Debunking the Pax Romana: War, Rebellion, and the Reality of Empire

[@tribunateSPQR]

Do you believe there was a Pax Romana?

[@StanGB]

Rome was at peace internally and to the Roman sources that was good enough

[@Ancient__Wisdom]

No!!!

[@Dataism]

Your explanation of Pax, not 100% our modern definition of peace really opens my eyes. So really we should call it the Roman pacification.

[@shootfirsttalklater4]

For some maybe. But almost certainly not for most.

[@rayhume1971]

If there was a Bronze Age, an Iron Age, a Renaissance, an Enlightenment, an Industrial Revolution, a Great Depression, or a Cold War, there was a Pax Romana.

[@alexandergangaware429]

The Pax Romana had no wars, only Special Legionary Operations

[@conrad4852]

🤣🤣

[@SerLaama]

Caesars, tsars, what have you

[@alexandergangaware429]

@@SerLaama We only accept Kaisers around these parts

[@GAarcher]

*"Guts, Nero did nothing wrong"* *Griffith's most based quote*

[@liamrobert2460]

“I think you’re confusing peace with quiet”

[@tribunateSPQR]

Well said - that mindset is unfortunately still pervasive.

[@Giantcrabz]

​@@tribunateSPQRlike MLK's concept of negative and positive peace

[@guccifer764]

One of my favourite movie lines from an aggressively average movie

[@krulidn]

Confusing "peace" with the pacification that follows domination, subjugation and genocide.

[@heck3143]

​@Giantcrabz Holy moly that is an apt comparison. Thank you for maming this comment. I needed someone to connect those dots for me. Youve created new neural pathways in my brain for real.

[@apollonphoebus7549]

"You Romans are to blame for this; for you send as guardians of your flocks, not dogs or shepherds, but wolves." ~Bato the Daesitiate

[@tribunateSPQR]

Great quote and very incisive. I wanted to include this but felt I had gone overboard in source quotations already. I'll be sure to include it in a later video.

[@Arkhestra]

For all of Rome’s faults it’s hilarious how hard it is for them not to be described in the coolest ways

[@mat_correa]

​@@Arkhestra wolf = cool?

[@Arkhestra]

@@mat_correa wolves are badass hell yea

[@thomasford5893]

@@Arkhestrathe passage at 8 minutes felt a little badass at times

[@JohnVance]

“Talk about the glory of Rome!” *It was violent and terrible for most everyone* “No not like that”

[@ProbusVerus]

I love Roman history but objectively think the Roman empire left a deep impression on later European states. It is a curse on which everyone in Europe tried at some point in history to be the next Roman empire. It is ultimately the glorification of Imperialism and violence which we like to glorify as the golden age of mankind.

[@Notimportant3737]

I have had this thought for so long, thank you for finally verbalizing it…. Just like the Han empire left a huge mark on Chinese civilization, the Roman Empire left a huge mark on the various nations and civilizations that have risen in its shadow.

[@BernasLL]

The alternative is not great; fractioned kingdoms in perpetual war, to be easily conquered by neighbouring continental powers, and with no resources for great technological advancements. Some of the tools of empire are distasteful to our modern values, but they did ultimately bring people together under common goals to the advancement of society, instead of bickering and fighting one another, at times when no other political tools would have done the same. We should take in what lessons we can, about the good and the bad, and avoid both glorification or villanization. Let's not judge the dead too emotionally. It is history, after all.

[@AlexaSmith]

@@BernasLL the alternative? as if there is only one...

[@trevorv9218]

⁠@@AlexaSmithhuman nature doesn’t allow for Utopia. What other alternatives could exist?

[@tribunateSPQR]

Well said, the prestige of Rome (itself a misnomer obviously) has often been hijacked to advance brutal causes and oppression even into the modern era. Our next video will even cover that subject in greater detail!

[@Oujouj426]

My funniest interaction with a Rome-fanboy was when I brought up the Pax Mongolica and he tried to explain that there was no real peace as the Mongols were always warring someone. I didn't bother continuing after that, nothing was going to top that cognitive dissonance.

[@mattislindehag3065]

Well that's silly since the Pax Romana and the Pax Mongolica are the same exact thing. A superpower expands massively and as a consequense of that it ends up placing vast tracts of land extremely far away from any potential frontile. Given that they are under one power these lands experience a long period of unusual peace. Prior to the superpower they were battlegrounds. After the fall of the superpower they became that once more. As the inhabitant of a small state and a patriot who sees our independence as a good thing i say this without any special reverence for superpowers. It just is what it is.

[@michaelweir9666]

@@mattislindehag3065 Is that really the only factor that matters to you? If your home was a literal battleground or not? Relative security from foreigners is one thing, but if this peace doesn't include domestic security, stability, civil liberties, individual prosperity, etc., then we might as well add Pax North Korea to the list. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the battlefield was only far from your home if you were part of the imperial heartland in Italy, with no such guarantees elsewhere across the border provinces.

[@neroatlas9121]

@@michaelweir9666 and the mongols were unironically the more tolerant out of the two.

[@jeremym4451]

You could argue that with China too couldn't you

[@hugodesrosiers-plaisance3156]

Very interesting material. I'm impressed. ••• The main takeaway for me here is: to the Romans, "Peace" was not the absence of conflict, but rather the fact that Rome was able to stay on top in a relatively stable fashion.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Peace for me but not for thee. There remains a desire to conflate prosperity with peace when these two states are in reality very different

[@conrad4852]

@@tribunateSPQR Peace & prosperity are indeed separate concepts that can indeed be separated out analytically & sometimes do indeed break apart in real history. However, they do not with respect to the Pax Romana & your failure to look beyond elite sources to look at the material lives of millions of non-elite people across the empire is precisely why I dislike this video so much. We have more than enough material evidence to attempt answer to the question 'Was the Pax Romana real and if so, in what ways?' and yet you are focused on the writings of the elites.

[@Teutius]

To never know peace is to redefine it.

[@corneliaaurelli1603]

​@@conrad4852 What other sources point to Pax Romana being a time of peace?

[@conrad4852]

​@@corneliaaurelli1603 Literally all of the MATERIAL evidence. Bones, pots, ships, coins, cities, houses, pipes. The Pax Romana was real in the sense that during it the population of the territory of the Roman Empire 1) continuously grew in size i.e. deaths were not negatively impacting population growth 2) the population of territory of the Empire during the Pax Roman was larger than the populations of the territory of the Middle East, Europe, & North Africa before or after the era of the Pax Romana 3) the population growth was not confined merely to the city of Rome or the other largest cities of the Empire like Alexandria & Antioch--it was a population growth all across the Empire in smaller cities and in town 4) if we compare the size of Roman cities during the Pax Romana to other cities in the world only Han China has cities of comparable size & only Han China was a polity with a population of similar size 5) of course we should not just care about there being more people living than not, we should care about people living long lives and in this regard we find that life expectancy in the Roman Empire during the Pax Romana was higher than life expectancy in the Middle East, Europe, & North Africa before or after the era of the Pax Romana 6) we should also not just care about more people living and living longer lives, we should also care about them living longer lives with greater material abundance that help make life easier & more enjoyable for all people not just the elite few and what do you know but it turns out that archaeology reveals that the Roman Empire during the Pax Romana was an era where we can talk about the masses of the Empire partaking of greater material well-being than they did before & after the Pax Romana. I will given Tribunate credit in that we cannot gloss over the dark parts of Roman history that we know from both written records & achaelogical remains--we do ourselves & the people who lived in the past a disservice if we fail to acknowledge the brutalities of Roman conquests & Roman slavery or we image the Roman welfare state as being sufficient to justify the existence of the obscene levels of wealth inequality. But to deny reality by denying that the Pax Romana was a very real positive reality simply by cherry-picking quotations from surviving ancient texts written primarily by elite Romans for elite Romans is reprehensible. If you think we should care about the lives of non-elite peoples in general and about the history of non-elite people--and we should!!--this means that we have to look outside of elite writings when the only writings we have are elite. Whether Seneca the Younger or Tacitus or Cassius Dio in their writings talk about the Pax Romana, whether the propaganda artwork of the Emperor Augustus or the Emperor Trajan talk about the glories the peace of their Empire or the brutalities of their Empire is not where we should stop our analysis. We must never take ancient documents at face value, we have to compare to other documents from their time production & near contemporary production, and we must, must, must engage in archaeological investigation. History is not merely what elite men did, its the lives of the masses and how their lives went for good & ill. The absolute contempt I have for Tribunate's video here is that it is engaged in the type of simplification & strawmaning of history that rightwing reactionaries do. Tribunate attempts to handwave away potential objections to their criticism by anticipating in the video that it will come from rightwing reactionaries, but that is most definitely not where my critique is coming from. If we didn't have absolute decades of research here I'd probably be more sympathetic to trying to throw out the very idea of the Pax Romana as mere elite propoganda, but we do have lots & lots & lots of archaeology research from all across Europe, North Africa, & the Middle East which makes the strawman discussion of the Pax Romana all the more enraging. If you're curious about where I am drawing from, Kyle Harper's book about Roman as well as the following blog by Brett Devereaux (he includes lots of excellent citations) are both excellent starting points: acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

[@1917girl]

I would really enjoy a dive into how it is Rome managed to slip into monarchy while fundamentally upholding Republican values to the extent that they did. how did this dissonance exist in the minds of the common people? did it even represent a massive change from how it had been in the Republican period?

