Aurelian became Emperor in 270 and immediatly faced an invasion of Italy by the Juthungi. After succesfully driving the Germans off, Aurelian turned his attention to building a new wall circuit around Rome to protect the capital in the future.
images from wikipedia
Woohoo, more THOR! Thanks for your work, Mike. Much appreciated.
Recognize this weeks' images from looking up Aurelian, knowing my lack of knowledge on the man. Since most of what I know about ancient Rome I learned from you (and lots of geography/countries from 'Europa Universalis: Rome' :P ), I used to have Marcus Aurelius and Aurelian conflated into one vague figure untill you reached the Good Emperors.
":(" for school mainly going "Here's a map of some greek colonies and a couple of Important Events, then Rome rose to own all of this, now let's study why Rome fell!" then moving on to more recent history after discussing migrating peoples. At least that's how I remember it, thanks for unclouding this vast era of the western world.
Posted by: Mainframe | November 29, 2010 at 04:42 AM
Mike,
The commentary on the walls was great. It seems to me that this should be a candidate for the distinction of the End of Antiquity. It's not clear to me whether imperial Rome was a superstate, suprastate or something else altogether, but if this was the end of frontier defense then this must be when Europe started fracturing into feudal entities.
Every mayor for himself...
Posted by: Packherd | November 29, 2010 at 05:36 AM
Hi! I'm a new listener. I thought I would post a comment on this episode (since it is the most recent), but in fact I am plodding along chronologically, so I'm still back with Augustus at the moment. (I opted to begin listening around the time of Julius Caesar, but I may go back to the very beginning later.) Anyway, I just wanted to say "thanks" for all your terrific work- it has really livened up some of my dull nights working graveyard shift. As a night auditor in a resort hotel, I have to keep my eyes and hands busy typing data into accounting spreadsheets, but my ears and my mind can travel back in time, thanks to your fine podcasts. I really appreciate it.
Posted by: Rob Shinnick | November 29, 2010 at 10:33 PM
Pretty Cool, Lucius Domitius Aurelianus and Sanford Koufax in the same podcast. You know, there is a disturbing lack of good baseball podcasts out there. Maybe where you are finished with Rome...
Posted by: TheGoodMan19 | November 30, 2010 at 10:50 AM
Awesome stuff as always! Really appreciate this podcast, thanks. Quick question....re: peak value, if you have time..if not, I'll live. How would you compare the peak value of Koufax and Pedro Martinez?
Posted by: Darryl Sharpe | November 30, 2010 at 01:53 PM
As Packherd mentioned, I also love the commentary on the walls! I always wondered how western europe went from being all cool and classically antique to all lame and middly evil. But it makes perfect sense as a military strategy when you have one superarmy trying to defend all the spread out towns from random barbarians all the time.
Posted by: Robert | November 30, 2010 at 09:46 PM
Very happy to see photos and maps included with a post. I hope more show up in the future. Thanks as always!
Posted by: Andrew | December 03, 2010 at 11:46 AM
Have just caught up with the first 116 episodes. Love it - I feel I've learnt so much.
If anyone is interested, a radio adaptation of I, Claudius is currently being broadcast on the BBC. To listen go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qfz6
(there are only 6 days left to hear episode 1). I think you can listen outside the UK. Derek Jacobi is in it, but this time as Augustus.
Posted by: Jonathan | December 05, 2010 at 12:11 PM
Yay, I'm finally caught up since I started listening from the beginning about a month ago. Unfortunately, this means that I now have to wait for a whole week for the next episode :( Keep up the great work Mike.
Posted by: Toby | December 05, 2010 at 12:21 PM
@ Darryl: you might find interesting this mathematician's take on baseball players' "value":
http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/baseball.html
Note: There are 4 pitchers on the "First Team," one of which is Pedro. Sandy is on Third Team. I saw them both pitch at their peaks. They were the best I *saw* in their respective eras, although Randy Johnson and Bob Gibson were equally dominating.
Posted by: Grandpa D | December 06, 2010 at 11:28 AM
Mike....as a long time listener and a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, I fully appreciate the Sandy Koufax reference. But who would you rather having going for you in Game 7: 2001-2002 Randy Johnson, 1963 Sandy Koufax, or 273-274 Aurelian?
Posted by: Casey | December 12, 2010 at 05:36 PM
Grandpa D..thanks for the reply and link. Sorry I was so late in checking back in and seeing your response, much appreciated!
Posted by: Darryl Sharpe | December 12, 2010 at 09:15 PM
holy that is amazing and that is done with out any modern construction vehicles
Posted by: Jacob | March 15, 2011 at 12:18 AM
I hope to learn more about the Aurelian walls, cus I have a big project for the end of the year. It has to be at least 3-5 pages and I don't have that much info for it. Put I hope I get more by next week cus it's due on Wednesday and I don't have that much.
Posted by: Jazmin | May 03, 2011 at 03:48 PM