15 Now, before we get on to that, I should say that there's one other point that he does while he's in Rome, which is, you know, I'm laboring because it's one of my sort of major passions when I study it.

Speaker 15 Before he leaves Rome, he seems to enact an edict that we now know as the Constitutio Antoniniana, or the Antonine Constitution.

Speaker 15 In one move, in one edict, he gives the rights of Roman citizenship to nearly every free person living within the Roman realm.

Speaker 15 It's a constitutional watershed. And certainly, historically, scholars thought that citizenship was this kind of mechanical process.

Speaker 15 You know, you're defeated by Rome and then you're gradually brought into the body politic.

Speaker 15 It doesn't seem to be the case. Modern studies have suggested that only around

Speaker 15 33% of the empire's total population were enfranchised in 212 prior to the edict.

Speaker 15 So this is a remarkable move and it's something that is quite avant-garde, it seems, for an emperor who's usually known as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

Speaker 15 He seems to want to secure this huge loyalty base after the murder of Geta, and this is one of the ways he does it, just by making everybody citizens in one move. It's incredible.

Speaker 1 That is one of the big events of Roman history, isn't it? If you could do like the big, big hitters, just I don't want to understate just how significant a moment this is.

Speaker 15 Yep, it is a watershed moment for how citizenship is perceived, certainly. There have been a lot of arguments about what is the actual application of it.

Speaker 15 It could be just a kind of legal expedient to make everything a bit smoother.

Speaker 15 It could be a political expedient, as I've argued, to kind of make everybody accept the new narrative that Caracal is laying down, that Geta was this villain.

Speaker 15 But whatever the rationale for it, it's a remarkable move, which is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Register, I think it is.

Speaker 15 So it has a very, very esteemed now afterlife, but it's introduced by this kind of murderous villain who spends the next five years on campaign.

Speaker 15 on the northern frontier and then eventually the eastern frontier where he wages war on parthia and if you're looking for the kind of the spark notes, the short version, he raises an army basically wherever he goes through Germany, through Thrace, through Greece, into Asia Minor.

Speaker 15 The only other really important point that I would raise for listeners, if we're doing a very short version of Caracalla's reign here, is that he visits Alexandria, the city of Alexandria in Egypt.

Speaker 15 Now, Caracalla, you may know, is a big Alexander the Great fanboy.

Speaker 1 Oh, he loves him, doesn't he? Absolutely loves him.

Speaker 15 Cannot get enough of Alexander. Claims Claims that he's Alexander reborn, according to the senators, according to Dio, although I question that to some extent.
Anyway, he arrives in Alexandria.

Speaker 15 This is supposed to be the pinnacle of his imperial tour. I mean, he's going to the city of his idol, he's visiting the tomb of Alexander, and he's offering sacrifices to the gods Serapis as well.

Speaker 15 Now, he stays there for a few months. He arrives in the winter of 215, and he leaves in the early months of AD 216.
The visit has gone incredibly sour at that point, though.

Speaker 15 There are sources, Dio Herodian, the Historia Augusta, they all agree that for some reason or another there's a breakout of civil disobedience, rioting in the city, and Caracalla puts it down violently.

Speaker 15 And the sources, while they may exaggerate slightly, they agree that he probably killed around a quarter of the city's population before leaving. I mean, it's a remarkable contrast.

Speaker 15 That emperor giving everybody citizenship. and then laying waste to one of the foremost cities of the empire before he leaves.

Speaker 15 It's a remarkable story of kind of extremities, I would say, is Caracalla's reign. And then his final months are spent on campaign against Parthia.

Speaker 1 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not release too much there.
Okay, I gotta pause you

Speaker 1 too many spoilers there.

Speaker 1 Matilda, are there some really interesting things that take place in Caracalla's reign where there's like the people surrounding him that really help set the scene of this, what seems to be kind of this new center of the Roman Empire whilst Caracalla is traveling, which is the eastern part of his empire?

Speaker 14 Well, sure.

Speaker 14 I think that one of the really critical things that we see happen in this period during caracullus sole reign is his mom steps in julia domna who has been empress of the roman empire for the past however many years that severus reigned was there at the moment of assassination when the elder son kills the younger and after Gaeta's death, or even before Gaeta's death, she's granted all of these extravagant titles.

Speaker 14 She's granted more honorary titles than any empress had previously been given. She's named mother of the army camp, of the senate, of the fatherland.
She's named Pia Felix.

Speaker 14 These are titles that have only, those last two had only previously been given to emperors before.

Speaker 14 So we're seeing these honors lavished upon her, and we don't really know what those mean.

Speaker 14 There's some debate in the scholarship, but we do get a sense that she's kind of stepping into almost an admin role for Caraculla. She's answering imperial letters.

Speaker 14 She's traveling across the empire with him and eventually ends up in Antioch as this eastern imperial center. She's answering letters.
She's receiving petitions.

Speaker 14 She is holding public receptions for all of the most prominent men. The actual text of the Dio passage where this comes from, the Greek, it says these are imperial receptions.

Speaker 14 These are official public events. And she's sorting through all of the mail.
She's kind of the main admin on board. She's included in letters sent to the Senate.

Speaker 14 This looks like a sort of official position.

Speaker 14 And this is a more, I would say, official recognition from the sources of a role held by an empress like this than we have seen before. So Caraculla is making this movement eastward.

Speaker 14 He's a military emperor. We see him doing all of these sort of incredible and horrible things.

Speaker 14 And we know that there's got to be sort of a gaggle of administrators around him that are helping him rule this empire as he is leading the army.

Speaker 14 And his mom is one of them, which is incredible and becomes important to the Macrinus story.

