Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to Western Sieve and today in an awesome
Speaker 1: author interview, I am sitting down with historian Edward Watts,
Speaker 1: and we are talking about his most recent book, The Romans,
Speaker 1: a two thousand year History. Well you can just tell
Speaker 1: from the title that we're going to have fun with
Speaker 1: this one, and by the length of the episode you
Speaker 1: can tell that we did. Now, there is absolutely no
Speaker 1: way to cover everything in this incredible volume in an hour,
Speaker 1: and we didn't. Really We're going to be discussing the
Speaker 1: Late Republic because as you probably know, that's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite periods of Roman history. Really talking about the
Speaker 1: time period from the death of Julius Caesar until the
Speaker 1: rise of Augustus circa thirty one thirty BCE, so a
Speaker 1: time period of about fifteen years or so, but a
Speaker 1: time period within which the history of the Western world
Speaker 1: changed dramatically, and it's important to bear that in mind,
Speaker 1: and we talk about all the reasons that this time
Speaker 1: period still matters, as well as maybe some ways in
Speaker 1: which history, as they say, doesn't repeat, but it kind
Speaker 1: of rhymes.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The book is out today, so if you'd like to
Speaker 1: go ahead and pick up a copy, you can click
Speaker 1: the link in the show notes, or you can just
Speaker 1: go to whatever bookseller you want to. It's available there.
Speaker 1: I've got all the biographical information for the author and
Speaker 1: everything that you might need to locate it. It is
Speaker 1: a phenomenal book and anyone who loves Roman history, or
Speaker 1: ancient history, or just history in general will love this
Speaker 1: book book, so I highly recommend you pick up a copy.
Speaker 1: And without further ado, after some quick messages here, we're
Speaker 1: going to get the interview with historian Edward Watts and
Speaker 1: his new book, The Romans. All right, welcome back. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned moments ago, I'm sitting down today very excited
Speaker 1: to talk to historian Edward Watts. We're talking about his
Speaker 1: most recent book, The Romans, a two thousand year history,
Speaker 1: which is an undertaking. Okay, that's quite a lot, but
Speaker 1: fans of the show will know I'll never get tired
Speaker 1: of talking about the Romans. Now, I'll tell you we
Speaker 1: were not going to have time to cover two thousand
Speaker 1: years of history here today, but and if you want
Speaker 1: to cover the whole thing, you should just click the
Speaker 1: link in the show notes and buy the book right now,
Speaker 1: which I recommend either way. But I'm going to start
Speaker 1: us off here by talking about a period that's of
Speaker 1: intense interest to me, which is the Late Republic. Let's
Speaker 1: flash back to mid March. Let's say March sixteenth March
Speaker 1: seventeenth forty four BCE. All right, so we are to
Speaker 1: ground our listeners. We are right after the assassination now
Speaker 1: of Julius Caesar, and so I wanted to start to
Speaker 1: ask you what was the mood in Rome like at
Speaker 1: that moment. This seems like a massive turning point in
Speaker 1: world history. You know, what was the intention of the conspirators,
Speaker 1: the Brutius Bruces, the Cassius Is And why how did
Speaker 1: Rome react to such an apocalyptic event?
Speaker 2: They don't know how. They're terrified, you know. I think
Speaker 2: this is the thing that we have to sort of
Speaker 2: put put in our framework. They don't know what to
Speaker 2: think about this, because what Caesar had represented was a
Speaker 2: stabilizing force in the Republic, and this was something the
Speaker 2: Republic desperately needed and had needed since, you know, at
Speaker 2: least since fifty two BC. And Pompey was brought in
Speaker 2: as a sole consul to calm street violence that had
Speaker 2: prevented a consular election, which you know, would be the
Speaker 2: equivalent of preventing a presidential election until after the new
Speaker 2: term started. So Rome had this need for you know,
Speaker 2: the better part of a decade, for at least this
Speaker 2: perceived need for a strong man to come in and
Speaker 2: calm things. And Caesar understood this. What the conspirators didn't
Speaker 2: understand was there needed to be somebody controlling things. And
Speaker 2: so what Brutus and Cassius thought they were doing was
Speaker 2: getting rid of a tyrant. What Caesar thought he was
Speaker 2: doing was providing a kind of a lid on the
Speaker 2: tensions and passions and violence in the republic in a
Speaker 2: fashion that allowed most of the republic to function as
Speaker 2: it had before, just with somebody controlling the sort of
Speaker 2: things that were disrupting it. And so when Brutus and
Speaker 2: Cassius destroyed that lid, nobody knew what this meant. So,
Speaker 2: you know, we have this wonderful, terrifying scene in the
Speaker 2: Senate where Brutus is a platonic philosopher. Brutus, you know,
Speaker 2: wrote a really wonderful speech that he hopes to deliver
Speaker 2: about the liberation of Rome from tyranny in the Senate house,
Speaker 2: and you know, Caesar's done to death, and Brutus gets
Speaker 2: ready to give his speech, and everybody runs away because
Speaker 2: everybody but Brutus understood that what you have, what you
Speaker 2: have right now is you know, anarchy, And they leave.
Speaker 2: And the Senate was meeting in the Theater of Pompey,
Speaker 2: and right, you know, right near to this is a
Speaker 2: space where gladiators are getting ready to perform. They see
Speaker 2: the senators running, the gladiators start running. Everybody then sees
Speaker 2: senators and gladiators running, and everybody starts panicking, and so
Speaker 2: on the fifteenth nobody knows what to make of this,
Speaker 2: even Mark Antony, who's generally a pretty brave guy. He
Speaker 2: runs to his house and hides, and then Brutus and
Speaker 2: Cassie has go climb up the capitol one him and
Speaker 2: get gladiators to defend themselves because they don't know what
Speaker 2: to do either. So on the sixteenth, the seventeenth, the eighteenth,
Speaker 2: all the way probably through the twentieth, all of these
Speaker 2: figures are getting their bearings and trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what comes next. You know. So Anthony has a play Lepidus,
Speaker 2: who has has control of the only military force in
Speaker 2: the city of Rome. He seizes the forum with his
Speaker 2: military force, Brutus and Cassius have to look down from
Speaker 2: the Capitol line hill on this military force in the
Speaker 2: middle of the forum. And over those few days you
Speaker 2: have negotiations where each person is trying to figure out,
Speaker 2: now that Caesar's gone, how does this work? You know,
Speaker 2: is there still a republic? Is Caesar a tyrant? Is
Speaker 2: Caesar a hero? Are the things that Caesar did legal?
Speaker 2: Are they illegal? If they're illegal, what does that mean?
Speaker 2: Because everybody in Rome has offices that they got through Caesar,
Speaker 2: so the government would effectively be illegal even if you
Speaker 2: get rid of Caesar. And this all has to play
Speaker 2: out very quickly, in real time in a city of
Speaker 2: a million people, where everybody is totally scared about what's
Speaker 2: going to come next. So this is a moment. You
Speaker 2: have your finger on, a moment in Roman history that
Speaker 2: is super significant and also I think terrifying because it
Speaker 2: could go in any direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a couple of things to talk about here.
Speaker 1: But before we get into sort of the aftermath of
Speaker 1: this a little bit further, I think, especially for today
Speaker 1: and for anyone who's listening to this years from now.
Speaker 1: We are recording this in early October of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: there has been a fairly dramatic uptick of political violence,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States where I am recording this.
Speaker 1: You know, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, was murdered, whichever phrase
Speaker 1: you want to use, you know, several weeks ago. That
Speaker 1: has changed a lot of the way we think about this.