[@tribunateSPQR]

That's a great idea for a future topic! I feel that it is very difficult t o discern the opinions of the average Roman on this because of the elite bias in our sources but I'll do a bit more digging to see what I can uncover. But there is plenty to say about Virgil and the Aeneid on this so if I can't find the perspective of the average Pleb then I'll focus on him

[@onemoreminute0543]

Well from what I've read, in the minds of most people the role of 'emperor' was never official, and was just a public office. If you messed up, then you could be removed by the people, the Senate, or the army. The emperor was still seen as accountable to the republic and the people. The reason why the Romans never developed any official succession laws for the emperors was because it would heavily lean into monarchism then. As a result, emperors came to power by popular support via the army, the Senate, or the people. This continued on into the Byzantine era, where the medieval writers referred to their state as the 'Roman politeia' (Roman republic), and their leaders were still seen as accountable to the public. The empire did go through a period from the Severans onwards where the military overshadowed the role of the people and the Senate in imperial politics, but that ended in the east by the 5th century but continued in the west until it's demise.

[@genovayork2468]

​@@onemoreminute0543 Byzantium was a bavkwards monarchical dictatorship. The son of the emperor became the next.

[@onemoreminute0543]

@@genovayork2468 No, that's not true. The East Roman empire was as politically fluid in terms of succesion as the empire of old (just look at the Twenty Years Anarchy or the aftermath of the Macedonian dynasty, where 3 different families took power after deposing one another. Or how a frickin finance minister deposed Irene) An emperor could only vouch for their own flesh and blood to be made the next emperor if they were popular enough themselves. Otherwise you had instances such as the death of Anastasius where he left no heir, which led to civil servant Justin I buying the office in an election.

[@genovayork2468]

@@onemoreminute0543 Wow, so you say in a dynasty change the dynasty changes! Doesn't change the fact those were dynasties, boso.

[@CBrace527]

I love the use of primary sources - even though the quotes are long they really help set the tone

[@tribunateSPQR]

Glad to hear that - I kind of felt like I went overboard on this one but thought each was so good that I didn't want to cut any

[@conrad4852]

This is the PROBLEM with this video. We have SO few primary sources. The question of whether or not the Pax Romana was real cannot be ascertained by merely looking the few written records we have written by elites many of whom in the early Principate were salty about transformation from oligarchic Republic to monarchy. Without looking at physical evidence we cannot make claims about reality the way this video is doing. It's doing very bad history.

[@SlickMcClick]

​@@conrad4852Its doing very bad history to use primary sources? What, should we be using written accounts made by historians that used the same sources or made things up centuries later? Or are you saying that we cant derive anything of value from what we do have? I think you just dont understand how history is done.

[@conrad4852]

@@SlickMcClick no, not at all. Nor should we 100% trust Julius Caesar, or Tacitus, or Cassius Dio or other elite Roman historians without interrogating them. I'm talking about the enormous evidence of archaeology. "over the past half-century or so, it has so happened that effectively all ancient historians have had to develop a strong grasp of archaeological data; we don’t all necessarily learn to do the excavation work, of course (that’s what archaeologists do), but pretty much all ancient historians at this point are going to have to be able to read a site or artifact report as well as have a good theoretical grasp of what kinds of questions archaeology can be used to answer and how it can be used to answer those questions. This happened in ancient history in particular for two reasons: first, archaeology was a field effectively invented to better understand the classical past (which is now of course also used to understand the past in other periods and places) so it has been at work the longest there, but also because the sources for ancient history are so few. As I like to say, the problem for the modern historian is taking a sip of meaning from the fire-hose of evidence they have; but the challenge of an ancient historian is finding water in the desert. Archaeological data was a sudden, working well in that desert and much of the last two decades of ancient history has been built around it." "Even if the collapse of Roman political authority was a neutral or even potentially beneficial experience for the elite stratum at the top of society - and it is not clear that it was, mind you; those elites themselves that write to us certainly did not think so - if it was catastrophically bad for the non-elite population, their experience utterly swamps the elite experience by sheer dint of numbers. ... And... it was catastrophically bad. [W]e can start with another fairly common theory about this period - ‘perhaps the decline in exploitative cities and population causes life to get better.’ This isn’t as crazy as it seems! The Black Death, which we’ve just mentioned, is an obvious (and of course for any medievalist, readily available) analogy. The Black Death may have killed something like a third of the population of medieval Europe in the mid-1300s. Of course that is very bad! But one of the paradoxes of the Black Death is that in the aftermath of it, living conditions for the survivors clearly improved! The population growth of the previous centuries had meant bringing more marginal, less productive land under cultivation to support that population, which had reduced the per-farmer efficiency of agriculture even as total production grew, which had in turn meant that most farmers lived closer to the subsistence line and thus were poorer, their labor less valued. Killing a third of them thus made the labor of the remaining two-thirds much more valuable. Marginal land fell out of production as farmers focused on the best land, which improved production per-farmer (even as total, aggregate production fell) resulting in higher standards of living for the survivors. This is a classic ‘Malthusian’ interaction and the evidence for the period is robust enough that we can be quite sure it happened. ... Instead, to jump to the end, what the evidence - again, here mostly archaeological evidence used in a statistics-driven way - suggests is that what we are seeing is that average, per-capita production declined, resulting in a real decline in living standards including nutrition, which resulted in population decline. That population decline was thus the physical expression of a lot of real misery: starvation perhaps, but in most cases more likely heightened infant and maternal mortality as a result of malnourishment. ... In essence, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire caused the carrying capacity of the Mediterranean World, and especially western Europe, to decline, leading to the population declining to follow in step - which is to be clear, an incredibly bloodless way to describe a period of real, sharp human misery. The evidence for this decline, initially slow in coming, is now quite substantial; Willem Jongman assembles perhaps the most complete set of it in “Gibbon was Right: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Economy” in Crisis and the Roman Empire (2007). Jongman considers evidence for coin minting (through atmospheric lead records contained in ice cores), trade (via dated shipwrecks), meat consumption (via bone assemblages) and basic nutrition (via height calculated through femur length in dated human remains), inter alia and finds the same or similar patterns in each indicator. To take the most direct indicator of nutrition effect son people, mean femur length rises over the early Roman Empire, falls slightly in the late second and early third century, rises again but not quite so high over the fourth century, and then utterly collapses in the fifth." acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

[@conrad4852]

