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Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the

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the Wall dot com forward slash Support.

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Speaker 2: I want to.

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Speaker 1: Explain something right now. If you support me through substack

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you support me through a subscribe, Star, gum Road or

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where you can download the file and you can listen

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to it any way you wish. I really appreciate the

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support everyone gives me. It keeps a show going. It

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allows me to basically put out an episode every day now,

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and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate.

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I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two

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even three a day, and yeah, can't do it without you,

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So thank you for the support. Head on over to

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Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, forward slash support and

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do it there.

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Speaker 2: Thank you.

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Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinganas Show

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by popular demand. Alex Petkas is back. How are you doing, Alex?

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I'm doing great, pete yourself. Good good, And I think

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that I'm not lying about that. I think that you

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told me that after your first appearance on the show,

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a lot of people reached out to you when they

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has some kind words.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got a great audience. And uh, you know,

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I think talking about these issues about you know, the

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corruption of academia and ancient heroes seems seems to hit

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a key. And so it's it's a pleasure to be

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back and to dive a little deeper into some of

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the stuff we talked about.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. You know, we were trying

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to come up with subjects and we are literally seven

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days away from the most important election in our lifetime trademark.

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So you had the you had the idea that you

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were looking at elections in the past and especially in

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the Roman Empire, and you came upon pretty much one period.

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And I think that once I was reading what you

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wrote this thread that you that you did on Twister

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or it looks like it'd be perfect to start talking

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about this subject of elections and how often in history

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when you looked at elections there was the same kind

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of blankety blank stuff happening that caused people to go

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what the hell's going on here and to cause real problems,

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So start wherever you want.

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Speaker 2: Go ahead, Yeah it was. The thread was on yesterday Monday.

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In the late Roman Republic, legal tampering with voting roles

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caused the Great First Civil War. This happened by sudden

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massive additions of new citizens by legislative fiat, and people

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seem to relate to that a little bit. This is

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not a popular take on the origins of the First

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Roman Civil War. It's you kind of wonder why that is.

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I think this is a story that is told from

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this perspective of a clash of two personalities, more often

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Guius Marius and just Cornelius Solla. But even so it's

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not really taken as it's not taken in the context

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of our political situation today so much. A lot of

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people are interested in this idea of you know, is

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Trump Caesar and blah blah blah. But I think that

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the earlier periods of the breakdown of the Republic, beginning

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with the Grachy and the one twenties and one thirties BC,

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leading up to especially Guius Marius. I think Guius Marius,

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the populist politician too. They're a lot more parallels to

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today than in the time of Julius Caesar in my opinion.

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So yeah, well, maybe it makes sense to kind of

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start from the bigger context if that, Like I was

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thinking of diving into the Grachy a little bit and

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the problems that Rome was facing that I think are

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interesting for us to reflect on today, and then we

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can see where things lead to hopefully build up to

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the First Roman Civil War, which happened in the eighties

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bcure ahead. So the so here's an interesting point of

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comparison with with today. I there's this passage from the

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Life of Tiberius Gracus by Plutarch. It kind of sets

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the stage of Tiberius Gracus is this populist politician who

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realizes there's massive discontent, there's great wealth and equality, and

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he wants to do something about it. And I'll read

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you this passage from Plutarch's Life of Gracus, and that

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we could talk about who Gracus is in the background

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of it. But so here's Plutarch talking. He says of

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the territory which the Romans won in war from their neighbors,

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a part they sold and a part they made common

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land is ager publicus in Latin, and they assigned it

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to for occupation of the poor and indigen among the citizens,

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on payment of a small rent into the public treasury.

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And when the rich began to offer larger rents and

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drove out the poor, a law was enacted forbidden forbidding

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the holding by one person of more than five hundred

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acres of land for a short time. This enactment gave

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a check to the rapacity of the rich and was

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of assistance to the poor, who remained in their places

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on the land which they had rented and occupied the

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allotment which each held from the outset. But later on

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the neighboring rich men on summarise here they're inventing fictitious personages. They're,

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you know, at first having this legal ruse so they

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can capture public land. And then they eventually just dropped

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the ruse and say we own this land, and then

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the poor get ejected from their land. Continuing on with

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Plutarch here no longer they did. They show themselves eager

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for military service and neglected the bringing up of children,

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so that soon all Italy was conscious of a dearth

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of free men and was filled with gangs of foreign

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slaves by whose aid the rich cultivated their estates, from

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which they had driven away the free citizens. There are

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various attempts to solve this problem, including those of Gracchus

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that Plutarch mentions here. But here he quotes Gracchus's Tiberius,

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Gracchus's brother Guius, Gracchus who's a little younger, and he says,

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but his brother Guius, And a certain pamphlet has written

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that as Tiberius was passing through Tuscany on his way

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to Numantia, on his way to Spain, and observed the

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earth of inhabitants in the country, and that those who

