[RERUN] EPISODE 48: Give Me Back My Legions! (Part 2)

History on Fire

Daniele Bolelli

Society & Culture

4.8 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2022

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes” — Victor Hugo

“Inconceivable!” — From The Princess Bride

A little over 2,000 years ago, Rome was a well-oiled war machine crushing everything in its path. At that time, the Roman legions were the most deadly military force in the Western world, and possibly in the whole world. Every year, they conquered new peoples and pushed the boundaries of their empire. Rape and pillage was the name of the game, and they were masters at it. But in the year 9 CE, something happened in the forests of Germany that was going to have a profound impact on the destiny of the world. Some historians go so far as to suggest that both the German and English languages may not exist as we know them, had things gone differently. News arriving from Germany, along with a severed head delivered by courier, threw Emperor Augustus in a deep depression.

In this second and final part of the series (for the first part you can check Episode 47)about the clash between Rome’s power with Germanic tribesmen, we’ll consider topics such as how suicide post-defeat in battle was a family tradition for one of the key characters in our story, when Varus ordered 2,000 people crucified, the training of the Roman army, Arminius’ skill at playing the long con, the battle that changed history, having to cut your friends’ throat out of kindness, the German passion for human sacrifice, Roman vengeance, how these events may be tied to the creation of the English language, and much more.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

If you’d like to go to Japan for a historical tour with yours truly as a guide, please check out https://geeknationtours.com/tours/signature-battlefield-series-classic-samurai-from-the-gempei-war-to-the-mongol-invasions-2023/

Big thank you to Athletic Greens for sponsoring this episode. Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit https://athleticgreens.com/HOF

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to episode 48, part 2 of the Give Me Back My Legion series.
0:08.0	Now you may wonder, I just released an episode that was number 94.
0:13.3	What am I doing with episode 48? Am I that bad at math? The short answer is yes, I am that bad at math
0:20.9	but that's a separate topic. The reason why this episode pops up now on your feed and why this is
0:28.8	gonna keep happening, how you're going to see new episodes in the 90s and early 100s and so on
0:35.0	and you're gonna see some older episodes pop up. It's because starting in this October 2022,
0:43.1	I'm gonna be able to start releasing one episode amount of those that have previously been behind
0:49.6	the paywall. So I wanna apologize for any confusion that this may create because I understand it's
0:56.3	a little messy but the good news is that you're getting now on three feeds, episodes that were
1:02.0	previously on a paywall as well as new episodes. So there should be a whole bunch of history
1:07.1	on fire episodes coming out about two a month. Ideally I'm gonna do one new one and one of the
1:12.5	old ones. Some months I mean it more time to work on the new ones so there may be two of the older
1:19.0	ones either way. There's a whole lot of content to about to be coming your way and this is the first
1:26.2	one in this series of episodes that are being released. Since this is a part two, in case your
1:34.8	memory is a little fuzzy from way back when in 2019 you may wanna give a listen again to give
1:40.7	me back my legions part one that was episode 47. This is the finale to that series. If I haven't
1:48.8	confused you too much now before we get into the episode a couple of quick things. One is a
1:55.6	shoutout to the sweet folks who have been supporting me on Patreon at the highest possible level.
2:01.2	That would be Marc Chang, Chimi Moxam, Gail Goodwin, Azusa Renteria, Jofri Tolethson and Rafael Guerrero.
2:10.2	If you wanna join this brave band of heroes well even if you don't wanna contribute at the
2:14.6	highest possible level that I admit is a little much but for for anybody else if you wanna support
2:20.9	podcast on Patreon that goes a really long way to get history on fire going. The entry level is
	...

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