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Appius Herdonius And His Failed Slave Revolt In Rome

By
thehistorianshut
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In the year 460 BCE, a man named Appius Herdonius reportedly led a campaign against Rome and successfully seized the Capitoline Hill.  Although no known history of Rome was written by a Roman until around 200 BCE, the tale of Appius Herdonius had survived in ancient Rome’s consciousness to be documented and preserved by historians such as Cato the Elder (c. 234-148 BCE), Livy (c. 59 BCE-17 CE), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (flourished c. 20 BCE).

As the story goes, Appius Herdonius was a Sabine of wealth and power who lived in the 5th century BCE. He was something of a migratory warlord, traveling the land with a large following in tow. As a rich and powerful individual, Herdonius apparently was able to come and go from Rome, allowing him to meet its population, and to get an understanding of the city’s layout and defensive features. Unfortunately for the Romans, Herdonius’ familiarity with Rome gave the opportunistic warlord access to a dangerous pool of manpower—exiles, dissidents, and, most frightening for the Romans, slaves.

Appius Herdonius made his move in 460 BCE, leading an army against the city of Rome under the cover of night. In Livy’s account, Herdonius commanded 2,500 Roman “slaves and exiles” (History of Rome, 3.15), whereas the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus claimed that the warlord’s force was 4,000 strong and that it was solely made up of “his clients and the most daring of his servants” (Roman Antiquities, 10.14). Herdonius, with his thousands of followers, be it Roman dissidents or his horde of loyal servants, successfully infiltrated Rome and sneaked up to the Capitoline Hill. In a surprise attack, the infiltrators stormed the Capitol’s defenses and made short work of the surprised defenders. By morning, Appius Herdonius’ troops had firmly occupied the Capitoline Hill and were using the Hill’s defensive features against the rest of Rome.

After suffering this random attack, it took the Romans some time to recover from their confusion. According to Livy, Rome did not know who had attacked them, or how large the army was, and also feared the possibility of a simultaneous attack from another army outside the city. As the Romans gathered more intel on their opponents, they sent out messengers to request help from allies. The Romans, however, were not the only ones calling for aid—after Appius Herdonius seized the Capitoline Hill, he called for the rest of the city’s slaves to rise up in rebellion, and beckoned for all of the oppressed to join his cause. Although there was indeed friction between the oligarchs of the fledgling Roman Republic and the common people, Herdonius misjudged the power of communal identity. Instead of inspiring the commoners to defect, his attack prompted the common people to make a truce with the oligarchs and fight back against the threat to their city.

By the time the Roman population had readied itself to fight against the occupiers on the Capitoline Hill, they saw a completely different foreign army quickly approaching their walls. According to Livy, the sight of this force struck fear into Rome, as their first impression was that it had to be an army from one of their various enemies at the time, hoping to take advantage of Rome in its time of weakness. Yet, to Rome’s relief, the force was actually an allied army sent from Tusculum to aid Rome. Together, the Romans and the Tusculans attacked Appius Herdonius’ army on the Capitoline Hill. As the occupiers were firmly entrenched in the Capitol’s defenses, the battle was hard fought and many died in combat. The Roman consul, Valerius, was killed during the assault and the warlord Appius Herdonius, too, was slain in the heat of battle. Rome, with its Tusculan allies, eventually killed or captured all of the occupiers of the Capitoline Hill. In the aftermath of the battle, the Romans made a declaration of thanks for Tusculum’s aid, and then set about the grim task of cleaning and ritually purifying the blood-splattered temples on the Capitol.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Gustave Housez, La mort de Vitellius, c. 1847, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

The Buddha

By
thehistorianshut
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The Buddha (6th-5th century BCE)

“Irrigators guide the water.
Fletchers shape the arrow shaft.
Carpenters shape wood.
The virtuous tame themselves.”

  • The Dhammapada (Verses on the Way, Chapter 10), recorded in the 3rd century BCE. Translation by Glenn Wallis, 2004.

The Northumbrian Coup Against Earl Tostig

By
thehistorianshut
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Tostig Godwinson became the Earl of Northumbria in 1055. His brother was Earl Harold Godwinson of Wessex and his brother-in-law was King Edward the Confessor of England (r. 1042-1066). Encouraged by his own power and that of his relations, Earl Tostig began to act tyrannically in Northumbria, angering his local liegemen in various ways. The least nefarious of these abuses was a poorly explained increase on Northumbrian taxes. More scandalous, however, were the assassinations of several noblemen that occurred at that time in Northumbria, which the locals attributed to the machinations of Tostig and the fellow members of his House of Godwin.