Speaker 1 I mean, it absolutely does, but something which blows my mind straight away is, isn't Julia Domino the one who, at least in one colorful story, her younger son, Geta is murdered in her arms.

Speaker 1 So, and now she's actively supporting her other son who killed her other son. I mean,

Speaker 1 it is absolutely brutal stuff where, you know, sometimes you have things like Game of Thrones where it's fictional stuff, but the actual history of certain events is more interesting than fictional stories.

Speaker 1 And this feels one of them. It is absolutely mad.

Speaker 14 It really is. And it's brutal to think about.
And our sources talk about it a lot. How does she cope with this?

Speaker 14 We are told that she's pushed out of the public eye.

Speaker 14 And I've never really known how I feel about that description of her sort of disappearance from the public face of the imperial family following Gaida's death.

Speaker 14 I don't know if it's that Caraculla says, mom, you got to get the hell out of Dodge because I don't want you here and I need to do this myself.

Speaker 14 I'm a big boy now, or if it's really that she needs time to grieve. And we get a little bit of both from the source tradition.

Speaker 14 But in the end, she kind of steps up and does what she has to, I suppose, for her last remaining son.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, family dynamics are complicated in the Roman imperial period. I mean, I suppose you could make the argument for any monarchical or autocratic system.

Speaker 15 what goes on within the family dynamic is an absolute mystery. And that, for me as well, is one of those big mysteries.

Speaker 15 If Daio is correct that she was in the room at the point of Geta's murder, then it is, to our modern sensibility, absolutely unthinkable that she could then go on and be the faithful servant and the administrative figurehead of this regime for another four and a half, five years.

Speaker 15 It is utterly, utterly remarkable. I mean, Daiwo paints her in a very particular way, as I'm sure Matilda will talk about later.
He depicts her as being kind of power-hungry in her own right.

Speaker 15 So there's a little bit of a complicating factor in how our ancient literature talk about Julia Domina, inasmuch as she's a powerful imperial woman and she can't really shake that baggage from some of these rather conservative men.

Speaker 15 But it is, to this day, one of these big mysteries. How on earth did they work that out? It's a very difficult dinner table situation thereafter.

Speaker 1 Well, let's move on to the figure of Macrinus and how he fits into this dysfunctional family and this time of Caracalla in the yeast. Alex, first of all, who was Macrinus?

Speaker 15 That is the million-dollar question, isn't it?

Speaker 15 Well, I mean, I think our sources give us a very particular version of who this individual is.

Speaker 15 But often he is a foil either to the violent extremity of Caracalla or he is just the pre-runner to the later Severan era.

Speaker 15 I mean, often when you read even textbooks about this era, you'll have the the Severan era and Macrinus will barely get a mention, such as the kind of limited amount that we know of him.

Speaker 15 In terms of his background, we know that he was born in the Roman province of Mauritania, so on the North African coast, and he was...

Speaker 15 This is something that will become important for his story later. He was not from a senatorial family.
He was not from a highly aristocratic family. He was a member of the equestrian order.

Speaker 15 So that second property class of Rome. And I don't want listeners to think that this is a kind of middle class, for want of a better description.
These people are still often obscenely wealthy.

Speaker 15 It's just that they don't have the family bloodlines of the senatorial order.

Speaker 1 The equivalent of some said that they're like the knights or something, is that right?

Speaker 15 Absolutely. I mean, the name, the Ordo Equestre, the Equites, it really all has that kind of equestrian, knightly vibe to it.

Speaker 15 And historically, it was, you know, these people could afford horses to engage in warfare with.

Speaker 15 But certainly it's by by Macrinus's time it is just a large social class within Roman society and so this is the kind of context into which he's born our Dio and Herodian are fairly in much in agreement that he is trained as a lawyer and he I think it's Dio tells us that he's maybe not the most inventive legal mind out there but he is quite diligent in his following of the law and this seems to bring him into the orbit of the Praetorian prefect in the early third century, Plotianus, infamous for his attempted coup later on against the Severans.

Speaker 1 We talked about him in the last episode, didn't we?

Speaker 15 Yes. We did, yep.
So sort of the internal problems that the Severan household faces in the third century, a lot of it comes down to this Plotianus figure.

Speaker 15 And according to Dio, Macrinus is quite lucky, actually, not to be tarred by association and kind of gotten rid of after the Plotianus affair.

Speaker 15 But it seems that for a while he kind of holds junior magistracies thereafter.

Speaker 15 I think the one office that Dio tells us Septimius Severis allows him after is kind of like a traffic superintendent on the Via Flaminia.

Speaker 15 So it's a little bit of a kind of step down from working in the Praetorian Prefect's office.

Speaker 1 Waving flags, that red and green flags, which wagons can go kind of thing on the Glass.

Speaker 15 Well, that's how I like to imagine it. I'm sure it was probably much more administrative, but I do like to imagine him as a kind of glorified traffic cop

Speaker 15 for a few years in the wilderness. But he eventually, as Severus's reign goes into Caracalla's, his career seems to steadily increase again.

Speaker 15 He occupies a number of procuratorial posts and ends up as Praetorian Prefect himself.

Speaker 14 The one thing that I guess I would add is just my quick review of the sources this morning.

Speaker 14 Macrinus is really pushed as the legal nerd Praetorian Prefect, along with his co-prefect, who is sort of the military commander.

Speaker 14 So even under Caracalla, he's viewed as this kind of pencil pusher, dorky lawyer, which stands very much in stark contrast from the Macrinus figure that I've seen in these gladiator trailers.