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tilted soil or tendant's flocks there were barbarian slaves. He

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then first conceived the public policy, which was the cause

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of so many of countless ills to the brothers, And

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so what do you have in this what are we

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looking at? Here? The year is like one thirty four BC,

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and Rome has been conquering most of the Mediterranean in

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the past century, and the two twenties, two teens, two

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oughts they were fighting this great long war with Hannibal,

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the Carthaginians, the Punic Wars, a second Punic War, which

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once they defeated Hannibal finally, and there was a lot

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of warring in Italy. They had a lot of Italian

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allies turn on them. They finally defeat Hannibal, they start

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to control directly Africa, which is the state Tunisia and Algeria,

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sort of the northern coast of Africa. And they already

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controlled Sicily only for a couple of decades at that point,

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and Spain. So then over the course of the first

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half of the second century BC, the one nineties through

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one forties, they conquer the rest of a lot of

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the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Macedonia, they win these great wars

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against Antiochus of of the King of Syria, Greek King

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of Syria, and so you have the situation where Rome

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is increasingly fighting these foreign overseas wars. Their military system

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was not really designed for this. It's sort of built

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around this idea of the citizen soldier who goes and

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fights a campaign during the summer, and then he goes

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back home to his fields in the winter to do

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what he needs to do, sharpen his sides, and that

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kind of thing sickles, and then you've got to see

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soldiers are away from their farms now their peasants. For

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the most part, they're living away for like up to

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six years, just really abandoning their life and their farms.

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They're becoming a professional soldiery. It's taking a lot of

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toll on the middle classes, the kind of peasant, yeoman farmers.

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And Rome is alllo so drawing more and more heavily

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on its allies. So throughout Italy, Rome has allies. They

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call them the soki e it's the Latin word for allies.

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And over the course of previous entries they conquered Italy

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brought a lot of these people into subjection. You know

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people in Tuscany, and you know Picena, Umbria and to

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the south and Campania, Leucania, Samnium. All these regions are

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filled with different Italian cultures. Some of them are close

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to the Romans. The Tuscans speak a different language that's

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completely unrelated to Latin. Some of them are kind of

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latin Oid Italic languages, but most of them are not citizens.

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Most of them are kind of confederates of the Romans.

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They'll fight in their wars and they get some of

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the plunder, but most of the plunder in these wars

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is going to the hands of the rich, of the commanders,

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and of the also the businessmen who are winning these

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lucrative contracts to build ships, to supply weapons, to supply forage,

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and you know all the gear, winning mining concessions. You know,

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if the Romans conquer land in Spain, there's a lot

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of silver minds there that are very lucrative to to,

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you know, to exploit. And you know, wealth is getting concentrated.

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Capital is flowing in also in the form of slaves,

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and so you have a situation where the elites are

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getting richer. And Rome has this policy of that Plutarch

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mentions of after you win a war or you conquer

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some territory, some of that territory you designate as a

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possession of the Roman people ager publicus public land. And

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what that's supposed to do is be a bank out

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of which you can reward loyal service of soldiers by

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giving them land. There's a couple of ways that they

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do this. Plutarch refers to one here, which is basically

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the state kind of retains tidal to the land and

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they just rent it out, so you get a kind

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of more or less permanent tendency that you can pass

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on to your children, and you give the state some

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nominal sum the vectigaal, which is like a land tax,

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and then the rest of it you keep for yourself.

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So it's kind of like ownership. In some cases they

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just give you outright ownership. It just depends on the

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local situation and whatever land commissioner that's there on the

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spot decides to do. But in agriculture, and ancient agriculture especially,

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there's a really big difference between subsistence farming and cash

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crop farming and kind of farming or rather agricultural activity

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for for profit and and the you know, the economic

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difference there is really interesting. But before we get to that,

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the symbolic significance of owning land it's just hard to underestimate.

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For the Romans, you know, this is how you really

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know yourself to be a free man, that you have

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land that is yours, that your ancestral tombs are on,

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that there's an emotional connection to land in a way

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that it's just hard to imagine. Like there's the family.

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We have this notion I think in the West now

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of a family business that you might pass on to

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your kids, but you know, land is just so much

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more symbolically significant, like biologically significant, as kind of giving

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you an identity and a standing in society and freedom

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and kind of self reliance. So the people that own

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this land are supposed to be you know, country gents

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doing a combination of subsistence agriculture and maybe a bit

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of profit. You know that they can buy their wife

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nice things or have a few kids, whatever the case

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may be. But since so much capital is flowing in,

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I think this is where it gets really interesting. You've

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got all these slaves coming in from from you know,

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they're the part of the booty of war, and there's

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piracy escalating in the Mediterranean at this time. So the

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pirates are just capturing slaves and selling them to these

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hungry Roman slave markets. And it's because coming cheaper to

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buy slaves, and there's a lot of capital among the

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rich from for the reasons we discussed, and so the

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rich are able to to basically either buy this agri

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publicus or you know, acquire it through sometimes legal sometimes

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illegal means. There's a there's a scholar that talks about

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a really interesting quote that I'll I'll give you here.

