November 17, 2025 • 46 mins
Margaret talks with Hazel about how the Romans were stopped from conquering Germania and how a bunch of terrible people are excited about it.
Sources:
https://www.thecollector.com/teutonic-meaning/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ambush-that-changed-history-72636736/?c=y&page=3
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-excavation-will-examine-germanys-legendary-founding-battle-180964235/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sculpted-horse-head-complicates-legendary-roman-conquest-german-barbarians-180970077/
https://archaeology.org/issues/online/collection/germany-roman-town-waldgirmes/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110714211343/http://www.nujournal.com/page/content.detail/id/509454.html
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/havoc-in-the-teutoburger-forest/
https://web.archive.org/web/20140428164647/http://www.livius.org/q/quinctilius/varus.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3567880
https://the-past.com/feature/arminius-hitlers-barbarian-hero/
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_2#88
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that I have
a podcast that comes out twice a week, and I'm
your host, Margaret Kiljoy. And this week my guest. You
might have heard them before. You might have heard them
(00:23):
feeding soup to people or killing random things, like in
a murder hobo way. If you don't know what we're
talking about, that makes no sense. My guest is Hazel Akasha,
better known, of course to people who listen to Coolzone
Media Book Club as Murder Grana Murder Go. How do
you pronounce your character's name?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hi, Margaret, Hi, my name is Hazel, and I the Pathfinder.
Let's play that we're doing. I play Sister murdra Ghana Mr.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Dragana, which is Murdy for short. Yeah, well, welcome Murdy
Hazel Murdy to cool people who Did cool Stuff. So
it's just the two of us. Sophie isn't here, but
Sophie is still our producer Hi Sophie. And our audio
engineer is still Eva Hi Eva hi Eva. And our
(01:12):
theme music was written for us by un woman. And
this week I am going to tell a story that
I am nervous to tell Okay, there's this thing that
happens a lot on the show where I'll get into
a topic and I'll get really excited, I'll get really
far along, and then I'll be like, wait a second,
this guy is kind of a terrible person. But that's
not what happened this time. Instead, the people who are
(01:33):
into this person are terrible people. No, this week, I'm
going to tell you a story with all of the
usual cool people trappings. It's about a group of people
coming together despite their differences, to resist settler colonialism. Hell yeah,
and that's high on the list of my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Mind too.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It's also set in the Late Iron Age, or if
you're being pedantic, past the Late Iron Age, but I
don't really care. I'm going to go Iron until. I
don't actually know when the Iron Age stops. I looked
it up before I started recording, and then I forgot Margaret.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I think it's okay if I don't know when the
irony advents, but you should know.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
In the Iron Agents, a lot of people say that
it ends at like, you know, one ce, because Jesus, yeah, well,
it's kind of like they've just sort of decided. I
think that Jesus is the biggest part of it. And
someone's going to know way more than me about this.
But it's basically, you have like the ages. You have
the like Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and then
whichever one comes before that's probably the Copper Age. And
now everyone knows them opposer about this stuff. I usually
(02:31):
record about the nineteenth century, but that's like prehistory because
it's not as written down, and then you get into
the like right, right, you know, classical era or whatever.
The fuck. I don't know what I'm talking about about
this particular thing. Please, no one take my word for it.
But that's that's funny I say that. But I have
also read this a bunch of times in a bunch
of places. But then I've just been really confused because
people describe things differently. But what people don't describe. Nope,
(02:55):
people describe the character we're going to talk about today
actually very differently from each other. This is a story
I'm nervous to tell because it's about a historical figure
that the right wing fucking loves to me, I think
they take the wrong lesson from this story classic and yes,
I will specifically tie that into Tolkien at the end,
(03:18):
because I think that that explains it all. This week,
we're going to talk about the Battle of Teuteburg Forest,
in which a bunch of warring tribes of barbarians in
Germania teamed up to just absolutely slaughter three legions of
the Roman Army. I'm just describing a massacre, but it's
going to be good. Have you ever heard of the
Battle of Teuteburg Forest? I'm Margaret, I have no idea
(03:38):
what this is, Okay, this is the battle that more
or less ended. I have my entire life avoided becoming
one of those people who knows a bunch about Rome,
to the point where I was avoiding learning cool things
about things that happened while Rome was around, because I've
always hated the like, you know that thing where like
white cys men think about the Roman Empire once a
(04:00):
week or whatever. Mm hmm, because I already had one
of those. It's called the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
But everyone needs something, and mine is the live performance
that Fleetwood Mac did of a Silver Spring. I think
about that once a day.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah. I don't know how to tie that into them
killing fascists, but I actually wouldn't put it past any
of them. I think anyone in Fleetwood Mac they would
have gotten over their personal difficulties to run people through
his swords.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
I think probably. I think that's what the chain is about, right.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I think so it's about how we're still stuck in
the same band, and by band we mean a group
of people who kill fascists together.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
The chain keeps us together, something like that.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
The Battle of two to Burg Forest was the thing
that broke the chain. Eh that Rome was attempting to
put upon the people of Germany. And it's more or
less what ended Roman attempts at conquest in Germany, which
is part of why Germany never became a province of
the Roman Empire. Historians like to argue, I could end
(05:03):
the sentence there. Historians like to argue about how exactly
influential this battle was, because for the most part, you
can actually pretty honestly present this as one of the
single most influential, like most consequential battles in human history.
Because if Germany had gone Roman, German would be a
(05:25):
Romance language, which means English would be a Romance language
instead of being a half Romance language. There's a joke
there somewhere about being like half Romantic we're a demi
romantic language. Ah, that's what I'm going with. That's my
final answer. Germany would have far more likely stayed Roman Catholic,
and like we kind of might not have had the
(05:45):
Protestant Reformation if twenty thousand Romans hadn't been slaughtered in
the woods in the year nine.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Oh shit, like damn.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
It's also really easier to be influential on human society
when there's a total of three hundred million people in
the world.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, I can't argue with that.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
This battle was literally and directly influential on Martin Luther
and the Reformation, and you would have this very different
cultural situation between France and Germany because France was conquered
by Rome, and you have like this whole idea of
like the Rhine, which is this river that separates the two.
(06:25):
You know, it was this very very important border for
so long, which is very influential on basically all of
the wars in Europe that then sprawl out into the
rest of the world that you have starting in the
late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. There's a
couple of those wars. I've heard of some of them.
So you get this like this is the single most
important battle ever argument, and this is kind of the
(06:48):
most common argument most historians are on this page. More
modern historians tend to downplay the importance of this battle,
and I think I think mostly they're doing that to
sort of avoid the like big man theory of history,
where people like, this is the one thing that everything
changed because of this one thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, reasonable take. Do we want to avoid that?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah. The other reason though, that I think people downplay
the importance of this battle because the fucking Nazis are
really into this battle, right, and specifically the leader of
this fucking Armenius, he is going to be the main
person we talk about today. They're super fucking into this,
and everyone, especially Germans really for some weird reason when
I put as much distance as possible between themselves and
(07:31):
anything that Nazis like.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Again just another reasonable take.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, unfortunately, but here we are talking about a thing
done by a guy that Nazis like, and once again
they got it all wrong. That's gonna be my argument.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, we can't let the Nazis have everything.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, they're really good at ruin and stuff, airship travel.
Have I ever given you my rant about airship travel
and Nazis.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I have not heard this.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
All right, let's see if I can do this off
the top of my head. So, airship travel is a
really big thing. Germany was like one of the more
important airship places in the world. Airship's much greener way
to travel by air. Not as fast, it's not as efficient,
it's not as good for war as fixed wing aircraft,
but a reasonable way to get from point A to
point B in style.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
And when you say airship, you mean like blimp.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, yeah, blimp zeppelins, Yeah, like rigid. Oh I used
to know all this shit inside and out, okay. And
so the Nazis were like the guy in charge of
Nazi airship travel sorry pre Nazi airship travel was just
not a Nazi. It wasn't even an anti fascist. He
was just not a Nazi. And he really believed in safety.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
We can't have people out here believing in safety.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
That's actually also a position that Hitler agreed with. Oh fuck, yeah, no, I.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Kind of say, came out that too close to the sun.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, you absolutely did. You like Icarus. So Hitler fires
the guy who is in charge of airship safety, and
they put in a yes man, because on some level
every now and then, like the modern fascist problem, I'm like, no,
they're not Nazis. They're just like thieves stripping the copper
out of the wires of the US government. But then
I'm like, yeah, kind of, so is Hitler like hmm,
(09:09):
or at least like he didn't care. He cared about
people being loyal more than he cared about safety, right, Yeah,
So the Hindenburg goes down and everyone's like, airship travel
isn't safe and no one ever touches it again Nazis
ruin everything, That's my theory.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
But yeah, fucking Nazi for many reasons. Yeah, not limited
to this, but add another better to the pat on
good reasons to hate Nazis.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
It's true. I think that if you are someone who's
specifically concerned with airship travel, you too should be out
in the streets confronting fascism. But honestly, you should be
doing that for other reasons more importantly, And to be honest,
my current guess about the Battle Toutenberg Forest.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Which you still need to tell me about. You're still
on the hook for a whole podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, The Battle of tutebook first is
the entire episodes today and Wednesday. So my guess is
that it's actually exactly as influential as people say. And
I say this because of a couple archaeological findings that
have come up in the past couple decades, evidence that
show that Germany was well on its way to Romanizing
before they were driven out. I do think that the
(10:21):
specific battle is slightly overrated, and I think this one
guy's influence. I think that is overstated a bit. But honestly,
like I think they're onto something about this kind of
Sometimes you ambush a bunch of people and it changes
the face of history.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Sometimes guys with guns in the woods is just gonna win.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah. Last week we did an uprising in Britain led
by this woman and it started off gorilla and then
it moved into this open conflict and then they all died.