Speaker 1: Why Why was that strong necessary? Why was that Caesar
Speaker 1: so necessary to keep that lid on that pot? Why
Speaker 1: had political violence become so endemic in particularly in the
Speaker 1: city of Rome, right, Like what was going on that
Speaker 1: had led to that necessity that Brutus didn't understand?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think there's a couple of really interesting
Speaker 2: works that Cicero writes in the period between like fifty
Speaker 2: four and fifty one BC. So one of them is
Speaker 2: on the Republic, which is a very famous work that
Speaker 2: unfortunately we know primarily through quotations of like Augustine. We
Speaker 2: don't have the full thing, but the quotations are really
Speaker 2: robust and really important and really really interesting. And then
Speaker 2: he also writes a defense of Milo, who is a
Speaker 2: political basically a political figure who also has a street gang,
Speaker 2: and the defense of Milo is a defense for Milo's
Speaker 2: assassination of another politician named Clodius, where Cicero says, in essence,
Speaker 2: Clodius is so violent and so out of control that
Speaker 2: the state, the state can't do anything to regulate his behavior,
Speaker 2: and so Milo assassinated him. Good for Milo, right, Milo
Speaker 2: is a hero because he did what the state couldn't do.
Speaker 2: In on the Republic, though, what Cicero says is, you know,
Speaker 2: a republic that's governed by violence, it never actually can
Speaker 2: be a republic. And so and so he actually speaks
Speaker 2: in both he's in a sense, speaking two sides of
Speaker 2: the same argument in the Milo text and on the Republic,
Speaker 2: and in both of those he's talking about this moment
Speaker 2: where Pompey is brought in to serve as that sole
Speaker 2: consul to regulate the violence that unfolded after the Clodius
Speaker 2: and Milo fighting. And what Cicero says, and I just
Speaker 2: reread this a couple of days ago, what Cicero says
Speaker 2: in those texts that I've never realized before is ultimately
Speaker 2: what's going on is everybody is afraid. So if you
Speaker 2: read the pro miilone, what Cicero is saying. He begins
Speaker 2: by saying, although I I'm afraid, and then throughout this
Speaker 2: speech is this whole sort of legacy, this whole sort
Speaker 2: of story of everybody from Cicero to regular people to Pompey,
Speaker 2: all being afraid. And I think this is where the
Speaker 2: moment worry in right now resonates so clearly with what's
Speaker 2: going on in Rome in that period from fifty two
Speaker 2: to forty four. They're afraid. And when you're afraid, you
Speaker 2: don't think rationally. You can't think rationally because what you're
Speaker 2: doing is you're sort of engaged in this decade of
Speaker 2: fight or flight where you're just looking for something that's
Speaker 2: going to stabilize your reality and make you feel comfortable.
Speaker 2: And you know, until really the Kirk assassination, I never
Speaker 2: understood that. I never read Sister that way. But I
Speaker 2: think that this is what Brutus didn't understand. Right. Brutus,
Speaker 2: I think, did not feel that fear. What Brutus felt
Speaker 2: was something very different. You know, we have these accounts
Speaker 2: written by the Great or an Appian who talks about
Speaker 2: how Brutus is a descendant of, you know, the Brutus
Speaker 2: who founded the Republic. He's also a descendant of a
Speaker 2: man named Ahala who had massacre, had killed somebody who
Speaker 2: was trying to seize power in the Republic in the
Speaker 2: fifth century BC, and Brutus's political brand is both Brutus
Speaker 2: the founder of the Republic and Ahala, the assassin who
Speaker 2: saved it. And so what Brutus thinks he's doing is
Speaker 2: is performing a kind of obligation that he has as
Speaker 2: a member of this family to preserve freedom, to preserve liberty.
Speaker 2: Brutus doesn't understand that for most Romans, freedom and liberty
Speaker 2: in forty four BC means terror, it means fear. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing that you know, I've been
Speaker 2: reading these texts forever. This is something that really clicked
Speaker 2: for me only in the last few weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: about this and I don't want to, you know, Pote
Speaker 1: point blame, you know, to a civilization that you know,
Speaker 1: the Republic, but you know, about two thousand years ago
Speaker 1: at this point, we're getting close to I suppose an
Speaker 1: actual anniversary.
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 1: I'm always pretty critical of the Roman government during this
Speaker 1: time period. It seems to me that in particular, the
Speaker 1: Senate is just woefully not up to the challenge of
Speaker 1: the changes that have happened in the Republic, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, really since the Second Punic War, right, that
Speaker 1: it is in so many ways a backward looking institution,
Speaker 1: and that that institution has failed to change in the
Speaker 1: way that might have prevented so many of these things
Speaker 1: from happening. I don't know what do you think about that,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a historian, but that's always been my perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean my sense in writing this book, what
Speaker 2: I realized is you have like, in a way, the
Speaker 2: greatest generation of Romans, right, all of the guys that
Speaker 2: you think of as like in the pantheon of the
Speaker 2: most famous Romans of all time, Caesar, Cicero, Pompey, Cato, Crassis.
Speaker 2: They're all basically the same age, right, They're all born
Speaker 2: within ten years of each other, and they all were
Speaker 2: basically young adults beginning their political career during this civil
Speaker 2: war that erupts in Rome in the eighties BC. And
Speaker 2: all of them were affected in different ways by this
Speaker 2: civil war. Caesar was very badly affected, you know, he
Speaker 2: was asked by a dictator to divorce his wife, his
Speaker 2: dad's property was confiscated. Even Pompey, who fought for Sola
Speaker 2: in the civil war who fought for the winning side.
Speaker 2: Pompey is also very badly affected because he's you know,
Speaker 2: forced to do things like commit massacres and kill people.
Speaker 2: And he gets the nickname the adolescent Butcher because of
Speaker 2: his violence as a servant of Sola. And so all
Speaker 2: of these people come out of the Sivian experience thinking
Speaker 2: that the worst thing that could happen is to go
Speaker 2: back to that, but totally disagreeing with each other about
Speaker 2: how you prevent your how you prevent the state from
Speaker 2: going back to that. And none of them, and I
Speaker 2: think this is the crucial thing. All of them don't
Speaker 2: want civil war, but none of them trust the republic
Speaker 2: to be strong enough to prevent it. And so every
Speaker 2: single one of them is thinking, you know, when push
Speaker 2: comes to shove, the state cannot protect me, and so
Speaker 2: I need to take care of myself and my interests.
Speaker 2: And I want a republic. I don't want a civil war.
Speaker 2: I don't want a dictatorship. I don't want to repeat
Speaker 2: what Sola did. But I don't believe that the state's
Speaker 2: strong enough to keep me safe, and so I got
Speaker 2: to look out for me. And if it comes down
Speaker 2: to the best interests of the state or looking out
Speaker 2: for me. I'm going to look out for me. And
Speaker 2: this is how I think it all unfolds. None of
Speaker 2: these people wanted civil war, but their own lack and
Speaker 2: their own inability to have faith in the institutions of
Speaker 2: the state. And I think it's a reasonable you know,
Speaker 2: it's a reasonable fear they have, but their inability to
Speaker 2: have faith in the institutions of the state undermine that
Speaker 2: state to such a degree that they end up falling
Speaker 2: into civil war even though they don't want it. And
Speaker 2: so I think when you look at what the Senate
Speaker 2: is doing, the Senate is engaging in this very complicated
Speaker 2: process of trying to figure out, like how can we
Speaker 2: work within the confines of the state but also not
Speaker 2: give up so much that we personally are exposed. And
Speaker 2: I don't think any political system can really work that way.