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One scholar describes a situation in southern Italy as wild

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West cattle barons and armed slaves, armed slaved hands raiding

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herds and homesteads in the true spirit of Texas and Colorado.

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We have evidence of this from a speech of Cicero.

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This is kind of what's going on in some of

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these places. They're ranchers that are you know, it's it's

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very lawless in some of these areas. It's kind of

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the strong man wins. And not only are they strong

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and that they're able to capture lands through sometimes underhanded means,

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but they have the capital to turn these lands into

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cash crops, so you know, investing in all of presses

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and storage and buying slaves so you can work this land.

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And the profiteering of this the countryside is becoming more

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and more pronounced, and so the poor kind of getting

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either shoved out or bought out. And this is a

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problem that a lot of people have heard of. This

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idea of the Latin fundia, these like wide vast landholdings

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of the Roman elite. Probably in this period. It's not

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necessarily huge consolidated landholdings because economies of scale don't necessarily

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they hit a cap pretty quickly in pre modern agriculture.

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But you know, they have landholdings scattered across Italy, and

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it's more an issue of like, they have the capital

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because they're the rich living in Rome, and they can

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afford to hire you know, slave masters and professional farm

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managers and all this stuff, and then they can afford

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to ride out a bad year and they have access

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to credit that just a subsistence farmer has no chance

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against these guys, right, I think that this is really

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an underappreciated aspect of the decline of the republic. So

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all this money is coming in, right, and it's coming

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in unequally, but it's also incentivizing certain behaviors that used

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to not be so incentivized by the Roman political system,

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to wit merchandising merchant like becoming you know, businessmen instead

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of military commanders or statesmen. Like the elites are suddenly

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faced with this prospect of making huge profits and something

257
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you know, they're they're inclined to see that justify that

258
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in terms of well, this is what it takes to

259
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get ahead in politics in Rome. Rome their moral system

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does not incentivize business businessman like, there's a kind of

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a prejudice against money making as such like the Senate,

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for example, members of the Senator are not supposed to

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be lending money interest. It's seen as dirty. But you know,

264
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you can find a guy that is maybe not a senator,

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he's an equestrian. You know, you give him and trust

266
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him with some money and he'll he'll lend it out

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for you. There's ways to get around the rules because

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it's just very profitable. And you know what, it's really

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honorable in Rome is war, in politics is lawmaking and

270
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statesmanship and leading armies. But in in the face of

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all these opportunities, we start to see a kind of

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merchantification of the wealthy really in the second century, and

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it kind of accelerates, i think toward the end of

274
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the century. It's hard to quantify this, but like anecdotally,

275
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this is an impression that you get when you get

276
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to the life of Gaius Marius, and we'll get to

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in a second. So there's another challenge that the state

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is facing that Plutarch mentions here is they're having trouble

279
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recruiting soldiers. Right these soldiers are getting these long tours

280
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of duty, they're not able to have children as effectively,

281
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they're not able to kind of have a family hearth

282
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like to produce the soldiers that are going to fight

283
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the wars, these increasingly far away foreign long term wars.

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These you could call them forever wars, you know, because

285
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there's people that profit whether you win or lose, or

286
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whether it takes one year or ten years. They're going

287
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to profit more if it takes ten years, if you're

288
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if you're selling them the ships and the and the

289
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armor and so forth. So uh Rome is having trouble

290
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recruiting soldiers for its armies, and so Tiberius Gracchus kind

291
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of comes into this situation. He sees an opportunity and

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I can pause for questions. Just interrupt me if if

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if any of that, if you have any reflections on that.

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Speaker 1: I will I will keep going. I made some notes,

295
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but not ready yet.

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Speaker 2: So here's where Gracus comes in. Tiberius Gracchus, he's one

297
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of two brothers, the Gracchi brothers. The famous Grachy Guias

298
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is the younger one. They are top aristocrats. They're blue

299
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blooded nobles. Tiberius Gracchus's father of the same name was

300
00:20:48,319 --> 00:20:51,400
consul twice. He was a censor, which is the highest,

301
00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:54,559
most dignified office in the state. He had two triumphs

302
00:20:54,599 --> 00:20:59,079
like you know, military glory triumphs and the highest honor

303
00:20:59,119 --> 00:21:02,960
that any Roman can hope to attain. He's widely respected.