@@SlickMcClick "Trying to reconstruct population levels in the ancient world is a crude business. ... Even in recent times, credible voices have spoken in favor of peak numbers for the Roman imperial population ranging from ca. 44 million to 100 million. Where there is broad agreement is around the fact that the populations within the empire grew in the 150 years after the death of Augustus (AD 14) and reached their maximal extent on the cusp of the Antonine Plague. (pg 45) Han China is in many ways an appropriate comparandum [to the Roman Empire], but even its population seems never to have matched the Roman imperial apex of ~75 million (in the east, that would wait for the full development of the rice economies and the construction of the great canal systems). There is a more telling contrast. A Chinese writer of the midsecond century lamented the press of peoples in core regions of the eastern empire. “In the central provinces and inner commanderies, cultivated land fills the borders to bursting and one cannot be alone. The population is in the millions and the land is completely used. People are numerous and land scarce.” In the Roman context, such laments are notable for their absence. In the Roman Empire, population growth appears to have been accomplished without sending society spiraling downward in a cycle of diminishing returns. Contemporaries [during the Pax Romana] sang the song of prosperity, not the dirge of grinding impoverishment. For what it is worth (which may well be limited), the articulate classes of the Roman Empire were more preoccupied by general decadence than destabilizing squalor. Maybe our urbane elite was totally insensible to the daily life of the poor. But, it is harder to stare past famine, and we ought to be struck by the broad absence of true subsistence crisis in the Roman world. Food shortages were endemic in the Mediterranean, thanks to its naturally fickle ecology. Unlike the later middle ages, when violent spasms of acute hunger wracked the population, the Romans seem not to have been haunted by the threat of outright mass starvation. The absence of evidence is never probative, but it is suggestive. More important are the various indices reflecting high levels of production, consumption, and well-being in the Roman Empire. We lack proper economic statistics such as those gathered by modern states. So historians in search of Roman growth have often turned to archaeological proxies of economic performance. Shipwrecks, iron smelting, housing stock, public buildings, and even fish salting operations have all been cited as tracers of Roman productivity. They do in sum suggest robust economic performance in the late republic and high empire. And the broad evidence for meat consumption, implied from tens of thousands of sheep, pig, and cow bones, is difficult to square with any picture of a society emaciated because the population had badly overrun its resource base. It is telling that archaeologists are usually the biggest believers in Roman economic development. Still, it can be objected that these indices are crude and less than conclusive, particularly if we are interested in per capita measures. How can we be sure that the archaeological evidence for more stuff is not merely the effect of having more people? Perhaps the most telling answer can be retrieved from the abundant scraps of papyrus preserved from Roman Egypt. The arid climate of the Nile Valley means that, from this province alone, we chance to possess an extraordinary number of public and private documents. These, in turn, afford us the only chronologically resolved series of prices, wages, and rents from the Roman world. Precisely because Egypt was a region subject to net extraction by the imperial center, we can be certain that any patterns we observe are not due to plunder or political rents. The papyri suggest that, far from succumbing to diminishing returns on a massive scale, the Roman economy more than succeeded in absorbing population expansion, to achieve real growth on a per capita basis. Wage growth for truly unskilled laborers-diggers, donkey drivers, dung haulers-outpaced slowly rising prices and rents, right down to the advent of the Antonine Plague. The copious monumental ruins of the Roman Empire’s many cities might also be considered an index of the real wealth of the societies under Roman rule. The extent and nature of ancient urbanism has been the object of spirited disagreement among modern historians. But the conclusion seems increasingly irresistible, that the Roman Empire fostered a truly exceptional level of urbanization. The empire was home to a galaxy of cities-over one thousand of them. At the top, the population of Rome probably surpassed one million residents. Its scale was artificially inflated by the political entitlements of ruling an empire, but only partly. It was also the nexus of the entire economy, a hub of useful activity. Moreover, the urban hierarchy was not overly top-heavy. Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, and other metropoleis were surely several hundred thousand each. (pg 47-49) .... "[I]t does no discredit to the Romans to admit they had not transcended the basic mechanics of premodern economies. They were, simultaneously, precociously advanced and thoroughly preindustrial. We should not envision premodern economic development as a flat line of bleak subsistence until quickening growth from the Industrial Revolution onward. Rather, the experience of civilization has been one of consequential waves of rise and fall, consolidation and dissolution, with repercussions stretching far beyond a tiny elite squeezing rents from an underclass of indistinct peasants whose condition was more or less equally miserable from time immemorial. The Roman Empire was possibly the broadest and most powerful of these waves, prior to the everlifting crests of modernity. (pg 54)" From Kyle Harper, "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, & the End of an Empire

[@Morilore]

OK but qualitatively the borders of the Roman Empire didn't ACTUALLY change that much between 27 BCE and 180 CE, did they? Especially when compared to the two centuries prior to this? That was my sense of what the term "Pax Romana" actually indicated: the empire reached approximately its maximum realistic span during the period of the Late Republic, so that senatorial warlordism increasingly found its outlet in civil wars against the Roman state itself; kind of like how the division of the Earth among the European colonial powers in the 19th century led to the world wars of the 20th. And, like, obviously the Earth hasn't been at peace since 1945, but just as obviously if and when that hypothetical event that we call "World War III" actually happens this will turn into a completely different world very, very quickly. So I think Augustus really did solve a world-historical problem of a kind: late-Republican senatorial warlordism needed to end and it actually did end, even granted that the total failure of the Romans to work out any concept of dynastic legitimacy did guarantee the eventual emergence of a new kind of warlordism.

[@onemoreminute0543]

Yeah, new conquered provinces like Britannia and Dacia were generally the exception, not the standard, to expansion.

[@laisphinto6372]

Its a Bit that moralist hate imperialism and hate the Roman Empire but Love the Republic that was constantly beefed with every Nation that looked at them funny

[@onemoreminute0543]

@@laisphinto6372 It's a complex affair as the Republic was empire before it became an empire, and was arguably still a republic after it became an empire.

[@Morilore]

Nah, actually, you know what, I talk myself out of it; Pax Romana was fake. It's not actually a solved problem; they only projected that problem into the shape of a single person and then literally just got lucky 5 or 6 times in a row with their total lack of a succession procedure. If any of those emperors had actually succeeded in fully burying the last embers of republicanism by implementing a real succession law, then it would have made sense to talk about Pax Romana, but they didn't. The civil wars before Augustus and those after Marcus Aurelius were fundamentally the same thing.

[@conrad4852]

@@Morilore From Augustus' victory at Actium 31BCE until the assassination of Pertinax in AD193, there was a single Roman civil war in AD69. Neither the death of Marcus Aurelius nor the assassination of his son Commodus led to a civil war. It was only the assassination of Pertinax & the subsequent horrific behavior of the assassins that led to civil war for first time in 124 years. From 31BC to AD 193 that's 226 years with only a single civil war! I'd call that pretty good! It wasn't getting lucky 5 or 6 times, it was getting lucky 11 times--there were 11 peaceful transitions of power from 31BC to AD193 plus a 12th that was violent in AD69. The "total failure of the Romans to work out any concept of dynastic legitimacy did guarantee the eventual emergence of a new kind of warlordism" I'm actually less comfortable with this pronouncement because once dynastic legitimacy was far more firmly entrenched in Roman culture & institutions in the late 300s & continued to be so in the 400s, 500s, 600s, & 700s, it's not like the Romans weren't still having civil wars in the 500s & 700s.

[@donrog5035]

To be fair, Rome before Augustus was a mess. Every generetion of romans knew or fought wars. I mean Rome got the punic wars, after that multiple wars with the Greek kingdoms, and then the social wars and then the servil wars and then the civil wars. And all those wars contributed heavily in the destruction of the republica. So from romans pov it was a mess. So when Augustus came into power, he fixed all of that and it worked until the thrid century crisis. So from a roman point of view, they lived a way better life in the empire than in the republica. The pax romana was a pax for the romans and not for others people. So we cannot use this term literally we have to take it within some context.

[@elagabalusrex390]

I think most romans of the time would have agreed with that assessment. Augustus and his successor princeps gave them order, consistency, and stability, even if it did come at the expense of political freedom (though, to be fair, the Romans of the Republic era didn't enjoy "freedom", as we would understand it, either). Most people will usually choose order over freedom, and being cared for, over caring for themselves. The Pax Romana delivered that to them for roughly two centuries.

[@infidelheretic923]

"I have brought peace, justice, and security to my new empire." This quote from Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars seems oddly fitting for Augustus.

[@newsaxonyproductions7871]

Dude I kept repeating that line as I watched the video, since it really is just so applicable to various situations across history

[@chefzane8714]

The last line about cultivating gardens rather than creating desserts was a perfect line to end the video. I'm happy im a member with this great content🍻

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you - and thanks for the support that makes this channel possible!

[@StanGB]

Mic drop moment

[@felixmurat1677]

I can't say it comes as a surprise that Pax Romana was mostly, if not only, referred to the Romans. Similarly, as to how a so called "Pax Americana" is coined every now and then despite the US having taken part in recent conflicts although minor. Whether a true peace or not, the Pax Romana was perhaps a much more agreeable time than that of the 3rd century. In that context, I believe it earned the name.

