Lessons from History and Future Recovery

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That's odoo d. com slash heartradio Pushkin a the farthest bleeakest province of the Roman Empire three ninety C E The harsh misty land of savages and strange mystics. forty thousand soldiers About an eighth of the imperial army They needed to control the unruly native tribes Potect the archipelago from pirates and push any marauders back over Hadrian's wall into Scotland Such a mighty army needs a tremendous leader And they have one in the shape Magnus Maximus. Maximus is a distinguished general As a younger man, he helped restore order after the picts from Scotland Scottty from Ireland. And the Saxons from the continent joined forces attack Roman Britannia in the G Barbarian conspiracy Three six, seven, C E Then, he fought in successful campaigns against the Mors in North Africa And the Alamanai on the Danube River For ten years now, Maximus has governed Britania down raids by the picts built a huge church on London's tower hill and forced the country to bend to his will But he can't wait in Wild Iowa. W of the Empire He spies opportunity back on the mainland A young, unpopular emperor Six on the throne in Rome courtiers are turning against him rivals are guting their armies Maximus is a great military general and he leads the biggest, toughest army in the empire He instructs the entire Roman garrison of Britannia board a fleet of ships They sail for the mainland and victory Ifn Maximus have consulted the history books first I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary Tales. Aus Maximus wasn't the first governor of Britannia with ambitions to be a Roman emperor H to tell us all about him and the history he should have studied is Paul Cooper. Penter of the podcast Full of civilizations, stories of greatness and decline and the author of a book of the same name . cautionary tails It's a great pleasure to be here. Paul, you're going to tell us all about Magnus Maximus, but first I wanted to know what attracted you to studying the fall rather than the rise of civilizations My PhD focused on the idea of the ruin in literature and film and also how various ruins have figures of importance for culture throughout history So I've always been drawn to the idea of the ruin. what they mean and what they've meant for people who are creating works of art Ruins are amazing spaces. Yeah. I was really struck just reading your book, really struck by this amazing Anglo Saxon poem about a ruined Roman bathhouse, and I'd never encountered it before, but it's just spellbinding. Yeah, it's an old poem called The Ruin, which is found in the collection known as the Exeter book And it's a marvelous rendition of a person writing in old English of Anglo Saxon, early medieval British person wandering through a ruined bathhouse and viewing the crumbling pillars, the bars now overgrown with weed with frogs, you know, jumping in and out of the pools and As they're walking these shattered bath halls, they're imagining place as it used to be feasts that might have gone on here, bright warriors in their armour who might have come to celebrate their victories, the kings and the great society that once built this And it's believed that this poem is written about the Roman Baths in the town of Bath one example of many of a person in history wandering through the ruins of a society that came before And having that amazing experience that people always seem to have in these ruined places, which is a moment of contact with the people of the past sudden appreciation Not only of the power of time and it's, you know, immense size, but also the ability of human monuments to survive the ravages of that very same force It does raise the question of, well how could a civilization build such remarkable monuments, achieve such heights of greatness and yet somehow that civilization is no longer with us, which is is something you explore in your podcast and in your book. On cautionary tales, we are scholars of failure. We're fascinated by disaster that we have in common? Yeah, yeah. The fall of civilization seems itss cautionary tales in extreme slow mo while you're just goingop. So yes, I really appreciate the crossovers between the podcasts. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a human fascination with disaster, isn't there? tritional view of history is one of monuments and great men and victorious battles But actually the story of failure is one that's completely ingrained in the human epic. these stories of societal failure are as much a part of us as those of success and triumph. So I tryed to draw out some common threads then in why civilizations do o One thing that comes up again and again is violence. And obviously violence is needed cononquer It poses dangers to the aggressors too, doesn't it? Well, that's right, yeah, any empire is by definition a violent undertaking. But also some empires who build their power, build their territory through this bellicose approach, this excessive expansionist aggressive Violence. are actually sowing the seeds of their own destruction in doing so The Assyrians spring to mind, they were quite notorious. Absolutely The Assyrian emmpire flourishes mostly in the first half of the last millennium of the BC period conquers its neighbourors with extreme violence, know piling pyramids of heads outside cities. Flaying people alive, you name it. You know, Asyrian kings have done it And people who rebel against the emmpire are slaughtered executed in displays of brutality Often entire populations uprooted and sent to a different part of the empire where they don't know the land, don't know the territory, disconnected from their ability to