Oh interesting, And this one is another resistance to Rome
and it starts off and stays gorilla and succeeds. Don't
fight the Roman army head.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
On, Yeah, a lesson that should stay in history.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Mounted archers and or gorillas with spears in the woods,
that's how you take on the Roman army. But before
I can tell you about the Battle of Tutenberg Forest.
I must provide to you context. There wasn't really a
Germany in the ancient world, or honestly most of the
world until what like eighteen seventy five or something like that.
(11:29):
But you've got a bunch of related ethnic groups and
tribes and nations, depending on how you want to call it,
living in the region that we now more or less
called Germany. The Romans called the place Germania, which was
just a clever name. It was actually the name of
one of the tribes in the area. But then they're like, yeah, yeah,
that's kind of.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Everybody, also a classic Roman thing.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I know, and they're about to do it with a
second tribe from the area, the Tutans. One of the
main sources about this battle, just like last week's episodes
about revolts against Roman Britain, is this guy Tacitus, who
wrote about eighty years after this battle, and also Cassius Dio,
who wrote a couple hundred years later. These are the
(12:08):
two big Roman historians that kind of once you learn
that like basically all we have for Roman history is
like two guys who had fucking access to grind.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Everything kind of gets cast in a New Light.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, which just I get so overwhelmed by how much
I want to know the truth to where I have
been working a billion of time machine.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But well, when you finish that time machine, let me
know so that I can go back to the nineteen
eighty six performance at the Warner Brothers Theeter by Fleetwood
Mac of the only time that they have performed Silver
Spring live.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Well, this is the only time they played that song.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
It's the only time they played that song live.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh my God. And there's a recording of it.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
There's a recording of it.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
WHOA, Okay, So we'll do a bill and Ted, we'll
go and we'll get the whole band of Fleetwood Mac. Yeah,
and then take them back to ancient Gaul and a
bunch of other places.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
They would love Stevie Nicks.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I think, so, who doesn't love Stevie Nicks. That's how
you could find out who's like worth trusting. You just
bring around Stevie Nicks. And if someone doesn't trust Stevie Nicks,
you're like good thing. I brought an Air fifteen with
me and then.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, the issues that Lindsay Buckingham trusted Stevie Nicks for
at least an amount of time.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Okay, I don't know who that is by name. I
only know Stevie Nicks by name from Clayton mack.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Oh, Lindsay Buckingham is her shitty X also in the
band how she sings all of her songs about.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Lindsay is a boy's name, got it?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Lindsay is a boy's name. Lindsay is a boy's name. Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, well, I suppose I will forgive him for trying
to steal women's names. That's not problematica for me to anyway.
So Tacitus wrote a whole ass book called Germania and
is one of the main sources we have about what
Germany looked like at the time. And this is a
problem because, as we've talked about a little bit before,
Tacitus is really into this trope that you can call
(13:53):
the the hard Primitive in order to show how weak
and decadent and homosexual Rome has become. No, not homosexual, Oh,
they've gotten so homosexual over there, and it's a problem
according to Tacitus.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Clutching by pearls and fainting on my couch.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
He absolutely in the last week's episodes, he absolutely put
a bunch of homophobic stuff and like even like these
people are weak like women into the mouths of an
actual historical woman who led like a massive army.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, Brosbie bros Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Tacitus bro man. The hard primitive is a sort of
it's a version of the noble savage trope. But instead
of saying like, the primitive people are perfect and peaceful
and utopian and unbothered, you say the primitive people are
hard as fucking nails, unlike the soft girly boys of Rome.
And Ttacitus actually, in his homophobia, he's like, and the
(14:49):
Roman leaders they sleep with men, not even something normal
like boys, adult men. I don't like this man.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Nasty.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, I'm not going to comment on that.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
That's terrible.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah. So I am skeptical of what he had to
say about German culture and the late BCE and early CE.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I can't imagine why.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
But yeah, no, But you know what I'm not skeptical of,
and I don't think anyone else should be skeptical of.
I don't know what is it the ads that support
this show. I think we can assume best intentions. I
think that what we need to learn to offer each
other grace in these trying times I think we need
to start with corporations and politicians.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think so. I think, you know, really, the exchange
of money for services is like the purest form of
interaction because it's so equal and even and justin pure
and good. And I assume that that's what the products
and services that support the show are offering to you.
I know.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And do you ever worry that the fact that both
you and I have like a really strong, straight faced sarcasm.
I never worry about that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I've never thought about this.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Here's ads enter Beck. So Germania was a collection of
what are called the Teutonic tribes, which is itself sort
of a misnumber. I have you ever heard of, like
the Teutonic Knights. I had no idea what they were,
but I had heard that name before.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
No, Teutonic sounds like a word similar to phrenology in
my mind, where it's like old timy and vaguely racist.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
That's kind of what's happening, only is about Germans.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
So chronology actually racist. But yeah, yeah, this category of
word teutonic.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Is a word that went out of fashion around the
same time that phrenology went out of fashion, and in
a similar thing where if you meet someone who starts
talking about Teutonic bloodlines or something, you could no, wait,
you could, you could disagree with them in a vehement fashion.
So the Teutons. So actually it's still a misnomer in
(16:53):
the same way they calling them Germans is misnomer because
there was a tribe called the Germans. Yeah, there was
a tribe called the Teutons, and they're not actually from Germany.
They're from the Jutland peninsula modern Denmark.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Oh uh huh.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
But then around the second century BCE they moved southeast
and along the way they displaced Celtic tribes, including one Tariski,
who were allied with Rome. People like to argue, I
am not among the people who like to argue about
this whether or not the Teutons themselves were Germanic or Celtic,
and whether Germanic is actually a different thing than Celtic.
But in general let's go with yes. It's like culturally
(17:31):
has some unique things going on. Tacitus wrote about the
Germans and one of the main things he was really
impressed by. The Germans were monogamous.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Oh we got homophobia, we got monogamy.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, and the Germans women if their husbands die are
never allowed to get married again boo, and everyone marries
late in life and is chased until marriage. This is
why I don't believe Tacitus. I don't think that that
sounds real to me, but that sounds boring, honestly. Yeah,
the Germans compared to the Gauls, who were like headhunters,
(18:10):
where their polycule is like all interwoven, you know. But
I also just like kind of don't believe this stuff.
But Tacitus also during all of this he wrote about
how somewhere near the Swedes was this other group that
were entirely like the Swedes, except they were run by women,
whoa and people have ever since, And I had it
in script and then I deleted it by accident. I
didn't know where to tie it in. But ever since
(18:32):
people have been like, what the fuck was he talking about?
And he either made it up, heard it from a guy,
or the Romans kept being like, these people were run
by women, isn't that weird? Whereas it was like very
very normal almost everywhere else. So if like one Swedish
clan happened to have a queen that year, he might
(18:53):
have been like, holy shit, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I love this figure of like what if tweeth century
anthropologist but like Roman and more fucked up. I'm really
taken by this, right, he is like a kind of
guy that just seems to exist throughout history.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I know, I know, And these people are still You
could watch them on YouTube. If you watch most of
the videos about the Tutenberg Forest, you're gonna find this guy.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Caesar also wrote about the Germans, and he wrote quote
their diet, daily exercise, and the freedom from restraint that
they enjoy for from childhood. They do not know what
compulsion or discipline is, and do nothing against their inclinations
combine to make them strong and tall as giants. They
(19:44):
inner themselves in spite of very cold climates in which
they live, to wear no clothing but skins, and these
so scanty that a large part of the body is uncovered,
and to bathe in rivers not scanty, I know, not
scanty cl in the cold North. While I also love
that the way to become as strong and tall as
(20:05):
a giant is to be an anarchist, Like, yeah, I
think that's true. Do nothing against your inclinations and you're
gonna grow up big and strong. Sure, sure, guy, Yeah,
I might as well. So this is Germania and the
BCE and all these tribes in Germania, Celtic and Teutonic alike.
(20:26):
They start moving into Gaul, into France, and they start
fucking up. This is the preamble to the other stuff.
This stuff doesn't matter as much for the story, but
it's worth pointing out. They move into Gaul, which is France,
and they start fucking up the French, including again a
bunch of folks who are allied with Rome at this point.
So Rome marches an army in and drives them back,
and for a moment that's working, but then Romans betrayed
(20:46):
the German tribes. You've ever seen a movie where they
do the trope where like the imperial forces call everyone
to a like sit down meeting and they're like just
kidding and they like kill everyone.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh did they do that?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
They do that all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I actually don't know if they did it specifically here,
because I lost track of how many times in the
ancient world, everyone, especially the Romans, are just being like, yeah,
let's like all meet up and talk, and then it's
not to talk.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
The one honorless cowardice two at some point.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Like well, they don't have the Internet.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
I guess you don't have the internet. But does word
not get around I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Well, actually, I mean I guess by the time Arminius
is on the he's like, nah, I don't fucking trust
you all. And that's going to go really badly for
the Romans because yeah, they keep doing this shit. It's
like the whole like, it's the pirate code. If you
show up to rob someone in like ye oldie pirty times,
you have to say, like, look, if you surrender, you
don't die. Yeah, because if they surrender and they do die,
now no one has any reason to surrender, right, And
(21:49):
now being a pirate just got like ten times more dangerous.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Bluffing can actually be very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
In fact, yeah, totally. So Rome betrays the German tribes
in France and so they just like fuck Rome's troops up.
They're just like, nah, there's gonna be a bunch of
back and forth, a bunch of brutal battles. And it
led me down a rabbit hole to research the history
of the concept of surrender.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Whoa, I'm still ready for this rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Well, unfortunately, what I really want is this one hundred
and ten dollars hardcover only history book that is about
the history of surrender, but I instead read a bunch
of reviews about it and a bunch of other shorter
essays that I could find in access Right. Surrender, as
we understand it is a reasonably modern concept. Like I
kept reading these reports of like ancient battles, and not
(22:36):
just in the sort of west or near East, but
like also like there's a battle in like ancient China
in the BCE where like literally two hundred thousand people
got buried alive after they surrendered.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And that's when there was one hundred and ninety million
people in the world total.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Holy shit.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, Oh my god. Yeah, and this happens so much. Yeah,
rome Ha said, multiple conflicts at this point where either
they're killing one hundred thousand guys or someone is killing
one hundred thousand of their guys.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Wow. Where do all these guys come from?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I don't fucking no, certainly not Germany where they're monogamous
and only get married late. Now, this wasn't that every battle.
