Reviving a Roman Matrix

What if a once shared territory can foster a sense of belonging today and thus help to heal problems of the present? Geza Frank, our guest in this episode of the EXARC Show, certainly thinks it can. This conviction lies at the heart of his upcoming project to circumnavigate the frontiers of the entire Roman Empire in historic outfit and equipment and by historic means of transport. Host Phoebe Baker talks with Geza, aka Gaius Flavius Constantinus Aeneas Stilicho, about his plans and how he expects a renewed focus on the Roman empire, by creating the largest UNESCO World Heritage site ever, can benefit people who live within the Limes, its former borders. From his unique perspective as a former soldier in a modern army, he also shares some salient insights into what, in his view, truthful reenaction of a Roman entails (and what not).

Geza’s Instagram

Transcript

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You're listening to the EXARC Show run by EXARC, the International Society for Experimental Archaeology, Open-Air Museums, Ancient and Traditional Technology and Heritage Interpretation. 

Hello and welcome to the EXARC Show. My name is Phoebe Baker, and today I'm joined by Geza Frank, a member of our EXARC community, to talk about his upcoming project to circumnavigate the frontiers of the entire Roman Empire by historic means and in historic equipment. Also known by his Roman name, Gaius Flavius Constantinus Aeneas Stilicho, Geza is a seasoned Roman reenactor with interest in all areas of Roman life. He has been involved in many recent projects such as curating festivals of Late Antiquity at the Roman site of Carnuntum and the battle sites of the River Frigidus, joining the international Roman Cavalry Excellence project Ala I. Augusta and initiating the EU-funded Living Danube Limes project in 2022, which resulted in the longest continuous Roman boat journey since Antiquity. Geza also has very successful Instagram and Threads accounts under the name The Age of Constantine, where he shares aspects of his life as a Roman. Geza’s latest project is his most ambitious yet: he hopes to embark on a journey to circumnavigate the entire frontier of the Roman empire, taking him across Europe, west Asia and North Africa, using only equipment and transport that would've been available during Roman times. The project aims to highlight the cultural value of the Roman frontier sites and their power to connect and unify the people living alongside them. So welcome Geza, and thank you for joining us today. 

Geza: Hello, thank you for having me on.

Phoebe: I think we'll spend the first portion of today's episode getting to know a little bit about you, before then talking a bit more in depth about your upcoming project. The perfect place to start might be to ask you how you got into Roman archaeology and reenactment. 

Geza: Oh, that was actually quite early. My aunt is a classical archaeologist, an Egyptologist, and when my mother started working again after I was born, she handed me over to her sister, my aunt, who was still studying at the time, and she took me into the lectures already as a baby. Although I don't remember much from that time, that kind of set the tone a little bit for what was to come later. So I grew always up with some bits of archaeology around me. Although I have not studied archaeology myself - probably because I did grow up with it all around myself and remember my aunt's struggles in her studying times and then in the work - I have made it sort of part of my job now because as a professional reenactor, that's my main income, my main job, it plays a huge role obviously, although I am not an archaeologist myself, I work a lot with it. 

Phoebe: Wow, so a really early start then. 

Geza: Absolutely, yeah. 

Phoebe: What are your favorite parts of Roman life to reconstruct and reenact? 

Geza: That always depends a little bit on the context and the season. I do reenact imperial figures of the fourth century a lot. But that's definitely not my favorite part. It's just very tedious to do and very expensive and I think my favorite parts are the simple things. Right now, after a festival, I'm just in a simple tunica with simple sandals, nothing more and I'm just cleaning up my equipment, basically living a simple life, like a simple citizen of the Roman Empire, simple crafter or something like that. That's very enjoyable. I also just like to wear historic fashion and be as in tune with the time I'm portraying and the 21st century at the same time. So doing something credible in Roman or historical gear, something also credible in the 21st century. So everything I'm doing here now is not a show or not put on. I'm doing my job and I'm wearing the according historical dress of what my job is right now. So preparing things, being a crafter, all of these kind of things. That's definitely my favorite part. 

Phoebe: Good answer. You mentioned that you have just finished a festival. Would you like to tell us a little bit about what you've been doing whilst you were up there? 

