HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2024-10-28T13:25:50.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Pax Romana: peace at the point of a sword
items: Tom Holland on the Roman emperor Trajan: "He is vastly overrated"
items: The Pax Romana: how the Romans maintained peace at the point of a sword
items: The astonishing Æthelstan
items: 15 minutes of fame | Tom Holland chooses Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás
items: 15 minutes of fame: Franz Nopcsa, Hungarian adventurer and palaeontologist
items: Tom Holland on Christianity’s enduring legacy
items: Christ’s communists: the radical religious sect that challenged the Holy Roman Empire

Pax Romana: peace at the point of a sword
type: item
date: 2023-09-04T06:44:12.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Long reads (podcast series)
description: Tom Holland reveals the lethal violence behind Rome's vast empire
encoded: Pax Romana brought stability and prosperity to Rome’s vast empire. Yet, argues today’s long read written by historian and broadcaster Tom Holland, behind the dazzling new cities and teeming sea lanes lay the threat of lethal, irresistible violence. HistoryExtra Long Reads brings you the best articles from BBC History Magazine, direct to your ears. Today’s feature originally appeared in the August 2023 issue (you can read it here) and has been voiced in partnership with the RNIB.

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Tom Holland on the Roman emperor Trajan: "He is vastly overrated"
type: item
date: 2023-08-15T11:01:34.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Roman rulers
subject: Video shorts
description: Historian Tom Holland considers whether Trajan, who oversaw the Roman empire at its height, was its most accomplished ruler
encoded: Please note this is a transcript of an extract from an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast that has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full episode here: Tom Holland on Rome’s golden age Was Trajan Rome's greatest emperor? The Romans called Trajan the optimus princeps (the best of emperors), and that is how he is commemorated, not just by the Romans, but intriguingly right the way into the Christian period. The Christians, when they looked back at Trajan, couldn't bear the thought that this great emperor, because he hadn't been converted to Christianity, might have ended up in hell. And so they came up with all kinds of stories to suggest that perhaps he'd got a pass, uniquely, and had made it into heaven. Read more | The 8 bloodiest Roman emperors in history My personal take is actually that Trajan is vastly overrated. He wins this great victory in Dacia, but he is essentially encouraged by that to aim at conquests that overstretch Roman resources. And he does what has been disastrous to so many subsequent western leaders: he invades Iraq. The only real geopolitical rival that the Romans take seriously on their own borders is the Parthian Empire, which is an Iranian Empire, but rules Mesopotamia, as the Greeks called what we now call Iraq. Trajan decides that he's going to knock this out; he's going to conquer Mesopotamia. He does this – and he reaches the shores of the Persian Gulf, where he sees a ship sailing away. And he asks: “Where is that ship sailing?” And he's told, “Oh, it's off to India.” And he expresses an Alexander the Great-type lament that he can't follow in Alexander's footsteps and conquer India himself. The truth is that even conquering Mesopotamia has overstretched his resources. Trajan essentially dies amid the implosion of those conquests, and it's left to Hadrian, his successor, to clear up the mess. There's a point when Trajan is dying, that not only are his recent conquests in Mesopotamia imploding, but there's a massive Judean …