The majority of battles in the ancient world did not
end with massacres, but a lot of them did, and
more common was that you surrender and you end up enslaved.
This is like the sort of normal thing where you're like, well,
at least I'm alive and ancient yeoldie world slavery is
(23:33):
completely different than like American chattel slavery. It's still an evil,
but like whenever people defend American chattel slavery by being
like everyone did it, they're wrong because American chattle slavery
was a unique evil. Yeah, but yeah, so the idea
that like if you're in a battle and then you
surrender and now you're just a prisoner of war and
then you go home at the end of the war,
that's pretty new.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, how new is new?
Speaker 1 (23:56):
That's what I'm trying to find out. I like, yeah,
I know that you start getting a lot more like
I know it exists by the Victorian era. I suspect
it exists well before then. Hostage taking was a big
part of medieval conflict, but that was only for rich people.
So it was like your kind of goal in order
to make back the money of like being in a
(24:17):
YILDI sortie times war, yeah, is to capture a bunch
of enemy nobility like the knights and shit and then
hold them hostage and ransom them back. But I think
that like the average peasant who's in the war, I
don't know yet, and I'm very curious about this stuff
because I have normal interests, like a normal person.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, that's why they pay you the big bucks.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
That's right, that's why they pay me the medium bucks.
I mean big bucks. I love Okay. Anyway, So the
Germans and their allied galls are just fucking up Rome.
But then they split the party, which you should never do,
and Rome sends a big fuck off army and defeats
them like one at a time, and the two Tones
and the Allied Simbri are sort of wiped off the
map and their remnants are absorbed into other groups. All
(25:00):
this is BCE is important in this week's story because
this is what cements the Germani as like terrifying giants
of legend to the Romans ever since, in a similar
way as to how the step people became the Amazons
because there was like women among them, and it scared
the Romans so much that they invented a whole type
of guy, the Amazon. You never heard this, Wait, that's
(25:23):
where that comes from. That's like the most likely thing
most likely is that they were like uh huh okay,
Like the way to kick Rome's ass is to fight
them in a swamp with a spear, like bare chested
in the middle of the dirt, or to have force
archers and just be like.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Horse lords are that's God tear, You're not beaten that.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, And so they kept getting their ass kicked by
like nomadic folks, and a lot of the step folks,
both the warriors and the leadership would be women, and
enough of them that basically in that same way that
tacticist tactic whatever, that fucking Assholese guy, he's like, Oh,
there's this entire realm where women run things, and it's
(26:03):
like probable that there was just actually even between men
and women and it happened to be a woman at
that time, and that was like so impossible for him
to imagine. So two tones in the Simbri are wiped
off the map, but they're like, now, this race of giants,
even though they're Jermani, they're also the two tony, the
(26:24):
two tones or the tutons, and tutan becomes the medieval
Latin word for the German languages, and that's how you
end up with the Teutonic Knights. We I don't really
know I or care all that much about they're involved
in the Crusades, and I haven't. I have all the
books about the Muslim side of the Crusades that I'm
excited to read and eventually talk about, but I haven't
gotten there. My one day, this podcast will cover all history, yes.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And it will be the only legal history podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Left, I know, once we defeat all the other ones.
But fortunately we have horse archers and there are a
bunch of Romans, so it's true. It's not going to
go well for them. We're God here, yeah, yeah, they
thought they were rest here, but where God tyre? Rome
meanwhile gets more and more powerful the stuff that happens
in Gaul. But they're just like expanding more and more.
(27:11):
It's empire keeps expanding. Sometimes it shows up and it
just conquers raw military force, but more often it shows up.
It sets some local leaders up as client kings and
slowly romanizes the area like trading with them, taking a
little bit of tribute but not a ton, and then
slowly takes over more and more. Like there's no literally,
(27:35):
the only way to stop this is to kill your colonizer,
as for Churchill put it, by the time we're in
the current era, Rome is all over the fucking place.
A Smithsonian magazine put it, quote the Imperial Navy had
turned the Mediterranean into a Roman lake, and they're like,
all right, I want that Germania thing too, mostly because
(27:57):
it's at the edge of their own borders, not because
it's a particularly interesting or wealthy place.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, but do you.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Know what is both interesting and wealthy you after you
purchase the products and services that support this show. You
caught me again, especially sports gambling, which I can't even
straight face. Don't sports gamble. It's bad if we advertise it.
I'm sorry. Anyway, here's our.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Ads and we're back.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
There's not a lot of point for Rome to take
over Germania. They there's not even that many people to
build client kingdoms from because there's not really kingdoms. There's
not really any gold or silver to steel. There's some
limited trade, but not really enough to make a ton
of money by taxing it. The Germans make good mercenaries,
(28:54):
and a ton of them are already serving in the
Roman military, but it isn't even good farmland. The soil
is really shitty. Apparently, I read one historian called it
too sticky, and I don't know what that means. I
don't either, But if you're in Germany, sorry about your
sticky soil.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Sticky, that's just so gross.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I know. Sticky is like almost never a good word.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Rarely is it a good like even if I'm describing
candy like I don't want sticky candy. I want candy
that almost is sticky, but I wouldn't describe it as sticky.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Well, then don't start chewing German soil.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I wasn't going to okay, mostly on account of I
don't live on that continent.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, that is the only reason. Before the development of
better plows, apparently it was less good agricultural land than
the Mediterranean area, at least by the Roman standards. It's
mostly like forests and swamps. It's a real Barbarian era area.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, that's what I know about Germany as allegedly the land.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Of my people. Yeah, but Rome is Rome, and Rome
wants everything.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Them bitches you want and everything.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
I mean, they really are. They just absolutely are like
greedy assholes who are like, we want to conquer fucking
everything because it like the concept of a morality or
that's bad. Hasn't really like hit the Western world, you know.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, Jesus hasn't come to save us yet, I know.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah, God, then of course you know that whole will
become the state religion and that'll whatever.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
So A good chunk of the modern border between France
and Germany is the Rhine, is the river r hin E,
and it's been roughly that border for a long ass time,
for about ten years, from six BCE to four CE.
I don't know if there's a zero CE. I don't know,
maybe it's eleven years. I don't know how to count.
Rome started setting up a militarized frontier along the Rhine,
(30:45):
and this is to stop the Germans from invading Roman Gaul.
But it's also the start of a settler colonial project
into Germania. And this is something that we've only learned recently,
like in the past thirty years out of the two
thousand years since this happened.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Wow, it's interesting that history like we keep learning more
about it. I know this is not as wise of
an aside as I thought it was going to be
when I started. I just think it's cool.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
No, it blows my mind. Sometimes I'll find a source
from nineteen sixty and I'll be like, oh, well, that's
not gonna be as accurate even if I'm talking about
nineteen twenty, you know, yeah, because I'm like, oh, they
weren't as good at and not because like we're geniuses,
but because like the way we accumulate and develop science
and like understandings of history. But what's funny in this
particular case. So basically, for a long long time people
(31:34):
were like, oh, no, there wasn't really colonization of Germany happening.
It was just this border with this like angry tribes
on the other side, and some like they knew there
was some trade and stuff like that, but they didn't
realize there was colonization or settlers. Even though one of
the old Roman writers, Cassius Dio, who wrote a couple
hundred years later, he wrote about how Rome was starting
(31:55):
to set up cities and shit in Germania. But for millennia,
people thought he'd just be making shit.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Up, right, Well, because he does, right.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I think, yeah, exactly, that's the like I distrust Tacitus
and Cassius Dio, right, But Cassius Dio wrote, quote, the
Romans were holding portions of Germania and soldiers of Theirs
were wintering there, and cities were being founded. The barbarians
are adapting themselves to Roman ways. We're becoming accustomed to
(32:25):
hold markets, and we're meeting in peaceful assemblages. And in
the nineteen nineties, archaeologists discovered the ruins of a short
lived Roman style town. It gets called Waldegrimes, but that's
just the modern name. No one knows the original name.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Impeccable modern name though. I know that's the name of
my next Pathfinder character.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
And you're just from Waldegrimes and you just go.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Home, Yeah, something like that. We'll workshop it later.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah. And this was a brand new settle. It wasn't
just like, oh, we're kind of converting people like they're
literally they show up and they build this town from
the ground up, full of Roman amenities like running water
and the sewage system.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Wait, Romans had running water too.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, yeah, oh my god. The fact that they had
it at the frontier is a little bit wild to me.
I think that they did. The thing that I read
is like, look, we found lead pipes that are plumbing pipes,
and so we don't know as part of why Romans
fought a lot I think honestly, yeah, that makes sense.
And so yeah, this is twenty acre town. It's walled
off and it's full of running water and whatever. They
(33:36):
have amenities there. Fuck that rules, I know.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And then I mean fucked, like fuck the Romans, but
y'all got running water. That's the time of Jesus. I
clearly know a lot about history, and I'm kind.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Of showing, but I think that there is this like,
especially in the West, we have this very very linear
idea of history, right, and so like the idea that
like apparently in somehow I had to like double check
some shit. I was like, because I'd read this when
I was a kid, that Romans had running water, and
so I was like double checking and it was like, oh, yeah,
Romans had running hot and cold water at rich houses.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Like fuck, I only sometimes have hot water in my house.
You know. I don't want to limit to the Roman
Empire the same I don't want to limit the American Empire.
But yeah, damn all right, people be smart. I know
you are fucking smart.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I know, and we also know. One of the smartest things.