Speaker 14 And I just can't get enough of it. It's been cracking me up.
But yeah, I mean, that legal history, that's really what we know of him. And

Speaker 14 I think the thing that has been interesting to me thinking about sort of the interaction with women is whether this bureaucratic role that he's always had puts him in any contact with the imperial women earlier in the reign.

Speaker 14 And there's no way that we can tell, but it would make sense if they sort of ended up working on some of the same projects, maybe. They certainly would have known one another, but.

Speaker 1 They're helping with the bureaucracy and all of that.

Speaker 11 That's so funny, like the legal nerd of the two.

Speaker 15 And of course, you've highlighted theirs.

Speaker 1 You know, there are two Praetorian Prefects, aren't they? Which is a nice, interesting other factor to highlight.

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Speaker 1 Well, let's get on to the main kind of, well, the first big main event in Macrinus' story, his rise to power.

Speaker 1 So, what is the situation in the East in early 217 that ultimately results in the fall of Caracalla and the rise of this pencil-pushing Praetorian prefect, Macrinus?

Speaker 15 So, in early 217, Caracalla is in the midst of a military campaign against Parthia, against the Parthian Empire. This is something that he had started in 216.

Speaker 1 That's Iraq area today, isn't it?

Speaker 15 Yes, that's correct. And under the Parthian royal household, we've not quite got to the stage in history where this becomes the much more aggressive Sassanid Persian regime.

Speaker 15 We're still in the final years of the Arsacid Parthian royal household. Now, the campaign that Caracalla wages has been rather inconclusive, to everybody's frustration.

Speaker 15 The first campaigning season, 216 to 17, appears not to have produced a single meaningful clash between Roman and Parthian forces.

Speaker 15 I think it's Herodian, gives us this rather convoluted idea of Caracalla trying to outsmart the Parthians at a wedding reception, which is, I think, a lot of historical bunk. But

Speaker 15 in reality, it's been a frustrating year of campaigning. Caracalla wages another campaigning season immediately because that's basically his style.
That's him. He is a soldier emperor at that point.

Speaker 15 And it's quite clear, I think, reading between the lines of our sources, particularly Cassius Dio,

Speaker 15 that this is not going well. The soldiers themselves are starting to get a little bit frustrated, I think, with the lack of any kind of decisive outcome.

Speaker 15 And importantly for Caracalla, we've seen a real diminishment in his imperial concilium.

Speaker 15 That is to say, the group of senators or people that would usually surround an emperor and offer day-to-day advice.

Speaker 15 The account that Dio offers us is very fragmentary, but it suggests that basically there's only one senator left in that circle at all, this consular guy called Aurelianus.

Speaker 15 So Caracalla is in the field, mired down in a campaign, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Speaker 15 Macrinus is there as Praetorian Prefect, but it seems that there is a much smaller circle around Caracalla at this point as well, as everybody seems to be getting increasingly fed up with him as an emperor, as much as a commander.

Speaker 1 His mum's not there at the moment, are they? So his family members aren't there. He's in the midst of the campaign.
The campaign's not going well. Soldiers getting more angry.

Speaker 1 I feel like we've seen this type of scenario again and again in history. I'm guessing then the soldiers just decide to take matters into their own hands.
And Macrinus takes advantage.

Speaker 14 I would say about that much. My favorite, I can't remember which source it's in specifically, but we get this very detailed narrative of Terraculla's ultimate demise.

Speaker 14 There's a lot that kind of begins to boil under the surface. We get in Dio, we get a letter from Rome is sent to Julia Domna

Speaker 14 reporting a prophecy that Macrinus and his son, Diadumenianus, will take the purple. And another letter simultaneously sent by

Speaker 14 by Julianus from Rome to Macrinus. So we have these two letters speeding across the empire.

Speaker 14 And Domna, who is sorting the mail, you know, like a good mother administrator in Antioch, opens this letter and goes, my God, my son is going to get assassinated. And she is too late.

Speaker 14 Caracalla meets his fate. He's traveling and I believe this is in the dio.
Alex will have to correct me here.

Speaker 14 He stops and says, I need to relieve myself and then gets stabbed in the back, which is a hell of a way to go.

Speaker 15 Yeah, yeah. Caracalla has been in the midst of this rather frustrating campaign, it seems, visiting a number of kind of local sites and towns and religious sites.

Speaker 15 And he's been to a lunar deity near the site of Carai, which, you know, those of you that maybe know Roman Republican history know that that is a kind of disastrous area for

Speaker 1 Crassus.

Speaker 15 Crassus meets his gold-plated finish near Carai.

Speaker 15 And it's on the way back from that visit that he stops to empty his bladder and his guards or at least an officer within the guard descends upon him and stabs him brutally.

Speaker 15 And yeah, I like Matilda, I just love this idea of these two letters coming across. It's highly dramatic.
It's very dial in as much as the whole thing is kicked off by this portent or this prophecy.

Speaker 15 There's no real insight into the nitty-gritty of what's going on.

Speaker 15 Actually, it's all down in our literary sources to this prophecy that Macrinus will seize power and his son will be named an emperor as well.

Speaker 15 It would be interesting to know exactly what was really going on in the military camp around that point, but

Speaker 15 one way or another, Macrinus feels vulnerable.

Speaker 15 And it seems that he doesn't waste any time to take action, lest the letter from Antioch get to the front and reach Caracalla's eyes before he can do anything.

Speaker 1 I mean, well, it certainly makes for good television, I must say that. What a way to go for Caracalla.
That's terrible. What happens next? Is there like an immediate reaction?

Speaker 1 If Macrinus has not killed Caracalla himself, is it that, how does he then take advantage?