exploit their knowledge of the land to resist empire But in With this kind of ruthless, remorseless approach, the Asyrian Empire becomes absolutely despised around the region. In the end as the seeventh century BC Wears on and the last great king of Assyria Ashu Banipal dies, you get a succession of weak kings foollowed by a rebellion in Babylon Suddenly, a horse rearing people called the Medes who live in the Zagros mountains of Iran. Join in to invade Asyria You get rebellions in Egypt and suddenly revolts happening all around the empire as outside enemies are uniting against it Babylonians and Medes sign a pact in the ruins of an Assyrian city called Ashur. And in the next years, really only a period of about three years, The Assyrian Empire, what was the most powerful empire in the world, is completely dismantled. Many of our cities never recover as centers of population. Yeah Be I mean they didn't make any friends because they were incredibly brutal. So when the end comes it It comes incredibly quickly. Yeah. And another theme that you pick out is taxation. And again, if you're going to have a successful civilization, you need some kind of mechanism for levying resources from the populace and deploying those resources to assemble armies and to build these great monuments and so on. But of course it's possible to overdo it and you point to both the Han dynasty of China and the Kher dynasty of Cambodia as civilizations that overdid the taxation and then that was their undoing Yeah, I think, um I wouldn' describe it as excessive taxation so much as an entrenched sense of inequality, which you see in places like China, obviously, you know built on labouring peasants You see in Rome, you know, built on a slave class, a vast slave class. ancient Greek cities. in Athens, you might have a slave population about equal to the free population. But in Spart of the slave population is ten times the size of the free population. made up of entire conquered ethnicities were forced to work in the fields, The entirety of the agricultural sector of this city is propped up by people who hate and despise you know the people they're feeding This means that The Spartan army is never able to leave the city for very long. It's never able to stop defending from these constant threatened rebellions from this hellop class So this is one example in which inequality becomes a great weakening agent in a society preventing them from engaging in long term planning from feeding their population without immense resentment building And there are many examples throughout history of this. Yes. I mean them some of them perhaps not very historical at all. It's very striking to draw these parallels between the modern world and these ancient civilizations. But every now and then I encountter something in the book for which I think, oh, I'm not sure we have a parallel for that one. And one of them was the Han dynasty in China The power very much in the hands of women, which of course we do have in the modern world, and eunuchs not so many eunuchs in power in the modern world. So tell me about them Yeah, that Han dynasty in China is a fascinating example There's an increasing concentration of power in the imperial palace in Luo Yang and The two great power blocks inside the palace are the Eunuch attendants and the Dowager emmpresses, the mothers of both the emperor and previous emperors who have passed on Their power and prestige depended completely on their sons, their progeny and how close they were to the imperial throne So this meant a constant jockeying for power among these rivals Dowagers would poison the sons of other empresses in order to get them off the throne and get their son just one step closer to inheriting it In this way, the immperial Palace of China ran red with blood A Eunuch served in the palace because Essentially, this was the place where the emperor lived with his women, and I mean, A, it was thought to be safer to castrate these men in order to prevent them from Eangling themselves with palace women, shall we say But it was also a way of ensuring that they would have no Aspiration for the throne It was thought that someone who was unable to have children would have less desire to topple the emperor, do a palace coup What we see in these centuries is power contest between the Dowager emmpresses and the Eunuchs with the emperor being essentially a puppet, a kind of game piece that's being passed between them. And for this reason the emperor was very often a child The Emperor Shan was actually a six month old baby who was crowned emperor while still in his crib. This is because children were easier to control Yeah, so this's the ultimate symbolic Head of state, right? I mean if it's a six month old baby, you can have all of the pomp and the ceremony. and the genuflecting to the imperial throne and none of the difficulty of them actually having any opinions other than I need my nappy changing. That's right. ye. But I would contend that That does have echoes in the modern geritocracy that seems to be taking over in places like the United States Ronald Reagan used to joke that Soviet premiereers kept dying on me, I think he said But it was true. in the Soviet Union, they had a problem with geritocracy with passing on power to the next generation power became incredibly encrusted in these Men who are in the seventies and eighties and The society really didn't have a healthy mechanism for passing that power down We now see that same situation developing in the United States where The election before last saw Donald Trump and Joe Biden. contesting the presidency You know, both of them in their seventies and It's that inability to pass on power to the next generation that