By 1065, the Northumbrians were fed up with Tostig’s rule. According to the chronicler, Florence of Worcester (d. 1117), the assassinations of three prominent Northumbrians (named of Cospatric, Gamel and Ulf) were what finally caused the region to rebel against its tyrannical leader. Around October 3, 1065, a coup was reportedly launched by a group of local Northumbrian noblemen. At a time when Earl Tostig was away from Northumbria, the members of the coup marched with a small army to the earl’s seat of power at York. The rebellious force skillfully infiltrated the city, systematically executed around two hundred of Tostig’s loyal administrators, and seized control of the treasury and armory in York. With the city of York firmly in the conspirators’ hands, the maneuverings in Northumbria against Tostig transitioned out of the shadows and became a more public affair. Noblemen and peasants rallied behind the coup, and an anti-Tostig army was mobilized which reached a formidable size.

Earl Harold Godwinson led the English response to the Northumbrian revolt, leading on behalf of the increasingly ill King Edward the Confessor. By the time he and his army arrived on the scene of the rebellion, Harold Godwinson found the Northumbrians organized and well-led by a prospective earl named Morcar. As Morcar’s leadership among the rebels was stable and his Northumbrian army had formidable strength, Harold Godwinson was not enthusiastic about attacking the rebel force, even if it was his brother Tostig’s earldom that was at stake. Instead of going to war and crushing the rebellion, Harold Godwinson instead opened up negotiations with Morcar and the rebel leadership. During these negotiations between the English army and the Northumbrian rebels, Harold Godwinson did not put up much of a fight for his tyrannical brother, Tostig. Instead, England accepted Morcar as the new Earl of Northumbria, and Tostig Godwinson was outlawed.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Image from page 44 of “The book of the Bayeux tapestry” edited by Hilaire Belloc (c. 1914), [Public Domain] via flickr and Creative Commons).

Sources:

Giovanni Boccaccio

By
thehistorianshut
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Giovanni Boccaccio (c. 1313-1375)

“Do as you would be done by, that’s my motto.”

  • The Decameron (Second Day, Ninth Story) by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by G. H. McWilliam. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

Golden Gambling Between Montezuma And Cortes

By
thehistorianshut
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To the delight of Hernan Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors, Montezuma II of the Aztec Empire was an extremely generous gift-giver. He handed over treasures to the Spaniards nearly every time they interacted, be it delivered by messenger or bestowed in person. Whenever Montezuma, himself, hosted a meeting with the Spaniards, multiple golden or gilded objects almost always were handed over to the conquistadors at one point or another. Yet, sometimes Montezuma II made the Spaniards work harder than usual for their gilt gifts.

Hernan Cortes and his conquistadors entered Montezuma’s capital city of Tenochtitlan in late 1519 and stayed there for the opening months of 1520. During their stay in the Aztec capital, the Spaniards came to feel increasingly paranoid that Montezuma’s hospitality would one day cease and that he would have them arrested and executed. In order to save their skins from this potential danger, and to apply more leverage against the Aztec Empire, the Spaniards captured Montezuma and detained him in their Spanish quarters in Tenochtitlan. At first, they held the Aztec emperor on a short leash, but they eventually loosened their grip, letting Montezuma hold court and visit temples—all, however, under Spanish surveillance.

Early on in his captivity, Montezuma and Cortes were forced to live in the same compound together, and Montezuma apparently decided to kill time by playing games with Cortes and the Spaniards. Montezuma’s game of choice was variously called totoloque or totoloc, and in Montezuma’s typical fashion, the Aztec leader’s personal equipment set for this game was golden or gilded. It seemed to have been a gambling game, where the participants made bets and then each player had a certain number of turns to throw a ball or pellet at a designated target. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Hernan Cortes’ conquistadors, described the game: “it is played with small round glossy balls, which here were made of gold, and are pitched at a certain mark, also of the same metal: five throws finished the game, and the stakes were for valuable gold trinkets and jewels” (Conquest of New Spain, chapter 97). Even if the Aztec leader won the game, Montezuma—either because of his generosity (or his being under arrest)—was said to have always given away his gambling winnings to the Spaniards. Despite this, Bernal Díaz claimed that Hernan Cortes’ score-keeper tried to pad Cortes’ stats, and Montezuma eventually called the man out for cheating.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Sketch of Cortes and Montezuma in the Historia de la Conquista de Méjico, c. 1851, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

Mencius

By
thehistorianshut
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Mencius (c. 372-289 BCE)

“If the services of the common people were used with a view to sparing them hardship, they would not complain even when hard driven.”