Speaker 1 Does he know that he's got these powerful figures, and let's say the assassin as well, that they're very much on his side? Has he got a plan as to what happens next?

Speaker 14 There's different narratives. I mean, my favorite one is the fact, you know, he, Herodian tells us he cries, weeps over the body and is, you know, so sorrowful.

Speaker 1 Predicting, yep.

Speaker 14 All the while has, you know, organized this from the get-go and then sends the ashes of Caracalla back to his mother in Antioch, where she promptly says both sons are gone and and ends her own life.

Speaker 14 Alex, I'll let you get into the intricacies of the better narrative.

Speaker 15 Yeah,

Speaker 15 it does seem, no matter who you read, that there seems to be a brief interregnum because Macrinus can't step forward and say, right, chaps, we did a good job here. It's my turn now.

Speaker 15 There's no way that that would be acceptable, even with just the army surrounding them. So Macrinus, I think Matilda's right to say that's probably what he does.
He makes this great show.

Speaker 15 Oh, my goodness, there's been a murder. And the assassin is hunted down by some of Caracalla's loyal bodyguards and is killed.

Speaker 15 So in a way, that helps Macrinus because there are no loose ends to implicate him at that point in the murder, even if later on the kind of story creeps out that he's been implicated in some way.

Speaker 15 And so it seems that there are at least a couple of days between the murder of Caracalla and the accession of Macrinus, where the army, those who are around from the imperial court are more or less compelled to put somebody on the imperial throne.

Speaker 15 The army is hundreds of miles into enemy territory at this point. The Parthian king seems to be raising forces to counter the Roman army in this region.

Speaker 15 An army and empire without a commander at this point is unthinkable. And so Macrinus, as one of the most senior magistrates of the court, is apparently installed at this point.

Speaker 15 And that this in itself is a remarkable chain of events because, as I said earlier, Macrinus is an equestrian. That does not happen.

Speaker 15 Macrinus is the the first man of equestrian status to achieve the purple.

Speaker 15 This is a real watershed moment for who gets to be in charge of the Roman Empire.

Speaker 1 So Macrinus has taken advantage of being there in the East and the soldiers are deciding who the next emperor is and making this unprecedented change.

Speaker 1 I mean, so militarily, I guess he's now straight away, he's got to deal with continuing that campaign.

Speaker 1 But Matilda, at the same time, you've already mentioned how Julia Domna, so Caracalla's mother, she's now lost both her children, she commits suicide.

Speaker 1 But I'm guessing there are also other members of the royal family that surrounded Caracalla, who have like royal blood.

Speaker 1 I mean, how does Macrinus then decide, how do I treat these figures, especially if I'm in the East? What do I do with these other figures?

Speaker 14 So we need to go back because the first narrative that I told you, that's the one that's in Herodian. Dio tells us a totally different story.
Okay.

Speaker 14 Julia Domna learns of her son's death, according to Cassius Dio. She's in Antioch.

Speaker 14 And Macrinus sends her a letter and he says, you can retain your title as as Augusta, can stay empress, you can retain your Praetorian guard.

Speaker 14 So she keeps the imperial bodyguard. You can do whatever you want, just stay there.

Speaker 14 And she does. And she, according to Dio, she considers ending her life and then she sort of gets it together a little bit.

Speaker 14 and starts scheming with the soldiers who are around her and then eventually dies of breast cancer before anything can be taken anywhere. But this is an incredibly important moment.

Speaker 14 If what Dio is reporting is true, this is really unprecedented or nearly unprecedented for Roman empresses.

Speaker 14 The only precedent that we have is Domitia, Domitian's wife, who is reported, you know, rumored to have been involved in his assassination and may have had

Speaker 14 more new imperial portraiture created under Trajan and left up around Trajan's forum. She continued to be celebrated as an empress and sort of retired in luxury with her brickworks in Italy.

Speaker 14 That is the only precedent we have. So why Macrinus would decide to, you know, keep this woman on with a title, which did not happen for Domitia.
She retired without the title.

Speaker 14 We know this from the inscriptions from her brickworks. She keeps the title.
She keeps the Praetorian guard. She is still, you know, for all intents and purposes, empress of the Roman Empire.

Speaker 14 And this is something that's very perturbing, I think, to anybody who looks closely at this period. There's this huge question of why.

Speaker 14 And Alex and I were talking about this prior to sitting down with you. And we kind of, we still have not really been able to wrap our minds around it.

Speaker 14 It is part of why I kind of wanted to bring up, you know, is it just that they know each other? Cause they've been in these bureaucratic circles?

Speaker 14 Is it that Macrinus is like, well, I just, I just like this woman? Does he already know that she's dying from cancer? And so

Speaker 1 I've just overseen the murder of her son, but

Speaker 1 I quite like the woman.

Speaker 14 So I'll leave her alone, you know. Does he know that she's dying of cancer?

Speaker 14 And so he wants to, you know, he presents himself as an, he adopts the name Severus to present himself as a continuator of the Severin dynasty. He elevates himself on Septimius Severus' birthday.

Speaker 14 Is he trying to use her to create this continuity with the Severans sort of artificially knowing that she's really not going to last that long? It's a big question mark.

Speaker 14 It's really, really interesting. This doesn't happen with any other empress at any point, especially for one who is so incredibly influential and involved in the running of the empire.

Speaker 14 And Macrenis really shoots himself in the foot here because he, you know, allows Julia Domna to survive.

Speaker 14 And she eventually, you know, dies, I think, a couple of months after her son, probably in the summer of 217.

Speaker 14 And all around her are her family, her older sister and her older sister's two daughters, each of whom have a son.