304
00:21:04,279 --> 00:21:10,000
Tiberius Gracchus marries the daughter of This is a sign

305
00:21:10,039 --> 00:21:13,000
of his status of Scipio Africanus the elder, the guy

306
00:21:13,039 --> 00:21:17,359
who defeated Hannibal, like the most kind of noble of

307
00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:21,759
the noble aristocrats of his day. Tiberius Gracchus marries his daughter,

308
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:26,039
the famous Cornelia of the Gracchi, who's a fascinating woman

309
00:21:26,279 --> 00:21:30,440
worth studying in her own right. She has thirteen kids

310
00:21:30,920 --> 00:21:34,960
and only three survive, you know, gives you a taste

311
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:36,880
of how tough it was to be a woman in

312
00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:43,160
those days. And their sister that you know, two brothers

313
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and the sister survived to adulthood. Tiberius and Guius Gracus's

314
00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:55,160
sister marries Skippio Emilianus. Skippio Africanus the Younger, who is

315
00:21:55,200 --> 00:22:00,519
the guy who conquered, finally conquered Carthage, sacked Carthage in

316
00:22:00,519 --> 00:22:05,440
one forty six. So these are super super elite guys,

317
00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:13,880
and so Tiberius gracus Is is one of the nobles

318
00:22:13,880 --> 00:22:19,880
and so he sees this, this discontent as an opportunity

319
00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:23,880
to build a different kind of career. And he's credited

320
00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:26,759
with being one of the most creative well, I would

321
00:22:26,759 --> 00:22:29,079
credit him with being one of the most creative statesmen. Certainly,

322
00:22:29,839 --> 00:22:34,279
his his innovation and populism was very decisive in Roman history.

323
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:38,559
So what he figured out was, there's this office of

324
00:22:38,599 --> 00:22:44,079
the Tribune of the plebs excuse me in Roman, in

325
00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:50,759
the Roman constitution, that is a kind of a it's

326
00:22:50,799 --> 00:22:54,400
a legal office primary, it's a civil office that there's

327
00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:56,960
ten of them every year, depending on the period that

328
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:01,160
you're looking at. And the tribune has this ight to

329
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:06,359
call a popular assembly and to propose laws to this

330
00:23:06,799 --> 00:23:08,960
popular assembly. There's there's a couple of ways that you

331
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:13,079
can pass a law at Rome. One of them is

332
00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:21,039
through a kind of wealth and status ranked voting system.

333
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:25,160
I believe it's called the Centurion Assembly, where you know,

334
00:23:25,200 --> 00:23:28,960
the rich people's votes count for more basically. But another

335
00:23:29,039 --> 00:23:31,960
way is through the tribune assembly, through the it's called

336
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:37,440
the Conchillean Plebis, the Council of the Plubs of the

337
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:41,000
people of Rome, which is not weighted by wealth. It's

338
00:23:41,079 --> 00:23:42,960
just anybody can vote and if you get a majority

339
00:23:43,559 --> 00:23:49,920
your law passes, you're supposed to refer your legislation to

340
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:52,720
present it to the Senate as an advisory body, to

341
00:23:52,799 --> 00:23:57,240
kind of get their approval, because if you don't, even

342
00:23:57,279 --> 00:24:02,279
though it's legal, you can face assive political retribution. They

343
00:24:02,279 --> 00:24:05,240
can end your career. You know. The Senate is an

344
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:08,119
informal body of the most powerful men of the city,

345
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:10,240
and they can make your life really miserable. So there's

346
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:13,480
there's strong incentives not to go against the Senate because

347
00:24:13,599 --> 00:24:16,240
tribunes only serve for a year at a time. But

348
00:24:16,599 --> 00:24:20,680
Gracchus is so elite and so well connected that he

349
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:25,559
sees well if I build up enough political capital, I

350
00:24:25,599 --> 00:24:28,079
can resist the Senates. And this needs to be done

351
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:35,119
because our people are suffering. One of the consequences of

352
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:40,400
the increasing dispossession of the land by the elites and

353
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,079
the rich in Italy is a lot of these people

354
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:46,519
are coming to Rome looking for jobs, having nothing to do,

355
00:24:47,079 --> 00:24:51,519
getting recruited into armed gangs. You know, there's a lot

356
00:24:51,559 --> 00:24:56,559
of volatility. So if I can solve this problem, even

357
00:24:56,759 --> 00:25:00,839
against the Senate's wishes, I'll be considered a great statesman

358
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,039
and I'll do something great for Rome, and certainly it'll

359
00:25:03,039 --> 00:25:04,839
help me in my political career. You know, this guy

360
00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:08,119
wants to be consul one day. He wants to be

361
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:10,839
a censor like his dad. He wants to lead armies.