Speaker 2: You know, in a sense, what you're doing is you're
Speaker 2: sort of lying to each other that you believe the
Speaker 2: political system is strong enough to survive, when in reality,
Speaker 2: you're just going through the motions of sort of following
Speaker 2: the rules until those rules look like they might undercut
Speaker 2: your ability to look out for your own interests. And
Speaker 2: then you disregard those rules. And so I think this
Speaker 2: is why the Senate has that very real sense of
Speaker 2: disconnection from the real problems it needs to solve, because
Speaker 2: in a way, they don't believe the Senate is capable
Speaker 2: of solving those problems in a way that's finding in
Speaker 2: a way that's going to actually restrain enemies from doing
Speaker 2: things to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think, you know, when when I think
Speaker 1: about this era, I'm always I always have to remind
Speaker 1: myself that the members of the Senate and the aristocracy,
Speaker 1: you know, they they had been hit very hard by
Speaker 1: the civil wars between Marius and Sola, and particularly the proscriptions.
Speaker 1: You know, there weren't you know, they weren't going after
Speaker 1: the plebs, and in the proscription lists, you know, that
Speaker 1: was very targeted. So I can understand to a large
Speaker 1: extent why the Senate would feel the need to be defensive,
Speaker 1: right for themselves and for their for the really their
Speaker 1: almost their lives, right, certainly their lives and their property.
Speaker 1: Maybe in a secondary standpoint, but then of course you
Speaker 1: have this, you know the curses, right, you have this
Speaker 1: this ladder that young Romans are supposed to climb and
Speaker 1: it's it's intended to be so competitive, and you're intended
Speaker 1: to attack your your enemies, and that has worked to
Speaker 1: a large extent with the Romans, but then it works
Speaker 1: till it doesn't, right, and now we're in a situation
Speaker 1: where reform just doesn't seem to be a possibility anymore.
Speaker 1: And that gets us then to forty four BCE, right,
Speaker 1: And I just can't understand. Maybe there is no answer
Speaker 1: to this, but I can't understand what was not honestly
Speaker 1: going through the minds of Brutus and Cassius, because it
Speaker 1: seems to me that they didn't have a plan for
Speaker 1: what the next step was going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was just going to reset. I mean,
Speaker 1: what were they thinking was going to happen to the
Speaker 1: extent that we know it after the assassination of Caesar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, to me, Cassius is something of a mystery.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't feel I understand what's driving Cassius.
Speaker 2: With Brutus. I think I do understand what's going on,
Speaker 2: you know. I think with Brutus there is this this
Speaker 2: very theoretical sense of obligation, and there's actually a quote
Speaker 2: where I think it's Cato says that, you know, Brutus lives.
Speaker 2: Brutus lives in the Republic of Plato, but cannot bring
Speaker 2: himself to understand he actually lives, in reality, in the
Speaker 2: Republic of Romulus. Right, I butchered that quote, But that's
Speaker 2: the idea. Right, Brutus lives in this theoretical world where
Speaker 2: liberty is a thing, it's a concept, is a concept
Speaker 2: that you can bring to bear in the real world.
Speaker 2: And in the lead up to Caesar's assassination, Appian tells
Speaker 2: us that we have all of this graffiti that starts
Speaker 2: appearing around the city saying things like, you know, on
Speaker 2: a statue of the ancestor Brutus, your progeny is not
Speaker 2: living up to your legacy, and on the statue of
Speaker 2: Brutal and on monuments associated with Brutus the assassin, and
Speaker 2: stuff like, you're not connected to the things that you
Speaker 2: said you ought to connect to. And so Brutus feels
Speaker 2: a lot of pressure, both because he has this legacy
Speaker 2: to uphold, but also because Brutus thinks in this sort
Speaker 2: of theoretical sense where liberty is good, right, liberty is
Speaker 2: what we want. His first induction to Roman political life
Speaker 2: is a series of coins he issues in fifty four BC,
Speaker 2: and one of them, on the front has Lady Liberty
Speaker 2: and it says libertos and on the back is Brutus
Speaker 2: with his lictors right, the ancestor Brutus. And so Brutus
Speaker 2: very much believes in this concept of liberty. It's in
Speaker 2: a census personal brand, but it's also his conviction. And
Speaker 2: I think the problem with Brutus is there isn't this
Speaker 2: understanding that you know, what the real world is messy,
Speaker 2: it's not Plato's, it's not a Platonic form, and you
Speaker 2: need to understand that liberty means different things to different
Speaker 2: people in different contexts, and what you claim you're doing,
Speaker 2: it's going to resonate differently to everybody who's not you,
Speaker 2: because everybody who's not you lives in the real world
Speaker 2: and you live in this sort of nice, platonic, sort
Speaker 2: of conceptual world. And so I think that's the issue
Speaker 2: with Brutus. With Cassius again, like I find Cassius a
Speaker 2: difficult person to under stands, and I can't claim that
Speaker 2: I really get what's going on there. But with Brutus,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think he just doesn't know
Speaker 2: that the concept that he embraces so firmly, it's too abstract,
Speaker 2: and nobody understands what he actually means in reality when
Speaker 2: he's saying those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think sometimes when I when I think about Brutus,
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit reminded, maybe even in contemporary times
Speaker 1: in the United States, of some decisions I'll read recently
Speaker 1: from from the Supreme Court, which are incredibly high flown
Speaker 1: and incredibly legalistic, but seem at times to just ignore
Speaker 1: the obvious practical implications of what is actually going on.
Speaker 1: So if we're looking at like modern parallels, sometimes I
Speaker 1: look at some of those decisions and I say, like, well,
Speaker 1: Brutus could have written that. I mean, like, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's something you write as the ship is going down.
Speaker 1: But and I don't think it is, by the way,
Speaker 1: and we can go into that. But so that's one half, right,
Speaker 1: One half is you know, Brutus and Cassius and the conspirators.
Speaker 1: But then we got the other half. We've got the Caesareans. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got the people who had, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: benefited from Julius Caesar from the dictatorship. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about some of them talking about Mark Antony
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. So where are they
Speaker 1: at immediately after this assassination?
Speaker 2: So okay, So I think that the issue that we
Speaker 2: have is that for a lot of these Romans there's
Speaker 2: this sense a different sense of what freedom represents and
Speaker 2: what a republic represents. And so for Brutus, freedom is
Speaker 2: basically a binary. You're either free or you're not. For Caesar,
Speaker 2: I think a way to understand it is Caesar would
Speaker 2: say that freedom is in a sense something that exists
Speaker 2: on a spectrum in the way that we have kind
Speaker 2: of a modern way of measuring democracy, where you don't
Speaker 2: have any pure democracy and you don't have any pure
Speaker 2: authoritarian state. You just have a spectrum that runs kind
Speaker 2: of from like North Korea to Sweden, and you know,
Speaker 2: and your state can become more or less free in
Speaker 2: that context, and those choices are made for reasons. And
Speaker 2: I think what Caesar believed is the republic as it
Speaker 2: existed in the fifties didn't function, and so Caesar undertakes
Speaker 2: a lot of significant reforms in the period after the
Speaker 2: Battle of Farceless and forty eight, you know, and through
Speaker 2: the fighting in near like forty six and forty five.
Speaker 2: But what Caesar is trying to do is serve as
Speaker 2: that lid that controls passions and fear. And then because
Speaker 2: these passions and fears are controlled, you can start rebuilding
Speaker 2: elements of the republic to make it function better. And
Speaker 2: so it's less free. It's moved towards less free on
Speaker 2: the spectrum, but it is still a republic. Citizen rights
Speaker 2: still matter. They're brought responsibility citizens have to the state,
Speaker 2: and the obligation of the state has the citizens. Those
Speaker 2: things still exist, and what Caesar wants to do is
Speaker 2: to make sure that some of the stuff that had
Speaker 2: gotten gummed up for the last hundred years starts happening again.