Speaker 14 And she sends this family back to Emesa, the familial sort of home place, which is sometimes described as sort of a backwater in Syria, but has a massive temple to the deity, the solar deity, Elagabal.

Speaker 14 And Julia Maesa promptly enrolls both of her grandsons in this priesthood, which is the ancestral priesthood that her family has belonged to and has tons of money and tons of property at her disposal.

Speaker 14 And Macrinus, thinking that this won't be an issue for him, allows them to kind of retire.

Speaker 1 And Maesa immediately starts scheming and brings in nearby legions and starts bribing them and sort of fomenting a new severin dynasty a coup to put her grandson elakabalis on the throne i think we'll re we'll get back to that in a second but i mean you've mentioned that i mean it is really interesting part of the story but matilda just to just to clarify because you said a few names there so julia maesa so julia domina dies but she lays the seeds for like kind of fomenting rebellion against macrinus very early on.

Speaker 1 Julia Maiesis, this is a new name. That is Julia Domina's elder sister, is it?

Speaker 14 Yep, it's her big sister.

Speaker 1 And quickly introduce who are these children of Julia Maesa who are also part of this family. We'll just introduce their names now and then come back to them a bit later.

Speaker 14 Sure. We have her elder daughter is named Julia Soamius.
These are all women with the name Julia, and so it gets very confusing.

Speaker 14 Her elder daughter is named Julia Soamius, and she has a son who is the future Emperor Elagobalus.

Speaker 14 And then her younger daughter is named Julia Mamea, who who also has a son who is the future emperor Severus Alexander. And at this point,

Speaker 14 all of the men in the family, the husbands of Julia Soamius and Julia Maesa, certainly have died. And so, you know, one reason that Macrinus would not view them as a threat.

Speaker 14 These are women without sort of any male familial support. And the husband, it appears that Julia Mamea has a second, she's in her second marriage to somebody who

Speaker 14 has not really had a formidable career that would make him a threat to Macrinus's fledgling reign.

Speaker 1 All right, well, there you go. Well, you've got those lots brewing in the background, and we will come back to them.

Speaker 1 But if we focus back on the figure of Macrinus, Alex, so he's spared Julia Domna, and Matilda's just given that story of the other Julias as well.

Speaker 1 But of course, this is on the eastern part of the empire, and he's been elected, and it's unprecedented.

Speaker 1 He's not one of the most elite figures of the roman empire not belonging to the royal family either as news starts filtering back to the heart of the roman empire and places like the senate truly macrinus must be a little bit worried about the like if his title as a new emperor will be confirmed i mean what's going through his mind as he's also got this military venture that he's now got to deal with at the same time What do you think is going through his mind?

Speaker 1 What does he have to do to try and consolidate his position really quickly? It seems a difficult position.

Speaker 15 Oh, it's undoubtedly a difficult position.

Speaker 15 And and it's ironic though you say that he would be worried about news getting to rome it seems that rome is probably the safest environment that he could have been in certainly dio and herodian a little bit less they say it's questionable why he didn't just disband the army immediately upon ending the parthian campaign which we'll get onto in a moment and just hightail it back to rome why he dallied in the east and why he himself ended up in antioch for a while it seems that he himself wasn't sure how to respond to the kind of myriad problems and myriad little situations that he was facing as emperor and that would ultimately cost him his life.

Speaker 15 In the immediate sense, he does send letters to the Senate in Rome and it's interesting the way he tries to kind of seize the initiative but also pander to the Senate as well.

Speaker 15 In his first letter he apparently just claims a bunch of imperial titles and this is where his imperial nomenclature changes and he adds Severus to his naming tradition.

Speaker 15 The Senate are a little bit confused by how presumptuous this new de facto emperor is being, I think, by claiming all of these imperial titles.

Speaker 15 But at the same time, they're just tremendously happy that somebody has gotten rid of Caracalla. And so

Speaker 15 in the very short term, they're just kind of happy to let things roll and let him be the emperor. Now, his second letter follows after he concludes the Parthian campaign.

Speaker 15 He initially tries to negotiate with the Parthian king, because the Parthian king's bearing down on the Roman army at this point. Parthian king's having none of it.

Speaker 15 He wants Rome out of the Mesopotamian region. He wants them to rebuild all of the forts that they've destroyed at their own cost, and basically to apologise to everyone on their way out.

Speaker 15 And so, you know, rebuild the wall, I suppose you could use a modern political parlance. Now, Macrinus refuses.
I mean, he's in no position to accede to that kind of demand.

Speaker 15 And indeed, it would have been political suicide with the army around him to be seen, I think, to surrender everything. So he has to fight, initially, at least.
And that doesn't go very well.

Speaker 15 The Roman army is defeated in the field at Nisibitz, and he has to come to another negotiated conclusion. Now,

Speaker 15 in historical terms, he doesn't give away as much as the Parthian king seems to have wanted. So it's not a completely dishonourable peace.

Speaker 15 And yet, in his communication, he's trying to big this up, that he has secured peace with honour. And this is where the threads start to unravel, because not everybody accepts this narrative.

Speaker 15 And certainly the army, while they may have been frustrated by Caracalla's campaign, this slightly ignominious end to their campaigning does him no favours either.

Speaker 15 And so I think it's very easy to see with hindsight how Macrinus kind of his regime comes unfurled within the space of months. But it would be a mistake to class him as inactive.

Speaker 15 I think he gets an unfair rap. I think he is dealing with a very difficult and unprecedented situation.

Speaker 15 He's having to sort of set a new political narrative in motion at the same time as having to inherit a campaign of his predecessor, which is less than stellar.