[@Oujouj426]

Pax Mongolica and Pax Anglica are two more examples that show that it's not really a term for total peace, whether global or regional, but rather one for domination and quasi-total peace for the core populations of those with the domination.

[@AveMaria1888]

⁠@@Oujouj426”Pax-anything” typically just means there are no great power conflicts.

[@Lucasp110]

Well, I for one am more on the camp of the existence of a Pax Augusta, as the Roman political system was stabilized, various legions were disbanded and an standing regular army was established. Not having an army crossing the Rubicon every few years, or random commanders raising levies from your town every month, must have had a boost on even the lowest plebeian's quality of life. Even more after the Conquest of Egypt guaranteed the expansion of the Dole. Of course, it was peace for Romans. Not other peoples tho.

[@tribunateSPQR]

I do believe that the average Roman in Italy probably benefitted from the 80 year pause in civil wars, but as you mentioned - ultimately the "peace" was built on the continued exploitation of the provincials, not to mention the continued importation and abuse of the enslaved. So while the pax romana was great for a Roman citizen, the goal of the video was to push back on the notion that it was a singular geopolitical accomplishment or something that modern states should attempt to recreate. I do like your idea of separating out the Pax Augusta as a separate construct than the more broad Pax Romana. Thanks for the feedback and support

[@Lucasp110]

@@tribunateSPQR yeah, I get your point, and very much agree with your argument on the application of the concept in modern day geopolitics. Pretty much any argument on geopolitical paradigms from antiquity is pure bullshitting. And while I believe that a state's primary objective must be the well-being of its citizens, that doesnt excuse the perpetuation of human suffering. Or the disenfranchisement

[@onemoreminute0543]

I'd argue that the 'Pax Romana' (or 'Golden Age') of Rome occured more under the Flavians and Nerva-Antonines, and was more about Rome's relative stability and created the imperial image of the Roman empire more than any other period. For all of Augustus's incredible statesmanship, his own dynasty was a dysfunctional mess that was just kind of left to experiment with their powers as the 'emperor', and ended in the bloody Year of the Four Emperors in 68-69 AD. The succeeding Flavians made great strides to reconstruct the state after this interregnum (with Domitian in particular overseeing a great fiscal policy) and then the Nerva-Antonines built upon it with the alimenta welfare system (Nerva-Trajan), wealth flowing in from Dacia (Trajan), consolidation and mass building projects (Hadrian), and then a nice spell of peace (Antoninus Pius) before the cracks began to show under Marcus Aurelius. Was it a 'peaceful' era in the sense that it was void of war or natural disasters? No. But was it, on the whole, a period of relative peace and stability compared to what came before (Late Republican civil wars) and after (3rd century crisis)? Arguably yes.

[@Giantcrabz]

Not to mention Augustus started his "peaceful" reign with proscriptions

[@onemoreminute0543]

@@Giantcrabz TBF people usually date the start of the Pax Romana under Augustus as beginning in 27 BC when he actually took the titles of Augustus and Princeps. He was definitely a more bloody warlord before that point with the proscriptions than afterwards, relatively speaking (which tied into his post 27 BC propaganda campaign where he presented himself as the man who brought peace to the Republic and saved it)

[@conrad4852]

@@onemoreminute0543 Glad to find a fellow appreciator of Domitian! Once we no longer take elite sources as entirely truthful or representative of the views of the whole Empire and we start to look at material culture, Domitian certainly looks ok if you're common Roman.

[@onemoreminute0543]

​@@conrad4852I'd actually argue that, with the exception of the Dacian war, he was pretty great! One of the few emperors to fix the issue of inflation and prove a competent micromanager. The more I've studied Roman history, the more interesting I find some of the emperors once you read between the lines of the senatorial histories written about them. You end up realising that some of the 'tyrants' (Domitian and Gallienus) are actually ahead of the curb and many of the 'madmen' (Caligula) were actually evil geniuses.

[@nowhereman6019]

Absolutely fantastic video. I very rarely see history KZbinrs who are legitimately critical of Rome and don't just repeat glorifying propaganda.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you! I appreciate that so much

[@conrad4852]

Unfortunately this video is nothing more than propaganda, it engages in the selective use of sources written by the ultra elites rather than looking at the immense material information that we have about the actual lives of the masses of people across the Empire. We have enough archaeological evidence to answer the question "Was the Pax Romana real for the masses rather than just the elites?" and the answer is unquestionably yes.

[@arturleperoke3205]

though I love Roman history the critique is absolutly based .. this channel ... criminally underestimated and unknown!

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks! Appreciate the comment not just for your kind words but because every little show of support is a boost for the algorithm

[@NathanHearn-ms7vv]

Totally agree with all of this. One possible addition to your larger point - Rome conquered certain territories such as Gaul, Britain and Dacia for remarkably short term and personal reputation-building rationales and these territories ended up being security nightmares later on when the empire went into decline. Each of those territories were difficult if not impossible to defend and the resources and manpower spent trying to hold onto them impoverished and destabilized the rest of the empire.

[@brandonquezada9523]

I’d agree with Dacia and certainly Britannia, but Gaul was such a big area which was heavily romanised and didn’t see much combat after the time of Augustus until the 3rd century. Do you mean the Germanic provinces on the Rhine?

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks! I want to come back to the empire's "border" system and fortifications at a later date to discuss just how difficult it was to hold the territory and keep it all secure.

[@runajain5773]

​@@tribunateSPQRyeah they conquer how much maintain that territory how peaceful or cruel rule as we know when empire conquer newly region only few region develop for beneficial for state whereas the whole region is bad

[@brebuoch]

They held those areas for centuries. I think there is a fair bit of overcorrection in this comment section... "The Pax Romana was anything but 'pax', you know", and that is used as a jumping board to overcorrect everything else conventionally said about Roman realms. It's just a silly habit of both amateur and real historians.

[@frederickstabell3796]

I cannot describe how refreshing it is to find a historical content creator like you that is more than happy to call people out on their pseudo-historical fascistic bullshit. So much of the remembrance of Roman history is dominated by clowns. Subscribed, and eager for more!

[@Magplar]

this was a well needed video as I feel that virtually all content discussing pax romana seem to completely buy into it. your videos are always more grounded and challenge us to think differently than what the propaganda filled history books tell us. i say this as a diehard lover of rome. thank you for putting out such great content!

[@gregorylittle1461]

A succinct but in-depth treatment of a complex topic. Great job!

[@tribunateSPQR]

Much appreciated- there’s so much to cover here as it relates to Roman religion and political ideology that we’re going to return to the topic later.

[@Matheus_Oliveira25]

This one goes well with the caeser mass murder video. Great content as always!

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks - it's a reminder that just as the roman view of liberty was freedom to do as one pleased to anyone, peace was only viewed as the stability and security of the Roman community itself - regardless of what was happening abroad

[@patrickglenn4038]

Good to hear history based on rational scepticism rather than myth and power worship.😮

[@tribunateSPQR]

thank you!

[@conrad4852]

Sadly, that is NOT what is being done here. It's irrational skepticism.

[@Colddirector]

Yeah, I love Roman history, but I find the blind reverence of Rome you see everywhere so embarrassing, it makes me not want to talk about it.

[@tribunateSPQR]

@@Colddirector This is my approach as well - I find Rome endlessly intriguing but too much history at the popular level flattens contradictions within the society and equates their power and success with an intrinsic right to rule. I want to look at Romans not just as how they saw themselves but as how they would have been perceived by other societies

[@conrad4852]

@@tribunateSPQR Yes, Rome IS endlessly intriguing & we absolutely should avoid ignoring "equat[ing] their power and success with an intrinsic right to rule" but that is NOT what you have done here in this video. We should neither grovel at the feet of Augustus & Trajan nor ignore the great achievements of the Empire. In this video you are moving from one extreme to another & I hope you self-correct.

[@Warmaker01]

Nice going into what "Pax" and "Pacify" were. Empires are made and maintained by force of arms. Look throughout history, anywhere. They're not made by being so diplomatically savvy that one's neighbors were so ecstatic that they wanted to join and become part of something larger. There's also the term *"Wars of Empire"* works with this whole thing. Often, once someone gets big enough, diplomacy starts taking more of a back seat and it becomes easier to use violence or the threat of violence to get one's way. The Romans weren't the only ones like this and they definitely are not the last.