Geza: I'm at the moment in Ajdovščina, which is close to the battle site of the river Frigidus, one of the largest battles of Late Antiquity. It's here in Slovenia, close to the frontier with Italy. I have just come from a giant round trip, from Vienna to Budapest and then to Rome, where we celebrated Rome's 2,778th birthday, where I have played the Emperor Julian the Apostate and I have also brought a large camp for an international organization called Nova Roma. It's an organization for Roman enthusiasts. Basically, I've provided the infrastructure for them and I've also played a concert in Circus Maximus with my historicising band. That was fun. Very stressful as well because Rome is a large capital. And living in the Circus Maximus, in a historical camp has its challenges. You always have to have somebody there watching out against theft. That's a very common thing in Antiquity and today, Rome hasn't changed in that regard. 

Now we've driven up again to Slovenia and we have been here participating in the largest sports event of the entire Vipava Valley, which is an ultratrail. I am basically a little bit the mascot of this ultratrail here, so as the embodiment of the emperor Theodosius, who was the winner of the Battle of the Frigidus here. I am handing out prizes to the winners of this amazing race. We have reenactors here that are participating also in the marches. We're basically bringing living history to a setting that doesn't have living history and to people that have no connection with living history. So it's not a museum event. It's not a living history event. It's an ultratrail, it's a modern sports competition. But because the branding of the competition is somehow affiliated with Antiquity and with the battlefield here, it makes sense that we are here as reenactors and bringing that aspect a little bit to life. It's good that they have quality reenactors and not just people in costumes, bringing also a little bit of realness to the whole thing. People are definitely very appreciative of that. Also when the trail runners see our reenactors here on the trail themselves, they feel really connected with the history of the landscape. They feel like they're running alongside the ancient ghosts, so to speak, of the people that lived here before, that worked and fought here before, that overcame themselves here before and that's a very nice round analogy. I'm very happy to be able to do that. Now we're just packing up after a storm has, again, a little bit devastated our campsite. There's frequent storms here in the area, notably during the battle of the river Frigidus a godly wind apparently has derailed the projectiles from one of the armies to the advantage of the other army that won. So this wind is definitely a recurring factor here. 

Phoebe: Yeah, a link from the past all the way into the present there. That's so cool that you've such a range of activities and that the links between the present and the past are really nice. I wanted to talk a little bit about the kind of equipment that you use. How much of it do you make yourself? How much of it do your fellow reenactors make and how much do you buy? 

Geza: I make about a third to half of my equipment myself, depending on which panoply. Obviously I try to get the fabrics all handwoven and plant-dyed wherever it's possible, so I'd say most of my textile equipment is now handwoven and plant-dyed by some experts. I just then do the sewing and make sure that it's all fitting me exactly as I need it to. My shoes are also made by experts, so I don't do that myself. Then with my armours, I customize them. I get the parts, and then I make them so that they fit and I do the customizing with all my tent equipment and some furniture. I make a good bit of it myself wherever I can. Then there's obviously limits to my own expertise in woodworking or in any crafts and also limitations of my own tools. So there's some things that I can't really make in a satisfactory level, so to speak. That's where I'm turning to crafters and I'm also willing to pay quite a good amount of money to get really the top quality. 

Phoebe: Yeah, that makes sense. I guess if you're spending a lot of time in it, you want the good stuff, that's not gonna break. 

Geza: Exactly. Or at least if it breaks, it should break in the historical way and correspond to the stuff that we see in the museums. 

Phoebe: How much of your year would you say that you currently spend reenacting? And how much of it do you do other things? 

Geza: I would say between March and October I spent two thirds of my time with Iiving history or living history associated gigs. So be that festival organization or be that attendance at festivals or be that other projects such as filming. I do a lot of film work also and training people as well in workshops, et cetera. Oftentimes it's all at the same time. I have festivals where I am part of the organization, where I'm part of directing the scenario, so to speak, where I'm also one of the main characters, where I am both doing infantry and cavalry and where I'm even playing the music. So more and more often, all of the spectrum of my abilities, so to speak, come into play. It's an advantage for the museums or the festivals because I can ensure quite a high quality in everything I do. And it comes from one source, so it's cheaper at the end. Although I'm from Austria and not from a country that's traditionally associated with lower prices - Austria's an expensive country - but still I can be very competitive in my price because I can just do so many things at the same time. That makes it cheaper. However, it comes to the detriment of myself because it's very stressful and changing a lot and being in the organization, being there for everyone and still trying to perform as well. That's increasingly a challenge I have to admit. 

Phoebe: Yeah, I was gonna say, that sounds very busy. 