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The Pax Romana: how the Romans maintained peace at the point of a sword
type: item
date: 2023-08-15T10:51:36.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Roman rulers
description: The Pax Romana brought stability and prosperity to Rome’s vast empire. Yet, writes Tom Holland, behind the dazzling new cities and teeming sea lanes lay the threat of lethal, irresistible violence
encoded: In the early winter of AD 101, Caesar’s emissary arrived in Rome. Hadrian, a young man of only 25, and a relative of the emperor, Trajan, had ridden directly from the field. He bore missives for the senate. Senators, listening to Hadrian report on the great victories won by Roman arms, could feel themselves transplanted to a more distant and heroic age. Trajan, the man who only three years previously had ascended to the rule of Rome, appeared a stirringly old-fashioned figure. The qualities he put on public display – plainness and self-discipline, affability and lack of pretension – were the very markers of an antique hero. View oEmbed on the source website In the Dacians, a martial people of eastern Europe whom he had spent all year breaking to the Roman yoke, Trajan had adversaries who, in a similar manner, appeared conjured up from ancient annals. They were strange and menacing and terrible: men who wielded scythes in battle as though they were cutting corn; who bore standards shaped in the form of dragons; who wrote messages on giant mushrooms. All these were the details reported by Hadrian to the senate. Mood of excitement in Rome As news of Trajan’s dispatches began to percolate out through the city, the Roman people were swept by a mood of excitement such as they had not known for a long while. “For under the rule of sluggish emperors, they seemed to have grown old and enfeebled; but now, under the rule of Trajan, they were stirring themselves afresh, and – contrary to every expectation – renewing their vigour as though their youth had been restored to them.” Rome was a city that had been at peace for almost a century and a half by the time that Trajan became emperor. True, back in AD 69, civil war had briefly flared in the capital’s streets. Four Caesars had ruled in succession. Blood had splashed the Forum. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, the holiest in Rome, had gone up in flames. But this sudden eruption of violence had been only a fleeting …

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The astonishing Æthelstan
type: item
date: 2023-04-14T17:26:18.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Seven Kings Must Die
subject: The Last Kingdom
description: Son of Edward the Elder and grandson of Alfred the Great, Æthelstan (or Athelstan) was the first West Saxon king to effectively rule over the whole of England, with the whole of Britain coming to acknowledge him as overlord during the course of his reign. Historian Tom Holland describes how the brilliant Anglo-Saxon king managed to forge a new country
encoded: Early in the 12th century, a tomb in the abbey of Malmesbury was briefly opened. A monk named William took the chance to inspect the skeleton that lay inside it. The dead man, so he reported, had been of average height and slender build. Not everything in the coffin, though, was bones. Traces of hair were still to be seen – and these too the monk studied attentively. “It had been,” so he recorded later, “blonde in colour, and beautifully twisted into golden braids.” William of Malmesbury had good reason to take an interest in such details. Sent to the abbey as a child, he had grown up with a justifiable pride in its history. More than anyone, he appreciated the significance of the man whose braided hair he had so carefully noted. Æthelstan, a king who over the course of his reign had brought the whole of Britain to acknowledge him as overlord, had been laid to rest in Malmesbury some two centuries before, in AD 939. During his lifetime, he had been a formidably generous patron of the abbey. Of all the many shrines to which he had been devoted, “he had honoured none as more holy than Malmesbury”. It was thanks to his generosity that it could boast a particularly awesome relic: a fragment of the True Cross. The monks’ devotion to their long-dead patron was only to be expected. View Green Video on the source website William’s horizons, though, were far from bound by the limits of his monastery. Fascinated by the past since a child, it was his ambition to write a comprehensive history of England. That one of his parents was actually a Norman did not in any way inhibit him from declaring his motivation to be “love of my country”. The sheer antiquity of the English state, far from being despised by its conquerors, tended instead to be both prized and respected by them – for it added lustre to their rule. A Norman anointed as ‘King of the English’, no matter that his native tongue was French, ruled as the heir of those same kings who had first, long before the slaughter at…

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15 minutes of fame | Tom Holland chooses Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás
type: item
date: 2022-08-31T14:49:20.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: 15 minutes of fame
subject: Historical people
description: As part of our series exploring lost or lesser-known figures from history who deserve their 15 minutes of fame, Rob Attar interviews Tom Holland about the life of Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás
encoded: Who was Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás? Baron Franz Nopsca von Felső-Szilvás was a Hungarian nobleman of Transylvania descent who lived through the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and beyond. He came from an aristocratic background, but is largely remembered for his role in palaeontology, explains historian Tom Holland. Nopsca was instrumental in developing ground-breaking research into European dinosaurs and evolution. This was not all he was famous for though, Holland explains. He also became an expert on Albania, during a time when Albania was still “rather a land of mystery”. Franz Nopcsa’s life Nopsca’s interest in palaeontology was sparked by a discovery made by his sister, Holland explains. When he was 18 years old, his sister Ilona showed him some bones she had found, and he worked out they were fossils. This discovery intrigued him so much, says Holland, that he enrolled in a palaeontology course at the University of Vienna. Incredibly, within just a year of study, he had published a study on dwarfish dinosaurs. Following his studies, he continued to make key palaeontological discoveries – including the idea that the Balkans had once been an archipelago of small islands, which would have had a significant influence on the way dinosaurs had evolved. Aside from his professional achievements, Nopsca had a remarkable life that is perhaps stranger than fiction. During an exploration of Albania in 1906, Nopsca met and fell in love with a shepherd named Bajazid Elmaz Doda, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. The following year, Nopsca was kidnapped by a bandit and had to concoct a convoluted plan to escape his captor. Even more interestingly, says Holland, in 1913 Nopsca proposed to the Austro-Hungarian authorities that he should be king of Albania. The start of the First World War put an end to these plans, and also marked a deterioration in Nopsca’s life. Though his revolutionary study of dinosaurs was published in 1914 – a key moment in his life, …