I think has echoes in something like the Imperial Court of China It is remarkable. I think Biden was the oldest president ever and if Trump survives to the end of this term, he will be even older than Biden was Ronald Reagan was he was thought of as an old man, but he was young compared to these guys. Yeah. He diffused the issue of his age by saying refuse to exploit my opponents's youth and inexperience for political reasons and that kind of go He was He knew what he was doing, didn't he One more question before we return to Rome and Britain and the teaser we began with is environmental degradation because this is, I think ofen associated with the fall of civilizations. I think Jared Diamond wrote a famous book Collapse, who was very interested in this problem. Is it the case that climate change or some other environmental problem has historically often been the trigger for the fall of ancient civilizations? Yeah, it's an undeniable resonance with today that in a very large number of the stories we've looked at, there has been some element of environmental change that has struck these societies Some crucial examples are the Sumerian Society, which flourished in the third and second millenniums BC The Valley of Mesopotamia It's not as famous as the Romans or the Greeks, but the Sumerians, you know, they invented acccountancy, they invented writing, they I mean they invented the city. I mean, this is really an incredibly important early civilization Yeah, they were one of the earliest city dwelling civilizations To really create what we would think of as an empire, multiple walled cities, connected by trade networks going up and down the rivers Tigris and Euphrates As you say, the first examples of writing in the world are found in Mesopotamia in the city of Uruk. As we get to the end of the third millennium BC So around the twenty two hundred BC We get a small localized climate shifts How kind of tendrils happening elsewhere in the world But in general, this was a kind of Eurasian shift, perhaps a change in cururrents going over the Sahara desert, a drying of air around the Mediterranean And it must be underlined that this was a very minor climate shift compared to what we're looking at in the coming century Nevertheless, this caused a period of drought and aridity in the easastern Mediterranean and the near East. This meant that crops that were flourishing like wheat were suddenly being replaced by hardier, more drought resistant and salt resistant crops like barley. People began to starve in cities, and Prally becausecause this was affecting the whole region The rivals of the Sumerians were struggling too. They were then driven to raid and plunder in Sumerian lands So we see that as the environment tightens its noose around a whole region, that creates conflict, that creates the desire to invade fertile abundant areas And this was too much for the Sumerian society to handle, and each one of the Sumerian cities is destroyed in turn We see that societies from the past were sometimes completely destroyed by These climate shifts that today we would hardly even notice This is Cautionary Tales. I'm speaking to Paul Cooper, the broadcaster and author book and podcast Full of civilizations After the break We will return to Roman Britain and Paul is going to tell us what happened to Magnus Maximus run a business and not thinking about radio Think again, because more people are listening to the radio on IHart today than they were twenty years ago, and only IHart Broadcast radio connects with more Americans than TV, digital, social, any other media E twice as many teens than TikTok And that reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. the number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate, equals the results Now let's get those results growing for your business Radio' here now more than ever, and IiHs leading the way thinkink radio can help your business, Think ye hard streaming, podcasting, and radio where the reach is real Let us show you at iheartadvertising. com heartadvertising. com or call eight four four, eight four four Hart. One more time, just call eight four four eight for four, iHart and get radio working for you This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union Navy Federal Credit Union knows that looking for a home in today's market can be tough Housing prices are rising Mortgage rates are steep and fewer housing options are available But if you're looking for a positive sign towards home ownership This is it because their home buyer's choice loan has down payment options as low as zero percent with no required private mortgage insurance And you can get up to nine thousand dollars cash back to cover closing costs with Realty plus And that makes home ownership achievable for members. So whether your home ownership dreams involve buying your first home or your next home You can get there with a home buuyer's choice loan from Navy Federal credit Union Look for your sign at navyfederal. org Navy Federal credit Union. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA equal housing lender Terms and conditions apply, loans subject to approval and eligibility requirements Learn more at navyfederal d. org slash zero down Benefits vary by transaction and location No Navy federal financing required Terms, restrictions, and conditions apply Visit navyfederalrealtyplus. com Running a small business takes everything you've got Chase for business, you're not alone They bring together local support and a broad range of resources to more than seven million customers undernderstanding of your day to day needs, they provide products and guidance built to help you thrive Right now, earn five hundred dollars when you open a new Chase business complete checking account for new business checking customers with qualifying activities Offer expires june eighteenth, twenty twenty six Chase Business compleomplete chehecking has the flexible tools you need to accept payments, make deposits, and manage your finances with confidence Learn more at chase. com slash podcast Biz offer Chase M more of what's yours These may apply to Chase Business compleomplete checking accounts. The five hundred dollars offer is available for new business checking accounts with qualifying activities through june eighteenth, twenty twenty six. Eligibility and qualification requirements must be met, additional restrictions may apply Please speak with a business banker for more information JP Morgan Chase Bank, NA Remember FDIC withithout I'm Tim Harford talking to the broadcaster and author Paul Cooper. about Fall of civilizations, which is both a book podcast I wanted you to take me to Roman Britain, really and perhaps begin by tellelling me what the Romans initially thought when they arrived in Britain and how difficult did they find Britain to colonize Britain had a unique place in the Roman Empire It was a large island, which is a kind of territory that they had never really conquered before. This sub provided problems of supply, problems of connection to the mainland. That would always mean that Britain sat in a slightly awkward position within the Western Empire When the Romans arrived in Britain, they loved playing up how wild and untamed and semi monstrous the people were Roman writer Amianus Marcolinus even famously describes Britain's sitting in swamp water up to their necks for days on end Living only on nuts. I mean, story checks out Well, you see jokes about British weather and bad food have been going on for two millennia, it seems But when Rome slowly conquered and began a process of Romanization in Britain They would always find it a restive province With its long coastline, it was always prone to attack from People like the Attacotti and Scoti in Ireland. theseese are kind of warlike tribal peoples Saxons, Jutes, gets, you name it coming from East in Germany and Denmark, Norway, etceter and from people beyond Hadrian's Wall, the Northern limit of the empire. peopleople who would become known as the picts due to the pictures that they painted on their skins Now, all of these threats menacing Roman Britain meant that it needed a large garrison. This was somewhere between three to four legions at various times. which is up to sixteen thousand soldiers. But these were augmented by manyany Thousands of auxiliaries, who are usually local people who are armed and trained and so on by Rome, but who aren't necessarily citizens. Were they well integrated? Did the British kind of become citizens of the empire in the same way that, for example, the Gauls did? It's an ongoing question of debate, but I would say that Britain struggled to become as integrated as Gaul, which is what we call France today No Britain ever was raised to the rank of equitee, which was one of the highest ranks in Roman society and was required to hold you positions of power of, you know to become a statesman So we get a sense that Britons were never really considered fully Romanized Certainly in towns like Camulodenhum, Colchester or Londinium, London, There was a great Romaned population. There people were living large on olives and wine from Gaul reed gloss pottery, all of the signs and symbols of Roman excess and luxury People were building villas with mosaic floors. But outside in the countryside People still lived in you know, roundhouses with turf walls and thatched ceilings, liivving much as people had in the British Iron age So we get the sense of a A two tier system. So the old line, what have the Romans ever done for us? The answer is, well, if you live in the country, not very much. Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know although it was subject to invasions, raids from these people outside the empire, the time of Roman Britain was a time of relative peace while the emmpire flourished. When Rome had arrived, Britain had been a patchwork of, you know tribes like the Ikeenai, famously led by Budica or Bodica. Exactly, yes, Wh who gave the Romans quite a scare. Yeah I live in Norwich, so Buddakas have Big figure for us, the Akinai were our local tribe And they burnt Colchester to the ground, something I think they've never quite forgiven us for So I mean, this is an unruly place It takes, as you mentioned, a big army to keep the peace, you also need a strong man. You need a strong governor or strong generals to command that army and We mentioned Magnus Maximus at the beginning of the conversation, but Magnus Maximus wasn't the first of these strong men. So tell us about Clodudius Albinus. because he seems I'd not heard of him before reading your book and he's a very intriguing figure. Yeah, he's A remarkable guy who' born in North Africa and is a classic Roman statesman who's know flown into Britain to rule over these unruly people as a Roman He is therefore in charge of one of the largest armies in the emmpire. which You know it's necessary to defend Britain from all the threats it faces but also provides an irresistible temptation to anyone who leads it Was he minilitarily successful? Yeah, absolutely. He's a good governor Um But the emmpire is going through a period of political upheaval and turmoil This is during the reign of the Emperor Commodus, who's memorably played by Jaquin Phoenix in the movie Gladiator Yes, as a terrible, terrible human being in the movie. and it sounds like perhaps not much better in real life. Well actually if you can believe it, I think the movie had to dial