362
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,680
He's a very competent soldier. He wins some decorated honors

363
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:18,640
in war. He's a great ambassador. But I think he's

364
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,960
around thirty years old when he becomes Tribune of the

365
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:28,039
Plubs and with this radical agenda to solve this problem

366
00:25:28,519 --> 00:25:31,240
of wealth and equality. And the way that he does

367
00:25:31,279 --> 00:25:37,640
it is he proposes an agrarian law that essentially is

368
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:41,599
to set up a commission of a few select men

369
00:25:41,839 --> 00:25:48,880
to go around throughout Italy figuring out who's dispossessed locals

370
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,000
of public land illegally. You know, they have this law

371
00:25:52,039 --> 00:25:53,559
on the books that you're not supposed to own more

372
00:25:53,599 --> 00:25:56,640
than three hundred yugura, which is about five hundred ugura,

373
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,720
which is about three hundred acres of land. Nobody's supposed

374
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:02,319
to own more than that much of the public land

375
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:05,599
that was distributed as a part of the war booty.

376
00:26:05,799 --> 00:26:07,559
So he's going to go and try to clean up

377
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:11,759
these the Land Register of Rome and redistribute it to

378
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:14,880
you know, deserving men and to get some of these

379
00:26:15,599 --> 00:26:20,359
these you know, volatile young men out of the streets

380
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:22,160
of Rome and get them back on the farms and

381
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:28,759
get them making families and stuff. And what ends up happening.

382
00:26:29,599 --> 00:26:33,880
Long story short, Well, I'll tell the story. So basically,

383
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:40,559
he he manages to pass his his agrarian legislation, but

384
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:44,000
the closer he gets to it, the Senate throws up

385
00:26:44,039 --> 00:26:47,720
more and more resistance. They one of the interesting things

386
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:52,599
that they do is they put forth a series of

387
00:26:53,799 --> 00:26:58,519
kind of anti populist tribunes. So you know, anybody can

388
00:26:58,599 --> 00:27:02,880
any any not anybody, but most of the nobility are

389
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,440
eligible to run for the office of tribune of the plubs.

390
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:09,440
There's patrician families that are technically disallowed from this and

391
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:13,400
they're super elites, but they can find a guy. So basically,

392
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:17,200
the Senate will put forward their own well I call

393
00:27:17,279 --> 00:27:19,079
I say, the Senate, but let's let's call them the

394
00:27:19,079 --> 00:27:22,440
the the establishment. Because there's there's dissidence in the Senate.

395
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,720
The establishment can put forward a candidate, like the guy's

396
00:27:26,799 --> 00:27:31,359
name is Octavius, and Octavius was a friend of Gracis actually,

397
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:33,960
but the Senate kind of got to him and they're like,

398
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,599
we need somebody to stop Gracis because a lot of

399
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,880
these guys are are in on it, right, like they

400
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,799
a lot of the Senate are the very men who

401
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:48,079
own some of these wide swaths of augur publicus, who

402
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:52,960
are profiting off of the inequality, and they're gonna they're

403
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:55,079
gonna get they're gonna lose out, they're gonna have their

404
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:58,920
land dispossessed, or you know, maybe they'll be forced to

405
00:27:59,039 --> 00:28:03,000
sell it at a at a bad price. And so

406
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:08,240
they try to stop him through this guy Octavius, who

407
00:28:08,279 --> 00:28:12,359
tries to veto his laws and propose countermeasures, and eventually

408
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:15,319
Gracchus manages to get him stripped of his tribunet by

409
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:19,160
a tribunary law. I should say that, you know, when

410
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:24,000
he passed his agrarian law, he did it against the

411
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,920
Senate's wishes, right like he proposed it to the Senate.

412
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:28,759
They're like, hell no, and he says, I'm going to

413
00:28:28,799 --> 00:28:31,079
propose it anyway. He gets the votes that he needs.

414
00:28:31,599 --> 00:28:34,359
There's scuffles in the forum. It's kind of ugly, but

415
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:40,960
he manages to get it done and then he you know,

416
00:28:41,279 --> 00:28:44,920
long story short, he strips Octavius of his office, and

417
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:50,519
he's running for a re election is tribune, both to

418
00:28:50,599 --> 00:28:55,440
continue his legislative program and put a few more nails

419
00:28:55,480 --> 00:29:04,599
in the edifice when he unfortunately loses his election as tribune.

420
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:11,519
Because Roman law, Roman voting practice is involved, you have

421
00:29:11,559 --> 00:29:17,680
to be present in Rome to to like vote. You can't.

422
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:20,720
There's no absentee voting right. And a lot of these

423
00:29:20,759 --> 00:29:23,400
guys that he's championing are too busy out in the field.