We know that this place was built in exactly four BCE,
because we know when you build with wood. You can
just literally look at the rings in the wood and
map it to other trees in the air.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Oh my god, holy shit.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, damn.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, science is cool.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I know it's always used for bad shit, but it's
fucking cool in concept and like, and it's not bad
shit to look at this and learn when this place
was built.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, it's also obviously not neutral. You know, where it
gets funding and where get the resources to study is
obviously were not with all kinds of stuff. But I'm
not surprised that there's so much money getting poured into
discovering the ancient Germany and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Well, what's weird is actually modern Germany is like kind
of sketched out by ancient Germany right now, like because
modern Germany is like not excited about German nationalism.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Again, just a correct take out, No, I know, I'm
not going to riff about this with you.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah. And so for a long time archaeologist assume Walde
Grimes was just another military camp. But there wasn't a
single military building there and there were barely any like
spearheads or other military relics. It was a whole ass
trade town occupied by people who weren't afraid of being
attacked by Germans. So it's not just saying like, oh,
(35:53):
there's enough here that we can have a town. It's
saying that, like, we can have a town because we
think the Germans are our friends, you know, huh. And
in fact they know how the houses were built based
on where the postholes are and stuff, and like the
styles of building in different areas, and so there were
both Roman and German style buildings there.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
And there was German jewelry around, not gathered up in
like trade form, but like probably being worn by people. Yeah,
there were limestone pedestals with limestone imported from Gaul upon
which set statues. Most likely this includes a life size
Augustus statue. He's the first Emperor of Rome and he's
in charge at this point when this happens.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I know that from the Bible.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Ah, that other book that has some historically accurate stuff
and a lot of other stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
He called for the census, which is why Mary went
back to Bethlehem.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I believe shit.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Okay, Okay, I don't know if that's I'm remembering from
elementary school, a whole Sunday school.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
So you know, no one actually knows what the Bible says,
no one's read it.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I certainly haven't. No, I just heard about it from
other people.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, that's you might be joking.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
I don't know. Somewhere are lost in between joking and
not joking. So there's an Augustus statue that's covered in
It's a bronze statue covered in gold leaf of him
astride a horse, and this is this monumental show of
wealth for this frontier town. You can make a lot
of weapons and armor with like six hundred pounds of bronze.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, there's a lot of bronze.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And we know about the statue because after the city
fell because spoiler alert, the Romans are going to get
kicked out of Germany.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I said that at the top, the head of the
horse is going to get chopped off by the barbarians
and then sacrifice to the water gods by putting it
at the bottom of a well.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Fuck.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah, And I love that they don't even sacrifice Augustus's head.
They just like they do a lot of horse sacrifice
in this area at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, mixed feelings about that, but the
story is good.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, and the rest of the bronze was turned into
weapons and armor probably, but lots of little bits of
it were found around this dig. But having a statue
of an emperor wasn't just like the way we would
do it now, where it's like this guy's so in
charge that fuck you.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Instead, with their religious understanding, it's basically saying, the emperor's
here with us.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
And so the Germans were beginning to Romanize, at least
some of them were. There was a lot of tension
between the tribes about this, and even within tribes, where
some tribes are like, yeah, fuck it and other ones
are like no, fuck you. There's a lot of fuck
in both directions.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Not a lot of fucking though, because they're not getting married.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
No, yeah, no Germans ever had children.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
If only, if only history was clean, just to.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Go back in time and distribute birth control very efficiently
in like nineteen twenties and like nineteen fifteen in Germany anyway,
that's called eugenics, and it's bad. See almost every episode
of this show. So one of these tribes in this
area is the Cheruski, and that's the Roman name for it.
(38:56):
No one knows the Germanic name for it. There's lots
of arguments about what it might be. This is one
of these tribes that they're really split on the whole
Rome thing. But the chief is pro Roman. Probably. I've
read a bunch of different modern writing about this shit.
Everyone is interpreting these old Roman historians and doing it
in different ways that don't line up with each other. Great,
(39:16):
but let's just say, you know, he's pro Roman. He
has a bunch of kids. One of them is going
to wind up with the Roman named Arminius, and he
is our main character, Arminius. He either joins the Roman
army voluntarily in a normal way as an adult, or
what I think is more likely, and I've just again
(39:36):
read both by people we seem to know what they're
fucking talking about, or he's sent to Rome as a
kid to be raised as a hostage. Have you heard
about this thing? This like kind of like nobility hostage stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I've heard about it with regards to other conflicts, but
I don't know anything about this in the context of
the Roman Empire. I've heard about it in like other stuff,
But tell me all about it.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, no, fair enough, it's funny. I actually mostly know
about this from other cultures and like more like Renaissance
in medieval kind of conflict, which I just like know
more about in general.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Right, I feel like I know about this from Game
of Thrones.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, this is some serious Game of Throne shit. Honestly,
Game of Thrones. I always thought it was like very medieval,
and then I started learning about the ancient world and
I was like, no, this actually is like far more
to do with like ancient world conflict than it does
like medieval, especially with that fucking Hadrian's Wall. I mean,
I'm the wall, although it could just as easily be
the fucking fortification of the Rhine called the Limitus anyway, whatever,
(40:35):
So you basically just let your kid be raised by
another family from like kind of your enemies, and it's
a way of being like, well, of course you're not
gonna like be disloyal. We have your kid, but it's
not a like prisoner. I mean, it is a prisoner,
but it's like you're adopting the kid in a lot
of ways, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah, And Arminius is the son of the chief of
this tribe, and so he's raised in Rome. Is the
most likely thing. Also read that he joined as an
adult whatever I don't care. He's in the Roman Army.
He gets a Roman name. It possibly comes from maybe
he did work in Armenia, like for Rome, but I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I was going to ask what the connection between his
name and Armenia was.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
But yeah, it might be that he like because there's
a lot of like Like later a dude named Germanicus
is going to show up and he's not German but
instead he fought in Germany.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Great, I want to know everything about how they're naming shit.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, those are the kind of rabbit holes. I start
down and I'm like, the answer is kind of we
don't know, but yeah, Arminius, that is one of the
things that people conjecture. He speaks Latin, he learns Roman tactics,
and he gets real good at Roman tactics, and that's
not going to go well for Rome.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Something something of the Master's tools.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I know, this is some serious like focos boomerang. Shit,
I almost did a whole aside about Foocos boomerang, but
you all can do it yourself, or listen to the
very first season if it could happen here, he's promoted
to the rank of equoit, which is basically a night.
I saw it translated first as night, and then I
was like, what the fuck Roman didn't have knights? And
then I like did a bunch of research, and I
was like, oh, he was an equite. Okay, great, which
I also didn't know anything about. But whatever, I mean,
(42:10):
I know everything. I don't have to do research. I
actually just was born knowing all this stuff. And he
becomes a Roman citizen. So the Roman army has legions,
which is like the more proper marching around in squares
fucking people up because they have impeccable tactics. And then
they have auxiliaries, and the auxiliaries are like stranger units
(42:32):
built out of colonized people.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Funky.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, And he's leading a unit of auxiliaries of his
own people in the Balkans for a while, and so
he's actually doing colonizing for Rome, right, And this actually
makes him very comparable to Oh my god, my favorite
person I've ever covered on show, the gay Irish knight
who stopped Leopold Roger Casement. There's an episode I did
(42:58):
a long time ago about this gay Irish knight who
was part of the British colonial service. And then he
was like, I think I'm on the wrong side, and
he instead intervened in King Leopold of Belgium's massacre of
eight million, like a genocide that he was doing in
the congress. Shit, and he was part of the bringing
down that ending that genocide, and then he went and
(43:19):
helped end another genocide and then he was like, you know,
Ireland's not doing great either, yeah, and so then he
like he did a treason even though he was a
knight in the British Empire, and they killed him, but
he was part of the Easter Rising or he was
trying to provide weapons for the Easter Rising. But then
when he died, he's the last person to get hanged
because he's not caught in the rising, right, and he's
(43:40):
on trial and everyone's like, oh, he's a true patriot.
But then they found his sex journal, Oh my god,
and it's basically like he's a size queen and he
like has fucked so many people all over the world
that he like writes out how big their dicks are
and shit, holy shit, and then the fucking piece of
shit Catholic Irish people are like, not all of them,
but an off of them are like, oh, this guy's
(44:01):
not our guy. We don't like him anymore, and then
they fucking hanged down mn.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Fuck that.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
And he's one of the best people's ever lived, as
far as I can tell. But he also started off
by being on the wrong side. He was part of
the British Columby service. And Arminius is actually not going
to have that noble of an ending because Armenius is
not as good of a person. But we'll get to that.
We'll get to our Minius's end, but we won't get
to it until Wednesday, because we're actually at the end
of today. Today is now over. Officially, set your clocks
(44:29):
to midnight.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Oh but I want to hear the end.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Oh well, then you have to wait till actually you
only have to wait a couple of minutes, but everyone
else is to wait till Wednesday, because we are going
to talk about the kind of least intelligent and capable
Roman officer that you will ever read about that will
make fiction look fake, and about an ambush that will
change the world. And also how Arminius should have read Tolkien.
(44:53):
We'll talk about that on Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Everyone should. It's the Holy Book.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
It is, there's no problems with it, except for all
the racism mm hmm, probably some other stuff too, But
before that, do you have anything you want to plug?
Is there anything if people want to hear about you
interacting with battle, Is there any way that people can
do that?
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Well, no they can't, because Margaret I have never battled
or committed any crimes. But if people would like to
hear about a band of erstwhile revolutionaries fighting some frogs
in between revolutions, you can head over to the cool
Zone Media book Club feed and take a listen to
our Pathfinder play through. That's you and me and Robert
and iow and it's DMed by Jason Bullman and it's
(45:37):
pretty fun, I think.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, it's in this feed too, I hear it is.