Speaker 15 And I think this whole move about keeping the Severan women alive, yes, sure, we know it's a strategic tactical error.

Speaker 15 But if he is trying to paint himself as this Severan continuator, as a way of kind of glossing over his equestrian heritage, it seems to me at least a sensible move.

Speaker 15 I mean, I would hate to sort of put myself into McCrinish's shoes, but I think it's coherent as a set of policy.

Speaker 15 So I think there's a reason why he doesn't retreat to Rome immediately, but I think ironically, that may have been the one course of action that could have saved his regime long term.

Speaker 1 So he aligns himself with the Severans, but also his son as well. He's got a young son at this time.
Is he a very young son or teenage? Do we know much about that?

Speaker 15 So he's barely 10 years old. Is that right, Matilda?

Speaker 14 Yeah, born around 208. So he would be about 9, 10 years old.

Speaker 15 And he's initially named as Caesar. And that is the extent of his formal acclamations that get agreed by the Senate.

Speaker 15 Macrinus will later name Diadomenian, his son, as a co-Augustus in the kind of frantic last few weeks of his regime. But the Senate barely even hear about this by the time he's assassinated.

Speaker 1 How does it all start to unravel for the poor old Macrinus?

Speaker 14 So he's made the critical mistake of underestimating Julia Domna's big sister, who he's sent back to her power base.

Speaker 14 She is, you know, this family are the descendants of the priest kings of Emesa, so they already have tremendous regional influence.

Speaker 14 Also, Julia Domna had, at the very beginning of the reign of Septimius Severus, already been aligned with the military pay on the coinage issued in the east.

Speaker 14 We see the very first coinage issued with liberalitas, you know, military distribution reverses struck in her name.

Speaker 14 So when Julia Maesa comes in and she says, I'm going to give you guys money, I think that it probably makes a lot of sense to people that she really will pay up.

Speaker 14 They're used to the women in this this family giving the military lots of money. So she comes in and she says, I have these two grandsons and they have both been enrolled in the temple of Elagabal.

Speaker 14 And from what we hear, the 3rd Gallic Legion, which is stationed near Emesa at Raphinea.

Speaker 14 are really big fans of the cult of Elagabal and they love to come to the temple and watch the ceremonies and they think that the beautiful young Elagabalis, the head priest, is really doing a fantastic job.

Speaker 14 And she says, oh, well, by the way, he also is the illegitimate son of Caraculla. And I'm going to give you a hell of a lot of cash if you put him on the throne.
And so it works.

Speaker 14 And on the 15th, the evening of the 15th of May, 218, Maesa and Elagobalis' mother, Maesa's older daughter, Julia Soamius, and her younger daughter, Julia Mimea, and Julia Mammea's son, Severus Alexander, all get snuck into the fortress of the third Gallic Legion of Graphinea.

Speaker 14 And then the next morning on the 16th, they bring Elagobalis up onto the ramparts and they say, here he is, the son of Caraculla. He is the legitimate emperor of Rome.

Speaker 14 And things kick off immediately.

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Speaker 1 Do they actually think he was a son of Caracalla? Do historians think he was a son of Caracalla today?

Speaker 14 No, we have

Speaker 14 no.

Speaker 14 We have his father's gravestone

Speaker 10 that was set up

Speaker 14 by Julius Suamius. We know that he had a sibling at some point from that gravestone, though we have no record of the sibling in

Speaker 14 the literary evidence. However, we do have provincial coinage that has Elagobalis on one side, his face,

Speaker 14 or provincial coinage struck in the east, and then the face of Plotilla. Teraculla's executed and exiled wife on the other side.

Speaker 14 So clearly people are really running with this in the Eastern Empire and it seems to be working. You know, he very much is accepted by a lot of these Eastern legions.

Speaker 14 It takes a little while, it takes a couple of months, but Macrinus's forces respond pretty quickly.

Speaker 14 And his Praetorian prefect Julianus, who's the one who, you know, throwback, sent the letter to Macrinus saying, by the way, there has been a prophecy that that you are going to become emperor.

Speaker 14 If we throw back to the beginning of this episode,

Speaker 14 he immediately marches on Elagobalis' forces

Speaker 14 and things with the 2nd Parthian Legion, I believe, again, throw back to that legion.

Speaker 1 Or the one outside Rome, yeah.

Speaker 14 Yes, he's brought, that's been brought east. Things go very poorly.
He is, there is an immediate coup. outside of Raphanea.
His soldiers say, we are going to join the third Gallic Legion.

Speaker 14 We're joining Team Elagabalis and they execute him and they behead him and they send to Macrinus in Apamea his head wrapped up with his ring and they deliver it to him at a dinner.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's kind of gruesome stuff. I mean, just to go back a second, I'm a little bit more cynical on the whole Elagabalis as the son of Caracalla thing.

Speaker 15 I think everybody knew this was complete hookum, but we're being offered so much cash that it was an easy conceit to accept.

Speaker 15 And also, I think it was probably a very thinly veiled statement by this quote-unquote Severan cause that they have more bloodline claim to being the Severans than Macrinus with his new Severan name coming out of nowhere.

Speaker 15 And yet, events at Rafinai, I think, kind of show that the ground is ripe for the Severans to stage this counter-revolution.

Speaker 15 It's interesting that Macrinus, I think it's in Herodian's telling of this episode, sure, Julianus has been sent with detachments to try and secure the third legion.

Speaker 15 Macrinus is at Apamea because that is the legionary fortress site of the second Parthica when it is in the east. So he is actively trying to court that legion at the point where Julianus

Speaker 15 is murdered. And Herodian tells us that Macrinus gives this long speech and offers a bunch of money and a ton of honours.