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15 minutes of fame: Franz Nopcsa, Hungarian adventurer and palaeontologist
type: item
date: 2022-06-27T14:55:01.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: 15 minutes of fame
description: Tom Holland discusses the remarkable and somewhat unexpected life of adventurer, aristocrat and palaeontologist Franza Nopcsa
encoded: It’s the HistoryExtra podcast’s 15th birthday! To celebrate, we’ve asked 15 historians to nominate a figure from history they think deserves their ‘15 minutes of fame’. In this episode, Tom Holland nominates Franz Nopcsa. Speaking with Rob Attar, he recounts the story of the early 20th-century Hungarian palaeontologist, adventurer and specialist in Albanian studies. Browse more episodes about figures from history who deserve 15 minutes of fame

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Tom Holland on Christianity’s enduring legacy
type: item
date: 2019-09-13T08:38:55.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: General ancient history
subject: General Early Modern
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Tom Holland discusses his new book Dominion, which argues that Christianity has had a transformative and enduring impact on the western mindset
encoded: Historian and author Tom Holland discusses his new book Dominion, which explores the history of Christianity and argues that it has had a transformative and enduring impact on the western mindset. When did Christianity first arrive in Britain? What is the oldest church in England?

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Christ’s communists: the radical religious sect that challenged the Holy Roman Empire
type: item
date: 2019-09-10T11:55:59.000Z
creator: Tom Holland
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Six centuries ago in Bohemia, a dissenter army led by a one-eyed warrior waged war on the Holy Roman Empire. Tom Holland tells the story of the Taborites, whose creed was to reject money, property… and the Antichrist
encoded: There had never been anywhere quite like it. The castle, perched on a spit of rock above the Lužnice river, had been abandoned decades before, and the blackened ruins of the settlement that had once surrounded it were choked by weeds. The rubble had to be cleared, and a new town built from scratch. There was an urgent need of fortifications. The nights were bitterly cold. Yet still the refugees came. All through March 1420, they made the trek, drawn from every class of society, from every corner of Bohemia (a kingdom that’s now part of the Czech Republic). By the end of the month, camped out amid tents and half-built perimeter walls, there were women with their children, in flight from burning villages; tavern-keepers from Prague and peasants armed with flails; knights, clerics, labourers and vagrants. All shared in the common danger – and all shared a common status. Every man was called brother, and every woman sister. There were no hierarchies, no wages, no taxes. New arrivals were obliged to hand over their possessions, which were shared out according to need. Private property was illegal. All debts were forgiven. The poor, it seemed, had inherited the earth. Everything you need to know about the Holy Roman Empire The legacy of Charlemagne: how the king of the Franks continues to cast a shadow over Europe The town, the first ever to be founded on quasi-communist principles, was called Tabor by its inhabitants. The name broadcast a defiant message to its enemies. In the Bible, it was recorded that Jesus had climbed a mountain to pray. “And as he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.” The site of this miracle had long been identified by scholars with a mountain in Galilee: Tabor. The radiance of the divine had suffused its summit, and heaven had been joined with earth. Now it was happening again. As lords laboured alongside peasants, toiling to provide Tabor with an impregnable screen of fortifica…

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