down some of the insanity of Commodus. Commodus was fascinated with gladiators and with the idea of himself as a gladiator. And he would actually go into the arena himself to kill animals like ostriches and giraffes and you know exotic animals of this kind He once cut off the head of an ostretch and to the stands where the senators were sitting and shouted up to them, You'll be next. That's not cool. No It's certainly not. He's a larger than life character who's violent, mad tyrannical, you name it But Commodus dies in one hundred ninety two AD and suddenly the empire is up for grabs And essentially the two contestants who emerge as the last people standing from a period of chaos that's called the Year of the Five Emperors Uh Clodius Albanus in Britain. and the emmperor Septimius Severus. These two come together at the Battle of Lugdenum in one hundred ninety five And it's an enormous battle that takes place over two days and Clodius Albinus is finally defeated When he realizes he's going to lose, he runs himself through with his dagger. and the Emperor Septimius Severus tramples him with his horse This is tragic for Albanus personally. but for Roman Britain his departure was also a disaster. because he basically took the entire army to fight Sepimia. Yeah and left Britain without an army, which sounds like it might be an opportunity turns out opportunity for the wrong kind of people. Well, that's right. I mean, if you're going to try and seize the imperial throne, you need every man you can take Loss of a single unit could mean the loss of a battle So he took every one of Britain's legions, but this leaves Britain largely defenseless. It's raided by Picks from the North, Atakoti from Ireland rumoud to eat human flesh by the way But it wasn't only a military threat coming from outside. It was also the collapse of the British economy The entire economy in Britain was predicated on the situation of forty thousand armed Roman soldiers there. Entire industries were built around mining metal, smelting it forging it into useful things, nails, hob nails Sords and spears, etca And feeding this vast force as well, of course The moment these people depart Nobody in these industries is getting paid and you get a free full economic collapse that affects every part of Britain Presumably that also redounds to the harm of the empire as a whole. this source of tin, source of metals, source of tax revenue is in chaos. So the new emperor, Septimius Severus He could presumably take an army into Britain and pacify it again. What makes that difficult? Well, this is what he does eventually. Severus travels to Britain, he campaigns north of Hadrian's wall for a while He seems to trample some poor peoples he encounters but doesn't achieve any kind of lasting strategic success Eventually withdraws, sickens and actually dies in Europe So in some sense, Britain also ended up defeating Severus Now the story of British economic collapse of military failure on the mainland is one that Magnus Maximus, one hundred eighty years later, should have learned, because it's a pattern he repeats almost exactly. He's in a similar situation he's in charge of a big army in Britain And there's an unpopular emperor back in Rome Yeah, so this emperor is one of the most colorful figures, I think from Roman history, which is saying a lot. He's the Emperor Gracian, who's a young man who has a fascination for all things barbarian He begins hanging out with a group of Scythian archers. These are men from what's now Ukraine, but at the time the Romans consider them to be barbarians. They're like horse riding people And Gracation begins dressing like a Scythian in the kind of typical pointed cap robes and so on And this causes a lot of muttering at court. But if you're a Roman emperor, you can do what you like until you can't. So what turned this from being a kind of affectation for Grasian to being something that was a real political problem for him Well, it's suddenly barbarians become a bit of a problem in the empire Emperor of Valens is famously killed when he goes out to fight an army of Goths. He's the emmperor of the Etern Empire and Gatans, the emmperor of the Wesn Empire at this point. Yeah, the Epire has been divided at this point, but it still actsing in concert. They often fought together, etceter. Okay. But one of them is killed by barbarians, which makes it yes, makes it weird that the other one is dressing like a barbarian all the time. Yes. That's right. Yeahah. So the Gatation his toppled Once more, the Empire is up for grabs Enter Magnus Maximus. Here's our man. He's in Britain He has this enormous army and he's looking down at Rome and he's thinking I fancy this. That's right. yeah. Magnus Maximus sails for the mainland in three hundred and eighty three Once again, just like Clodius Albinus He brings every man he can to engage in a battle for the Empire Maximus is exceptionally successful He's very popular, he's clearly a charismatic character He wins the battle, unlike Albinus So he actually becomes emperor The moment he does, his support begins to collapse And it does so in part because of the anarchy that he's left behind in Britain He's not only taxed his provinces brutally in order to fund this campaign But just like Albinus, he's left it completely undefended. It economy once more collapses and Maximus is eventually left without support. He's chased out of the throne finally defeated in battle and he's actually condemned to Roman punishment of Danacio meemori, which is to have all mention of you scrubbed from the records So that didn't go well at all He's basically brought down becausecause he abandoned Britain and the weakened empire that he was trying to rule could not