Geza: Yeah, it is and comes at a price. It's what I love to do. It's freedom on the one side, but it's a lot of stress and a lot of time away from home, and oftentimes I only have time to organize something or be present for the people that I'm working with shortly before something happens and it always turns out well. I have a lot of experience now over the years, and I genuinely am very secure in what I do, so it always turns out well. But oftentimes people get a bit nervous because they don't get a hold of me for a few weeks because I'm just busy with other things, and they have to be content with the fact that I'll be there a week before and everything will be fine, even though they'd prefer if I was already available two, three weeks or a month before, which oftentimes during the season just isn't possible.

Phoebe: I see. Another element of what you do, of course, is your social media platforms. How long has that been part of your portfolio of things that you do? 

Geza: The social media thing just grew organically, I think, over the course of a few years. I was one of the very early Facebook users when it came out, 2006-2007. I gathered quite a big following on Facebook, but it works differently than those viral sites like TikTok, Instagram, et cetera. I had already quite a good following from within the reenactment scene, from within the Roman and especially Late Antiquity reenactment and living history scene and I transferred that then to Instagram and TikTok, where it grew very slowly over several years. It was just a couple of thousand followers, and I think it's only two years ago that it started to really grow bigger. I'm now at 47,000 followers on one profile on Instagram, 28,000 on TikTok. So it's not huge by any means, but for such a niche subject where I'm not actually content with doing easy and a bit degrading content just to grab attention, where I'm still trying to hold up a little bit of quality, a little bit of information. I'm quite happy with how it grows and mostly it's videos with a lot of informational content that then explode and then I get a couple of thousand more followers. So in steps, incrementally it's increasing. It definitely plays a part in my job because I get people interested in cooperating on various projects or on having me organize a festival or having me at their festival, but it definitely isn't a central element. It's like a hobby on the side and if something comes of it, I'm happy, and if not, then I still do it anyway the way I do it.

Phoebe: I was looking through your Instagram earlier today… I really like the variety of videos. So you've got some that range from whether Romans had glass windows to the types of military maneuvers, how they dressed, showing real life Roman sites as well. You were saying the ones that you get the most feedback from are the more informational ones? 

Geza: It really depends. I think it's the ones where I start the video out bare-chested. Those are usually the ones that get the most views for whatever reason. It's the fashion ones, so to speak. I start with the underwear of course, and I never thought it would work because usually that works better with the female content creators, I noticed, but apparently they are still interesting, nevertheless, where I'm just presenting fashion, so people stay on longer and once they stay longer than those two initial seconds somehow the algorithm boost it more and people stay on longer. Usually the ones where I'm really talking in depth about the houses, like building techniques or stuff like glass windows or the hypocaustum or freshwater systems in Roman cities, they don't necessarily get that many views. A lot of the museum videos, a lot of the actual reenactment videos don't get that many views. I could be just happily be one of those fashion channels where I just film myself in the garden, put on some historical dress, talk about it a little bit or even not at all, and just do these ‘get ready with me’ videos and I'd probably have a hundred thousand or more followers, but that's not me, that's just part of what I do. Even though the modern world prefers absolute specialists that do just one thing, I am a Renaissance man and I'll be unapologetically so until the end of my days. I'm interested in many things, I do many things, I think I do many things quite well, and that's what my pages show, the whole spectrum. 

Phoebe: Jack of All Trades... I wanted to talk a little bit about reenactment itself. What do you think the biggest advantage of doing reenactment over other forms of historical interpretation is, and are there any disadvantages to reenactment? 