[@MarceloKuroi]

Your video-essay about crucifixion was suggested to me and I love it. This video-essay made me a subscriber.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you for the kind feedback- very glad you have enjoyed our work so far

[@krazygangster2968]

Just curious cause I'm into words. How long did the script take?

[@guglielmoa.p.6764]

In a private school in Brazil, when we studied the pax romana it were presented as a period of few civil wars. The books presented this period as a pacification by wars in the frontiers and by a brutal law within the empire.

[@ldamoff]

A counterpoint to all of this would be going back to a comment on a recent video; perhaps our critique of the peace of Rome in this era is only possible because we are more individualistic. Yes, life might have been precarious for the majority of individuals, but the stability of the society itself was not. One bad harvest might cause my family to starve, but it would not cause the social order I am a part of to collapse. My concern for individual justice and equity is predicated on a level of communal stability which I am conditioned to consider to be the baseline that is sometimes deviated from in times of crisis. But for those in the ancient world (and for much of the modern as well) this sort of stability was an aberration. The main trouble I have with the idea of the Pax Romana is how the era is viewed nostalgically, as if it would be desirable to return to such a social or political reality. This is, to my mind, both naive and ridiculous. But the phrase itself still has utility, though perhaps that is because to me it implies that the state of affairs is not unalloyed or unqualified peace but peace as per the Roman usage (i.e. a stability built on violent conquest and subjugation). To my mind the notion of a "Roman Peace" has somewhat sinister undertones. But that might just be a me thing.

[@tribunateSPQR]

This is a good point, and I don't take issue with the assertion that Roman society as a whole was stronger and more stable during this period than any other. However (and this feeds into your second point) we wanted to drive home that this peace was essentially bought on credit through the unsustainable looting of provinces and exploitation of slaves. Augustus stabilized the empire but didn't address the long term rot at its core. I fully agree that Pax Romana has a threatening undertone to it, its hard not to read it in any other way than the willingness of an empire to make deserts so it can claim peace.

[@onceamusician5408]

It had never occurred to me in all these years as a history buff to even consider the question as to whether there really was a roman peace. But to merely see the question raised and the answer is self evident. of course not ALL empires are evil, being plunder murder and rapine. Thanks for raising a question i had never considered

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks! Glad you found it thought provoking, that's the goal here - to challenge assumptions about the ancient world and to help people understand the exploitation inherent in ancient societies by invoking modern parallels

[@conrad4852]

@@tribunateSPQR This is indeed a noble goal. However, ignoring the truth while seeking a noble goal is neither useful toward said goal nor admirable. The case for the Pax Romana cannot be made by looking at elite sources only--whose sources can be quite biased--but by looking at the enormous wealth of material culture that archaeologists have uncovered which reveal that that Pax Romana oversaw a huge population increase of the areas within the Roman Empire with higher life-expectancy & all around better material conditions of life compared before & after it.

[@ParkerRobertson-t8m]

@@conrad4852if we’re going to define peace by stability in an empire’s interior, then the US hasn’t fought a war since 1865

[@conrad4852]

@@ParkerRobertson-t8m to be clear, by "within the Empire" I am not talking about the city of Rome alone or even the province of Italy alone, I am talking about southern France & central Turkey as well Greece & Morocco. I actually think your point leads to an interesting one. How many wars has the US had in the 20th century? By Congressional declarations of war, only two. By United Nations General Assembly & United Nations Security Council sanctioned use of military force, three (none of which are identical to the two Congressional declarations of war). How we define war & how we define peace are important and contested. That said, I definitely think we should think about the contrast in material terms rather than legal terms, but by any analytically useful materialist definition of peace vs war, the Pax Romana was a real phenomenon across the Imperium that meaningfully contrasts with time periods in these regions of Europe, North Africa, & western Asia before & after it as well other regions of the world at the same time.

[@StanGB]

Really great stuff - loved the references to Orwell

[@tribunateSPQR]

thanks!

[@giuseppecalegari3852]

L'evento più importante di tutta la Civiltà Romana si svolse proprio durante gli anni della Pax Romana di Augusto. In una Provincia lontana da Roma, in un piccolo villaggio, una sconosciuta ragazza di 16 anni dà alla luce un bambino. La fanciulla si chiamava Maria.

[@JuanRamos-yw6me]

Just found this channel and I can't stop binge watching. Love the critical perspective you bring to this fascinating period, don't ever stop posting these!!

[@heck3143]

Perfectly captured my vibe on this channel. I've never seen so much discourse on Rome in this vital critical lens. The Romantic bias in the classics is withering away and I can't wait to see how that goes.

[@130lukas]

Tickles me to see the points mentioned at 18:00 play out live in the comments

[@ParkerRobertson-t8m]

Ikr…the dude who’s been commenting for weeks really thinks he’s cooking

[@Mrbluefire95]

I’ve never considered the Pax Romana as an objective statement of peace for all. To me it’s always seemed as a statement of Roman prosperity, and naturally, this prosperity would be for those who already had the riches. That has not changed in 2000 years.

[@teal_m_101]

Augustus didn't close the doors to the Temple of Janus because Rome was at peace, he closed the doors because Janus was shouting "you're a bloody liar and you know it, mate!"

[@conrad4852]

In the entire history of the Republic pre-Augustus, the doors were closed for one year. No joke. The idea that the Principate from the ascension of Augustus to the ascension of Marcus Aurelius didn’t have big moments of relative peace is rather false. This video is profoundly dishonest. (That said, your joke here is great!)

[@ignotaskatkus7685]

I have issues with this video. Yes, it wasnt some age when humanity was at its peak(such age never existed) but it is true that compered to other time periods, it was actually suprisingly peaceful and tranquil. In the 1st century, Rome did fight wars, but most of them were on the fringes of empire, in Germania, Britania or Parthia. Regions such as Italy, Spain, N. Africa(Tunis), Grerce or Egypt experienced unpressidented levels of peace and prosperity, unlike in previous centuries where they were rocked by various wars, raids, devastations and invasions. This relative stability allowed heartlands of the empire to prosper, with life standarts being shown to be much better than in previous centuries and population heavily increasing in these areas.

[@WorthlessWinner]

It's not just the heartland that prospered, even places like Britain benefited from the expanded trade network they were part of. The collapse of Rome was devastating and caused populations to collapse (and also led to a massive rise in violence as the barbarian invasions show).

[@joshuab2926]

You should probably listen to the video again.

[@WorthlessWinner]

@@joshuab2926 - you should probably read other sources on the topic and not just believe what one youtuber says

[@joshuab2926]

@@WorthlessWinner then please do point me towards the sources that make the claim that the peasant farmers, slaves, and non-citizens that made up a sizeable portion of the Roman population had improvement in their quality of life.

[@WorthlessWinner]

@@joshuab2926 - basically any economic history of the period will show this. "The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization" is a good source. The massive decline in living standards that the end of the pax romana caused, is evidence that the pax improved living standards.

[@someshtbaglcpl5455]

I just want to say that, as someone who occupies something akin to the exact opposite of your stated politics, I greatly appreciate your channel for that exact reason. The insight into the mind of someone so radically different from myself, through the medium of a topic I’ve had a lifelong passion for, really is helpful in understanding the “other side”.

[@WissHH-]

Wisedom

[@oreodepup]

If Rome did not crawl, America would have never ran. The fundamentals of our republic come from Roman institutions. We, however, have enacted their Ideal that all men should participate in civic duties. Right now if you are in America or in most democratic nations you have every right to engage with your government, run for office, have fair represented, and can freely petition for change. If we didn’t have ancient people questioning their social hierarchies we would have never reached a time now where merit reigns supreme.

[@oreodepup]

That being said Rome was far from the ideal. It is clear however that they slowly developed institutions which laid the groundwork for modernity

[@uwu_smeg]

appreciate seeing this sentiment whenever i see it. I ended up largely left-wing after heavily subscribing to right-wing and alt-right points for a large part of my life, and nothing is more infuriating than seeing someone else (wherever they lay on the political compass) completely refuse to listen to anyone they deem to be on "the other side". could go on and on about how damaging and stupid i think this practice of glorifying political orthodoxy is, but that's not what this comment is about. thank you for restoring a little bit of my faith in humanity, hope you have a good day

[@someshtbaglcpl5455]

@uwu_smeg Maybe that’ll be the end of my journey as well, time will tell. I’m pretty much where you once were, which is to say heavily entrenched in right wing politics, but I’m beginning to be burned out by how much they remind me of the leftists we’re supposedly against, like photo negatives of each other. We identify the same problems, ascribe different causes to those problems, and go about wishing to solve them in different ways, but the thought processes and solutions behind them are in direct opposition. It’s infinitely frustrating. Any attempt to point this out to either side gets you mocked and derided in the most smug and condescending ways possible.

