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Yes, I know that Octavian IS Augustus, but this episode is about how Gaius Octavius became Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, and in doing so replaced the old Roman Republic with a military autocracy masquerading as a republic. This is the conclusion of our three part series on the fall of the Roman Republic. My cohost for all three episodes has been my good friend Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America.

This episode includes two audio snippets:
Mark Antony's funeral oration for Caesar, from the 1953 film version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" (with Marlon Brando as Brutus)

"What have the Romans done for us?" from "Monty Python's The Life of Brian"

Quotations from:
Appian on Caesar's Funeral, trans. John Carter (https://www.livius.org/sources/content/appian/appian-caesars-funeral/)
Res Gestae Divi Augusti ("the achievements of the deified Augustus"), trans. F.W. Shipley (https://www.livius.org/sources/content/augustus-res-gestae/)
Tacitus Agricola. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1877)
Tacitus, Annals. Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus, 1931

For another take on the story, I recommend listening to "Marc Antony vs. Octavian Caesar: Ancient Rome's Ruthless Rivals," a two part series on the podcast "Beef with Bridget Todd."

As I am posting this a couple of days before Christmas and Hanukkah, I would like to wish you all Happy Holidays. And if you haven't yet listened to it, you might want to try our episode on how Hanukkah and Christmas were celebrated in the Middle Ages (with detours into how Hanukkah became the Jewish Christmas in the United States and why the Puritans tried to suppress Christmas).

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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This is the second of a three part series about the fall of the Roman Republic. My cohost for all three episodes is Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. We actually had been planning only two episodes, but the story is long and detailed, so we thought that three would be best. In episode one, Jenny and I explained the workings of the Roman Republic and the military, economic, and cultural factors that undermined its stability in the late second and first century B.C.. In it we examined how and why Rome's acquisition of a Mediterranean based empire undermined the foundations of its republican constitution. Among the topics covered in that episode are: the Roman class system and how it shaped Roman political institutions; the patron-client relationship; Roman just war theory; the land reform program of the Gracchi brothers; Marius' unprecedented six consulships; and the fracturing of the ruling elite in the Optimates, supporters of senatorial privilege, and the Populares, who sought to check the senate by appealing to the popular assemblies; This episode picks up where the last one left off, beginning with Sulla's march on Rome in 99 B.C. and ending with the assassination of Julius Caesar on the idea of March, 44 B.C.. The third and final episode completes the story, culminating in the establishment of the "Principate" by Octavian Augustus, an autocracy masquerading as a republic.

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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For the fiftieth (!) episode of this podcast, I'm taking a few centuries detour from the Middle Ages to talk about the fall of the Roman Republic. In this episode, the first of a two part series, my cohost Dr. Jenny Paxton and I talk about the political and cultural institutions of the Roman Republic in the late second and first centuries B.C.E.*. We explain how and why a republic designed to govern an Italian city-state fell victim to its own success as Rome rose to empire, despite all of its built in checks and balances. In the second episode, Jenny and I relate how a series of ambitious political generals--Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian Augustus--plunged the Republic into two generations of civil war that culminated in the establishment of a military autocracy disguised as a republic.

(Note: B.C.E. stands for "Before the Common Era"; C.E. for "The Common Era." They are the secular equivalents of B.C. and A.D.. Be warned, we weren't consistent in our use of these dating conventions. I also noticed that sometimes we called the Roman legislative and judicial body known as the consilium plebis the plebeian assembly and sometimes the council of plebeians. Sorry for any confusion this might cause.)

This episode includes an audio clip from Universal Picture's 1993 film "Jurassic Park"

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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I know. Just what everyone needed, an episode about an election. To take a break from reading and watching election postmortems, I decided to return to one of my favorite teaching texts, the monk Jocelin of Brakelond’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. This is more of a personal memoir of what Jocelin saw and experienced as a monk than it is the standard monastic chronicle. It contains the fullest account of the process by which English monasteries in the High Middle Ages elected an abbot, and I thought that would be a fun and a far less stressful subject than our recent election—at least for our listeners if not for the monks of Bury St. Edmunds in 1182. My co-host for this episode is my partner for life and inspiration for all things medieval, my wife Ellen. This episode is especially for those of our listening audience who regard the U.S. election results with fear and trembling and a sickness unto death.

[This is a corrected version of the episode. The first posting had some glitches which I corrected. Sorry about that.]