And also the sound design is really good. And if
you're one of the people who listens to the show
and then skips book club, I don't know, do whatever
you want. But one thing you can do is listen
to it.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah, or you could just like put it on before
you go to sleep and not listen to it, but
make sure that we get the place. That would also
I take that too.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, absolutely, there's no uh no problems. Yeah, that's what
I want to plug too. Because I'm also in it
and my character's name is Spie and she was named
after the Virtues. Anyway, Yeah, I'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
He CEA Cool People Who.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that I have
a podcast that comes out twice a week, and I'm
your host, Margaret Kiljoy. And this week my guest. You
might have heard them before. You might have heard them
(00:23):
feeding soup to people or killing random things, like in
a murder hobo way. If you don't know what we're
talking about, that makes no sense. My guest is Hazel Akasha,
better known, of course to people who listen to Coolzone
Media Book Club as Murder Grana Murder Go. How do
you pronounce your character's name?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hi, Margaret, Hi, my name is Hazel, and I the Pathfinder.
Let's play that we're doing. I play Sister murdra Ghana Mr.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Dragana, which is Murdy for short. Yeah, well, welcome Murdy
Hazel Murdy to cool people who Did cool Stuff. So
it's just the two of us. Sophie isn't here, but
Sophie is still our producer Hi Sophie. And our audio
engineer is still Eva Hi Eva hi Eva. And our
(01:12):
theme music was written for us by un woman. And
this week I am going to tell a story that
I am nervous to tell Okay, there's this thing that
happens a lot on the show where I'll get into
a topic and I'll get really excited, I'll get really
far along, and then I'll be like, wait a second,
this guy is kind of a terrible person. But that's
not what happened this time. Instead, the people who are
(01:33):
into this person are terrible people. No, this week, I'm
going to tell you a story with all of the
usual cool people trappings. It's about a group of people
coming together despite their differences, to resist settler colonialism. Hell yeah,
and that's high on the list of my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Mind too.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It's also set in the Late Iron Age, or if
you're being pedantic, past the Late Iron Age, but I
don't really care. I'm going to go Iron until. I
don't actually know when the Iron Age stops. I looked
it up before I started recording, and then I forgot Margaret.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I think it's okay if I don't know when the
irony advents, but you should know.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
In the Iron Agents, a lot of people say that
it ends at like, you know, one ce, because Jesus, yeah, well,
it's kind of like they've just sort of decided. I
think that Jesus is the biggest part of it. And
someone's going to know way more than me about this.
But it's basically, you have like the ages. You have
the like Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and then
whichever one comes before that's probably the Copper Age. And
now everyone knows them opposer about this stuff. I usually
(02:31):
record about the nineteenth century, but that's like prehistory because
it's not as written down, and then you get into
the like right, right, you know, classical era or whatever.
The fuck. I don't know what I'm talking about about
this particular thing. Please, no one take my word for it.
But that's that's funny I say that. But I have
also read this a bunch of times in a bunch
of places. But then I've just been really confused because
people describe things differently. But what people don't describe. Nope,
(02:55):
people describe the character we're going to talk about today
actually very differently from each other. This is a story
I'm nervous to tell because it's about a historical figure
that the right wing fucking loves to me, I think
they take the wrong lesson from this story classic and yes,
I will specifically tie that into Tolkien at the end,
(03:18):
because I think that that explains it all. This week,
we're going to talk about the Battle of Teuteburg Forest,
in which a bunch of warring tribes of barbarians in
Germania teamed up to just absolutely slaughter three legions of
the Roman Army. I'm just describing a massacre, but it's
going to be good. Have you ever heard of the
Battle of Teuteburg Forest? I'm Margaret, I have no idea
(03:38):
what this is, Okay, this is the battle that more
or less ended. I have my entire life avoided becoming
one of those people who knows a bunch about Rome,
to the point where I was avoiding learning cool things
about things that happened while Rome was around, because I've
always hated the like, you know that thing where like
white cys men think about the Roman Empire once a
(04:00):
week or whatever. Mm hmm, because I already had one
of those. It's called the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
But everyone needs something, and mine is the live performance
that Fleetwood Mac did of a Silver Spring. I think
about that once a day.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah. I don't know how to tie that into them
killing fascists, but I actually wouldn't put it past any
of them. I think anyone in Fleetwood Mac they would
have gotten over their personal difficulties to run people through
his swords.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
I think probably. I think that's what the chain is about, right.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I think so it's about how we're still stuck in
the same band, and by band we mean a group
of people who kill fascists together.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
The chain keeps us together, something like that.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
The Battle of two to Burg Forest was the thing
that broke the chain. Eh that Rome was attempting to
put upon the people of Germany. And it's more or
less what ended Roman attempts at conquest in Germany, which
is part of why Germany never became a province of
the Roman Empire. Historians like to argue, I could end
(05:03):
the sentence there. Historians like to argue about how exactly
influential this battle was, because for the most part, you
can actually pretty honestly present this as one of the
single most influential, like most consequential battles in human history.
Because if Germany had gone Roman, German would be a
(05:25):
Romance language, which means English would be a Romance language
instead of being a half Romance language. There's a joke
there somewhere about being like half Romantic we're a demi
romantic language. Ah, that's what I'm going with. That's my
final answer. Germany would have far more likely stayed Roman Catholic,
and like we kind of might not have had the
(05:45):
Protestant Reformation if twenty thousand Romans hadn't been slaughtered in
the woods in the year nine.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Oh shit, like damn.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
It's also really easier to be influential on human society
when there's a total of three hundred million people in
the world.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, I can't argue with that.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
This battle was literally and directly influential on Martin Luther
and the Reformation, and you would have this very different
cultural situation between France and Germany because France was conquered
by Rome, and you have like this whole idea of
like the Rhine, which is this river that separates the two.
(06:25):
You know, it was this very very important border for
so long, which is very influential on basically all of
the wars in Europe that then sprawl out into the
rest of the world that you have starting in the
late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. There's a
couple of those wars. I've heard of some of them.
So you get this like this is the single most
important battle ever argument, and this is kind of the
(06:48):
most common argument most historians are on this page. More
modern historians tend to downplay the importance of this battle,
and I think I think mostly they're doing that to
sort of avoid the like big man theory of history,
where people like, this is the one thing that everything
changed because of this one thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, reasonable take. Do we want to avoid that?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah. The other reason though, that I think people downplay
the importance of this battle because the fucking Nazis are
really into this battle, right, and specifically the leader of
this fucking Armenius, he is going to be the main
person we talk about today. They're super fucking into this,
and everyone, especially Germans really for some weird reason when
I put as much distance as possible between themselves and
(07:31):
anything that Nazis like.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Again just another reasonable take.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, unfortunately, but here we are talking about a thing
done by a guy that Nazis like, and once again
they got it all wrong. That's gonna be my argument.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, we can't let the Nazis have everything.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, they're really good at ruin and stuff, airship travel.
Have I ever given you my rant about airship travel
and Nazis.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I have not heard this.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
All right, let's see if I can do this off
the top of my head. So, airship travel is a
really big thing. Germany was like one of the more
important airship places in the world. Airship's much greener way
to travel by air. Not as fast, it's not as efficient,
it's not as good for war as fixed wing aircraft,
but a reasonable way to get from point A to
point B in style.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
And when you say airship, you mean like blimp.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, yeah, blimp zeppelins, Yeah, like rigid. Oh I used
to know all this shit inside and out, okay. And
so the Nazis were like the guy in charge of
Nazi airship travel sorry pre Nazi airship travel was just
not a Nazi. It wasn't even an anti fascist. He
was just not a Nazi. And he really believed in safety.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
We can't have people out here believing in safety.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
That's actually also a position that Hitler agreed with. Oh fuck, yeah, no, I.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Kind of say, came out that too close to the sun.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, you absolutely did. You like Icarus. So Hitler fires
the guy who is in charge of airship safety, and
they put in a yes man, because on some level
every now and then, like the modern fascist problem, I'm like, no,
they're not Nazis. They're just like thieves stripping the copper
out of the wires of the US government. But then
I'm like, yeah, kind of, so is Hitler like hmm,
(09:09):
or at least like he didn't care. He cared about
people being loyal more than he cared about safety, right, Yeah,
So the Hindenburg goes down and everyone's like, airship travel
isn't safe and no one ever touches it again Nazis
ruin everything, That's my theory.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
But yeah, fucking Nazi for many reasons. Yeah, not limited
to this, but add another better to the pat on
good reasons to hate Nazis.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
It's true. I think that if you are someone who's
specifically concerned with airship travel, you too should be out
in the streets confronting fascism. But honestly, you should be
doing that for other reasons more importantly, And to be honest,
my current guess about the Battle Toutenberg Forest.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Which you still need to tell me about. You're still
on the hook for a whole podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, The Battle of tutebook first is
the entire episodes today and Wednesday. So my guess is
that it's actually exactly as influential as people say. And
I say this because of a couple archaeological findings that
have come up in the past couple decades, evidence that
show that Germany was well on its way to Romanizing
before they were driven out. I do think that the
(10:21):
specific battle is slightly overrated, and I think this one
guy's influence. I think that is overstated a bit. But honestly,
like I think they're onto something about this kind of
Sometimes you ambush a bunch of people and it changes
the face of history.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Sometimes guys with guns in the woods is just gonna win.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah. Last week we did an uprising in Britain led
by this woman and it started off gorilla and then
it moved into this open conflict and then they all died.
Oh interesting, And this one is another resistance to Rome
and it starts off and stays gorilla and succeeds. Don't
fight the Roman army head.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
On, Yeah, a lesson that should stay in history.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Mounted archers and or gorillas with spears in the woods,
that's how you take on the Roman army. But before
I can tell you about the Battle of Tutenberg Forest.
I must provide to you context. There wasn't really a
Germany in the ancient world, or honestly most of the
world until what like eighteen seventy five or something like that.