  • From The Mencius (Book VII, Part A, section 12) by Mencius, translated by D. C. Lau (Penguin Classics, 2003).

Zou Yushan And His Ascension And Demise Through Assassination

By
thehistorianshut
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In the 130s BCE, the kingdom of Minyue (approximately Fujian Province, China) ran afoul of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (r. 141-87 BCE). Although Emperor Wu was, himself, a prevalent conqueror, he did not appreciate that the kingdom of Minyue was independently launching attacks against its neighbors. In 138 BCE, the king of Minyue attacked the kingdom of Donghai, but before the war was concluded, Emperor Wu sent troops to break up the fight and enforce peace. After being thwarted in Donghai by the emperor, the king of Minyue scoured the political landscape for another victim to invade. In 135 BCE, Minyue prepared an attack against Southern Yue, a kingdom where the Han Empire had long been trying to make diplomatic inroads. As the kingdom of Minyue was about to threaten Han foreign policy toward Southern Yue, Emperor Wu intervened once again, sending troops to stop the invasion and to punish the king of Minyue.

Minyue was ruled by King Zou Ying at the time of this second intervention by the emperor’s forces. Zou Ying was said to have plotted rebellion at this point, sending his own forces to block the passes and roads into his kingdom. The prospect of war with Emperor Wu’s imperial army understandably frightened the officials of Minyue, and a conspiracy soon formed to assassinate the king in hopes of alleviating the emperor’s wrath. At the head of the cabal was an unlikely assassin—the king’s own brother, Zou Yushan.

After Zou Yushan had gained the confidence of the kingdom’s officials and the military, he murdered his brother, King Zou Ying, while the two traveled. He reportedly slew the king with a spear and sent his brother’s head to the Han army. When the assassination became known, Emperor Wu spared the kingdom and placed on the throne Zou Chao, a weak and malleable member of Minyue’s royal family. Zou Chao, despite his imperial backing, was not the real powerbroker in Minyue. After the killing of King Zou Ying, it was the assassin, Zou Yushan, who became the shadow ruler of the region.

Zou Yushan’s influence could not be kept a secret forever, and Emperor Wu eventually decided to bring the shadow ruler out of the darkness. Zou Yushan was proclaimed king of Eastern Yue, while Zou Chou was named king of Yao. Under the leadership of Zou Yushan, Minyue was able to coexist with Emperor Wu for years. The peace, however, would not last, and Zou Yushan would soon find himself in a similar situation to that of the brother he had assassinated.

The downfall of Zou Yushan came in 112 and 111 BCE, when Emperor Wu stepped up his diplomatic and military pressure against Southern Yue. King Zou Yushan was put in an awkward situation by the conflict, as the monarchy in Southern Yue was said to have been a distant branch of Minyue’s own Zou royal family. As such, Zou Yushan was conflicted about the campaign and ultimately withheld his support from Emperor Wu’s conquest of Southern Yue, which occurred in 111 BCE. This hesitancy and lack of support did not go unnoticed by the Han army, and the generals who had attacked Southern Yue now pressured the emperor to let them punish Zou Yushan in Eastern Yue. According to Grand Historian Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE), Emperor Wu was not interested in a punitive campaign against Eastern Yue at that time, and did not give the generals a green-light to attack. Nevertheless, Zou Yushan heard of the army’s displeasure and the calls to attack his kingdom. The news made the king of Eastern Yue paranoid, and his paranoia eventually drove him to rebellion.

Following the same path of his brother before him, Zou Yushan declared a rebellion at the first sign of imperial military pressure, real or imagined. He sent his troops to block the roads and passes into his kingdom, and also appointed a general-in-chief to command the kingdom’s forces against a Han invasion. Emperor Wu indeed responded to the rebellion, and did so quickly in late 111 BCE, invading Eastern Yue on multiple fronts.

The war went poorly for Eastern Yue, and the general-in-chief of the kingdom was slain on the battlefield by Han forces. King Zou Yushan’s popularity in Eastern Yue fell as the Han forces pushed onward, and the officials of the kingdom grew less and less confident of their king’s abilities. From such an atmosphere, a plot inevitably formed among the officials and commanders to assassinate the king in hopes of winning back the confidence of the Han emperor. Once again, the assassin proved to be family, as Zou Yushan was killed by his kinsman, Zou Jugu. When the grim deed was done, the conspirators seized control of the kingdom and quickly surrendered to the Han forces.

