Arveh, and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from La Trobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Riannon Evans, Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University.

This is episode CCXXXX IX, Krasis and the Social Wars.

Marcus Licinius Krasis was an influential politician in the late Roman Republic. Famous for the

wealth he accrued and the power that he held, an ally of Caesar and a rival of Pompey.

He rose to prominence during the social wars, but would never get the military glory he believed he was owed.

Here's Riannon Evans.

Marcus Likinius Krasis was a Roman politician and also a general during the late Republic when it was all falling apart.

And he's sort of at the centre of a lot of political dealings and also warfare, although he won't

be around by the time of the Civil War, so he's not involved in the big Civil War of the 40s.

He's known mostly for being obscenely rich.

He makes a lot of money. He doesn't inherit it all. He's actually in some ways, as much as you can be in Rome at that time, a self-made man. He's known as being very greedy. The word avarice

comes up a lot in the sources on him. And even though we have a biography of him by

Plutarch, a lot of what we know about him is because he's interacting with people like

Caesar and Pompey and Cicero and the other big hitters of the time. Yes, yes. But he's a good way to

look at those people as well. And while we see him as a

peripheral player to these events, would he have seen himself as a peripheral player to these

events? Absolutely not. I think that if he had lived longer and been involved in that civil war,

he might have been able to help to write those histories,

even if he's not writing it down in something that survives himself like Caesar did,

then he would have been involved in the kind of policies that follow.

He might have been more famous to us.

...