Speaker 2: You know, colonies in places like Corinth and Carthage that
Speaker 2: should have cities, but the Romans destroyed them one hundred
Speaker 2: years before. You know, things like the codification of laws
Speaker 2: and the sort of regulation and rationalization of the law
Speaker 2: system that Caesar never finished but started to undertake. The
Speaker 2: calendar reforms that Caesar did. All of these things are
Speaker 2: about making this this state more functional. Even though you're
Speaker 2: training some of the liberty right, you're moving towards authoritarinessm
Speaker 2: on that spectrum. You haven't become North Korea even in
Speaker 2: a sense maybe made the sort of move that we're
Speaker 2: seeing in places like the United States or Turkey, you know, Mexico,
Speaker 2: where the states are moving to be less democratic, but
Speaker 2: they're not dictatorships, they're just they're just moving on the spectrum.
Speaker 2: And you know, and so I think what Brutus doesn't
Speaker 2: yet is that there is a spectrum. What Caesar doesn't
Speaker 2: get is how powerfully this idea of a binary still
Speaker 2: affects certain people. And I think that's the tension in
Speaker 2: forty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when you look at polling now, you
Speaker 1: look at you know, there's always sort of this tension
Speaker 1: between security and freedom right, and we can use those
Speaker 1: two values differently, and certain people will define those values differently.
Speaker 1: Of course, within any system it doesn't particularly matter, but
Speaker 1: they're always intension to some extent. And it does seem
Speaker 1: to me right now the world is trending towards we
Speaker 1: care more about maybe security than we do about freedom.
Speaker 1: It's particularly in the West, and it's not like we
Speaker 1: haven't done that before. So I'm not this isn't coming
Speaker 1: out of the blue right. It's not like space Aliens landed,
Speaker 1: and now we have this situation right like it's happened before.
Speaker 1: And I'm always amazed at how quickly people forget the past.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's one of the problems when we don't have
Speaker 1: you know, as many history majors anymore people doing those things,
Speaker 1: because there's no there's no ROI for studying the Romans.
Speaker 1: I think there is personally, but and I think the people,
Speaker 1: the Americans in the nineteen fifties thought there was an
Speaker 1: ROI on those sorts of things. And maybe we should
Speaker 1: look at our greatest generation and wonder what they know
Speaker 1: that we didn't that we don't. But that diatribe aside.
Speaker 1: Let's let's get back to our cast of characters, right
Speaker 1: because after the assassination of Caesar, the question becomes, all right, well,
Speaker 1: who's going to lead this faction? And there's really two
Speaker 1: candidates start to emerge right away. You know, you have
Speaker 1: mark Antony, but then Caesar doesn't have a son. Well
Speaker 1: he does, I mean, I think I think we can
Speaker 1: say he does, all right, he does by Cleopatra, who
Speaker 1: is in Rome at the time that this happens, by
Speaker 1: the way, and don't forget that, you know, she is
Speaker 1: in Rome when this happens, and kind of has to
Speaker 1: pretty quickly pack her bags and get out of town
Speaker 1: because she's not super popular, right. And his son is
Speaker 1: that by Cleopatra is not considered legitimate as you as
Speaker 1: you point out, and so that means that the mantle
Speaker 1: could fall to someone else, because he's got a nephew, right,
Speaker 1: a nephew who we don't know much about yet in history,
Speaker 1: but who we're going to know a lot about later.
Speaker 1: And his name is Octavian, and I find him one
Speaker 1: of the most fascinating people in the history of the world,
Speaker 1: full stop. So as the dust is settling, how are Mark,
Speaker 1: Antony and Octavian starting to look over, you know, the
Speaker 1: survey the land and decide what should our next steps be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think we have to go back to
Speaker 2: those five days that you talked about, right March fifteenth
Speaker 2: to the twentieth. What Antony realizes, what Anthony believes is
Speaker 2: Brutus is not going to get his liberation. Nobody wants that, right.
Speaker 2: Brutist cannot like convince people that see as there was
Speaker 2: a tyrant and this was an active liberation. But also
Speaker 2: nobody's going to totally want to go back to a
Speaker 2: system where there's someone who is a perpetual dictator who's
Speaker 2: in charge, because that was something only Caesar had the
Speaker 2: charisma and skill to pull off. And so there's going
Speaker 2: to have to be a compromise, you know, the compromise
Speaker 2: is going to have to be, Yes, we recognize that
Speaker 2: Caesar did really good things, and yet also we can't
Speaker 2: punish the people who killed Caesar because well, we're compromising.
Speaker 2: And so Antony doesn't understand that there is this other figure,
Speaker 2: right he doesn't under he doesn't know about Octavian. He
Speaker 2: doesn't know Octavian is named in the will, and so
Speaker 2: Antony believes that the sort of universe of possible people
Speaker 2: contesting for the legacy of Caesar are the people in
Speaker 2: Rome right now. And so when anti makes this compromise
Speaker 2: to say, well, we're not going to punish the assassins,
Speaker 2: but we're going to acknowledge that Caesar was a god,
Speaker 2: not just a great man, not just like a legitimate fovereign,
Speaker 2: but he's a god and all of his acts are
Speaker 2: you know, legal, Antony believes that what he he's done
Speaker 2: is he's actually kind of secured the legacy of Caesar,
Speaker 2: and it's not pure because you did have to make
Speaker 2: this compromise about him not going to avenge Caesar's death.
Speaker 2: But there's nobody who has any kind of legitimate power
Speaker 2: base who's going to be able to challenge you from
Speaker 2: the Cesarean side. Any crazy stuff happened that, you know,
Speaker 2: people claim that they're, you know, going to take that
Speaker 2: legacy up, but they're not serious challengers. And then in
Speaker 2: April of forty four, Octavian shows up. And Octavian is
Speaker 2: at this point, he's eighteen years old. He's you know,
Speaker 2: not a figure anybody in Rome really knows, but it's
Speaker 2: clear that this is a figure who is supremely intelligent,
Speaker 2: also you know, borderline sociopathic, I mean, willing to do
Speaker 2: anything that he can, using people as sort of tools
Speaker 2: and objects. And he is very very strategic about how
Speaker 2: he does this. And Caesar had been training him in
Speaker 2: the political affairs of Rome, and Octavian had actually been
Speaker 2: in Apollonia and what's now Albania with Caesar's army that
Speaker 2: Caesar was preparing to lead to attack the Parthians, and
Speaker 2: so Actavian is very very well positioned as the heir
Speaker 2: of Caesar. But he has none of this sort of
Speaker 2: dirt of compromising with the assassins. And so when he
Speaker 2: shows up in Rome as the heir of Caesar, the
Speaker 2: person named as Caesar's air in his will, Antony realizes
Speaker 2: that he's been kind of outflanked, and he starts doing
Speaker 2: all kinds of things to try to undercut Octavian, thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, this guy's eighteen years old, what does he know.
Speaker 2: And Octavian sort of carries every single jab you know,
Speaker 2: Anthony tries to use bureaucratic delays to prevent the adoption
Speaker 2: of Octavian, the possumous adoption of Octavian by Julius Caesar,
Speaker 2: and Octavian then just sort of says to the people
Speaker 2: like this is violating, you know, the terms of the
Speaker 2: gods will and you know, any blocks money that Octavian
Speaker 2: is supposed to give out to to run people based
Speaker 2: on Caesar's will. And Octavian says, okay, well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to take my own private money and give this out
Speaker 2: because Antony is blocking me. And so Octavian manages to
Speaker 2: establish himself as you know, in a sense of the
Speaker 2: pure champion of Caesar and Antony, who believed that he
Speaker 2: had won this whole sort of conflict between March fifteenth
Speaker 2: and March twentieth. By the end of the year forty four,
Speaker 2: he's totally on the outs with just about everybody. And Octavian,
Speaker 2: despite being so young that he's not able to even
Speaker 2: hold office, somehow has command of an army. He has
Speaker 2: a legitimate position. He's seen sort of widely by the
Speaker 2: people who are most loyal to Caesar as Caesar's air
Speaker 2: and you know, and everybody is really surprised that somebody
Speaker 2: with so little experience is smart enough to do all
Speaker 2: of this, and so this is kind of how that
Speaker 2: side is playing out, and that the core of that year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's really interesting because you I love how
Speaker 1: he does come out of left field in so many ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's eighteen years old. You know, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: honestly expect someone of that age in this system that
Speaker 1: valued experience and age in ways that maybe we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, in the modern American system by example today.
