TTC - Rome and the Barbarians
by Kenneth Harl
published by The Teaching Company (TTC)
36 lectures of 30 minutes - mp3 - 430 mb
Rome and the Barbarians tells the story of the complex relationships between Celts, Goths, Huns, Persians and their Roman conquerors as they intermarried, exchanged ideas and, in the ensuing provincial Roman cultures, formed the basis of European civilization.
As you examine the interaction between Rome and the barbarians from 300 B.C. to A.D. 600, you learn that the definition of barbarian was, effectively, the "next group not under Roman control." And you see how that definition was always changing, as former barbarians became assimilated into the Roman world, becoming provincials and, often, eventually Romanized themselves.
In leading you through this 900-year period, Tulane University’s Professor Kenneth W. Harl organizes the course around two major themes:
* The makeup of Roman society, politics, and military organization, particularly from the standpoint of how those institutions enabled the Romans not only to conquer those peoples, but integrate them
* The role played by the most recent of Rome’s barbarian foes, especially the Germans and the Persians, in bringing down the Roman Empire, including the question of what gave them the military or political edge to accomplish this.
Throughout these lectures, and the introduction of each new barbarian culture, Professor Harl emphasizes three crucial aspects of Rome’s relationships to them:
1. The ability of the Romans to adapt and build pragmatically on existing structures of the barbarian world, using what worked, and not simply imposing a "Roman way"
2. The ways the Romans looked on these barbarians not only as outsiders, but also as potential allies and provincials
3. What barbarian societies were like at the time of Roman contact and conquest, and how, through assimilation, they contributed to the successful establishment of Roman provinces.
Among the many figures you’ll come to know are:
* Augustus, the emperor whose organizational genius allowed him to establish the constitutional basis of the Principate—the imperial government in which the emperor rules in accordance with the symbols and powers of the Republic.
* Constantine I, who reunited the Roman world and, in dedicating Constantinople—"New Rome"—as a Christian capital, assured the future of the Christian Byzantine empire.
* Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, one of the greatest of Roman commanders, whose defeat of Hannibal ended the Second Punic War.
* Diocletian, the emperor who put the empire on a sound fiscal footing and attempted to create a permanent Tetrarchy, wherein imperial power was shared by two senior and two junior emperors.
* Jugurtha, the Numidian king whose wars against his cousins for mastery of Numidia caused him to blunder into a scandalous war with Rome.
* Gaius Julius Caesar, the most famous Roman of them all and the creator of the Roman imperial monarchy. As a dictator, he reformed Rome, but his monarchical aspirations led to his assassination.
* Nero, whose amoral and outrageous conduct alienated the ruling classes and frontier legions and precipitated his downfall and suicide.
* Attila, the Hun ruler whose devastating raids into the Balkans earned him the sobriquet "Scourge of God," and whose life of warfare and violence ended, ironically, with a death from overindulgence at his own wedding.
* Shapur I, the second Sassanid Shah of Persia who waged three successful campaigns against Rome, captured the Emperor Valerian, and sacked Antioch, the third city of the Roman Empire.
* Ermanaric, the King of the Gothic confederation, remembered in Norse legend as a cunning and cruel tyrant, who committed suicide after being defeated by Huns and Alans in 375.
Course Lecture Titles
1. Greek and Roman Views of Barbarians
2. The Roman Republic
3. Roman Society
4. The Roman Way of War
5. Celtic Europe and the Mediterranean World
6. The Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul
7. Romans and Carthaginians in Spain
8. The Roman Conquest of Spain
9. The Genesis of Roman Spain
10. Jugurtha and the Nomadic Threat
11. Marius and the Northern Barbarians
12. Rome's Rivals in the East
13. The Price of Empire—The Roman Revolution
14. Julius Caesar and the Conquest of Gaul
15. Early Germanic Europe
16. The Nomads of Eastern Europe
17. Arsacid Parthia
18. The Augustan Principate and Imperialism
19. The Roman Imperial Army
20. The Varian Disaster
21. The Roman Conquest of Britain
22. Civil War and Rebellion
23. Flavian Frontiers and the Dacians
24. Trajan, the Dacians, and the Parthians
25. Romanization of the Provinces
26. Commerce Beyond the Imperial Frontiers
27. Frontier Settlement and Assimilation
28. From Germanic Tribes to Confederations
29. Goths and the Crisis of the Third Century
30. Eastern Rivals—Sassanid Persia
31. Rome and the Barbarians in the Fourth Century
32. From Foes to Federates
33. Imperial Crisis and Decline
34. Attila and the Huns
35. Justinian and the Barbarians
36. Birth of the Barbarian Medieval West