Geza: That's a very interesting question and I've asked myself that a lot because of course I am talking a lot on my social media pages about the nature of reenactment, about how I see reenactment, how I see it from the perspective of somebody who does it professionally and not just as a hobby, which changes almost everything. I frequently have debates with people that come from museum interpretation, from different backgrounds of cultural mediation. What I ultimately always say is that because I never stop with living history, because I wear Roman dress for most days during the season, because I really live in those things, because I really interact with the 21st century unapologetically with and through my personal historical equipment, I just get a different type of interaction from the broader public. I'm not necessarily having most interactions in museums, but on the street where people just ask me ‘why are you wearing this’? Because it's maybe just on a gas station or on a train station or something like that. Some of the best and most unexpected conversations happen there when people are genuinely interested in why are you doing that outside of a context like a museum or a festival. So I think I can't possibly talk about the benefits or the differences between the various forms of mediation because I sit a little bit between the chairs, so I'm doing a little bit of everything and I can only ultimately speak from my own perspective, which is, people always give me the feedback when you wear the things, when you talk about them, when you walk around, it feels natural. It feels authentic. It feels like you really know what you're doing and that's really your culture. People often tell me like when we talk with you, when we see you move across a square, a street or whatever we really feel, yeah, this guy is really Roman. He's not just an interpreter who's dressed up as a Roman, but this guy really lives that. So it's a bit different, I guess, from what most other people are trying to do and what boundaries they set themselves. So I'm very aware of the boundaries of interpretation, yet I don't care so much about them because I think what I'm doing is just very organic, in a way. I'm very stringent in my methodology, so I'm very stringent in what I use, what materials, how they're made, in which context, et cetera. But because I use them almost every day I don't think so much about what am I gonna do when I'm in this or that space. I just am there and I tell the people how it feels to live wearing those things, using them all the time, having to repair them after, I don't know, a few kilometers or a few hundreds of kilometers, where I have sore spots or where I get a sunburn from literally wearing those things all the time. Or how I mend my tunics and what I do when I don't have the possibility to repair something and I do quick fixes with historical methods. I think that's very much what people are interested in, like how do you as a 21st century person live with those very stringent and very meticulous reconstructions of historic fashion. 

Phoebe: That's really nice that you're able to bridge those borders. I've got one kind of last question about you. You also have a background in the military. Do you think this affects your interpretation of the Roman record and how you do reenactment at all or not?

Geza: It certainly does. I've only had an example of that last night and today. Many reenactors who have no background in the military and just to reenactment, they come with a whole bag of personal culture, their own family culture, their own maybe national culture or regional culture. If they have not really integrated a real army and haven't had to go through the training, through the stringency of it all, through the whole mechanism of how to live with your unit and become a unit and how to care for each other by just being disciplined with your own equipment, they oftentimes lack certain automatisms, I would call it. So for example, a lot of people, they come into a camp, you build up the camp, they just put down their own things and then they take out stuff off the bag and then use it, then leave it somewhere and at the end of the day, oftentimes you have a lot of equipment that is used and lies around everywhere and is not actually always in a packed state. In the army you learn little practical things like you take something out of your package, you use it, you put it back there, because you wanna be able to leave the scene as quickly as possible. You always want to know where everything is, even if it's just a little leather strap that you need occasionally. You always need to know where it is, because when you need it and you don't have it, that's really problematic. And now to the scale of a whole army, if everybody always loses their straps, their little things et cetera, that's catastrophic. Even an ancient army, although we may lack the detailed sources about it, is very likely to have functioned in certain aspects like any modern army as well. You just need to have discipline. You need to always have order. You need to know where your things are. You need to know how the camp works. You need to be able to do that blind and in the dark and under attack and under stress. And those things I have internalized through 21st century military training. A lot of reenactors that just like the idea of the military, but don't actually have lived it, I find very undisciplined when it comes to such small things like attention to order, attention to packing, attention to certain processes automatizing things. There's a lot of ego still involved. People don't understand that when they're in the unit, their ego must take the backseat over the good of the unit. There's a lot of cliches in many people's heads about what it means to portray a historic military or to portray any military at all. I sometimes lament the absence of that competency and that experience in a lot of reenactors, especially when it comes to the Roman army, where a lot of things were quite standardized. 

On the other hand, I would have also a critique to some comrades from various modern militaries. For example, a lot of the Roman commands that we use in reenactment today are absolute fantasy. They were basically created out of modern British commands by the Ermine Street Guard - the earliest Roman reenactment group in Britain - because they didn't know any better. Many of the chaps were former NCOs, former officers and they said okay, we need to portray an ancient military. Let's just latinise some of the commands we have today because we don't know and we need some commands. While that's fair enough, it's also wrong because we do have commands from Roman times and it just needs a little bit more research, a little bit more insight. You need to talk with different experts. You can't just follow one. You have to basically build a committee to filter out what is the most likely and the most stringent interpretation of the ancient sources to get the commands. Oftentimes people that come from the military and are not actually academics and researchers are a bit too rash and too pragmatic when it comes to ancient sources, and they just wanna copy-paste what they do today onto the past, which is also wrong, that also almost certainly will yield cliches and wrong results. Both extremes are ultimately, in my opinion, leading us further away from a correct interpretation, or a more likely less wrong interpretation. I'm benefiting, I think, from being surrounded in my different groups by a lot of archaeologists, historians, who work really with the sources methodically. And by having also the army background in order to instill a little bit of structure and focus into the other reenactors who maybe don't have this experience. 

Phoebe: That was a really interesting critique.