Speaker 1: And you can talk about whether that's a figure or
Speaker 1: a bad thing, but we won't necessarily get into that.
Speaker 1: But one of the hallmarks I always think of a
Speaker 1: brilliant of a great leader is the ability to recognize
Speaker 1: greatness in those around him, and I Octavian's he's a
Speaker 1: brilliant politician, but he also has two really good friends
Speaker 1: who are super helpful to him throughout his life. Right,
Speaker 1: he's got Agrippa, He's got I think it's mass in
Speaker 1: As or Macinas, you know, whichever way you want to
Speaker 1: say that with a hard see. Right, those two guys,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, especially Agrippa, are absolutely crucial to understanding
Speaker 1: Octavian's eventual rise to power. What do you think? Am
Speaker 1: I right? Am I wrong about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I I think Agrippa. I think you're
Speaker 2: right that Agrippa is actually the real key because I
Speaker 2: think Augustus understood how to run public opinion very very well.
Speaker 2: And I think if he didn't have my chemis there,
Speaker 2: he still could have done it. Right. This is this
Speaker 2: is his skill, right, he knows how to do this.
Speaker 2: He is a terrible military commander, and you know, and
Speaker 2: Agrippa is the person who wins his battles for him.
Speaker 2: And the other thing with Agrippa is Agrippa is the
Speaker 2: person that Augustus ultimately, you know, lines up to be
Speaker 2: his successor. He's the one he marries his only daughter too.
Speaker 2: He's the one who's supposed to be the sort of
Speaker 2: progenitor of of you know, the line that is the
Speaker 2: next generation of imperial heirs. I think that Augustus would
Speaker 2: have been impossible without Agrippa because I think that you
Speaker 2: in a way you look at his skills. I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the ways that I talk about this when
Speaker 2: I talk about this in my lecture classes is you know,
Speaker 2: this is like Jedi training, right. It's like like Luke
Speaker 2: Skywalker got some Jedi training, but you can't get all
Speaker 2: of it. And so the Jedi training that Augustus got
Speaker 2: from Caesar was political. The military training was supposed to come.
Speaker 2: He never got it. And so what Agrippa does is
Speaker 2: he supplements that sort of training that Augustus never got
Speaker 2: with this tremendous skill and tremendous power and a tremendous
Speaker 2: ability to you know, terrify Augustus's adversaries if they do
Speaker 2: want to oppose him. And so you're exactly right that
Speaker 2: without Agrippa there's no Augustus. Yeah, and I.
Speaker 1: Think that there's you know, we're we're not going to
Speaker 1: get this far. But for those who are fans of
Speaker 1: the of the subject matter. We'll want to read the book.
Speaker 1: I think there's always a fascinating what if because Agrippa
Speaker 1: dies not young per se for for that age, but
Speaker 1: I'll say young ish, certainly significantly before Augustus, even though
Speaker 1: Augustus is the one who really suffers from ill health
Speaker 1: throughout his life, and he talked about well, Caesar was
Speaker 1: about to give him the military training. I seriously questioned,
Speaker 1: no matter how much training Octavian got, if he ever
Speaker 1: would have been Certainly he was never going to be
Speaker 1: Alexander of Massadon. That's that's for sure. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he could have been passable someday, But like he
Speaker 1: did not seem like a skill set that was ever
Speaker 1: going to be in his wheelhouse politics, Yes, commanding troops
Speaker 1: on a battlefield and setting out strategy, not necessarily, you know,
Speaker 1: Grippa's going to have a heavy hand in most of
Speaker 1: the campaigns, almost all the campaigns that Octavian and then
Speaker 1: later Augustus after the name change is involved in. But
Speaker 1: let's let's talk. I want to talk about at least
Speaker 1: one battle, Okay, like we need to so eventually, right,
Speaker 1: the battle lines do get drawn between these two sides. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got sort of the Cesareans under Octavian and
Speaker 1: mark Antony, who are quasi allied at the time. They're
Speaker 1: in the west, and then in the east you got
Speaker 1: Brutus and Cassius, and eventually this all comes to head
Speaker 1: at the Battle of Philippy, Right, And this is a
Speaker 1: battle that I think from my readings wasn't a foregone
Speaker 1: conclusion either way when it starts, and really even you
Speaker 1: know after maybe we could talk about it, maybe after
Speaker 1: you know, we have a premature you know, taking of
Speaker 1: one's own life, before you realize that the game maybe
Speaker 1: wasn't actually that over. So set the stage for us
Speaker 1: what's happening going into this critical Battle of Philippi, which
Speaker 1: is also fought in Greece, you know, like for Solace, Right,
Speaker 1: So every major battle seems to get fought in Greece
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, and there's a reason for that. And
Speaker 1: then how does that battle?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think the lead up to that battle
Speaker 2: is really important because these are two forces that are
Speaker 2: really these I think probably are one of, if not
Speaker 2: the largest sort of fixed battle that Romans fight against
Speaker 2: each other in all of their civil wars. And it's
Speaker 2: one of the largest battles in all of ancient history.
Speaker 2: It's so big that the lines extend so far that
Speaker 2: the commander that Anthony cannot see Octavian's line, and Brutus
Speaker 2: cannot see Cassius, right, So they're extended so far, and
Speaker 2: there's so many troops that did in effect, you have
Speaker 2: two battles going on at once. And this had been
Speaker 2: there had been a lead up for a couple of
Speaker 2: years where Brutus and Cassius, who are supposedly, you know,
Speaker 2: the liberators and non tyrants, are going around the Greek
Speaker 2: world and like looting cities, taking like all of the
Speaker 2: money in in you know, entire cities across the eastern
Speaker 2: Mediterranean to buy and equipped troops, huge numbers of troops,
Speaker 2: and Antony and Octavian are doing something similar in Italy
Speaker 2: and in the West. And so when these forces meet,
Speaker 2: it's a massive battle. And you're exactly right that there
Speaker 2: is no pre ordering conclusion here. But what ends up
Speaker 2: happening is, you know, Antony is a very very good commander,
Speaker 2: so is Cassius. But Antony is a very very good commander,
Speaker 2: and Antony's troops defeat Cassius's troops, but Octavian was sick,
Speaker 2: wasn't there ran away? Not totally clear. But Brutus's troops
Speaker 2: defeat Octavian's troops, and Octavian is, you know, of course,
Speaker 2: to flee, but Brutus hears that. So Cassius doesn't know
Speaker 2: that Brutus has won, and he believes all is lost,
Speaker 2: and so he commits suicide following the defeat by Anthony
Speaker 2: because he doesn't want to live under tyranny. And this
Speaker 2: is something you know, Cato had done something, so when
Speaker 2: fighting Julius Caesar, right, this is something that people with
Speaker 2: this particular mindset of like liberty or nothing, you know,
Speaker 2: they will do this. He doesn't know that they could
Speaker 2: have regrouped, they could have actually probably fought again, they
Speaker 2: had a viable army, but cassius is suicide prompts Brutus
Speaker 2: to panic. Brutus regroups and then has a sort of
Speaker 2: second battle much too prematurely, and then is defeated and
Speaker 2: he ultimately, you know, passes from the scene as well.