424
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:27,440
It's summertime, you know, they're they're they're not rich men,

425
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:28,920
and they don't have the leisure to come to Rome,

426
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:31,119
and so a lot of his base isn't actually able

427
00:29:31,119 --> 00:29:33,720
to vote. He loses on the office of the Tribune

428
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:38,319
itt and so he's trying to pass some emergency legislation

429
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:42,759
before his term expires, and things are just like heating

430
00:29:42,839 --> 00:29:45,480
up and heating up in Rome. And in this one moment,

431
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:52,119
the one day, there's all these omens that Plutarch recounts,

432
00:29:52,799 --> 00:29:57,839
but the Senate is is sort of ready for him,

433
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:05,319
and they have armed their slaves with weapons under their cloaks,

434
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:12,920
under their togas, and he senses they sense a you know,

435
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:16,119
he in his associates sense that there's gonna be some

436
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,119
hit on him, probably, so they arm themselves too, and

437
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:21,319
there's they're kind of getting ready for a face off

438
00:30:21,359 --> 00:30:27,880
in the forum, and in this key moment he's communicating

439
00:30:28,359 --> 00:30:30,920
is the way the story goes with somebody who is,

440
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:33,720
you know, across the mob and can't hear his voice,

441
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:39,160
and so he makes this gesture that I'm I'm arming

442
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:41,880
myself because there's a danger against my life and he

443
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,079
points to his head, which I guess is sort of

444
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:46,720
like the gesture of you know, we we run our

445
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:49,119
finger across our necks like I'm about to you know,

446
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,759
get executed or something cut off my head, but in

447
00:30:52,759 --> 00:30:55,640
the way in the Roman gesture is like you point

448
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,920
at the top of your head. And then somebody shouts

449
00:31:00,599 --> 00:31:04,759
he's he's asking for a crown. He wants to become tyrant.

450
00:31:05,559 --> 00:31:07,880
And this message is immediately passed to the Senate and

451
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:09,680
they're like, all right, that's it. That's all we needed,

452
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,480
that's all we needed to see. This guy is clearly

453
00:31:12,519 --> 00:31:14,720
a demagogue trying to become a tyrant. This is and

454
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:16,559
that's the message that they get out. It's like a

455
00:31:16,559 --> 00:31:20,680
fake news message, right, like typical kind of elite tactics

456
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:22,960
you just spend the story in completely the opposite direction,

457
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:28,240
you know, very fine people, and so and so the

458
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:32,880
Senate marches out. They they they vote the sinatas consultant

459
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:38,799
ultimum the the declaration of martial law. They order the

460
00:31:38,839 --> 00:31:42,279
count the consoles to not let any damage come to

461
00:31:42,319 --> 00:31:44,039
the state. This is the kind of formula for the

462
00:31:44,079 --> 00:31:49,400
declaration of martial law. And they march out, bust up

463
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:52,519
the benches in the Senate House, they make clubs out

464
00:31:52,559 --> 00:31:56,519
of them, and they basically mob Gracchus and his men

465
00:31:56,559 --> 00:32:00,400
and they beat them to death. And it's they many

466
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,839
of his supporters. There's blood running through the forum. They

467
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:08,160
throw his body in the Tiber and and so that's

468
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:12,759
the end of Gracus. Sound sounds just as bad as

469
00:32:12,839 --> 00:32:22,160
January sixth, right, Yeah, just to just a patriotic demonstration. Right. So,

470
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:26,200
I think that this is a really interesting instance of

471
00:32:26,599 --> 00:32:31,039
something that's Friedrich gundolfh talks about in his biography of Caesar,

472
00:32:31,119 --> 00:32:34,839
The Mantle of Caesar. That could read a quick couple

473
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:41,720
of sentences passage here. So he says, the worst anger

474
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:46,799
of the yunkers, you know, the the kind of the nobles,

475
00:32:47,599 --> 00:32:50,359
is aroused less by the mob and its tribunes who

476
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,759
thunder or mutter among them, than by the traitorous son

477
00:32:53,839 --> 00:32:57,079
of their own race, who veils himself of the masses

478
00:32:57,559 --> 00:33:00,839
through pride or intellect to achieve a higher level than

479
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:04,200
that of the great or who frees the masses through

480
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:08,400
a sense of justice. And I think this is really

481
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:12,240
you know, very and Plutarch even says that a lot

482
00:33:12,279 --> 00:33:17,640
of the violence was motivated less by Gracchus's policies than

483
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:22,160
by a personal hatred of the man, and Goodolf kind

484
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,599
of nails it there. It's it's the trump phenomenon. It's

485
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,960
the RFK phenomenon. Like the person from your class who

486
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:33,079
betrays you to champion the people is the most hated

487
00:33:33,119 --> 00:33:35,400
of all. He's the enemy within. And you see this

488
00:33:35,519 --> 00:33:38,759
really like in spades with with Tiberius Gracus.

489
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:43,039
Speaker 1: Oh, there was a lot there.

490
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 2: Yeah.

491
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:48,759
Speaker 1: One of the things that you mentioned, they're talking about

492
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:53,119
people having property and having their the tombs of their

493
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:58,160
ancestors there reminded me of the book The Ancient City and.

494
00:33:58,759 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 2: How I.