Geza: Actually, if I may add another point is obviously also in the army, you learn to suffer. That's a crucial point. You learn that the mission is crucial and your own wellbeing and your own comfort, especially, is not as important. I often find myself in situations where I'm just - to say it bluntly - I'm able to suck it up and others are already complaining and are well beyond their comfort horizon and don't think that they should be there. I'm thinking that's not even a fraction of what actually historical soldiers had to endure, so I better not complain. It's a bit of an ethical, a bit of a moral dilemma because on the one side, most people that do reenactment are doing it on the weekend as a hobby. And it's totally fair enough that they say, look, I don't want to have cramps or bloody blisters or like a sore throat or a sore something when I go back to the office on Monday. That is absolutely fair enough, and I always make sure that people understand that they don't need to go to the length that I go to. But once people come with me, after the disclaimer, and they embark on a journey where I say, look guys, this is simulating real military stress on your bodies. This is simulating a real experience, but be aware that you're gonna go to your limits, that you're gonna have a lot of pain possibly, please don't start complaining about that. We'll handle it there, but don't overestimate yourselves beforehand, because it's gonna be hard. I'm just quite okay with dealing with that sort of discomfort, when it comes to longer journeys, living in the camp, doing long marches and walks. That definitely comes also as a handy package with my military experience, I would say.

Phoebe: Yeah, it sounds it. That was a great addition as well. On that note, I think we'll talk a little bit now about your upcoming expedition traversing the frontiers of the Roman Empire. When exactly are you hoping to start and where? 

Geza: Since the geopolitical situation is evolving with fast pace, I have to think very carefully about the timing of it all. Also, I do have quite old parents and I have to also take into account their needs and then family planning. I'm now 38. I know that this project is going to take years. It's over 16,000 kilometers and I will not be able to do it all in one go because that would literally mean over two years, probably, on the road. I can't do that to my family. So I will do it in chunks. That means I will have to do it in several episodes. I'm probably starting in Carnuntum on the Danube, my base, it's a Roman museum. It was the largest Roman city on the Danube for a time. I will start from there and probably head eastward. I have already crossed all of Austria by historic means with Roman equipment. Three years ago, it was about 350 kilometers. I have done about 125 kilometers on the German section of the Limes and I have done about 400-450 kilometers by historic boat reconstruction in Bulgaria and Romania, doing most of the Danube there. I've done Hadrian’s Wall last year, so I'm gonna count all those chunks as well. I hope to be able to do most of West Asia and North Africa in one or two goes, but for the European countries I'll probably do it in several goes. So this year I hope to be able to start with Hungary in summer. Maybe then Croatia and Serbia later this year. But it really depends because of the restrictions of my job, I'm self-employed and I have to look after gigs. I have to forward my band. I have two bands as well, so I need to take their schedules into account as well. I can't just leave indefinitely and leave them without me because I'm soloist there as well and instrumentalist, and I have to be available for that. There's different questions that are still open. I have to do as much as I can by horse because again, by foot, it will take very long. Several chunks by horse are just the safer option. Notably, in desert regions or in regions where there's very little infrastructure, you just need to rely on the speed of the horse. Then I need, ideally, to find a team also for certain regions, like Anatolia, Mesopotamia, probably try and go along the river Tigris or Euphretis to not cross Syria. Iraq should be fine. Then go into Jordan. From there then across the Red Sea. So I need a team, ideally, that wants to participate in this entire journey. And the more people there are, the bigger the team is to help, the easier it will be to make larger chunks happen and to make it all even more visible. 

For example, the boat reconstruction, I'm very much open to collaborate with people that already have such boat reconstructions to use it in its full context. Here's a little parenthesis that I have to make: reenactment and boat reconstructions. I think in the Nordic world, in the Viking world it's quite common that reenactors and boat reconstructions work together. But everything that's earlier, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman times, oftentimes it's universities that have the financial means and the projects to build such boat reconstructions, but then they want to use it exclusively themselves. And oftentimes universities and their volunteers that are in those projects are not reenactors and don't want to be reenactors. They just want to take measurements and row these boats in their own way, which is often, frankly speaking, very sloppy in terms of reenactment. I don't know where this comes from, but the ideal symbiosis would be reenactors that have the time, the resources, the strength, the expertise, and universities should work together in order to have the most accurate measurement data. Because again, if you just put the Cambridge Rowing Club in one of those rowing boats from Roman times and measure them, you'll have a wrong reading because the Romans weren't the Cambridge Rowing Club. They rowed probably in armour oftentimes, especially on the riverboats and with a different packaging, et cetera. So if you want accurate readings, you should have people that are dressed accurately and also regularly exercise in those armours so that they have the actual constitution that is likely for the times. Many universities don't want to go that far. I find it funny that they want to go as far as building the boat, but then to use it, which is actually easier, to use it correctly, that's where the steam runs out. So I want to find partners that are okay with building such a boat and then using it correctly. Specifically, everybody on board has the accurate historical dress, and it's not so much about the boat, but about the human experience on such a vessel. Can I only emphasize that such boats are only interesting for us, ultimately, if it's about the human experience and not just about the technical data and specifics of such a boat. Shout out to anyone that's interested in doing something like that, I'm looking to build a Late Antique commercial vessel. There's a few good wrecks that could be used as a blueprint. 