Speaker 2: But I think what you have here is a super
Speaker 2: remarkable moment where you get kind of the character of
Speaker 2: each of these people revealed in this moment. Right Anthony
Speaker 2: in the forties is an exceptionally good commander. Cassius is
Speaker 2: a good commander. Is not because Anthony, but the liberators
Speaker 2: believe fundamentally in this principle, and they also are sort
Speaker 2: of working from this idea that you know, we have
Speaker 2: this this great example of a figure like Cato who
Speaker 2: commits suicide rather than surrender. And I think that this
Speaker 2: ultimately creates a kind of I don't know issue that
Speaker 2: they have about how they proceed after partially losing the
Speaker 2: first battle at Philippi, and this ultimately leads to the
Speaker 2: sort of collapse that you know, Brutus's terrible decision making
Speaker 2: produces in their military forces. And then in the end,
Speaker 2: what's remarkable is after those battles conclude, the soldiers that
Speaker 2: were raised by Brutus and Cassius just joined the armies
Speaker 2: of Antony and Octavian, and so the scene is set
Speaker 2: for eventually a conflict between Antony and Octavian that is
Speaker 2: like buttressed by like large numbers of soldiers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a couple of things about this, And I'm
Speaker 1: glad you brought up the fact that the soldiers from
Speaker 1: Brutus and Cassius aside with little to know prompting to
Speaker 1: join the other side, stressing the fact that for most
Speaker 1: Romans probably this wasn't an ideological conflict. This wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: This wasn't you know You've got the Russians of the
Speaker 1: Second World War on the Nazis on the other side,
Speaker 1: Like that's it's not that kind of a scenario here
Speaker 1: for the vast majority of the people who are engaged
Speaker 1: in the battle, you know, this this is another fight
Speaker 1: between two aristocrats. You know, this is another you know,
Speaker 1: they had just done this with Caesar and Pompey, you know,
Speaker 1: and the Romans, you want to back it up, they
Speaker 1: almost got all the way to doing it between Marius
Speaker 1: and Sullah, not for the fact that Marius dies, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, a lot of these sorts of
Speaker 1: things are for them. I think for the Romans there
Speaker 1: must have been this feeling of exhaustion at some point
Speaker 1: that I feel setting in. And I also I really
Speaker 1: get the sense going into that battle of PHILIPI that
Speaker 1: this is this is Brutus's he this is going to
Speaker 1: be his pen his final scene. He he goes into
Speaker 1: this with like I'm not going to do what Pompey did.
Speaker 1: If if we lose. This is it. I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: and you just get the incredible sense from everything that's
Speaker 1: written about the battle that retreat surrender is not an
Speaker 1: option for him under these circumstances. You know, this is
Speaker 1: we win or I die. One of the two things
Speaker 1: is going to happen, you know. So and then that,
Speaker 1: you know, gets us to the next stage of this,
Speaker 1: you know, this play that's getting itself out. So now
Speaker 1: we've got Okay, so we've got Octavian. Now we've got
Speaker 1: Mark Antony, and they didn't particularly like each other, right,
Speaker 1: and now we all say, and we've got Lepidis he's
Speaker 1: he's still there. And I'm not even going to get
Speaker 1: into sexist Pompey. He sexist Pompey's out there too. You know,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to the episodes on him if
Speaker 1: you want to get really into that. But here's an
Speaker 1: example of why civil war is bad, right, because Mark
Speaker 1: Anthony's going to go out east and crap, like I
Speaker 1: have to reorganize provinces that you have been stripped bare
Speaker 1: by a civil war, right, and I have an enemy
Speaker 1: on my flank.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So we've got these two sides who are all most
Speaker 1: immediately looking to continue this civil war. It seems inevitable
Speaker 1: to me that this is going to result in another battle. Okay,
Speaker 1: but what does what does Antony find really when he
Speaker 1: gets to the east.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think, you know, there's another element of
Speaker 2: this that I think is really it's fascinating to me
Speaker 2: because these soldiers, you're right, are not loyal to an
Speaker 2: ideology right now. No one is like, I'm a liberator,
Speaker 2: right They're they're like, okay, cool, right now, now I
Speaker 2: joined Brituses, or now I joined Anthony's army, but Antony,
Speaker 2: but they are loyal to their commanders if their commanders
Speaker 2: are good, and Antony and Octavian. When they do fall out,
Speaker 2: and they fall out pretty quickly, they do try to
Speaker 2: get their armies to fight each other, and the armies
Speaker 2: ultimately say, look, we're Cesareans. What are you doing? Right?
Speaker 2: And so the legacy of Caesar is still really really
Speaker 2: powerful as you come out of the forties into the
Speaker 2: early thirties, so powerful that you know, it's it's more
Speaker 2: powerful that these soldiers see themselves as Cesarians. They see
Speaker 2: them se dis loyal to Anthony or Octavian, and so
Speaker 2: what happens in the thirties, is Antony and Octavian are
Speaker 2: both going to work to undo that by rotating guys out,
Speaker 2: by you know, creating sort of propaganda that delegitimizes the other,
Speaker 2: and you know, and doing doing the sorts of things
Speaker 2: that diminish that legacy of Caesar and people's minds so
Speaker 2: that now you can be Antonian or you can be Octavian's,
Speaker 2: you know people. And so I think when you get
Speaker 2: into you know, what Antony finds when he goes east
Speaker 2: is he's got to figure out some way to incentivize
Speaker 2: these soldiers and also build enough of a power base
Speaker 2: that he can overcome what Octavian may well be able
Speaker 2: to salvage in the west. I mean, Octavian's position in
Speaker 2: the West is terrible because all of these soldiers who
Speaker 2: are cesarean soldiers that now want to retire. He's got
Speaker 2: to find some land, and he's got to find supports
Speaker 2: or may to provide for their retirement. And he does
Speaker 2: things like sees tie like eighteen total towns, like all
Speaker 2: the towns and all the property in Italy, and you know,
Speaker 2: in these eighteen towns distribute them to his soldiers. And
Speaker 2: so he has problems in the West, but if he
Speaker 2: figures those problems out, he's going to be able to
Speaker 2: sort of overwhelm Antony with Roman troops coming from the west.
Speaker 2: And so Antony needs to make ultimately an alliance with
Speaker 2: the only really significant independent kingdom remaining in the eastern Mediterranean,
Speaker 2: which is Cleopatra's Egypt. And so this is the sort
Speaker 2: of way that he deals with this problem he finds
Speaker 2: in the East. But the attachment to Cleopatra becomes something
Speaker 2: that starts as a political alliance and becomes a real
Speaker 2: sort of lot more than that, a romantic attachment, and
Speaker 2: then ultimately an attachment that becomes so great that he starts,
Speaker 2: at least in the propaganda of Octavian not paying attention
Speaker 2: to his duties as a Roman, and so he embarks
Speaker 2: an a Parthyan campaign. Late it's not particularly successful. This
Speaker 2: story starts circulating that you know, he really just wanted
Speaker 2: to be in Alexandria in Egypt because it's a nicer
Speaker 2: place and Cleopatra's there, and so the efforts that he
Speaker 2: makes in the East are reasonable efforts, but ultimately they
Speaker 2: get spun in such a way that they totally discredit him,
Speaker 2: and so Octavian has in a sense set up for
Speaker 2: what we will ultimately see, I mean, if we're going
Speaker 2: to jump ahead, what we ultimately will see in uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the ultimately concluding battle between the two of
Speaker 2: them where he forces Anthony to make a decision about
Speaker 2: am I pro my troops or am I pro my wife?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there's so many things going in here,
Speaker 1: and obviously again read the book. We can't go through
Speaker 1: every single thing that we're talking about, but you know,
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that, you know, neither one of
Speaker 1: these two characters were in a positive situation coming out
Speaker 1: of the Civil War. They weren't. You know, they both
Speaker 1: had enormous problems that they had to deal with. And
Speaker 1: you know, Anthony gets a lot of criticism for the
Speaker 1: way that he behaves and certainly for the donations of
Speaker 1: Alexandria that get really spun into major propaganda later on.