Quotations are from
Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, trans. Diane Greenway and Jane Sayers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

This episodes includes a musical interlude:
Orbita Solaris (Short Version) Gregorian Chant
Chant group Psallentes, directed by Hendrik Vanden Abeele, singing from a 12th century antiphoner, prepared for the Mariakerk in Utrecht. Semi-live recording by Jo Cops at Heverlee, Belgium, May 2009. Singers are: Conor Biggs, Pieter Coene, Lieven Deroo, Paul Schils, Philippe Souvagie and Hendrik Vanden. Abeele.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-yb-UDBHA

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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This episode is devoted to a truly unique and pretty weird Arabic text, The Book of Charlatans by an obscure early thirteenth-century Arabic scholar, Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Rahim al-Jawbari, commonly known simply as al-Jawbari. At the behest of a Turkman sultan, al-Jawbari composed an encyclopedic guide to the scams, con games, and trickery practiced in the cities of the medieval Middle East. Al-Jawbari not only catalogues the various scams and trickery but also explains how they were pulled off. The book warns its readers to be vigilant against these scams, but it also reads like a "how to" manual. What makes it such a "good read" are the many anecdotes that al-Jawbari includes based on his own experiences during his travels throughout the Islamic east. My co-host for this episode is Peter Konieczny, the owner of the website medievalists.net, the leading online platform for all things medieval. In an earlier episode, Peter explained to me how and why the Mongols devastated Abbasid Baghdad. Frankly, I had not even heard of The Book of Charlatans until Peter approached me with the idea of doing an episode on it. I am so glad that he did because this really is an interesting work that sheds light on the criminal underbelly of the medieval Islamic world. It is also just fun. Please join us as we talk about the many scams practiced by medieval Muslim--and Christian--con artists in the thirteenth-century Middle East.

The Book of Charlatans, translated by Humphrey Davies and edited by Manuela Dengler. New York Univesity Press, 2020.

(If you have questions about this--or any episode of the podcast--feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com.)

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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In this episode I talk with the distinguished historian of the crusades Dr. Steven Tibble about the motivations of crusaders and of those Europeans who settled in the Crusader states of Outremer. Steve is the author of five books dealing with the crusades, the most recent of which is Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land (Yale University Press, 2024). We examine the roles played by religious zeal, the promise of remission of sin, feudal obligation, the hope of material gain, and the benefit of temporal privileges in motivating those who took the cross. In considering the relationship between crusaders and settlers, Steve explains why the rulers and European residents of Outremer developed a culture of religious and ethnic toleration that surprised and appalled Crusaders just off the boat. And because I couldn't resist, I have Steve explain why the Crusader States became hotbeds of crime and violence. I hope you will join us.

Audio clips in this episode:
The movie trailer for the 1948 re-release of Cecil B. DeMille's 1935 epic, The Crusades.
A snippet from "The Crusades" episode of the 1989 PBS series "Timeline."

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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On 3-4 July 1187 the Sultan of Egypt and Syria Saladin enjoyed the greatest military victory of his career. The Battle of Hattin, a two-day battle fought along the road leading to the town of Tiberias and, on the following day, on the Horns of Hattin, an iron-age hillfort above that road, is one of the few decisive battles of the Middle Ages. (In this episode, Richard explains why there were so few battles.) The battle pitted a Muslim force of about 30,000, comprised largely of Turkish cavalry, against the largest military force ever raised by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, an army of about 1,200 cavalry and 18,000 foot soldiers. The outcome of the battle was the capture of King Guy and the virtual annihilation of the field army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the months following the battle, Saladin systematically took all the major coastal cities of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, except for Tyre, and then turned inland to take Jerusalem. King Guy of Lusignan's ultimately disastrous decision to leave the safety of its camp at the springs of Sepphoris (Saffurya) and march 30 kilometers across waterless farmland in the July heat to relieve Saladin's siege of Tiberias remains controversial. In this episode, Professor Nicholas Morton, author of Crusader States and Their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099-1187 and veteran of this podcast, explains Guy's military thinking by placing the Battle of Hattin in the larger context of warfare as practiced by the rulers of the Crusader States of the Middle East. In doing so, Nick persuasively argues against a reigning academic and popular consensus that regards Guy's decision as defying military logic.

(Sorry, no movie reviews in this episode--though the prelude to and aftermath of the Battle of Hattin is depicted in Ridley Scott's The Kingdom of Heaven, and the full battle is shown in Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's 1963 movie Saladin the Victorious.)

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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Yes, Kristin Lavransdatter is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time. That isn't as impressive as it might sound, as the movie only brought in $3.7 million in box office receipts, but virtually all of that came from domestic sales. Pretty much unknown outside Scandinavia, the movie was a sensation when released in Norway in 1995. An estimated two-thirds of the country's population have viewed it. The movie is based on the first volume of Sigrid Undset's trilogy about the life of an ordinary woman in fourteenth century Norway, which won her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. Directed and written by the celebrated Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, the film is a very faithful adaptation. The production strove for historical accuracy in costume and settings, and most of the dialogue is taken directly from the novel. (Sigrid Undset is credited as co-screenplay writer.)

The reason I decided to devote a short episode to this movie and to its source novel is they both are worthy attempts to examine an aspect of the Middle Ages virtually ignored in popular culture, the life of ordinary people. Kristin Lavransdatter is the coming of age story of young woman from a prosperous family in rural fourteenth-century Norway who is seduced by and falls in love with a knight with a (justifiably) scandalous reputation. Whether Kristin's mentalité in the novel and film is really "medieval" is a matter of academic debate. But the care with which Undset in her novel and Ullmann in the film recreate the religious rituals, customs, and everyday life in early fourteenth-century Norway is impressive and worth a reading and a viewing.

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com