Speaker 15 And the troops at Apamea take the money, accept the honours, and then one of them pulls Julianus' head out of of the basket to show Macrinus, and Macrinus is just penniless, defeated, and that's it.

Speaker 15 Has to go back to Antioch empty-handed, but at least with his head.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 14 pretty grim stuff. I think it's also, this is the point where as soon as Macrinus learns about Elcobalus's coup, that he declares his son, the young Diadumenianus, to be Augustus.

Speaker 14 And he also sends a letter to the Senate where he officially declares war on the usurper and his mother and grandmother.

Speaker 14 And that comes from from Dio, who we think would have heard this letter read out in the Senate.

Speaker 14 So that's a pretty incredible moment here where we have the Emperor of Rome declaring war on a woman and child. Yeah.
That's the political faction that he's up against.

Speaker 1 It's quite sunny, and it feels like this is the big test room, isn't it? It's all or nothing.

Speaker 1 I feel a bit sorry for his son, who's basically being told, yeah, you're now co-emperor with me, which also means if it goes wrongly for me, it's going to go wrongly for you. Sorry.

Speaker 1 So all that feels missing missing from this tale to make it a Hollywood epic in its own right, like the real history of the story of Macrinus, is a big battle. Is that what we're getting to next?

Speaker 1 Is this the big climax of the story?

Speaker 15 Oh, yeah, there's a big battle, all right.

Speaker 15 The big battle takes place just outside Antioch, actually. The sources disagree a little bit on the location of the battle.

Speaker 15 Some want to see it situated further east, but it seems that in all of Macrinus's attempts to secure a power base, he really doesn't have a tremendously large force around him.

Speaker 15 It's mainly comprised of his loyal Praetorians and some other local formations that he has brought with him to fight this battle.

Speaker 15 And all of the defected forces that are now Team Elagabalis are on top of him and a large battle ensues. And

Speaker 15 doesn't the account of the battle shifts and changes between our sources. In one telling, Macrinus's forces just don't put up a fight.
They're steamrollered by the Elagabalan forces.

Speaker 15 But, and I think this is where Matilda can offer insights, there there is another telling where Macrinus's forces actually put up some kind of stiff resistance and Elagabalus's forces, all of these cheats and defectors, on the verge of breaking and retreating.

Speaker 14 Yes, this is one of my favorite moments of Roman history. We have, you know, Elagobalis' forces who are about to give up.

Speaker 14 They're really lagging and Elagobalis is there and he's trying to cheer them on.

Speaker 14 And what actually succeeds in getting them to put up a fight and ultimately defeat Macrinus and bring Elagobalis to the throne is the presence of Julia Maesa and Julia Soamius on the battlefield.

Speaker 14 And they step out of a chariot and with their cries and lamentations, according to Cassius Dio, they manage to kind of rally all of these soldiers and get them, you know, back in the game.

Speaker 14 And that is how Elagabalus ultimately wins.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 1 And so they win the day. Macrinus, is he killed on on the field? I mean, what happens to Macrinus and his son after that if he's lost his army and now it looks like his game is up?

Speaker 15 It seems like both of them, Macrinus and Didomenian, actually survive the conflict itself and they make to flee. They are caught in different locations.

Speaker 15 It seems that Macrinus is caught in Bithynia, so that modern Turkish coastline. That's quite far.

Speaker 1 That's near Istanbul. Okay, so that's pretty cool.

Speaker 15 It seems like he's trying to make for a port to actually get out of Dodge and maybe even even go towards Rome.

Speaker 15 Maybe he's realized at this point that he has to get to the capital in order to raise any kind of significant resistance. And I think it's Herodians telling, although it might be Dio.

Speaker 15 It may be Dio, actually, because it's kind of supernatural.

Speaker 15 He gets in the boat and the boat starts to make progress and then a contrary wind comes and forces that boat back into port and Macrinus is captured thereafter.

Speaker 15 His captors don't really know what to do with him at first, but it seems like on the road back to Antioch, they make the decision just to assassinate him and he is killed or beheaded en route.

Speaker 15 Now, he sent his son, I think, at some point in that escape, he's actually sent his son, so the sources tell us, towards the Parthian border.

Speaker 15 He's sent his son to fall on the good graces of the Parthian king after their negotiated settlement, which suggests that maybe, if there's any truth to it, maybe the settlement was a little bit more substantial than our sources want to accept.

Speaker 15 But in any event, it's a futile effort.

Speaker 1 His train, his baggage train or whatever, his cortege is caught and he is murdered in the middle of that escape route as well it's such a short story isn't it but like but full of so many different extraordinary events you've got it all and and it's it's like the dynasty of macrinus well it didn't last very long but still for him to actually have got there in the first point from his uh you know pen-pushing praetorian background and his non-senatorial background and from mauritania to north africa morocco area today

Speaker 1 it's an extraordinary story Is it a story that continues to be popular with like Cassius Dio and senators and people in the Roman Empire following his execution?

Speaker 1 Or do the winners of this conflict do they decide to try and remove his name almost?

Speaker 15 In terms of his sort of immediate political legacy, it's almost non-existent. He's condemned.
He is a road hump, it seems, or a bump in the road rather, in the otherwise uninterrupted Severan story.

Speaker 15 His legacy is condemned by the nascent, the new Severan regime, and that's really pretty much the end of it.

Speaker 15 As you say, it is so short, he's not really had enough time to lay down any more significant roots or create any kind of significant legacy.

Speaker 15 And certainly, while the senators seem to have been happy enough to accept him in the short term, equestrian as he was, Dao's account is just characterized start to finish by a rank snobbery as a senator against this absolute upstart.