(11:29):
But you've got a bunch of related ethnic groups and
tribes and nations, depending on how you want to call it,
living in the region that we now more or less
called Germany. The Romans called the place Germania, which was
just a clever name. It was actually the name of
one of the tribes in the area. But then they're like, yeah, yeah,
that's kind of.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Everybody, also a classic Roman thing.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I know, and they're about to do it with a
second tribe from the area, the Tutans. One of the
main sources about this battle, just like last week's episodes
about revolts against Roman Britain, is this guy Tacitus, who
wrote about eighty years after this battle, and also Cassius Dio,
who wrote a couple hundred years later. These are the
(12:08):
two big Roman historians that kind of once you learn
that like basically all we have for Roman history is
like two guys who had fucking access to grind.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Everything kind of gets cast in a New Light.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, which just I get so overwhelmed by how much
I want to know the truth to where I have
been working a billion of time machine.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But well, when you finish that time machine, let me
know so that I can go back to the nineteen
eighty six performance at the Warner Brothers Theeter by Fleetwood
Mac of the only time that they have performed Silver
Spring live.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Well, this is the only time they played that song.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
It's the only time they played that song live.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh my God. And there's a recording of it.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
There's a recording of it.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
WHOA, Okay, So we'll do a bill and Ted, we'll
go and we'll get the whole band of Fleetwood Mac. Yeah,
and then take them back to ancient Gaul and a
bunch of other places.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
They would love Stevie Nicks.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I think, so, who doesn't love Stevie Nicks. That's how
you could find out who's like worth trusting. You just
bring around Stevie Nicks. And if someone doesn't trust Stevie Nicks,
you're like good thing. I brought an Air fifteen with
me and then.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, the issues that Lindsay Buckingham trusted Stevie Nicks for
at least an amount of time.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Okay, I don't know who that is by name. I
only know Stevie Nicks by name from Clayton mack.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Oh, Lindsay Buckingham is her shitty X also in the
band how she sings all of her songs about.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Lindsay is a boy's name, got it?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Lindsay is a boy's name. Lindsay is a boy's name. Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, well, I suppose I will forgive him for trying
to steal women's names. That's not problematica for me to anyway.
So Tacitus wrote a whole ass book called Germania and
is one of the main sources we have about what
Germany looked like at the time. And this is a
problem because, as we've talked about a little bit before,
Tacitus is really into this trope that you can call
(13:53):
the the hard Primitive in order to show how weak
and decadent and homosexual Rome has become. No, not homosexual, Oh,
they've gotten so homosexual over there, and it's a problem
according to Tacitus.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Clutching by pearls and fainting on my couch.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
He absolutely in the last week's episodes, he absolutely put
a bunch of homophobic stuff and like even like these
people are weak like women into the mouths of an
actual historical woman who led like a massive army.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, Brosbie bros Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Tacitus bro man. The hard primitive is a sort of
it's a version of the noble savage trope. But instead
of saying like, the primitive people are perfect and peaceful
and utopian and unbothered, you say the primitive people are
hard as fucking nails, unlike the soft girly boys of Rome.
And Ttacitus actually, in his homophobia, he's like, and the
(14:49):
Roman leaders they sleep with men, not even something normal
like boys, adult men. I don't like this man.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Nasty.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, I'm not going to comment on that.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
That's terrible.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah. So I am skeptical of what he had to
say about German culture and the late BCE and early CE.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I can't imagine why.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
But yeah, no, But you know what I'm not skeptical of,
and I don't think anyone else should be skeptical of.
I don't know what is it the ads that support
this show. I think we can assume best intentions. I
think that what we need to learn to offer each
other grace in these trying times I think we need
to start with corporations and politicians.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think so. I think, you know, really, the exchange
of money for services is like the purest form of
interaction because it's so equal and even and justin pure
and good. And I assume that that's what the products
and services that support the show are offering to you.
I know.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And do you ever worry that the fact that both
you and I have like a really strong, straight faced sarcasm.
I never worry about that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I've never thought about this.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Here's ads enter Beck. So Germania was a collection of
what are called the Teutonic tribes, which is itself sort
of a misnumber. I have you ever heard of, like
the Teutonic Knights. I had no idea what they were,
but I had heard that name before.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
No, Teutonic sounds like a word similar to phrenology in
my mind, where it's like old timy and vaguely racist.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
That's kind of what's happening, only is about Germans.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
So chronology actually racist. But yeah, yeah, this category of
word teutonic.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Is a word that went out of fashion around the
same time that phrenology went out of fashion, and in
a similar thing where if you meet someone who starts
talking about Teutonic bloodlines or something, you could no, wait,
you could, you could disagree with them in a vehement fashion.
So the Teutons. So actually it's still a misnomer in
(16:53):
the same way they calling them Germans is misnomer because
there was a tribe called the Germans. Yeah, there was
a tribe called the Teutons, and they're not actually from Germany.
They're from the Jutland peninsula modern Denmark.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Oh uh huh.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
But then around the second century BCE they moved southeast
and along the way they displaced Celtic tribes, including one Tariski,
who were allied with Rome. People like to argue, I
am not among the people who like to argue about
this whether or not the Teutons themselves were Germanic or Celtic,
and whether Germanic is actually a different thing than Celtic.
But in general let's go with yes. It's like culturally
(17:31):
has some unique things going on. Tacitus wrote about the
Germans and one of the main things he was really
impressed by. The Germans were monogamous.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Oh we got homophobia, we got monogamy.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, and the Germans women if their husbands die are
never allowed to get married again boo, and everyone marries
late in life and is chased until marriage. This is
why I don't believe Tacitus. I don't think that that
sounds real to me, but that sounds boring, honestly. Yeah,
the Germans compared to the Gauls, who were like headhunters,
(18:10):
where their polycule is like all interwoven, you know. But
I also just like kind of don't believe this stuff.
But Tacitus also during all of this he wrote about
how somewhere near the Swedes was this other group that
were entirely like the Swedes, except they were run by women,
whoa and people have ever since, And I had it
in script and then I deleted it by accident. I
didn't know where to tie it in. But ever since
(18:32):
people have been like, what the fuck was he talking about?
And he either made it up, heard it from a guy,
or the Romans kept being like, these people were run
by women, isn't that weird? Whereas it was like very
very normal almost everywhere else. So if like one Swedish
clan happened to have a queen that year, he might
(18:53):
have been like, holy shit, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I love this figure of like what if tweeth century
anthropologist but like Roman and more fucked up. I'm really
taken by this, right, he is like a kind of
guy that just seems to exist throughout history.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I know, I know, And these people are still You
could watch them on YouTube. If you watch most of
the videos about the Tutenberg Forest, you're gonna find this guy.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Caesar also wrote about the Germans, and he wrote quote
their diet, daily exercise, and the freedom from restraint that
they enjoy for from childhood. They do not know what
compulsion or discipline is, and do nothing against their inclinations
combine to make them strong and tall as giants. They
(19:44):
inner themselves in spite of very cold climates in which
they live, to wear no clothing but skins, and these
so scanty that a large part of the body is uncovered,
and to bathe in rivers not scanty, I know, not
scanty cl in the cold North. While I also love
that the way to become as strong and tall as
(20:05):
a giant is to be an anarchist, Like, yeah, I
think that's true. Do nothing against your inclinations and you're
gonna grow up big and strong. Sure, sure, guy, Yeah,
I might as well. So this is Germania and the
BCE and all these tribes in Germania, Celtic and Teutonic alike.
(20:26):
They start moving into Gaul, into France, and they start
fucking up. This is the preamble to the other stuff.
This stuff doesn't matter as much for the story, but
it's worth pointing out. They move into Gaul, which is France,
and they start fucking up the French, including again a
bunch of folks who are allied with Rome at this point.
So Rome marches an army in and drives them back,
and for a moment that's working, but then Romans betrayed
(20:46):
the German tribes. You've ever seen a movie where they
do the trope where like the imperial forces call everyone
to a like sit down meeting and they're like just
kidding and they like kill everyone.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh did they do that?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
They do that all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I actually don't know if they did it specifically here,
because I lost track of how many times in the
ancient world, everyone, especially the Romans, are just being like, yeah,
let's like all meet up and talk, and then it's
not to talk.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
The one honorless cowardice two at some point.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Like well, they don't have the Internet.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
I guess you don't have the internet. But does word
not get around I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Well, actually, I mean I guess by the time Arminius
is on the he's like, nah, I don't fucking trust
you all. And that's going to go really badly for
the Romans because yeah, they keep doing this shit. It's
like the whole like, it's the pirate code. If you
show up to rob someone in like ye oldie pirty times,
you have to say, like, look, if you surrender, you
don't die. Yeah, because if they surrender and they do die,
now no one has any reason to surrender, right, And
(21:49):
now being a pirate just got like ten times more dangerous.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Bluffing can actually be very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
In fact, yeah, totally. So Rome betrays the German tribes
in France and so they just like fuck Rome's troops up.
They're just like, nah, there's gonna be a bunch of
back and forth, a bunch of brutal battles. And it
led me down a rabbit hole to research the history
of the concept of surrender.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Whoa, I'm still ready for this rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Well, unfortunately, what I really want is this one hundred
and ten dollars hardcover only history book that is about
the history of surrender, but I instead read a bunch
of reviews about it and a bunch of other shorter
essays that I could find in access Right. Surrender, as
we understand it is a reasonably modern concept. Like I
kept reading these reports of like ancient battles, and not
(22:36):
just in the sort of west or near East, but
like also like there's a battle in like ancient China
in the BCE where like literally two hundred thousand people
got buried alive after they surrendered.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And that's when there was one hundred and ninety million
people in the world total.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Holy shit.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, Oh my god. Yeah, and this happens so much. Yeah,
rome Ha said, multiple conflicts at this point where either
they're killing one hundred thousand guys or someone is killing
one hundred thousand of their guys.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Wow. Where do all these guys come from?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I don't fucking no, certainly not Germany where they're monogamous
and only get married late. Now, this wasn't that every battle.
