Story here is that it's it shows when things go wrong to rule the ticket didn't want to be able to buy the rope and she's just so badly mistreated by them that she's left to get the point when there is no other alternative you know what do you do when you've been abused to that extent what have you got left of them to try and find will dive into the history of the Roman occupation of Great Britain including the response by Queen Buddha because with her sacking of London Our guest is ancient Roman scholar Adrian Goldsworthy the author of the book Dreams wall also discussed the nature of Roman occupation and the warlike nature of the ancient democratic and republican systems it's one of those strange things about the ancient world was the democracies do tend to be very aggressive to keep the big ones in cars because often the voters can see a benefit from this and certainly the political types and see the road people to take glory profit if you're going to wear the joins us next on letters in politics . But 1st the news for Pacifica Radio I'm Eileen Alpha dairy Republican Senator Rand Paul block independent Senator Bernie Sanders effort to pass a resolution to protect u.s. Election systems from Russian interference Sanders resolution also said President Donald Trump has to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller said that to geisha and to Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Sanders wanted to quit the Senate on record as standing by u.s. Intelligence agencies assessment that Russia intervened in the election that put Trump in the White House we are serious about preserving American democracy we must demand and I know this is a radical idea but demand that the president of the United States represent the interest of the American people and not Bush. Republican Senator Rand Paul accused Sanders and Democrats of acting on hatred of the president to block diplomacy with Russia trumped arrangement syndrome has officially come to the Senate the hatred for the president is so intense that partisans would rather risk war than give diplomacy a chance with the Russians Sanders was trying to advance his proposal by unanimous consent but that means it takes only one senator's objection to block it Russia's ambassador to the u.s. Says President Trump made important verbal agreements with President Vladimir Putin during their private conversation in Helsinki Anatoly and listed cooperation in Syria and arms control as 2 issues the world leaders had agreed on the Washington Post reports at the highest level Trump administration officials still don't know what Trump promised Putin during their one on one meeting which lasted more than 2 hours the Post reported that officials are scrambling to figure out what Trump agreed to the push for a federal Medicare for all single payer system of health care received to boost House Democrats prevail a giant hall of Washington Debbie Dingell of Michigan and Keith Ellison of Minnesota announced creation of a house caucus dedicated to pushing for passage of h.r. 6767 the Medicare for all legislation the measure now has 122 House sponsors nearly 2 thirds of all Democrats said health care must be accessible and affordable to every resident of the United States one of the best ways to ensure health care for all is to use the system that already exists for millions of seniors over the last half century and that is Medicare the congressional Medicare for all caucus will help build the evidence base for Medicare for all and let me say that all of us understand that this has been a process and. Journey and that the Affordable Care Act was a piece of getting to the place where people understood that things like preexisting conditions should be covered that people on Medicare Medicaid should have much greater access and it is allowed us to get to the place where now we need to take the next step Jiah Paul said that next step is working through the research and the challenges and making sure supporters understand how to craft and implement a Medicare for all system Israel's parliament approved contentious legislation that defines the country as the nation state of the Jewish people and makes Hebrew the only official language downgrading Arabic to special standing the vote was 62 to 55 and came in the early morning after 8 hours of heated debate the government says the bill will merely enshrined into law Israel's existing character Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called its passage a historic moment in the history of Zionism in the history of the state of Israel Palestinian Arabs make up about 20 percent of the Israeli population the head of the Arab list in the Knesset called it an evil law and said it would deny the rights of Palestinians member of parliament use of Java rain spoke to all Jazeera after the vote. This is a bill from a government that is an enemy to Palestinians it's the most dangerous measure it's a law from a racist government against Palestinian rights and to create an apartheid regime it turns Israel into a fascist state the American Jewish community said it was deeply disappointed and that the law puts at risk the commitment of Israel's founders to build a country that is both Jewish and democratic a groundbreaking Court ruling in Lebanon says that consensual sex between people of the same gender is not illegal Human Rights Watch hailed the ruling as the 1st such decision from an appeals court in Lebanon and says it moves the country further towards decriminalisation. A Human Rights Watch researcher said the Lebanese court has effectively ordered the state to get out of people's bedrooms I'm Eileen elf in Derry letters and politics is next Welcome to letters and politics I mean it shows rich quick note here about upcoming shows and I'm pretty excited about next week my home radio station k p.f.a. Is where we broadcast out of as well as probably a lot of other community radio stations will be if they're not already in a short summer fun drive during these type of times during these fundraisers I try to bring the very best of what we do on this radio program so starting next Tuesday we're going to be bringing a brand new series of shows that include a conversation with Stephen Green Blatt Pulitzer Prize winning author about the politics of William Shakespeare and how his analysis of politics is still very relevant today you know we are living in Shakespearean type of times another show we'll have is with Kyle Harper on how natural climate change and disease went hand in hand with both the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire and you know the Romans thought they