cope. with the chaos that that decision unleashed At what point do the Romans just go? you know this whole Pying Britain is just not worth it The date officially given to it is four hundred and ten AD when the Eperor Fenorius declares that Britainons should look to their own defences. But really I think de facto The complete loss of Britain is The revolt of Constantinus who is a common soldier who seems to rise to governor through some kind of military coup. He's risen from the ranks of the soldiers in Britain has no experience as a governor or statesman, He seems to have been elevated purely because his name reminded people of the great emperor Constantine at ruled less than a century earlier. People thought that's a lucky name. We'll go for this guy feels like a pretty thin basis for giving anybody authority, but okay. Yeah, certainly. He rebels in four hundred seven AD and makes much the same Paturn as Saximus and Albinus. he marches on Rome. He actually manages to force Horius into sharing the throne with him for a while. So he does actually rule as co emperor, this common soldier. But soon an alliance of challengers you know, disgusted at this guy forcing his way into imperial power, eventually chase him out of the capital Most of the soldiers he brings with him will never return to Britain Essentially, I think four hundred seven is the time when Rome really has no administrative power over Britain anymore And after this point the entire Romanized economy that we talked about really begins its terminal ine After the break, we are going to find out what happened to Britain after the Romans left why it affected everything from British riding to the British dinner table. Stay with us. We will be back with Paul Cooper after the break run a business and not thinking about radio Think again, because more people are listening to the radio on IHart today than they were twenty years ago. and only IHart Broadcast radio connects with more Americans than TV, digital, social, any other media. E twice as many teens than TikTok And that reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. the number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results Now let's get those results growing for your business Radio' here now more than ever, and IiHs leading the way thinkink radio can help your business? Think ye hard streaming, podcasting, and radio where the reach is real Let us show you at iheartadvertising. com iheartadvertising. com or call eight four four, eight four four Hart. One more time, just call eight four four, eight four four, iHart and get radio working for you This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union Navy Federal Credit Union knows that looking for a home in today's market can be tough Housing prices are rising Mortgage rates are steep and fewer housing options are available But if you're looking for a positive sign towards home ownership This is it because their home buyer's choice loan has down payment options as low as zero percent with no required private mortgage insurance And you can get up to nine thousand dollars cash back to cover closing costs with Realty plus And that makes home ownership achievable for members. So whether your home ownership dreams involve buying your first home or your next home You can get there with a home buuyer's choice loan from Navy Federal Credit Union Look for your sign at navyfederal. org Navy Federal credit Union. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA equal housing lender Terms and conditions apply, loans subject to approval and eligibility requirements Learn more at navyfederal d. org slash zero down Benefits vary by transaction and location No Navy federal financing required Terms, restrictions, and conditions apply Visit navyfederalrealtyplus. com Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why they make your business growth their priority. The team at Chase takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now and where you want to go A broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools. Looking for tips and advice, their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for business Learn more at chase. com slash businessiness Chase for business, think more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply, JP Morgan Chase Bank NA. Remember FDIC Copyright two thousand twenty six J Morgan Chaseen C comppany. We're back. I'm talking to Paul Cooper about his book and his podcast of the same name all of civilizations. So H The Roman emperor Horius has basically washed his hands of Britain Forget it. It's too much trouble The Romans have left. So then Was that a cause for celebration for the native population Well, undoubtedly, there were people who might have celebrated the departure of Rome, but the entire Romanized economy that we talked about earlier now began its terminal decline. Romanized cities slowly fell into disrepair, their populations slowly left Great monuments like Hadrian's Wall were also abandoned, left to overgrow People began to rob them of stone in order to build houses, build walls, and things like that Roman bathhouses, which require quite a lot of maintenance by skilled workers And also the hypercost systems that heated Roman houses from under the floor bothoth fell into disrepair, the baths silted up We get a sense of the complete falling apart of the cards there is a society You know, people stopped mining iron ore. they stopped smarting iron, they stopped hammering it into nails This meant that people now had no hob nails in their shoes And people began to scavenge in the Romanized cities for things like nails that were left behind and horseshoes, they lost the ability to make horseshoes or at least to