495
00:34:00,759 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: Covered that buck on my podcast. And I have people

496
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:07,039
contact me and go, that's not real history, and it's like,

497
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,760
I don't know, it's it seems like the more you

498
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:15,880
read yeah, the more that uh that it actually was.

499
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:20,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, who stilled the Kulange classic classic work.

500
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,199
Speaker 1: I never try to pronounce that name because I'm gonna

501
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:25,880
screw that up so bad.

502
00:34:28,079 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it it's very similar seminal work and still

503
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,280
quoted kind of in the footnotes sometimes as a as

504
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,800
a novelty by classes is today. But the brilliant work

505
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:38,800
of synthesis.

506
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 1: So when you take into consideration that people can be

507
00:34:46,519 --> 00:34:51,840
awarded land, and it sounded like more of I don't

508
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:55,079
know if you're familiar with the concept of usafruct, but

509
00:34:55,519 --> 00:34:58,679
it almost seems like that that that would be even

510
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:03,719
closer to use offer is actually still on the books

511
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:11,760
in Louisiana. Strangely enough, it seems like being awarded land

512
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:17,960
would be something that obviously would be something that would

513
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,360
motivate the citizen. But it would seem to me like

514
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,800
the more you had people coming in, especially for service,

515
00:35:25,119 --> 00:35:27,320
the more you had people coming in from the outside

516
00:35:28,079 --> 00:35:33,039
and you allow them to serve and get all the

517
00:35:33,079 --> 00:35:37,000
benefits of a native born Roman, you're gonna have the

518
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:38,920
same problems. You're gonna have worse problems than you have

519
00:35:39,039 --> 00:35:43,639
now because now not only are they in your land,

520
00:35:44,039 --> 00:35:48,119
but now they're also tied to your land? So did

521
00:35:48,199 --> 00:35:52,239
they allow did they allow people like merks who came

522
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:55,440
in from other places if they served, would they allow

523
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:56,639
them to have the same benefit.

524
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:01,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is something that seems to be happening that

525
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:08,239
it's not just the Roman citizen oligarchs who are taking

526
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:09,880
this land kind of by use of you know, they're

527
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,519
just occupying it and starting to invest in it and

528
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:15,960
you know, put put family tombs on it and just

529
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:19,320
sort of, you know, act like it's their own such

530
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:23,320
that if you were to challenge them on it, they

531
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:26,119
could say, hey, look we I spent you know, one

532
00:36:26,199 --> 00:36:29,840
hundred thousand dollars on this new barn. How can you

533
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:31,880
say this isn't my land? You know here there's my

534
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,840
grandfather lying in the field there. How can you say

535
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:37,599
this is not my land? A lot of that's going on,

536
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:41,400
But it's also going on with with the local Italian elites.

537
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:46,039
You know a lot of the merchant classes that are profiteering.

538
00:36:46,159 --> 00:36:49,800
It's not just Romans, like there's ways for non citizen,

539
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:54,719
non Roman citizen, but it's like well connected, enterprising Italians

540
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:57,760
to take a lot of this land and that's another

541
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:01,840
source of resentment too, for for the kind of Roman

542
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:07,480
citizen mob that is increasingly coming to Rome hat in

543
00:37:07,559 --> 00:37:10,800
hand looking, you know, complaining about being edged out of

544
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:14,039
their property. So it's a big issue and it's really

545
00:37:14,079 --> 00:37:17,280
thorny to undo a lot of this stuff once it happens.

546
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,679
You know, it's like some of these people either it's

547
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:23,400
true or they're just claiming it. But you know it's

548
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:26,599
like I inherited this land from my father, this is

549
00:37:26,639 --> 00:37:30,119
my patrimony. How can you say that this isn't my land?

550
00:37:30,159 --> 00:37:33,960
Because it has been going on for generations, right, So

551
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,840
it's quite a thorny problem that you know, Gracis may

552
00:37:39,159 --> 00:37:42,360
maybe underestimated how difficult it would be to do. And

553
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:47,599
yet after he is killed, the Land Commission goes on

554
00:37:48,039 --> 00:37:51,280
and his brother serves on it, and they do they

555
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:57,199
do some of this work for sure. Yeah, fascinating problem.

556
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: Well, just on a macro scale, a lot of the

557
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:05,000
things that you mentioned. It just seems to be a

558
00:38:05,079 --> 00:38:09,199
problem of empire. Yeah, throughout history. I mean we're going

559
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:11,159
through it now. I mean, anybody who wants to say

560
00:38:11,159 --> 00:38:14,280
we're not an empire is out of their mind. Military

561
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:20,920
bases in how many countries. But yeah, it seems that

562
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:27,559
once you get to like monarchy's one man rule, you

563
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,400
seem to avoid some of this because it's very hard

564
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:36,360
for one man rule to actually become an empire. I mean,

565
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:40,079
we see that later, we see where Spanish Empire obviously

566
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:47,119
British Empire now ours. And it just seems like if

567
00:38:47,159 --> 00:38:50,079
you want to know where your problems are going to happen,

568
00:38:50,119 --> 00:38:51,639
all you have to do is look at the past.

