Carausius: The Pirate King
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With ancient Rome often being viewed as a mighty, impenetrable empire - it seems unlikely that one man, let alone a pirate, could ever bring this empire to it's knees. Yet that's exactly what Carausius, posthumously dubbed the 'Pirate King', did. Striking when Rome was already weak and without it's Naval Fleet, Carausius took advantage of Britain's vulnerability and declared himself Emperor of Britain - but how long did this daring new venture last?
In this episode, Simon Elliot returns to the podcast to delve into this fantastical history of the Pirate King. Looking at backstabbing best friends (quite literally), family dynasties, and fog covered frontiers - can we really call Carausius the Pirate King?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the ancient's on history hit. |
| 0:15.8 | I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast we're talking all about Roman Britain |
| 0:21.4 | a particular I think it's fair to say also overlooked episode in the story of Roman Britain |
| 0:27.0 | because we're not talking about Budica not the ninth legion not the conquest not the end |
| 0:31.3 | of Roman Britain or Roman London or anything like that although Roman London does fit |
| 0:35.6 | into this story. We're talking about the story of a Roman usurper who took control of |
| 0:42.0 | Roman Britain and forged his own North Sea Empire in the late third century AD. His name |
| 0:50.6 | was Corazius and he is an extraordinary figure for which we have archaeology and literature |
| 0:57.1 | surviving. This man for a time was arguably the most powerful man in North-West Europe and |
| 1:05.0 | to tell the story of this Roman usurper of this pirate king I was delighted to go and |
| 1:11.5 | interview once again for the ancient's my good friend Dr Simon Elliott. Simon he is a |
| 1:18.6 | machine. There are a few repeating guests on the ancient so I think you will agree are |
| 1:23.1 | literally forces of nature and Simon is another one of those because the passion that he speaks |
| 1:29.4 | with is encapsulating it's in the throughling you can't help but be gripped by it and the story |
| 1:34.5 | too of Corazius is one that I know you're going to absolutely love. I really enjoy recording |
| 1:39.4 | this podcast in person always wonderful having Simon on the show and I think I'm allowed to say |
| 1:43.9 | I think you're going to absolutely love this one so that further ado to tell the story of Corazius |
| 1:49.2 | the pirate king is Simon. Simon veteran in the podcast you're tabby back on always fantastic to come |
| 2:04.9 | back on the ancient's with your Tristan. I know well the best podcast to the more right you've done |
| 2:08.8 | so many different podcasts but this is the one that you look forwards to the most this is the |
| 2:12.4 | most fun this is the P.A.s the resistance this is the culmination of anybody's ambition to go on any |
| 2:17.3 | podcast to go on the ancient's with your Tristan. 100% just want to get that straight away that ego |
... |
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