[@paden1865able]

Just one thing; the word "Celtic" in terms of the British people is pronounced with a hard "K", as in the word "kick". Some people may find it trivial but it's jarring to hear it mispronounced in a historical narrative.

[@TheNetherlandDwarf]

I'm very late to this channel, but I just want to say thank you, it's very informative and thought provoking. I appreciate a focus on deconstructing historical narratives, if not by focusing on the working classes and othered cultures, at least trying to highlight the seeming contradictions that traditional frameworks focused on and by aristocratic sources thrive in.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you - the goal here is to inform but also to provide an opportunity for reevaluation of the sources in line with their biases. That clearly doesn't mean an outright rejection but simply that a more comprehensive approach is required. You're also not that late - we've been at this for just about 2 years now but still feel that we're only just now getting started.

[@gustavchambert7072]

The romans were cool. They had really impressive architecture, infrastructure, organisation and logistics. But we also have to remember that on the whole, they were also absolute MONSTERS when it came to warfare, politics, public order, broader social relations and so on.

[@themetroidprime]

This video, I feel, argues against a strawman of the concept of Paf Romana, and assert straight out falsehoods, for example regarding the standard of loving of the Italian subsistence farmers.

[@CrazyJaketheTerrible]

Wasn't most judicial administration left in local hands with the exception of Roman citizens? I'm not sure brutal Roman justice applies until citizenship was extended across the empire - prior to that most people in the empire were handled with local justice, and ironically one of the perks of Roman citizenship was the ability to call upon Roman juris prudence. Or maybe I'm misremembering. I welcome clarification.

[@juliuswilliams4447]

Thanks!

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks so much!! All the extra support is super appreciated

[@Ancient__Wisdom]

Really great, thought provoking stuff

[@conrad4852]

"Trying to reconstruct population levels in the ancient world is a crude business. ... Even in recent times, credible voices have spoken in favor of peak numbers for the Roman imperial population ranging from ca. 44 million to 100 million. Where there is broad agreement is around the fact that the populations within the empire grew in the 150 years after the death of Augustus (AD 14) and reached their maximal extent on the cusp of the Antonine Plague. (pg 45) Han China is in many ways an appropriate comparandum [to the Roman Empire], but even its population seems never to have matched the Roman imperial apex of ~75 million (in the east, that would wait for the full development of the rice economies and the construction of the great canal systems). There is a more telling contrast. A Chinese writer of the midsecond century lamented the press of peoples in core regions of the eastern empire. “In the central provinces and inner commanderies, cultivated land fills the borders to bursting and one cannot be alone. The population is in the millions and the land is completely used. People are numerous and land scarce.” In the Roman context, such laments are notable for their absence. In the Roman Empire, population growth appears to have been accomplished without sending society spiraling downward in a cycle of diminishing returns. Contemporaries [during the Pax Romana] sang the song of prosperity, not the dirge of grinding impoverishment. For what it is worth (which may well be limited), the articulate classes of the Roman Empire were more preoccupied by general decadence than destabilizing squalor. Maybe our urbane elite was totally insensible to the daily life of the poor. But, it is harder to stare past famine, and we ought to be struck by the broad absence of true subsistence crisis in the Roman world. Food shortages were endemic in the Mediterranean, thanks to its naturally fickle ecology. Unlike the later middle ages, when violent spasms of acute hunger wracked the population, the Romans seem not to have been haunted by the threat of outright mass starvation. The absence of evidence is never probative, but it is suggestive. More important are the various indices reflecting high levels of production, consumption, and well-being in the Roman Empire. We lack proper economic statistics such as those gathered by modern states. So historians in search of Roman growth have often turned to archaeological proxies of economic performance. Shipwrecks, iron smelting, housing stock, public buildings, and even fish salting operations have all been cited as tracers of Roman productivity. They do in sum suggest robust economic performance in the late republic and high empire. And the broad evidence for meat consumption, implied from tens of thousands of sheep, pig, and cow bones, is difficult to square with any picture of a society emaciated because the population had badly overrun its resource base. It is telling that archaeologists are usually the biggest believers in Roman economic development. Still, it can be objected that these indices are crude and less than conclusive, particularly if we are interested in per capita measures. How can we be sure that the archaeological evidence for more stuff is not merely the effect of having more people? Perhaps the most telling answer can be retrieved from the abundant scraps of papyrus preserved from Roman Egypt. The arid climate of the Nile Valley means that, from this province alone, we chance to possess an extraordinary number of public and private documents. These, in turn, afford us the only chronologically resolved series of prices, wages, and rents from the Roman world. Precisely because Egypt was a region subject to net extraction by the imperial center, we can be certain that any patterns we observe are not due to plunder or political rents. The papyri suggest that, far from succumbing to diminishing returns on a massive scale, the Roman economy more than succeeded in absorbing population expansion, to achieve real growth on a per capita basis. Wage growth for truly unskilled laborers-diggers, donkey drivers, dung haulers-outpaced slowly rising prices and rents, right down to the advent of the Antonine Plague. The copious monumental ruins of the Roman Empire’s many cities might also be considered an index of the real wealth of the societies under Roman rule. The extent and nature of ancient urbanism has been the object of spirited disagreement among modern historians. But the conclusion seems increasingly irresistible, that the Roman Empire fostered a truly exceptional level of urbanization. The empire was home to a galaxy of cities-over one thousand of them. At the top, the population of Rome probably surpassed one million residents. Its scale was artificially inflated by the political entitlements of ruling an empire, but only partly. It was also the nexus of the entire economy, a hub of useful activity. Moreover, the urban hierarchy was not overly top-heavy. Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, and other metropoleis were surely several hundred thousand each. (pg 47-49) .... "[I]t does no discredit to the Romans to admit they had not transcended the basic mechanics of premodern economies. They were, simultaneously, precociously advanced and thoroughly preindustrial. We should not envision premodern economic development as a flat line of bleak subsistence until quickening growth from the Industrial Revolution onward. Rather, the experience of civilization has been one of consequential waves of rise and fall, consolidation and dissolution, with repercussions stretching far beyond a tiny elite squeezing rents from an underclass of indistinct peasants whose condition was more or less equally miserable from time immemorial. The Roman Empire was possibly the broadest and most powerful of these waves, prior to the everlifting crests of modernity. (pg 54)" From Kyle Harper, "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, & the End of an Empire

[@mineneuryuu3623]

I am not particularly interested in the history of rome. But this channel, the intro music, the narration, the images used and above all the political analysis is absolutely magnificent. Thank you so much.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you - this is one of the nicest comments we've ever received! It means so much to hear this from someone who isn't super interested in history and I'm glad the narration works because even now I still second guess it (I haven't yet built up a tolerance to the natural aversion to hearing the sound of my voice)

[@historiansayori2089]

I didn’t actually think about Jesus being crucified in the middle of the ‘Pax Romana’ period; doesn’t that make Christian historians describing this period so favorably blasphemy/heresy/some other religious term I’m unaware of? Imperialism truly has deeper roots than expected

[@kevinmccabe3984]

They tend to just blame it on the Jews and portray the Romans as ignorantly trying to placate their Jewish subjects

[@bobort2085]

No? It doesn't?? Lmao?? Christ's life, death, and resurrection are central to the Christian theology, without the DEATH, there would be no Christianity? If was after Christ's death, (during the pax and later crisis mind) that Christianity expanded. Please stop. For the love of God please stop.

[@gregorylittle1461]

Thanks

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you!!!

[@matthewvicendese1896]

The Pax Romana is just the same western chauvinism and indifference to life outside the imperial core that was central to the British Empire and the US empire.

[@conrad4852]

If your analogy is correct, then you have just made the most powerful argument in favor of the Pax Americana that I have ever encountered. This video is, quite frankly, TERRIBLE historical analysis. Despite a purported concern about the masses rather than merely the elites, there is only analysis of the writings of the elites rather than a look the HUGE wealth of material evidence that we have for the Pax Romana being a reality for the masses of the empire. If the Pax Romana really is equivalent to reality of the power & chauvinism of the contemporary west, then I must confess that I have severely misunderstood & undervalued contemporary western chauvinism & the reach of the US empire.