Speaker 15 Now, Herodian's account is interesting because it's written slightly later.

Speaker 15 It's written probably in the 240s, maybe even into the 250s AD, at which point who gets to be a Roman emperor is slightly different.

Speaker 15 So we find a little bit more emphasis in Macrinus's identity and Macrinus's apparent attempts to explain that identity in Herodian's account, but that's probably because Herodian was writing under the Emperor Philip the Arab, who himself was of equestrian descent and had risen to imperial power through military strength and through a coup that way.

Speaker 15 So that's quite an interesting way that Macrinus's identity is squared away by one writer, owing to kind of history repeating a little bit later down the line.

Speaker 15 Only a couple of decades, mind you, but still the divergence in the sources there is quite obvious. Dio of his time,

Speaker 15 arch senatorial, even though he's glad Caracalla is dead, he just cannot swallow this lower class person. Again, still obscenely wealthy, holding the imperial throne.

Speaker 1 Well, we'll wrap up their story of what happens next, the third century crisis and the later severance. I know both of you find really interesting, particularly you, Matilda.

Speaker 1 And we've done an episode. I think we've done a couple of episodes in the past about the sisters, Suemius, Moesa, Mamea, what happens next.
But that's several stories for several more episodes.

Speaker 1 I think the best way to end this one is I'd like to get both of your, what are both of your thoughts on Macrinus, your overall thoughts on Macrinus and how he's regarded today.

Speaker 1 I mean, having done this chat and having studied this figure as part of your wider research over the past few years, Matilda, I'll let you go first.

Speaker 14 You know, I kind of feel bad for the guy.

Speaker 14 The Sefferens were not a real terribly, for lack of a better word, nice family. And he seems like he really just kind of wanted to do right by the Roman Empire.

Speaker 14 And it seems like he kind of was doing right by the Roman Empire during his brief reign.

Speaker 14 I think he terribly underestimated the later Severin women and made a massive mistake in underestimating what these women could do and the importance of the Severin bloodline coming through these women.

Speaker 14 But perhaps he deserves more attention than he really got, because maybe if we had kept Macrinus, we wouldn't have seen the third century crisis. I don't know, Alex, what do you think?

Speaker 15 Oh, that's

Speaker 15 a bold statement. I mean,

Speaker 15 I think we're kind of heading that direction, maybe regardless, but it is a really interesting counterfactual. I tend to agree with Matilda.
I think Macrinus deserves a lot more attention. I think he

Speaker 15 is completely overwhelmed by the circumstances that he inherits. I think that's really the defining feature of him.

Speaker 15 Now, I'm somebody who would like to go back and revisit his rise to power, though, because this whole prophecy declaring that he will be an emperor seems a very neat way to explain it in narrative terms and to kind of almost give him a blank slate or a green light towards this.

Speaker 15 I would like to know whether he was a little bit more calculating, you know, the protégé of Plotianus at one point. Has that kind of ambitious Praetorian identity rubbed off on him?

Speaker 1 The scheming bureaucrat kind of.

Speaker 15 Yeah, well, indeed, that pencil pusher, is there more than meets the eye to the pencil pusher? Perhaps, but I think, yeah,

Speaker 15 I would tend to agree that he may even have had good intentions towards the imperial government.

Speaker 15 Certainly he wants to make that argument, but just he entirely underestimates the situation that he faces immediately militarily in the East, politically with the remaining Severans, and in kind of social class structure about just how acceptable somebody with his background will be wearing the purple.

Speaker 1 Well, what a legacy. And it's nice to see, as we mentioned at the beginning, how at least the name Macrinus is coming back into the public eye with Gladiator II.

Speaker 1 His story, I don't think he would have ever thought that his story would go from the likes of that contemporary Roman senator Cassius Dio and the like, all the way down to the 21st century and Ridley Scott.

Speaker 1 But hey, here we are, and what a time period it's been. Guys, it is such a pleasure to have you both in the same room, literally, for this podcast episode.
I mean, huge flashbacks for me as well.

Speaker 1 They said it could never happen. It has, and it's been fantastic.
And it's just for me to say thank you both for taking the time to come on the podcast.

Speaker 14 Thank you so much, Tristan. It's been a blast, as always.

Speaker 15 Thank you. It's been such fun.

Speaker 1 Well, there you go. There was Dr.

Speaker 1 Alex Imri and Matilda Brown talking through the story, The Rise and Fall, of the Roman Emperor Macrinus, the real history behind Denzil Washington's character in the new movie Gladiator 2.

Speaker 1 I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening to it.
Please follow the Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor.

Speaker 1 You can also follow me on social media. I'm on both Instagram and TikTok.
Just search Ancients Tristan. You will find me doing lots of different ancient history videos.

Speaker 1 And don't forget, you can also listen to the Ancients and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe.

Speaker 1 As a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code Ancients at checkout.

Speaker 18 This holiday, Verizon is helping you bundle up incredible gifts and savings. You'll get the latest phone with a new line on my plan and a brand new smartwatch and tablet.

Speaker 18 No trade-in needed, even on our lowest price plan. That's two gifts for your family and one for you.
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Speaker 18 Service plan required for watch and tablet. Additional terms apply.

Speaker 4 I know, I'm putting them back.

Speaker 5 Hey, Dave, here's a tip.

Speaker 6 Put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 7 Oh, scratchers? Good idea.

Speaker 8 It's an easy shopping trip.

Speaker 3 We're glad we could assist.

Speaker 9 Thanks, random singing people.

Speaker 10 So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.

Speaker 6 Scratchers from the California lottery. A little play can make your name.

Speaker 11 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.