Then about the horse. I have to still decide whether I procure myself a horse, which will be the same horse for all the journey, or if I get locally sourced horses just for a couple of weeks before returning them and then doing a few weeks on foot and then again a few weeks on horse. Those things are not clear yet because it depends on a lot of factors that have not yet materialized. Like sponsorships, like support, academic support, even for the wider Frontiers of the Roman Empire project. Because I think, ultimately, such an adventure is the most likely measure to make this project visible and make it understandable for the local people. Oftentimes, the Roman frontiers are neither visible nor very lucrative for the locals. So you have a double problem. You have to tell them why they should care about it, and you have to tell them that they are an important heritage because it links them with a lot of people throughout the Mediterranean basin and Europe and North Africa and the Middle East. There's a lot of preparatory work still ongoing. 

Phoebe: When you're talking about a boat, is it for river travel or is it to traverse bits of the Mediterranean on or both? 

Geza: Basically, it should be sustainable. What I don't want is one of those projects where the boat is built, used one or two times, and then it's again in some lake or in some university or in some museum and nothing happens with it. I think such boats can be used in so many ways, sustainably, over several project periods for several different things. What I would ideally want is to have such a boat to obviously traverse the Red Sea - I'm not Moses, so I need to use a boat, I can't split the Red Sea - and then perhaps even go from Morocco to Spain or to Portugal, then to go to Britain, sail through the Irish Sea, sail up to Hadrian’s Wall, then traverse Hadrian’s Wall and then sail down to the Rhine. Ideally I'd like to do long chunks of the Rhine also by boat, where it's possible in terms of the stream going upstream, or actually trying to do it downstream as well. So there's several options and to show that vessels there were for the high seas, so like commercial vessels for the Mediterranean, for the Atlantic, could also go obviously into the rivers. Not all Roman boat constructions on the rivers are necessarily always linked to the military, but that we have the civilian and the commercial aspect, which is very crucial to represent as well. 

I have a lot of volunteers for different stretches of the way that have already said that they want to join, be it walking, be it riding, be it sailing. A lot of experts that could man the ship. And we have a lot of ideas of how to use the ship after this, for different expositions, for different connecting journeys. Again, linking the Mediterranean and having a sort of Argo, like the Argonauts, that goes from one harbor to another and brings both the Antique specialities of the area and the modern ones and then does a sort of wandering exhibition, where you see how people were connected then and how they're still connected today. That we stop thinking the Mediterranean as this big frontier between two incompatible worlds, the Muslim world of West Asia and North Africa and the European world. I'm always repeating that the geopolitical frontier of Europe is not the Mediterranean, it's the Sahara. It's the Zagros Mountains. There was a reason why the Roman Empire expanded to the territories and the frontiers that it had. It's geographical, it's also cultural, and there still is a Roman cultural imprint on all of these regions, despite the last, let's say 1,500 years, having obviously created also new layers of history, new layers of identity. We're not ignoring them or saying that they don't matter, but I think focusing on the common, the Roman layer of our identity in all these places is the way forward, given our reality in the 21st century. I'm never just one of those romantics that looks at the past and tries to curate it. I'm looking at it pragmatically and saying, look guys, we had a system, a cultural matrix back then, which could be very useful right now, and adapted obviously to our times. I always say that's the beauty of postmodernism: it's like a shop of ideas. The reenactment the way I do it is something very 21st century, I couldn't have done that a hundred years ago or 200 years ago. So by living a little bit against the 21st century with bringing back aspects of Roman life, I actually do something which is deeply 21st century.