Upon the surrender, Emperor Wu reportedly spared the lives of the people of Eastern Yue, but he did take the opportunity to implement drastic steps to decrease the threat posed by the rebellious kingdom. According to Sima Qian, the emperor “commanded the army officials to lead away all the inhabitants of the region and resettle them in the area between the Yangtze and Huai rivers, leaving Eastern Yue a deserted land” (Shi Ji 114).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Photograph of Qin Terracotta Soldiers from Shaanxi Museum, photographed by Gary Todd, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

  • The Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji) by Sima Qian, translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Winston Churchill

By
thehistorianshut
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Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“Owing to the helplessness and subservience of democracy in the hands of ambitious and commanding men, added to the facilities of modern locomotion and propaganda, many communities have been plunged back into a state of insecurity hitherto only associated with barbarism.”

  • From Sir Winston Churchill’s “Europe’s Peace” (February 5, 1937), in Winston S. Churchill Step By Step: Political Writings 1936-1939 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).

The Assassination of Abbot Lupentius of Javols

By
thehistorianshut
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Around 584, a man named Lupentius, the abbot of the church of Saint Privatus in Javols, was accused of slandering Queen Brunhild. As the queen was the wife of the Frankish King Sigebert (r. 561-575) and mother of King Childebert II (c. 575-595), an allegation of slander against Brunhild was a serious charge. In response to the rumors of slander, Abbot Lupentius was summoned to appear before Queen Brunhild in order to answer for the allegations. Lupentius was put to question, but the interrogators apparently could not produce proof or a confession that pinpointed Lupentius as the originator of the slanders. The only concrete fact interrogators ferreted out during Lupentius’ time in Brunhild’s custody was the revelation that a certain Count Innocentius was the one who had lodged the allegations of slander against Lupentius. Unfortunately for the abbot, Count Innocentius was in the good graces of Queen Brunhild, and therefore no punitive action was taken against the count and little protection was given to the abbot to fend off further harassment. In this precarious situation, the abbot was released and sent on his way.

Count Innocentius apparently did not like that his name was mentioned or that the abbot was released. According to bishop and historian, Gregory of Tours (c. 539-594), the count sent troops to intercept Abbot Lupentius on the road. The abbot was captured and brought to a manor owned by Count Innocentius. At this estate, located somewhere near the River Aisne in France, Lupentius was said to have been “grievously maltreated” at the hands of the count’s henchmen (History of the Franks, VI.37). After some time, Count Innocentius decided to set Lupentius free, and, once again, the beleaguered abbot resumed his travels back toward his church at Javols.

Gregory of Tours, in his account of this story, did not go into detail on the cause of the feud between Count Innocentius and the abbot, but the count was evidently out to get poor Lupentius. Innocentius apparently soon regretted letting his enemy go and decided to gather a posse and again pursue the abbot. As the story goes, the count’s troops found Abbot Lupentius camping beside the River Aisne and the abbot was yet again arrested. This time, however, the arrest ended in the abbot’s execution. Count Innocentius, it was alleged, not only led the posse that killed the abbot, but he was also said to have personally killed Lupentius. Gregory of Tours described the murder of the abbot and the subsequent disposal of the body, saying “Innocentius cut off his head, put it in a sack weighted with stones and threw it in the river. He tied the body to a rock and threw that, too, into the water” (History of the Franks, VI.37).

Although the count had tried to make sure the remains would stay at the bottom of the river, Lupentius’ head and body eventually washed up on the bank of the Aisne. Upon this discovery, locals gave the late abbot a proper burial, and rumors quickly spread that it was Count Innocentius who was responsible for the murder. Despite the allegations, the count faced no known repercussions and he continued his career unimpeded. Ironically, Count Innocentius would later decide to join the church, and, with the backing of Queen Brunhild, he became Bishop of Rodez.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (scene depicting the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury, from a manuscript (dated to 1200) in the National Library of the Netherlands, [Public Domain] via picryl.com and Creative Commons).

Sources:

  • The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, translated by Lewis Thorpe. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

By
thehistorianshut
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Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

“Eternal humanity is unweariedly busy in creating and in representing itself in the most varied ways in the provisional appearance of finite life.”

  • From Friedrich Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (second speech), translated by Richard Crouter (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
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