[@bobort2085]

Okay, but literally in this video the man talks about how defence of ancient men and ideals is just informed by modern ideology. This is true of those reactionaries who uncritically and esthetically adore Rome. But is this comment not evidence of the fact that a condemnation of ancient polities, cultures and ethics is not also informed by modern ideologies and biases? This is completely anachronistic; the Roman people nor their elites had the understanding of the economic or social forces that we have today that support the empires you mention.

[@oldsnake1551]

The Roman Empire had forms of public programs and safety nets. Cities that faced natural disasters were often exempted from taxes, received monetary assistance from the empire, and then there was the grain dole. Looking at the sophistication of the era, I really don't think most Romans were one bad harvest away from starvation. It'd just be too expensive to lose that many people, especially when other parts of the state may have been doing well at the same time. I think there are good odds that there may have been a form of the grain dole or social safety nets for other parts of the empire when they were doing more poorly than the rest of it too.

[@nebojsag.5871]

I know for a fact emperors like Vespasian made it customary to wave taxes in any areas beset by natural disasters. I don't know if they sent aid though.

[@prs_81]

+In this era slaves attained more rights and the bustling and protected trade routs resulted in a general enrichment and prosperity of the polity

[@fish5671]

@@prs_81Slaves are still slaves wether with some new fancy half-liberties or not

[@lestergreen2828]

I’m reading Adrian goldsworthy’s Augustus right now, he says Augustus refusing Crassus grandson a triumph is probably a myth. The reason why Crassus grandson wasn’t mentioned again in the sources was probably just because he wasn’t relevant. There’s plenty of other figures that are only mentioned once

[@avalokitesvara4092]

If we're talking about a period of paradise on earth, then no. If you're talking about an egalitarian society, then no either (but here it's your definition that's at fault: if the Nazis had won the war, exterminated everyone they wanted and established their dominion, we'd rightly be talking about peace. Peace is the absence of conflict, not the absence of domination). But if we're talking about a notably more prosperous and peaceful period, then certainly.

[@elgatto3133]

They would have killed untold millions more people, in what way is such a definition of peace meaningful

[@clayashford9334]

Great video. It is similar to the narrative that the long 19th century was a peaceful time, when Europeans powers were in near constant colonial wars. Not to mention the several European wars in the period. It was relatively more peaceful in Europe specifically than during the Napoleonic or world wars, but not compared to the modern day, even with modern conflicts. How could the 19th century be an era of peace if it is the era of colonialism, the American civil war, and the Taiping rebellion (and other internal conflicts in China).

[@tribunateSPQR]

Oh man this is a great point! I feel like a complete idiot now for not referencing this idea as it is such a great parallel

[@willriley994]

Because in the 19th century, there wasn't any "great power war." War is a byproduct of humanity. All civilizations and peoples have it. Those that are vilified for empire were just smarter and luckier than everyone else. Not more violent

[@kurtringwalt3371]

Great discussion, first video ive seen of yours. Subbed

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you and welcome aboard!

[@swagatochatterjee7104]

What a great lecture on Roman Imperialism and Colonialism and how these values through Renaissance and Enlightenment gave us European Imperialism and Colonialism. Bravo! Subbed!

[@libertatemadvocatus1797]

The thing is that I think most people have are hard time accepting how complex and multifaceted empires truly are. Was Rome a genocidal, authoritarian, expansionist power fueled by greed and lust for conquest that often oppressed the people living under it or was it a comparatively enlightened and advanced society that spread literacy, culture, and economic growth across its territory? Yes. I think it's foolish to both dismiss the Roman achievements and Roman atrocities. Also, I think it's easier to accept the cruelty of the Romans because Ancient world was so cruel to begin with. The Romans were hardly more vicious than most civilizations of the time period; if you're looking for a clear "good guy" from early civilizations until maybe the High Middle Ages; you're not going to find many. Hell, it's hard to find any today. And, yes, you can say what I'm saying is apologia (which, to an extent, it is), but you still have to look at people as products of their place and time instead of holding them to hypothetical perfection.

[@genovayork2468]

What are the many good guys that appear in the High Middle Ages?

[@bobort2085]

​@@genovayork2468ah man so many potential funny options. Vlad the Impaler.

[@genovayork2468]

@bobort2085 Vlad III was in the late Late Middle Ages or early Modern Era, learn history.

[@bobort2085]

@genovayork2468 i stfg stfu. Nobody actually fucking cares. It's a youtube comment, not my goddamned research paper. I hope you're kidding. Also, fine then. William the Conquerer.

[@BP-rg8xp]

Love the detail and grounded approach in facts, while sharply critiquing the deep motivations, agenda, and contradictions of the ruling political elites, insidiously undoing the Republic and Empire of the Romans. This channel is great in exploring the historical minutiae of Roman history while clarifying the larger overarching themes of this civilization. Really humanizes the Romans without putting them on a pedestal or caricaturing in a two-dimensional manner. Loving this channel ❤️

[@ChefSpinney]

Sounds a lot like America right now: We haven't been at 'war' since 1945, but have been in a near constant state of conflict to our present day. I look forward to the publishing of "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire". Granted, I'll be long dead by then, but it's still a small comfort.

[@andezong9565]

JFC what a nightmare if our country falls

[@bobort2085]

This impression you have? Its the one the creator of the video wanted you to leave with i reckon. This video is created as a way to critize modern politics through the medium of ancient history. The parallels are constructed and amplified.

[@bobort2085]

​@@andezong9565fr. But you know, it's en vogue I guess. If only we could compare ourselves to rome in a positive way.

[@ChefSpinney]

@@bobort2085 Then what about Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Desert Storm, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq (again)? Tell me how many years since 1945 the US hasn't had troops in combat overseas. Or does that not count? We have BRICS nations getting ready to drop the Dollar as inflation crushes living standards that have been on a consistent decline for decades. It's not a 1-1 comparison, but it's not constructed or amplified, either.

[@FrankLucas-pw5hs]

​@@ChefSpinneyNone of them were wars that threatened 98% of Americans - only their aggressive military. The context of which we are talking should be clear.

[@adamesd3699]

Really really good video. There are several similarities between the Pax Romana and the Pax Americana: Both involve extreme violence against people on the periphery of the empire, and both were used by corrupt politicians and oligarchs as routes to wealth and power. Also, while both empires sometimes enriched themselves through loot and the spoils of war, Rome did bankrupt itself through wars, stupid social programs, currency debasement to pay for all this, and frequent high levels of corruption. And America looks to be following a similar path.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks - I think the chief similarity is the limited definition of "peace" that excludes all those who are subject to violence in order to maintain the prosperity of the imperial core. As Rome learned (and we shall someday) this simply isn't sustainable.

[@emilianohermosilla3996]

Always loved the Roman Empire! The ways that I always looked at it is that they were great FOR their time, and example to follow then and a pillar of our civilization (reminds me of the life of Brian joke “what have the Romans ever done for us!?”😆😅), but we must accept our advances from them as well as what they gave us, idealizing them blindly would be stupid on our part. I have the same feelings towards the British empire, as well

[@michaelweir9666]

The Romans were based about one thing in their narrative history; anything that is no longer useful them must be discarded for the sake of survival, no matter how sacred. If we wish to be true Romans, then we should discard everything about them that is not useful to us.

[@mottmatt7844]

Your view of the pax romana as a cope for becoming less successful at war reminds of the popular myth of peaceful Habsburg expansion through marriages. It was a narrative that mainly came to play once the Habsburgs stopped being successful at expansion.

[@bigbillyb0b]

I like your videos but I don’t necessarily agree with this one. Especially in hindsight, Rome’s rule during the Pax Romana lead to many benefits even if it came with additional hardships at the time. These areas enjoyed new and very long lasting benefits in infrastructure, legal systems, and trade. Similar to the way Napoleon ended serfdom in many areas of Europe. It may have hurt at the time, but was beneficial in the end. Also, I don’t agree with the depiction of Jesus “running afoul of Roman administrators.” Pontius Pilate made it very clear that it was Jewish leaders who wanted Jesus killed, not himself or Rome.

[@Rafael_Mena_Ill]

Why in gods name would a Roman Governor give the slightest damn about what jewish officials wanted?