Phoebe: You raise some interesting points there and I think that transitions nicely into talking a little bit about the Roman Frontiers project and the idea of the Frontiers becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about that and how you are hoping to do some presentations to local people about this? 

Geza: Sure. What I saw during my time with the Interreg Project Living Danube Limes, which I basically conceived and helped to get off the ground, is that a lot of local administrations, local people don't necessarily understand what this should be about. They see, okay, frontiers of the Roman Empire, but it's not very visible, it's not very tangible. What does it actually mean? Why should we spend some money, time, and effort on preserving some of the sites that are barely visible or how should we even get any advantage from that? Especially in poorer regions, for example, we worked a lot in the Romanian and Bulgarian Danube frontier region, those are some of the poorer districts in those two countries, people really have different problems than the frontiers of the Roman Empire. But that said, that doesn't mean that we can just neglect those sites, that we can neglect their part in the larger history, in the larger picture. We still have to sensitize the people there to where they're living, what they have there and how that can, in the long run, benefit them with UNESCO World Heritage Status. It would be the largest UNESCO World Heritage site in the world. It's a very ambitious project. It would be the largest shared UNESCO world heritage site between the largest number of countries. Especially given the geopolitical history of this entire Mediterranean and European basin, it would be just such a missed opportunity to not do this, to not have this as a project, even if it takes decades to come around. 

It's a very good long-term project. It's a very beneficial narrative to forward, and I think what people need today is returning to historical narratives in non-toxic ways. So while we had, during the 20th century and even today, very superficial, toxic nationalist historical narratives that are very cliched and often based on very poor understanding of history, we have a chance today to turn it around. I want also to add that oftentimes in our attempt to counteract those very simplistic and often toxic appropriations of history by modern politics, we have to also see the other side of things. We had a tendency in the last decades to see history, historic identity, and also pride in historic identity as harmful, as cliched and as stupid. So we entered a sort of animosity towards history, and it's expressed in everything that we do today in the political sphere, like modern, representative buildings are in an anonymous glass and concrete style. Whenever somebody wants to bring back some neoclassical or classical elements, our alarm bells ring immediately. And as we can see with the current American administration, sometimes for a good reason, but we are generalizing too much and I think people, especially in the Mediterranean sphere, need to feel connected to their history and to the history of the other people, in order to be able to open a window mentally and start understanding each other better. So if we try to build something completely new out of zero context, zero historical context, we are losing a lot of people to exactly those populists that are misusing history. So I’m in favor of using history consciously, academically, positively, with a positive attitude, not just deconstructing it all the time, because that's in itself a cliche. Use the deconstruction where it's about negative aspects. Use the narrative in a positive way where it yields positive results today for us. I'm totally open to further this discussion and bring this exact discussion to the people. 

Phoebe: I think we have time for one more question before we start to wrap up with our conclusion section. It kind of links back into your social media usage. I just wanted to ask, how much of this journey will you be publishing online? And will this be via your usual channels Instagram and TikTok? 

Geza: Indeed, I will be publishing everything extensively on YouTube, on Instagram, TikTok et cetera. Where I'm not yet quite clear is whether I will publish that only on those channels or whether we'll make a separate channel just for that journey as well, so that people have a fluid sort of series where they can just follow that one channel if they're just interested in that thing. On the other hand, my entire presence on social media is about universality, about many different aspects, about not just the struggle on the road, not just that one movie, so to speak, that's going on, but also about the sites I will see, also about the people I will encounter. I'm really kind of like a Don Quichot in the way that I'm fighting against the short attention spans, the short-livedness of content, the superficiality and easiness, so to speak, of the content oftentimes. I know that it's a futile fight because you go with the algorithms or you don't go at all, or you go with what people want or expect or how they interact with those social media or they just choose to not interact with you. So I can't really force my preferred way onto the people, I'm totally aware of that. But then I can also choose that the world doesn't enforce its ways onto me and I kind of try and find a bit of a golden middle ground there in terms of presentation. So probably I will just keep the one channel that I have now and publish everything there. If something happens that I don't know yet, in terms of like cooperation with a project, et cetera, where we have then new channels just for this project and initiative, then maybe there will be also a new channel. 