The majority of battles in the ancient world did not
end with massacres, but a lot of them did, and
more common was that you surrender and you end up enslaved.
This is like the sort of normal thing where you're like, well,
at least I'm alive and ancient yeoldie world slavery is
(23:33):
completely different than like American chattel slavery. It's still an evil,
but like whenever people defend American chattel slavery by being
like everyone did it, they're wrong because American chattle slavery
was a unique evil. Yeah, but yeah, so the idea
that like if you're in a battle and then you
surrender and now you're just a prisoner of war and
then you go home at the end of the war,
that's pretty new.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, how new is new?
Speaker 1 (23:56):
That's what I'm trying to find out. I like, yeah,
I know that you start getting a lot more like
I know it exists by the Victorian era. I suspect
it exists well before then. Hostage taking was a big
part of medieval conflict, but that was only for rich people.
So it was like your kind of goal in order
to make back the money of like being in a
(24:17):
YILDI sortie times war, yeah, is to capture a bunch
of enemy nobility like the knights and shit and then
hold them hostage and ransom them back. But I think
that like the average peasant who's in the war, I
don't know yet, and I'm very curious about this stuff
because I have normal interests, like a normal person.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, that's why they pay you the big bucks.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
That's right, that's why they pay me the medium bucks.
I mean big bucks. I love Okay. Anyway, So the
Germans and their allied galls are just fucking up Rome.
But then they split the party, which you should never do,
and Rome sends a big fuck off army and defeats
them like one at a time, and the two Tones
and the Allied Simbri are sort of wiped off the
map and their remnants are absorbed into other groups. All
(25:00):
this is BCE is important in this week's story because
this is what cements the Germani as like terrifying giants
of legend to the Romans ever since, in a similar
way as to how the step people became the Amazons
because there was like women among them, and it scared
the Romans so much that they invented a whole type
of guy, the Amazon. You never heard this, Wait, that's
(25:23):
where that comes from. That's like the most likely thing
most likely is that they were like uh huh okay,
Like the way to kick Rome's ass is to fight
them in a swamp with a spear, like bare chested
in the middle of the dirt, or to have force
archers and just be like.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Horse lords are that's God tear, You're not beaten that.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, And so they kept getting their ass kicked by
like nomadic folks, and a lot of the step folks,
both the warriors and the leadership would be women, and
enough of them that basically in that same way that
tacticist tactic whatever, that fucking Assholese guy, he's like, Oh,
there's this entire realm where women run things, and it's
(26:03):
like probable that there was just actually even between men
and women and it happened to be a woman at
that time, and that was like so impossible for him
to imagine. So two tones in the Simbri are wiped
off the map, but they're like, now, this race of giants,
even though they're Jermani, they're also the two tony, the
(26:24):
two tones or the tutons, and tutan becomes the medieval
Latin word for the German languages, and that's how you
end up with the Teutonic Knights. We I don't really
know I or care all that much about they're involved
in the Crusades, and I haven't. I have all the
books about the Muslim side of the Crusades that I'm
excited to read and eventually talk about, but I haven't
gotten there. My one day, this podcast will cover all history, yes.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And it will be the only legal history podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Left, I know, once we defeat all the other ones.
But fortunately we have horse archers and there are a
bunch of Romans, so it's true. It's not going to
go well for them. We're God here, yeah, yeah, they
thought they were rest here, but where God tyre? Rome
meanwhile gets more and more powerful the stuff that happens
in Gaul. But they're just like expanding more and more.
(27:11):
It's empire keeps expanding. Sometimes it shows up and it
just conquers raw military force, but more often it shows up.
It sets some local leaders up as client kings and
slowly romanizes the area like trading with them, taking a
little bit of tribute but not a ton, and then
slowly takes over more and more. Like there's no literally,
(27:35):
the only way to stop this is to kill your colonizer,
as for Churchill put it, by the time we're in
the current era, Rome is all over the fucking place.
A Smithsonian magazine put it, quote the Imperial Navy had
turned the Mediterranean into a Roman lake, and they're like,
all right, I want that Germania thing too, mostly because
(27:57):
it's at the edge of their own borders, not because
it's a particularly interesting or wealthy place.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, but do you.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Know what is both interesting and wealthy you after you
purchase the products and services that support this show. You
caught me again, especially sports gambling, which I can't even
straight face. Don't sports gamble. It's bad if we advertise it.
I'm sorry. Anyway, here's our.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Ads and we're back.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
There's not a lot of point for Rome to take
over Germania. They there's not even that many people to
build client kingdoms from because there's not really kingdoms. There's
not really any gold or silver to steel. There's some
limited trade, but not really enough to make a ton
of money by taxing it. The Germans make good mercenaries,
(28:54):
and a ton of them are already serving in the
Roman military, but it isn't even good farmland. The soil
is really shitty. Apparently, I read one historian called it
too sticky, and I don't know what that means. I
don't either, But if you're in Germany, sorry about your
sticky soil.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Sticky, that's just so gross.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I know. Sticky is like almost never a good word.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Rarely is it a good like even if I'm describing
candy like I don't want sticky candy. I want candy
that almost is sticky, but I wouldn't describe it as sticky.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Well, then don't start chewing German soil.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I wasn't going to okay, mostly on account of I
don't live on that continent.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, that is the only reason. Before the development of
better plows, apparently it was less good agricultural land than
the Mediterranean area, at least by the Roman standards. It's
mostly like forests and swamps. It's a real Barbarian era area.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, that's what I know about Germany as allegedly the land.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Of my people. Yeah, but Rome is Rome, and Rome
wants everything.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Them bitches you want and everything.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
I mean, they really are. They just absolutely are like
greedy assholes who are like, we want to conquer fucking
everything because it like the concept of a morality or
that's bad. Hasn't really like hit the Western world, you know.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, Jesus hasn't come to save us yet, I know.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah, God, then of course you know that whole will
become the state religion and that'll whatever.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
So A good chunk of the modern border between France
and Germany is the Rhine, is the river r hin E,
and it's been roughly that border for a long ass time,
for about ten years, from six BCE to four CE.
I don't know if there's a zero CE. I don't know,
maybe it's eleven years. I don't know how to count.
Rome started setting up a militarized frontier along the Rhine,
(30:45):
and this is to stop the Germans from invading Roman Gaul.
But it's also the start of a settler colonial project
into Germania. And this is something that we've only learned recently,
like in the past thirty years out of the two
thousand years since this happened.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Wow, it's interesting that history like we keep learning more
about it. I know this is not as wise of
an aside as I thought it was going to be
when I started. I just think it's cool.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
No, it blows my mind. Sometimes I'll find a source
from nineteen sixty and I'll be like, oh, well, that's
not gonna be as accurate even if I'm talking about
nineteen twenty, you know, yeah, because I'm like, oh, they
weren't as good at and not because like we're geniuses,
but because like the way we accumulate and develop science
and like understandings of history. But what's funny in this
particular case. So basically, for a long long time people
(31:34):
were like, oh, no, there wasn't really colonization of Germany happening.
It was just this border with this like angry tribes
on the other side, and some like they knew there
was some trade and stuff like that, but they didn't
realize there was colonization or settlers. Even though one of
the old Roman writers, Cassius Dio, who wrote a couple
hundred years later, he wrote about how Rome was starting
(31:55):
to set up cities and shit in Germania. But for millennia,
people thought he'd just be making shit.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Up, right, Well, because he does, right.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I think, yeah, exactly, that's the like I distrust Tacitus
and Cassius Dio, right, But Cassius Dio wrote, quote, the
Romans were holding portions of Germania and soldiers of Theirs
were wintering there, and cities were being founded. The barbarians
are adapting themselves to Roman ways. We're becoming accustomed to
(32:25):
hold markets, and we're meeting in peaceful assemblages. And in
the nineteen nineties, archaeologists discovered the ruins of a short
lived Roman style town. It gets called Waldegrimes, but that's
just the modern name. No one knows the original name.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Impeccable modern name though. I know that's the name of
my next Pathfinder character.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
And you're just from Waldegrimes and you just go.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Home, Yeah, something like that. We'll workshop it later.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah. And this was a brand new settle. It wasn't
just like, oh, we're kind of converting people like they're
literally they show up and they build this town from
the ground up, full of Roman amenities like running water
and the sewage system.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Wait, Romans had running water too.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, yeah, oh my god. The fact that they had
it at the frontier is a little bit wild to me.
I think that they did. The thing that I read
is like, look, we found lead pipes that are plumbing pipes,
and so we don't know as part of why Romans
fought a lot I think honestly, yeah, that makes sense.
And so yeah, this is twenty acre town. It's walled
off and it's full of running water and whatever. They
(33:36):
have amenities there. Fuck that rules, I know.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And then I mean fucked, like fuck the Romans, but
y'all got running water. That's the time of Jesus. I
clearly know a lot about history, and I'm kind.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Of showing, but I think that there is this like,
especially in the West, we have this very very linear
idea of history, right, and so like the idea that
like apparently in somehow I had to like double check
some shit. I was like, because I'd read this when
I was a kid, that Romans had running water, and
so I was like double checking and it was like, oh, yeah,
Romans had running hot and cold water at rich houses.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Like fuck, I only sometimes have hot water in my house.
You know. I don't want to limit to the Roman
Empire the same I don't want to limit the American Empire.
But yeah, damn all right, people be smart. I know
you are fucking smart.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I know, and we also know. One of the smartest things.
