Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History / The Roman Career of a Foreign Prince: Princeps Iuventutis
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- Lucas: We've talked a lot about how Rome projected power — through legions, through law, through concrete. But there's a quieter, more intimate strategy that Augustus perfected: raising foreign princes inside the imperial household, as a form of living diplomacy. Luna: Like hostages, you mean? Lucas: Exactly. The Romans had a term for it — obses, plural obsides. But it was more than just a hostage exchange. These weren't prisoners in chains; they were brought up alongside Roman aristocrats, educated in Latin, trained in Roman customs, and often given citizenship. The idea was to send them back to their homelands one day — or keep them in Rome — as loyal allies who understood Romanitas from the inside. Luna: Did it actually work, or did they end up turning against Rome? Luna: Wait, so Rome got to pick the Parthian king? Lucas: In a sense, yes. But it backfired. Vonones had become too Romanized — he dressed like a Roman, surrounded himself with Roman attendants, and ruled in a style the Parthian nobility found alien. Within a few years he was deposed and eventually killed. So there's a cautionary tale there: you can make a prince into a Roman, but you can't always make him a Parthian king. Luna: What about the ones who stayed in Rome? Lucas: Some were given titles and careers. Augustus created the honorary title Princeps Iuventutis — 'Prince of Youth' — originally for his own grandsons, but he also awarded it to foreign princes as a mark of favour. It placed them in the second order of the equestrian class, gave them a public role, and publicly tied their prestige to the imperial family. Luna: So it was a kind of honorary Roman citizenship, with perks. Lucas: Exactly. And the most successful example of this whole strategy might be Juba II of Numidia. His father, King Juba I, had sided with Pompey against Julius Caesar and lost. After the defeat, the young prince was paraded in Caesar's triumph — he was just a child — and then brought up in the household of Octavian, the future Augustus. Luna: He went from war trophy to adopted Roman? Lucas: Not formally adopted, but he received an excellent education. He learned Greek and Latin, studied history, geography, natural science. He became a prolific author, writing works on Arabia, Africa, and the theatre. Augustus later appointed him king of Mauretania — a client kingdom — and he ruled for nearly fifty years, married Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and turned his court into a centre of Hellenistic learning. Luna: That's a remarkable arc. So for every Vonones who failed, there was a Juba who thrived. Lucas: And that's what the system was designed to produce: princes who were Roman enough to be trusted, but still seen as legitimate rulers by their own people. Juba wrote in Greek and Latin, but he never forgot his Numidian roots — he minted coins with his image in Roman dress, but also with Punic script. He walked a careful line. Luna: How many of these princes were there in total? Lucas: Dozens, at least. We know of princes from Britain, from Germany, from the Caucasus, from North Africa. In the early empire, the practice was so common that the imperial palace must have sounded like a multilingual nursery. The historian Strabo mentions that Augustus educated the sons of many client kings alongside his own children. It was a deliberate policy: create a class of rulers who owed their education — and their loyalty — to Rome. Luna: It's a fascinating kind of soft power, especially compared to the conquests and the legions we usually think of. Lucas: And it raises a question: did these princes genuinely adopt Roman identity, or was it a pragmatic mask? For some, like Juba, the evidence suggests genuine intellectual immersion. For others, it might have been pure survival strategy. But the Romans didn't care about interior motives — they cared about behaviour. And a prince who spoke Latin, wore a toga, and offered sacrifice to the Capitoline gods was, for all practical purposes, a Roman. Luna: Speaking of which, you know, shows like this — where we dig into these specific stories — they take a lot of research and time. And I know our listeners appreciate it. A small but crucial number of them actually help make it happen through initiatives like buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's completely listener-supported, no ads, and that's how we keep doing episodes like this. Lucas: Yeah, it's a really simple way to support the work, if it's something that feels right to you. And it genuinely makes a difference — it allows us to keep the show free and independent. Luna: Exactly. And no pressure ever. But for those who've been following along, it's a nice way to keep the conversation going. Lucas: Now, back to those princely hostages. One of the most fascinating details is what happened to them when Rome went to war with their homeland. Imagine a Parthian prince, raised in Rome, watching a Roman army march east. Did he pray for a Parthian victory or a Roman one? Luna: I'm guessing that's exactly the tension the Romans counted on. Lucas: Exactly. They were living hostages in the truest sense — their presence guaranteed good behaviour from foreign kings. But they were also instruments of long-term cultural change. The historian Tacitus records a speech by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, who says of the Romans: 'They make a desert and call it peace.' But the hostage system was the opposite: they made a prince into a Roman and called it peace. Luna: There's also the case of the British prince Adminius, son of Cunobeline, who fled to Rome and was used by Caligula as a pretext for a campaign. Lucas: Right. And later, during Claudius's invasion of Britain in 43 CE, the Romans used another British prince, Verica — who had been exiled — as a diplomatic justification. So the system had a practical, immediate payoff too. But the long-term vision of Augustus was more ambitious: to create a network of rulers across the empire who shared a common culture, a common loyalty, and a common language — Latin. It was empire-building from the ground up, one prince at a time. Luna: Did any of them ever refuse to go back? Lucas: Some probably embraced life in Rome. The historian Josephus mentions a Parthian prince who lived in Rome and was so Roman that he was mocked when he returned to Parthia. But others, like the Numidian prince Juba, seem to have actively sought their kingship. After all, being a client king in your own land was far more powerful than being a foreign aristocrat at Rome. Luna: It reminds me of how modern empires used educational systems to train local elites. Lucas: Exactly. The British sent Indian princes to Eton and Oxford. The French educated Vietnamese elite in Paris. The Romans perfected the same strategy two thousand years earlier, but with a twist: the princes lived with the emperor's own family, literally under the same roof. It was intimacy as control. Luna: So the Roman family was a microcosm of the empire. Lucas: In a way, yes. The emperor as paterfamilias — father of the family — and the foreign princes as foster children. It's a powerful metaphor, and one the Romans themselves promoted. Augustus was careful to present his household as a model of Roman virtue. When foreign princes were educated there, they absorbed not just Latin and Greek, but a whole moral code. Luna: What happened to the practice after Augustus? Lucas: It continued, but with changes. Under Tiberius and later emperors, the system became more formalised. The imperial court had a designated position for these princes, sometimes called the 'consilium' of amici, or friends of the emperor. By the Flavian period, we see princes from the eastern client kingdoms serving in Roman military campaigns alongside their Roman counterparts. The practice lasted well into the third century, until the empire's resources became too strained to maintain such elaborate diplomacy. Luna: It really shows how Rome saw the world — not as a collection of enemies, but as potential Romans in waiting. Lucas: That's a perfect way to put it. The hostage prince system was a bet on conversion — cultural conversion, not religious. And in many ways, it succeeded. Juba II's son Ptolemy inherited the throne of Mauretania and was a loyal Roman ally until Caligula had him executed in 40 CE. But Juba's legacy as a scholar and king endured. And the very idea that a foreign prince could become a Roman — and a Roman could become a foreign king — blurred the lines between conqueror and conquered in a way that made the empire more stable. Luna: It's such a different picture from the usual military narrative. Lucas: And that's why it's worth exploring. Rome's power wasn't just in its swords and walls — it was in its ability to reshape identities. The hostage princes were walking proof of that power. And their stories — of assimilation, ambition, and sometimes tragedy — remind us that empires are built as much in the nursery as on the battlefield.