Otherwise, I'm really open for many cooperations with people, with locals. We are really striving to help local living history initiatives, especially in West Asia and in North Africa to come to life. We have already a few people there that would be very interested in bringing living history as a practice to the country because it doesn't really exist much in many of those places, which is an own phenomenon worthy of exploration. And then of course the Roman side of it is also something that's a bit underdeveloped. I think it's very, very beneficial to link those countries of the former Roman Empire together again, by our conscious treatment of this history. Because ultimately we are kind of back there in a way, aren't we? I mean, there's large populations from all of those areas which are living in Europe now, whether we like it or not. Most of them, despite current political discussions, aren't likely going to go anywhere anytime soon, so we have to also take into account that this is a very powerful tool because we have an identity that we have shared. We have a past that we have shared. I've seen it myself. I have had people that came in the big migration wave to Central Europe in 2015-16 of Tunisian and Egyptian origin, who found it a tremendous help to integrate here to relate to their Roman past. They said, look, once I discovered the Roman ruins here in Austria or in Germany and I connected the dots between these Roman ruins and the Roman ruins in my own hometown, I sort of found a new way of connecting today in the 21st century. I think that's very, very beautiful on the one side and it's also very powerful. It speaks to the fact that the Roman cultural matrix isn't just a thing that is now being for the 11th time dug up from the dead and sort of used to our needs today, but it's something that's still living, that has always lived. The Islamic world is a child of Roman Late Antiquity, if they want or if they don't doesn't matter, it is. And all of Europe, except for maybe still traditional-living reindeer herders and hunters in the very north, all the rest of Europe, is literally Romanized. From Norway all the way, Turkey, Spain obviously, but also Ireland. Even places that were not physically in the Roman Empire have over time, have over the medieval time period, over the Renaissance and all of these shared, cultural movements Romanized themselves via the use of Latin, of course, via Christian religion in all its forms, via the adaptation of classical philosophy and thought and by the very fact that they are states. By being a state, a modern state, or a state at all and not a tribal confederation they have Romanized deeply. This is something that has been active all the time. So we are not really reinventing something or rediscovering something that has been dead and buried and long forgotten and it's totally arbitrary that we're bringing it to the surface again. 

We're just becoming more conscious again of something because our geopolitical situation today is going in the same direction anyway. The Euromediterranean space will have to grow together, economically, in defense. It is already in the European side of the Mediterranean growing together because of external pressures. We have already a lingua franca again in all of Europe, which is English, this time round. But it does very similar things that the use of Latin and Greek did in Antiquity. We have local transnational languages such as German, which is very spoken in all of Eastern Europe, because many people from there work in Germany or in Austria. So we have a lot of things that we didn't have really for a long time that are now manifesting also within the framework of a shared legal space through the European Union. Yes, the European Union is not the Roman Empire 2.0, but it is the closest historical analogue to it. Bringing back a deeper understanding of how the Roman Empire, especially in its later, more cosmopolitan iterations, the Empire worked and how it didn't work, brings back some tools to us today to understand this space as something shared and not as something deeply divided. That's where my background as a soldier and as somebody that deals with very real modern geopolitical consequences or dynamics and predictions comes in. So I see both my work with history and my work as a modern soldier as interconnected in terms of bringing similarities from the past to the fore and showing people that something that we need now already once in a form existed and it's not necessarily harmful. That’s basically the plaidoyer here.  

Phoebe: That's a fantastic point to end on, a really important conclusion. I definitely look forward to seeing the progression of the journey as it goes on. Thank you so much for joining us. I've got one final question before we completely wrap up. How can the EXARC community and our listeners help to make a difference in regards to what we've talked about today? How can we help support your journey?

Geza: I'm very much at the start of the planning, so I have a GoFundMe page, which is the easiest thing to do, so anything that goes via the GoFundMe page. The link is in my Instagram account, the Age of Constantine. It's in the bio so you can access it there. Also anything via Patreon helps me to prepare this journey. Then of course, the most important thing is team members. So whoever is out there who would be interested in designing a project where we can build this ship, this high-seas-worthy Late Antique Roman ship and where we can basically plan stretches of the route together is very welcome. This is not a monolith project of just one man. This is as many people as want to participate in whatever form are very welcome. It should be turning over the years into a collective effort and into a collective stance, really. Even also projects that are cross-Mediterranean, getting reenactment groups up in, for example, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, et cetera, very much any connections in that regard are very helpful. 

Phoebe: Fantastic. So yeah, thank you again for joining us today and for sharing your experience and expertise. I've certainly learned a lot and as I said, I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses in the future, and I'm sure that our listeners feel similarly. So if you'd like to hear more from Geza, you can find him on Instagram, Threads and TikTok at The Age of Constantine. Thank you to everyone else for listening in to this episode of the EXARC Show.  

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