We know that this place was built in exactly four BCE,
because we know when you build with wood. You can
just literally look at the rings in the wood and
map it to other trees in the air.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Oh my god, holy shit.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, damn.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, science is cool.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I know it's always used for bad shit, but it's
fucking cool in concept and like, and it's not bad
shit to look at this and learn when this place
was built.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, it's also obviously not neutral. You know, where it
gets funding and where get the resources to study is
obviously were not with all kinds of stuff. But I'm
not surprised that there's so much money getting poured into
discovering the ancient Germany and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Well, what's weird is actually modern Germany is like kind
of sketched out by ancient Germany right now, like because
modern Germany is like not excited about German nationalism.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Again, just a correct take out, No, I know, I'm
not going to riff about this with you.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah. And so for a long time archaeologist assume Walde
Grimes was just another military camp. But there wasn't a
single military building there and there were barely any like
spearheads or other military relics. It was a whole ass
trade town occupied by people who weren't afraid of being
attacked by Germans. So it's not just saying like, oh,
(35:53):
there's enough here that we can have a town. It's
saying that, like, we can have a town because we
think the Germans are our friends, you know, huh. And
in fact they know how the houses were built based
on where the postholes are and stuff, and like the
styles of building in different areas, and so there were
both Roman and German style buildings there.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
And there was German jewelry around, not gathered up in
like trade form, but like probably being worn by people. Yeah,
there were limestone pedestals with limestone imported from Gaul upon
which set statues. Most likely this includes a life size
Augustus statue. He's the first Emperor of Rome and he's
in charge at this point when this happens.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I know that from the Bible.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Ah, that other book that has some historically accurate stuff
and a lot of other stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
He called for the census, which is why Mary went
back to Bethlehem.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I believe shit.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Okay, Okay, I don't know if that's I'm remembering from
elementary school, a whole Sunday school.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
So you know, no one actually knows what the Bible says,
no one's read it.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I certainly haven't. No, I just heard about it from
other people.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, that's you might be joking.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
I don't know. Somewhere are lost in between joking and
not joking. So there's an Augustus statue that's covered in
It's a bronze statue covered in gold leaf of him
astride a horse, and this is this monumental show of
wealth for this frontier town. You can make a lot
of weapons and armor with like six hundred pounds of bronze.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, there's a lot of bronze.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And we know about the statue because after the city
fell because spoiler alert, the Romans are going to get
kicked out of Germany.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I said that at the top, the head of the
horse is going to get chopped off by the barbarians
and then sacrifice to the water gods by putting it
at the bottom of a well.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Fuck.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah, And I love that they don't even sacrifice Augustus's head.
They just like they do a lot of horse sacrifice
in this area at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, mixed feelings about that, but the
story is good.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, and the rest of the bronze was turned into
weapons and armor probably, but lots of little bits of
it were found around this dig. But having a statue
of an emperor wasn't just like the way we would
do it now, where it's like this guy's so in
charge that fuck you.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Instead, with their religious understanding, it's basically saying, the emperor's
here with us.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
And so the Germans were beginning to Romanize, at least
some of them were. There was a lot of tension
between the tribes about this, and even within tribes, where
some tribes are like, yeah, fuck it and other ones
are like no, fuck you. There's a lot of fuck
in both directions.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Not a lot of fucking though, because they're not getting married.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
No, yeah, no Germans ever had children.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
If only, if only history was clean, just to.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Go back in time and distribute birth control very efficiently
in like nineteen twenties and like nineteen fifteen in Germany anyway,
that's called eugenics, and it's bad. See almost every episode
of this show. So one of these tribes in this
area is the Cheruski, and that's the Roman name for it.
(38:56):
No one knows the Germanic name for it. There's lots
of arguments about what it might be. This is one
of these tribes that they're really split on the whole
Rome thing. But the chief is pro Roman. Probably. I've
read a bunch of different modern writing about this shit.
Everyone is interpreting these old Roman historians and doing it
in different ways that don't line up with each other. Great,
(39:16):
but let's just say, you know, he's pro Roman. He
has a bunch of kids. One of them is going
to wind up with the Roman named Arminius, and he
is our main character, Arminius. He either joins the Roman
army voluntarily in a normal way as an adult, or
what I think is more likely, and I've just again
(39:36):
read both by people we seem to know what they're
fucking talking about, or he's sent to Rome as a
kid to be raised as a hostage. Have you heard
about this thing? This like kind of like nobility hostage stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I've heard about it with regards to other conflicts, but
I don't know anything about this in the context of
the Roman Empire. I've heard about it in like other stuff,
But tell me all about it.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, no, fair enough, it's funny. I actually mostly know
about this from other cultures and like more like Renaissance
in medieval kind of conflict, which I just like know
more about in general.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Right, I feel like I know about this from Game
of Thrones.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, this is some serious Game of Throne shit. Honestly,
Game of Thrones. I always thought it was like very medieval,
and then I started learning about the ancient world and
I was like, no, this actually is like far more
to do with like ancient world conflict than it does
like medieval, especially with that fucking Hadrian's Wall. I mean,
I'm the wall, although it could just as easily be
the fucking fortification of the Rhine called the Limitus anyway, whatever,
(40:35):
So you basically just let your kid be raised by
another family from like kind of your enemies, and it's
a way of being like, well, of course you're not
gonna like be disloyal. We have your kid, but it's
not a like prisoner. I mean, it is a prisoner,
but it's like you're adopting the kid in a lot
of ways, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah, And Arminius is the son of the chief of
this tribe, and so he's raised in Rome. Is the
most likely thing. Also read that he joined as an
adult whatever I don't care. He's in the Roman Army.
He gets a Roman name. It possibly comes from maybe
he did work in Armenia, like for Rome, but I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I was going to ask what the connection between his
name and Armenia was.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
But yeah, it might be that he like because there's
a lot of like Like later a dude named Germanicus
is going to show up and he's not German but
instead he fought in Germany.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Great, I want to know everything about how they're naming shit.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, those are the kind of rabbit holes. I start
down and I'm like, the answer is kind of we
don't know, but yeah, Arminius, that is one of the
things that people conjecture. He speaks Latin, he learns Roman tactics,
and he gets real good at Roman tactics, and that's
not going to go well for Rome.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Something something of the Master's tools.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I know, this is some serious like focos boomerang. Shit,
I almost did a whole aside about Foocos boomerang, but
you all can do it yourself, or listen to the
very first season if it could happen here, he's promoted
to the rank of equoit, which is basically a night.
I saw it translated first as night, and then I
was like, what the fuck Roman didn't have knights? And
then I like did a bunch of research, and I
was like, oh, he was an equite. Okay, great, which
I also didn't know anything about. But whatever, I mean,
(42:10):
I know everything. I don't have to do research. I
actually just was born knowing all this stuff. And he
becomes a Roman citizen. So the Roman army has legions,
which is like the more proper marching around in squares
fucking people up because they have impeccable tactics. And then
they have auxiliaries, and the auxiliaries are like stranger units
(42:32):
built out of colonized people.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Funky.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, And he's leading a unit of auxiliaries of his
own people in the Balkans for a while, and so
he's actually doing colonizing for Rome, right, And this actually
makes him very comparable to Oh my god, my favorite
person I've ever covered on show, the gay Irish knight
who stopped Leopold Roger Casement. There's an episode I did
(42:58):
a long time ago about this gay Irish knight who
was part of the British colonial service. And then he
was like, I think I'm on the wrong side, and
he instead intervened in King Leopold of Belgium's massacre of
eight million, like a genocide that he was doing in
the congress. Shit, and he was part of the bringing
down that ending that genocide, and then he went and
(43:19):
helped end another genocide and then he was like, you know,
Ireland's not doing great either, yeah, and so then he
like he did a treason even though he was a
knight in the British Empire, and they killed him, but
he was part of the Easter Rising or he was
trying to provide weapons for the Easter Rising. But then
when he died, he's the last person to get hanged
because he's not caught in the rising, right, and he's
(43:40):
on trial and everyone's like, oh, he's a true patriot.
But then they found his sex journal, Oh my god,
and it's basically like he's a size queen and he
like has fucked so many people all over the world
that he like writes out how big their dicks are
and shit, holy shit, and then the fucking piece of
shit Catholic Irish people are like, not all of them,
but an off of them are like, oh, this guy's
(44:01):
not our guy. We don't like him anymore, and then
they fucking hanged down mn.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Fuck that.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
And he's one of the best people's ever lived, as
far as I can tell. But he also started off
by being on the wrong side. He was part of
the British Columby service. And Arminius is actually not going
to have that noble of an ending because Armenius is
not as good of a person. But we'll get to that.
We'll get to our Minius's end, but we won't get
to it until Wednesday, because we're actually at the end
of today. Today is now over. Officially, set your clocks
(44:29):
to midnight.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Oh but I want to hear the end.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Oh well, then you have to wait till actually you
only have to wait a couple of minutes, but everyone
else is to wait till Wednesday, because we are going
to talk about the kind of least intelligent and capable
Roman officer that you will ever read about that will
make fiction look fake, and about an ambush that will
change the world. And also how Arminius should have read Tolkien.
(44:53):
We'll talk about that on Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Everyone should. It's the Holy Book.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
It is, there's no problems with it, except for all
the racism mm hmm, probably some other stuff too, But
before that, do you have anything you want to plug?
Is there anything if people want to hear about you
interacting with battle, Is there any way that people can
do that?
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Well, no they can't, because Margaret I have never battled
or committed any crimes. But if people would like to
hear about a band of erstwhile revolutionaries fighting some frogs
in between revolutions, you can head over to the cool
Zone Media book Club feed and take a listen to
our Pathfinder play through. That's you and me and Robert
and iow and it's DMed by Jason Bullman and it's
(45:37):
pretty fun, I think.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, it's in this feed too, I hear it is.
And also the sound design is really good. And if
you're one of the people who listens to the show
and then skips book club, I don't know, do whatever
you want. But one thing you can do is listen
to it.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah, or you could just like put it on before
you go to sleep and not listen to it, but
make sure that we get the place. That would also
I take that too.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, absolutely, there's no uh no problems. Yeah, that's what
I want to plug too. Because I'm also in it
and my character's name is Spie and she was named
after the Virtues. Anyway, Yeah, I'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
He CEA Cool People Who.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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