had conquered nature in their day so we'll talk about that waltz a look at how the early christians destroyed the classical world from Athens to Alexandria with classicist Katherine nixie and we'll explore the life of Zora Neale Hurston Nick specially her life as an anthropologist and her quest to save the record African American folklore and her 1st manuscript that is just now for the 1st time didn't turn into a book about a man by the name of. Allah who in 1927 was the last living African kidnapped from Africa enslaved in America and then had to forge a new life after the end of slavery in the south so for that conversation will speak to Zora Neale Hurston scholar Deborah Plante So that's all beginning next Tuesday and I'm very much looking forward to that I hope you understand that this week I'm spending much of my time. To get ready for those jobs for those interviews it's a tough job I know so today I want to weigh your appetite a little bit with the conversation about the outskirts of the Roman Empire that's where most of the opposition to the empire could be found that's where it was its fiercest and we're going to focus specifically on Great Britain in fact the name Britain comes from the Roman Latin term for Tenia and for their conversation I spoke to each Goldsworthy Adrian's Goldsworthy is a scholar of the Roman Empire He's the author of the book he dreams wall this is the wall that could be found in northern England and this was the further most Western expansion of the Roman Empire and then on the other side you would have what we think we call Barbarians the Celtic tribes and so I spoke to Adrian Goldsworthy just a couple of weeks ago and we did it via Skype Goldsworthy it's my very good pleasure to welcome you to our program. Thank you for inviting me can you tell me about the world that the Roman Empire found that Julius Caesar I guess found when he 1st arrived in the on the island which today we call Great Britain it's something that I mean Caesar really really would resist southeast of moss he talks about probably only applies to that area linguistically these are people who are speaking Celtic languages these days it's not really fashionable for the archaeologists to view all Celts as very similar in terms of culture of the organization the Greeks in the romans present they tend to describe them as all having the same sort of tribal structure they have chiefs they have kings they have high kings over there the tribes are always fighting each other they head hunters you know they take people's heads as trophies and display them on the buildings they do human sacrifice they get up to also things like us. There's a mixture there's a variation does appear to be very very common in Britain as it was in most of Iron Age Europe basically dating with that culture. There are a lot of probes in that some areas we have a rather poor archaeological record of what's going on. It's one of those drawbacks that often the best finds archaeologically when people are living in a quite simple roundhouses you might find postholes the houses all ships you find tend to be with grave goods when they if they bury somebody and put things in the grave the problem is if you then have a cultural or try who doesn't carry anybody but like some of the Native American peoples exposes the bodies on platforms that's going to leave almost no ocular trace whatsoever so there are areas of Britain where we really don't know too much about the people of them broadly this is the sort of pottery they use in this is for the men who are using and they live in these round houses the sort of material is quite hard to date one thing that is potent to remember not just about Britain but about the whole Roman Empire is that wherever the Romans go will many of the locals welcome them and there are many tribes leaders kings and queens who never ever fight against Rome instead they see the Romans as a big powerful friend to protect them against the neighboring tribe in the neighboring peoples against whom they be fighting for generations they've got those sorts of grudges that have been about cattle raiding in tribal problems of disputes in warfare for generations perhaps centuries that's far more important to you than this strange foreign empire that appears and generally speaking doesn't interfere too much in your daily life. However really the Romans that consciously interfere because that there are really too lazy and they don't have a good minister system they like people to become more like them so they encourage the aristocracy to live in Roman villas to start speaking lasted to they give the Roman citizenship and then try and encourage them to buy into the imperial system have a career in it. And also start being local magistrates' local priest all the things the Romans understand the Romans really understand cities and city life and that's the way they'd like to do the world in Britain you have some towns and cities but especially in the north people just don't seem to like living in that sort of environment so you end up with lots of little settlements around the country but they still start to become more rather than new There you have a currency you can see in sites on Hadrian's wall around it that luxury goods ordinary goods from hundreds even thousands of miles away in other parts of the Empire are readily available to quite ordinary people very very quickly this becomes part of the major Imperial economy goods and moving around people who've been around and but how to trace them up you know deeply but probably ideas maybe even jokes and psalms and shoes being around because this is a far more cosmopolitan world than anything that happened in the age of 4 when your people generally didn't move around so much. I guess beyond the archaeological record everything we've learned whether it be about the Celtic tribes in what we call today Great Britain I guess Britain itself or the Latin term or even throughout areas around Germany and France today everything that we know about these people when it comes from Roman historians or Roman writers themselves. Yes that's the program you're dealing with in peoples These are not literate cultures they so they don't leave any records the closest you get. Some of the poems that are not written into the early Middle Ages in Ireland where you have a very similar trouble in a zation you've got things like the Elsa cycle that has a good color than in the 20 in you know the full rate of coolie the central sort of epic of this cycle of stories about heroes who write in chariots who chop off each other's heads and keep this trophies to a very powerful