A vast ruined bath house, a fire-damaged poem and a world teetering on the brink of collapse.

In this episode, we look at the collapse of Roman Britain. Find out how a great civilization grew up almost overnight on the island of Britannia, how it endured the test of centuries against barbarian invasions and foolish rulers, and what happened after its final dramatic collapse.

  • @NothingButBits
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    33 years ago

    This guy’s documentaries are great. Learned a lot from him.

    • @Shaggy0291OPM
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      3 years ago

      Definitely a fan of his. I appreciate how he especially likes to zoom in on the material circumstances of the world involved, then relate them to the people that lived at that time. His observation of the Roman urbanist zeitgeist was genuinely incisive.

    • @Shaggy0291OPM
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      3 years ago

      You definitely get something different out of viewing ancient history like this through the lens of historical materialism. You see the clash of the social forces, of the indigenous British tribes and their Roman conquerors, and how these contradictions ultimately undermined and destroyed Rome’s settler state in Britannia, giving way to the feudal mode of production that followed the loss of their society. There is much we’ve inherited from our Roman history in the west; most prominently the indelible mark it’s left on our languages, calendar, philosophy and social consciousness. We are all a product of that history.