Speaker 1: Is it's interpreted in Rome that will he's bequeathing massive
Speaker 1: chunks of the empire to his own kids, which you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could, I mean, that's arguable, but you
Speaker 1: know that's certainly what that's certainly what Octavian would say, right,
Speaker 1: And so it and then you know, Anthony's supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to recruit troops in Italy and I Octavian
Speaker 1: doesn't really let him do that. And so there's this
Speaker 1: kind of you know, back and forth, and you do
Speaker 1: get the sense at one point that okay, Octavian feels ready. Okay,
Speaker 1: he's he feels ready to have this fight, and that
Speaker 1: ultimately then takes us to where we'll end today, which
Speaker 1: is sort of our last And I'm gonna put in
Speaker 1: an air quotes battle because I go back, I do.
Speaker 1: I go back and forth as to whether or not Actium,
Speaker 1: which is what I'm talking about, a lot of listeners
Speaker 1: will be aware of that name, whether that's an actual
Speaker 1: battle or not, or whether that's just sort of a
Speaker 1: set piece affair that that ends with a whimper rather
Speaker 1: than this great crescendo and is propped up as a
Speaker 1: huge battle afterwards by Octavian. I don't know which way
Speaker 1: to go on that, But I don't know. Tell me
Speaker 1: what you think of what happens at Actium and what
Speaker 1: should we and what should the listeners take away from that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that what the victory there is,
Speaker 2: it's a military victory, but it's really a political victory.
Speaker 2: So I mean, so what Octavian had been able to
Speaker 2: do because of the association of Antony and Cleopatra, is
Speaker 2: he had been able to build this entire narrative around
Speaker 2: this is not a civil war, this is a foreign war.
Speaker 2: And so what you had talked about with this leaking
Speaker 2: of a document that says that an and he intends
Speaker 2: to give Roman territory to his children, which is a
Speaker 2: huge no go because Rome, to its very end right,
Speaker 2: I mean, across the entire two thousand years I cover
Speaker 2: in the book, Rome remains a state that is the
Speaker 2: property of its citizens. It is not the property of
Speaker 2: its rulers. They do not they serve in an office.
Speaker 2: Even emperors serve in an office. And so when Antony
Speaker 2: says I'm going to give Roman territory to Cleopatra or
Speaker 2: to my kids, he's giving territory that belongs to everybody
Speaker 2: like its territory that belongs to him. This is a huge,
Speaker 2: huge problem in a Roman mindset. And so Octavian is
Speaker 2: able to spread all sorts of things that delegitimize Antony
Speaker 2: as a Roman commander and create this narrative that he's
Speaker 2: so besoughted with Cleopatra, that it's actually not a civil
Speaker 2: war to fight Antony, it's a foreign war. And then
Speaker 2: Augustus is. Octavian's power in Italy ultimately at that moment
Speaker 2: comes from something called the Oath of all Italy, where
Speaker 2: he has people go to every city in Italy and
Speaker 2: they swear allegiance to him as their defender against common enemies.
Speaker 2: That common enemy, of course, is Cleopatra. And so when
Speaker 2: Actium unfolds, you have this whole political narrative that Antony
Speaker 2: isn't really Roman, that this isn't really a Roman civil war,
Speaker 2: that this is a foreign war, that it's actually war
Speaker 2: against Cleopatra, and Antony is just like her tool. And
Speaker 2: when the battle is actually joined, Antony ends up fleeing
Speaker 2: with Cleopatra to go back to Egypt. And the battle
Speaker 2: is a naval battle, and so what you had had
Speaker 2: is a land force, an army that was loyal to Antony,
Speaker 2: it was actually on land in Greece, and then a
Speaker 2: naval force that was basically providing the supplies and the reinforcements.
Speaker 2: And when Octavian's forces defeat the naval force, Cleopatra's fleet
Speaker 2: sails away and Antony goes with them. The army then
Speaker 2: basically says, oh my god, Octavian's right, and they surrender.
Speaker 2: And when Octavian then shows up in the year thirty
Speaker 2: BC in Egypt, Anthony tries to call up the only
Speaker 2: Roman forces that are in that region in Sireni, they
Speaker 2: defect Octavian. It's clear, you know, what Actium did was Yes,
Speaker 2: there were people who died, Yes there were ships that sank.
Speaker 2: But what it actually did is it provided the complete
Speaker 2: proof that what Octavian had been saying for the last
Speaker 2: you know, many years was true. This is a foreign war.
Speaker 2: We are fighting Cleopatra, and Cleopatra has like intervened in
Speaker 2: Roman affairs in such a way that she's turned who
Speaker 2: was once a good man into basically her besotted sort
Speaker 2: of slave. And he's just doing what she is telling
Speaker 2: him to do. He's not Roman anymore. And so this
Speaker 2: victory is a great Roman victory over a foreign adversary.
Speaker 2: And so you're right, I think that the real location
Speaker 2: of Actium is not military so much as it is,
Speaker 2: you know, a political proof that what Actavian has been
Speaker 2: saying all along is one hundred percent true.
Speaker 1: Well, and listeners the podcast will know that the narrative
Speaker 1: about Cleopatra just plays into a lot of Roman tropes
Speaker 1: in stereotypes, and so there's a lot of good reasons
Speaker 1: that we should question a lot of those things.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's also like this idea that Antony is totally
Speaker 1: just going to do whatever Cleopatra says, it really doesn't
Speaker 1: fit with his character at all up until this point.
Speaker 1: So it's to me that's always seemed like, yeah, okay, Octavian, sure,
Speaker 1: whatever you say, Bud, Like I'd like, good job with
Speaker 1: the propaganda, but that that's that's quite over the top.
Speaker 1: But I mean, okay, go ahead, Yeah, no, I.
Speaker 2: Think it's it's interesting because both of their propaganda is brutal.