Queens who seem to be quite similar to the impression we get of the Celts described by the Greeks rather and that's about the elderly time we may be just get a glimpse albeit one written down centuries later of their own view of this world but otherwise it's it's deeply frustrating is that when you simply have artifacts when you have burials and when you settlements to understand the stories of these people how they thought what this meant to them is almost impossible because all of that is gone tradition you know we do know that the tribal names that appear for groups that began to tease in northern Britain or the I seen in Norfolk in the southeast. These are names written by the romans of by the graves and we don't know to what extent someone would have actually identified themselves as a member of that try. You know that was the true. The most important thing was that your family was it your some clan some section within it all of them all the detail all of the things that they would take for granted we simply don't know so we're guessing that what we think was probably that. Very hard to say precisely what it meant. If most tribes welcomed the Roman Empire then why did the Empire stop where he dreams wall is in and I realize it went further for for a short period of time than receded again to where Adrian's wall is what why didn't what why did it continue going north through up through to Ireland. It's one of those those strange things in the again it's a problem is that we don't know as much about Roman Britain Italy as we would like there are some tribes that are very hostile to fight the roads for a long period where all those south of the wall eventually submit and there's no real evidence for rebellions against the last one in southern Britain is an 860 when qui Boudicca. Landed in what would become London and a couple of other major towns but when that is defeated there appears to be no repeats of this a tool on the other hand Roman Britain always has what seems to be a disproportionately big garrison there are the Roman armies professional army which means it's very expensive now No government likes spending money when it doesn't have to do the other thing we have to remember with Roman emperors is that not only does the army expensive and it is the single I fathered biggest element within the Imperial budget but the Roman army also poses a threat to Everest because very few emperors will get killed by a foreign enemy even the Persians in the east the Great him that manage the feat and kill any couple of them. Particularly from the 3rd century a.d. All of that it's always a threat before that the Romans fight civil war after Civil War with Roman soldiers who claimed that general as a leader was a new emperor and go off and fight rival emperors and this happens there from 218 a.d. All was right to the end of the Roman Empire in the West in the late 5th century there are only 3 decades without a civil war and this is a something that just goes on and all and all so it means that concentrating a lot of soldiers in one place is actually a big risk to the Emperor So it's really something that on every grounds they don't want to do and yet Britain has one of the biggest omnis in the entire empire and it keeps a very large army right the way through its history so there's obviously a reason why there is a military problem there as far as the rebels are concerned. And it looks as if the wall than this garrison is one way off of one approach to dealing with this problem in the eighty's 80 the Romans March right up to almost the very north of Scotland they don't quite go to the tip however they do part of the Roman Navy sails around the top of Scotland they visit some of the islands probably the all means and it's only at that point the Romans are absolutely convinced and prove that Britain is an island they weren't sure if they didn't know whether it may have been a continent it just went on and on on at least one occasion they talk about intervening in Ireland and there are princes or Kings exiles from Ireland who come to them to help to be reinstated in power. That as far as we can tell never happens. They occupied northern Salton they build illegally fortress up there in the eighty's a.d.n. Within a few years abandon it and they have done this complicated lie of outposts of tar it's all on the edge of the Scottish Highlands controlling all the cleanse all the valleys that went through that area so they've obviously thought about well let's occupy all of all of the all of the island within a few years to suppress this on down you troops are needed elsewhere the garrison of Britain is reduce troops go back and that's the time when they drop back to the frontier line that will become Hadrian's wall generation so later so I think they've they've wondered about it but there is it's almost a sort of accountancy problem it's that it's a cost and profit balance because. If they're going to control that area they'll need a lot of soldiers but if they put a lot of soldiers out there the soldiers are expensive the revenue they get of taxation is going to be quite poor because this is not a wealthy area there are a lot of mineral resources out there the population isn't that huge all those some parts of southern songs very well cultivated in this period Nevertheless this is not a spectacularly wealthy part of of even compared to the rest of remember so I think there's a decision that how do we best dominate this area because it's it's vital to remember that Hadrian's wall is built as a barrier to other people coming south it's never meant as a barrier to the Romans there are outposts for the on the wall for most of its history and the Roman army into the very fast of the north whenever it wants to diplomatically the Roman presence is clearly there as well and we can see this in hordes of Roman silver coins that have been buried far up in northern Scotland up presumably gifts to Kings to chieftains to stay friends with Rome not to cause a problem it's a fairly traditional way then. You use force but you will see used bribery to keep anybody happy and what's quite interesting is that this clearly up here is not a military economy and it is are not coins that somebody spends they are simply valuable almost as bullion for the leaders so it's this is still that this does go that I can show off how rich how powerful I am and I can give out as gifts or that I can simply afford to bury in hordes of 300 or more coins and leave for good to be discovered by archaeologists 2000 years later so. All the way through this is a sort of ongoing pattern the problem is we just don't kn