[@bigbillyb0b]

@@Rafael_Mena_Ill Bc that's how Rome governed.

[@sasi5841]

Serfdom pretty much ended in most of europe before napoleon. The only parts that had serfdom in the 1800s (russia and ottoman empire) were largely unaffected by napoleonic wars.

[@bigbillyb0b]

@@sasi5841 Serfdom existed in Northern Italy and Germany. And the Warsaw Duchy's constitution abolished it.

[@bobort2085]

​@@Rafael_Mena_Illthis shows a complete ignorance toward Roman history, and that you are viewing this through a one dimensional looking glass on imperialism; They were oppressors, why would they care?? Because the relative compliance/collaboration of the native populace was essential in ensuring peace?

[@Ridcally]

As a Ukrainian, Pax Romana sounds painfully similar to the 'русский мир.'

[@HazyFelix]

I think it is clear what pax romana when compared with pax mongolica,britannica and americana. Was there peace? Relatively, mostly in Europe was there prosperity? Not really, not exceptionally so Did commerce flourish?That is probably the strongest definition, since a unified political entity controlling trade is what people mean by Pax mongolica, for example, and American might is and British might was maintained as the upholders of trade guarded by the respected county's fleet

[@Acalarakta]

The ending!!! That was awesome. ❤‍🔥

[@jpotter2086]

Asserting preferred narratives is a temptation nearly all human groups fall into. That said, I believe the "peace" was from a unilateral perspective. What mattered was stability and being unthreatened. Peace for me (i.e., our ruling /propertied class), at the expense of thee (EVERYONE else, inside and outisde the ruled domains).

[@stingyblue8189]

I’d like it if you’d compare and contrast the Roman Republic and the American Republic to see how similar and how different they are to each other.

[@mra4521]

“And pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

[@conrad4852]

Sadly, this indeed the attitude of this video. Pay no attention to material reality, only pay attention to the curtain of elite writings rather than what is behind the curtain which we can & indeed have ascertained via decades & decades of archaeology. We can indeed look behind that curtain and historians have... but this video has chosen to look at the curtain only.

[@elgatto3133]

Here's a question: How much did provincials actually benefit from the vaunted Roman roads? Were they truly facilitating bilateral trade, or were they an equivalent to 20th century railroads in Africa. Were they only truly meant to bring efficiency to resource extraction from the provinces?

[@conrad4852]

Short answer: A LOT. Whether we look at life expectancy or general well being.

[@kden9772]

I think to conclusively say there was no Pax Romana you would have to say that life for the average Plebian did not get better at all from the period of the Ceasarian civil wars to Marcus Aurelius. I don’t know if it did or didn’t

[@henryhankin9532]

Enjoyed thorughly, may the mighty KZbin algorithm shine down upon you 😊

[@m.streicher8286]

Love the critical evaluation of history and the way historians talk about history

[@matthewvicendese1896]

Are you talking about 21st century USA?

[@tribunateSPQR]

could very well be

[@bobort2085]

​@@tribunateSPQRthen you admit that this video pulling down the pax Romana draws on modern ideology and bias?

[@GarfieldRex]

Now I feel I've been lied for a while xd but is not that way. Many thanks for this! Clarifying this concept that was taken as granted

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank for the positive feedback, it means a lot to us

[@f1nalgambit381]

Awesome video!

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks! Really glad to see the positive reaction

[@MargeErin]

2 generations heard the term "police action" as a euphemism for war, absolving Congress of responsibility for such wars.

[@SeanHH1986]

i never believed in the pax romana ever since i wrote my thesis in college on the teutoberg forest when i was younger. its almost like "duh" level to me, but people go hard about defending the pax romana lol.

[@ElliotCarson]

some great points but equally how was ancient society meant to be ran? When your neighbours are equally as barbarous and murderous. If you put any Germanic tribe in the position of the Romans I somehow doubt they would’ve been ‘better’ so to speak. Yes Rome was brutal but at the same time Rome had a complex legal system unparalleled anywhere in the known world and was possibly the only place you had a ‘fair’ chance. I think to put modern morale parameters on an ancient empire is somewhat difficult. Yes there are objective atrocities but these same atrocities were committed everywhere. I really highly doubt any other society at the time would’ve grown in a better manner. I mean look at the various ancient chinese dynasty’s, atrocity upon atrocity. Nevertheless still thoroughly enjoyed the video 😁

[@elagabalusrex390]

The Egyptians kept to themselves, for the most part, throughout their long history. But they still had many internal traditions and ways of running their society that we would no doubt look sideways at today.

[@KGTiberius]

Great to hear more perspective. The more perspectives, the closer to true.

[@MChagall]

Our current time is also called the long peace (since world war two) even though there are still many conflicts going on

[@ffff4837]

This was really well said! Good job!!! ✌️💜

[@harrylipscomb6343]

Great video. I think a video which has something to say and not just facts to state is something properly special. While I mostly agree with this after watching the video I think that while this was a blood-soaked era that harmed Rome and it's people relatively speaking it appears golden compared to some other times before and after.

[@jpmuaddib5758]

My new favorite channel

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you!!!

[@Cyclonus12]

One thing is true, for better or worse... broad, overarching tyranny can clamp down on smaller internecine conflicts. As we see with the violence that erupted between factions in Iraq or Yugoslavia, for example, when the ruling tyrant was deposed. Heck, this is even reflected in fiction, with some books and games in the Star Wars universe that show how wars between nearby planets were quashed when the Emperor took over (and he took credit, declaring that there was now "peace"), but those conflicts flared right back up after the galactic empire fell.

[@Cyclonus12]

A lot of later ideas about the "Pax Romana" are very much influenced by 18th and 19th century scholarship. Really though, it certainly can't be described as an era of universal peace... it was more like a time in which citizens of the Italian peninsula lived in peace, and in which the Roman way of life (as opposed to just Roman military occupation) spread widely to many areas outside of the traditional Greco-Roman sphere... areas such as Gaul and Hispania.

[@sirbillius]

I’d always heard that it was called that due to the City of Rome itself not being threatened until the civil wars of the 3rd century.

[@enysuntra1347]

Originally, January was the 11th month, March the first one. If January was celebrating transition, then only the transition of days again becoming longer since the winter æquinox.

[@purplepunch4904]

Best video yet imo

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you so much - we hope to continue raising the bar with each video

[@salutic.7544]

Wait I’m not a based tradcath Caesarian protege I’m a lonely incel stuck in a smelly room? Aw man :(

[@rolandrothwell4840]

Highly interesting 🤔 read Tacitus and Suetonius. Thank you for your video so enjoyable 😉

[@irreview]

Great history. New sub

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thanks for the sub!

[@Xaviar_St.Thomas]

Excellent essay … truly excellent.

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you!!

[@joelfortin6634]

So glad to have found a non-fascist channel about rome

[@vintologi]

You redefined "peace" and ignored att the negative consequences from Rome decaying.

[@JadenAShelton]

He redefined peace as actually meaning peace

[@conrad4852]

@@JadenAShelton You are correct! and Also deeply incorrect because he is ignoring the reality of what the empire meant for the masses (yes, he pretends that that is what he cares about, rather than the elites only, but he's only considering elite sources & ignoring the massive, MASSIVE amount of non-elite data we have at this point.)

[@Bubatz_braucher]

What negative consequences? All I see is that the world was finally allowed to push beyond a slavery based production system after Rome fell.

[@NMvapa]

Ignoring the issue of aristocratic bias, what is the reason we should judge the Pax Romana by the way it treated non-citizens? And I don't mean it as a question of morality. Simply, considering they actively built a system to distinguish between Romans and their subjects, the goal never was to improve the life of the subjects, only the Romans. Why do we judge by standards they never set to achieve? Or maybe I am misinformed, and they had ambitions to improve overall quality of life?

[@Roman-Pregolin]

M. Hudson's Book forgive them their debts goes into this. Elites so exploitative region around Rome was depopulated as people fled predatory, expropriative lending

[@tribunateSPQR]

That sounds like a book I need to read - thanks for the recommendation!

[@chr0matic556]

great job :)

[@tribunateSPQR]

Thank you!

[@WestCoast-sy7fq]

The act of conquest is in itself purifying in that it snuffs out old ways that no longer work. Just as Rome conquered, it was subsequently conquered by unforgiving and brutal tribes.