Speaker 2: I mean, the propaganda against Anthony but also the propaganda
Speaker 2: against Activity is brutal, and you know, and we should
Speaker 2: take either of it very seriously. Like answer is propagandast
Speaker 2: that says that the reason Octavian is Caesar's air is
Speaker 2: because he basically prostituted himself to Caesar. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is the level we're at. So so they are they're
Speaker 2: smacking each other as hard as they possibly can in
Speaker 2: that propaganda, and you're exactly right, what Octavian says it's
Speaker 2: not real. But what Antony says about Octavian also not real?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's the lesson about propaganda, folks, It's
Speaker 1: usually not real. Okay, So if there's one takeaway from today,
Speaker 1: that's the takeaway. But I want to end with one
Speaker 1: last question, because we were talking about this before we
Speaker 1: cut went on the air, that you know, I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in in the Late Republic. I mean, that's but
Speaker 1: there's really two areas of Rome that people want to
Speaker 1: talk about. Well three, okay, there's there's Late Republic, you know,
Speaker 1: Julius Caesar to this. There's a lot of people always
Speaker 1: still want to talk about Trajan, you know, and sort
Speaker 1: of the height of the Empire, you know, and and
Speaker 1: it's fine, we can talk about that. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's actually super interesting. But then and then there's the fall,
Speaker 1: right and most people, I would say, in the past,
Speaker 1: when when I bring up the Romans, they would want
Speaker 1: to talk about the fall of the Empire, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we can talk about you know, is does give
Speaker 1: and just get the credit for that, like is because
Speaker 1: he wrote you know, the series that you know, that's
Speaker 1: the way this goes but you were pointing out that
Speaker 1: there's been a shift recently, and I found that kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So if you could talk about why students
Speaker 1: are becoming more interested in, at least in your conversations
Speaker 1: with the late Republic as opposed to the collapse of
Speaker 1: the When I say the fall, I mean the collapse
Speaker 1: of the West, by the way, the collapse of the West,
Speaker 1: Like what's going on there? Because I find that fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is something. When I started teaching
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago in Indiana, I inherited a course
Speaker 2: sequence that was, you know, a two course, a two
Speaker 2: semester Roman history sequence. One went up to basically Augustus
Speaker 2: and then the other was Augustus through more or less
Speaker 2: like four seventy six ish, right, the fall of the
Speaker 2: West and the end of the Western Empire. And what
Speaker 2: I noticed in that was in the two thousands, students
Speaker 2: thought the republic was super fascinating but not relevant to them, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the fall of a republic was a totally
Speaker 2: abstract thing for them because they lived in America where
Speaker 2: this was unimaginable. They just took for granted that they
Speaker 2: would live in their republic. But they were really really
Speaker 2: interested in this narrative of military over extension, what happens
Speaker 2: when a state that is supremely powerful kind of loses
Speaker 2: that power. And they're doing this in the context of
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, the Iraq War, the invasion of Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: and there's a whole series of books that are also
Speaker 2: building on, you know, stuff like are we Rome and
Speaker 2: you know, these things that came out at that moment
Speaker 2: that spoke directly to this question of, you know, the
Speaker 2: fall of the empire and what this means for America. Now,
Speaker 2: around twenty fifteen, I noticed the shift right. The question
Speaker 2: stopped being about how does Rome relate to us in
Speaker 2: the second class, and we started being about how does
Speaker 2: erm relate to us in the first class, you know,
Speaker 2: the class about the Republic and this, you know, this
Speaker 2: was like I understood why on one level, but I
Speaker 2: wanted to ask them, you know, why do you think
Speaker 2: this happened? And the students that I have now I
Speaker 2: asked them this question last year, right before, you know,
Speaker 2: right before the election, And the students that I have
Speaker 2: now they said, look like, we don't know, we don't
Speaker 2: remember that moment of America as the hyper power. We
Speaker 2: don't remember that, you know, we were barely alive. We
Speaker 2: were born after nine to eleven. We were born after
Speaker 2: the Iraq War we started. You know, we are kids
Speaker 2: of the Obama era and we lived through trump Ism.
Speaker 2: Like for us, that's abstract. It's interesting, but it's abstract
Speaker 2: because it's not our world. You know, we don't live
Speaker 2: in a hyper power. Instead, the world we live in
Speaker 2: is a world where we have lots of sort of
Speaker 2: concerns and conversations about democracy and you know, and what
Speaker 2: happens in a republic when those norms and those structures
Speaker 2: are challenged. They said, that's our reality, and so you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it is abstract to us to think about
Speaker 2: something that is as stable as the later Roman Empire
Speaker 2: because we don't live in a world like that. And
Speaker 2: that was really striking to me, you know, to think
Speaker 2: that just you know, I've been teaching a while, but
Speaker 2: I haven't been teaching that long, and to just see
Speaker 2: that the worldview of my students has changed so much.
Speaker 2: The experience of my students has changed so much, and
Speaker 2: the way they interact with Rome is in a sense
Speaker 2: conditioned by those experiences that they have in this world
Speaker 2: and the kinds of questions that they're trying to understand
Speaker 2: in the moment that we're living in right now. They
Speaker 2: still are using ROME to try to understand and answer
Speaker 2: those questions, but the questions are so very different than
Speaker 2: they were twenty or twenty five years ago, and that,
Speaker 2: to me is really striking. I'm not sure what we
Speaker 2: do with that beyond just sort of acknowledge this historical
Speaker 2: moment is really remarkable, you know, And we can see
Speaker 2: that flip just in the way that these students conceptualize
Speaker 2: the world around them and use ROME to help themselves
Speaker 2: better understand what's going on and what might happen as
Speaker 2: a result of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm reminded sometimes. I read a book in college
Speaker 1: when I was doing some medieval history. It's called A
Speaker 1: Distant Mirror.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: Used to be kind of a classic. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much people actually read it anymore, but you know
Speaker 1: that I think that was written in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: or nineteen seventies maybe, And so you think about what
Speaker 1: was going on in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and how chaotic it was, and how it might
Speaker 1: be naturalal to reflect back to you know, a time
Speaker 1: period when you know with the Black you have the
Speaker 1: Black Death, you have one hundred years war, you have
Speaker 1: all kinds of chaos everywhere. And I do think it's
Speaker 1: interesting what kids find resonance with I haven't you know,
Speaker 1: I don't get to teach, you know, classical history, but
Speaker 1: I'd be really interested to know what my students today
Speaker 1: think about a figure like Publius Clodius, right, and the
Speaker 1: because you look at somebody like that, you think. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the lesson here today, if we're doing lessons,
Speaker 1: is in my opinion, there were so many times that
Speaker 1: the Republic could have reformed, could have put up guardrails,
Speaker 1: could have stopped someone, and for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: they didn't. And as a consequence, Octavian becomes the first
Speaker 1: princeps and like no one saw that coming at the
Speaker 1: time that they made all those little choices. But the
Speaker 1: important takeaway, I think from my perspective is those little
Speaker 1: choices Rome teaches us they do matter, They matter a lot.
Speaker 1: And you can't see the bay wave coming until it's
Speaker 1: right up on you, and that is very problematic from
Speaker 1: my standpoint. At least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're exactly right. You know, I think
Speaker 2: all of those little choices are little cuts in the structure,
Speaker 2: you know, little just sort of knife marks on the
Speaker 2: founder and the like, little knife marks on the infrastructure
Speaker 2: that keep things going. And when you have enough little cuts,
Speaker 2: if you push the thing, it will fall. And it
Speaker 2: falls very quickly. But it falls because those people who
Speaker 2: have been making those small compromises don't trust it anymore,
Speaker 2: and so they're not going to defend it. They're going
Speaker 2: to look out for themselves in the way that you know,
Speaker 2: convinced patriots. And I think we have to use that
Speaker 2: word convinced Republicans like Caesar and Cato and Cicero. I mean,
Speaker 2: they all did these little side gambits because they just
Speaker 2: didn't trust the state. They wanted too, but they just didn't.
Speaker 2: And I think if we look around, you know, we
Speaker 2: all need to be very aware of making those choices.
Speaker 2: And I think we also, I think we need to
Speaker 2: take really seriously that Ciceronian text that we started with.
Speaker 2: You know, fear matters, because if you are not afraid,
Speaker 2: you're more willing to trust that system blindly, you know,
Speaker 2: to believe that it's going to be okay. But if
Speaker 2: you're afraid you're almost you know, working against your very
Speaker 2: most basic instincts to trust that a system can protect you,
Speaker 2: and that fear is it's so dangerous, it's so damaging
Speaker 2: in a representative state, because in a representative state, you
Speaker 2: are letting people speak for you, right, you are, in
Speaker 2: a sense in trusting your rights as a citizen to
Speaker 2: somebody who's going to be acting on them in a
Speaker 2: governmental context. And if you don't trust that person because
Speaker 2: you're afraid the whole thing can't work.
Speaker 1: Well, some good takeaways today, But the other takeaway I'll
Speaker 1: leave the audience with is it's a very large book.
Speaker 1: We talked about I don't know about maybe maybe ten
Speaker 1: years of Roman history in this and it's a two
Speaker 1: thousand year history, folks, so obviously there's a lot more
Speaker 1: out there. So my recommendation to everyone as if you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed the conversation, if you like Romans, as I know
Speaker 1: you do because you're listening to this, pick up the book.
Speaker 1: You will not be disappointed. Thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: Thanks Adam, This was so fun. I really enjoyed it.