569
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,920
There's no there's no solving if you're going to repeat

570
00:38:55,960 --> 00:39:01,800
these problems, you can't can't be so filled with hubris

571
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,800
to think that you you can somehow get past them.

572
00:39:05,119 --> 00:39:07,920
And it seems like it's just making the same mistakes

573
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:08,440
over and over.

574
00:39:09,679 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 2: Well, you know, and the American Empire as it grew

575
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:16,039
in the twentieth century offered a lot of similar incentives,

576
00:39:16,079 --> 00:39:19,119
you know, like the there's a ton of money to

577
00:39:19,159 --> 00:39:24,079
be made in foreign contracts. You topple a state, who

578
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,480
who gets to come in and do the development work

579
00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:34,760
and sell them the cranes and the steam shovels, and

580
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:40,079
and on and on, and you know, oil and gas contracts.

581
00:39:42,119 --> 00:39:46,079
People have definitely commented on this kind of mergentification of

582
00:39:46,119 --> 00:39:48,840
the American elite through the American Empire, the kind of

583
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:55,360
profiteering occupational class, right, and it's I think there's a

584
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:59,000
really interesting parallel too with anxieties that we have today

585
00:39:59,119 --> 00:40:02,199
about you know, black rock going and buying up single

586
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,480
family homes and and you know, when you have access

587
00:40:05,519 --> 00:40:08,679
to capital, when the elites have access to a lot

588
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,639
of capital, low interest rates because you're kind of able

589
00:40:12,679 --> 00:40:19,639
to print money because you have the standard fiat currency

590
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:23,880
that's used around the globe, it gives you this incredible

591
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:28,480
power of capital that the people who are well connected

592
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:32,440
and know how to use it will use and they

593
00:40:32,519 --> 00:40:37,480
end up driving up housing prices or at least accelerating

594
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:41,440
something that is happening through regular market forces because of

595
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:47,360
the availability of capital. So, you know, there are some

596
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:53,679
really striking resemblances with particularly on the on the issue

597
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:58,440
of like can people afford their own house, can people

598
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:02,239
afford their own land, their own kind of symbolic place

599
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:05,000
in the world to say this is mine and this

600
00:41:05,079 --> 00:41:06,679
is where I'm going to raise my family, and this

601
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:10,039
is where we're going to have kind of our identity

602
00:41:10,079 --> 00:41:12,960
based you know, it's it's incredibly powerful, and it's incredibly

603
00:41:14,039 --> 00:41:19,400
powerful politically, you know, and so I think that we're

604
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:23,000
seeing some of that today. Perhaps, I mean, we'll see

605
00:41:23,039 --> 00:41:26,440
what happens in seven days. But this is a problem

606
00:41:26,519 --> 00:41:31,880
that seems to really to really activate ambitious young men,

607
00:41:32,199 --> 00:41:34,480
you know, or young men feeling like they're they're missing

608
00:41:34,559 --> 00:41:40,159
out on opportunities because I think having land is a

609
00:41:40,199 --> 00:41:42,800
status symbol much more for a man than for a woman,

610
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:45,960
even though it is that it's in it. So, you

611
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:49,760
know what, I just saw thirty nine percent down from

612
00:41:50,039 --> 00:41:56,280
forty eight percent, forty nine percent young men declaring Republican

613
00:41:56,519 --> 00:41:59,360
in just just since twenty twenty. I think it's like

614
00:42:00,119 --> 00:42:02,920
it's like a landslide of young men. I think this

615
00:42:03,079 --> 00:42:05,159
is possibly connected to that.

616
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember if you went over this,

617
00:42:10,039 --> 00:42:11,519
but who could.

618
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:21,280
Speaker 2: Vote, right, male citizens, which would have been I'm not

619
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:23,039
sure at this time if that's a minority of the

620
00:42:23,079 --> 00:42:26,079
men living in Rome. It's certainly a minority of the people, right.

621
00:42:27,519 --> 00:42:32,280
But the way that they so you have, like anybody

622
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:39,840
can vote in a tribunary popular assembly, certain offices are

623
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:41,960
elected in that way, like the Tribune of the plubs

624
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,800
is elected in a kind of everybody gets to vote,

625
00:42:45,559 --> 00:42:47,960
and I think they The way that they do it

626
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:53,119
is they like, once they reach a majority, the voting stops.

627
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:57,960
And so if if the people that are voting, like,

628
00:42:58,039 --> 00:42:59,840
the order that you vote in matters a lot. In

629
00:43:01,159 --> 00:43:06,519
so the tribunary popular assemblies the more democratic body. Let's

630
00:43:06,559 --> 00:43:11,519
say those tribes the kind of units that vote together.

631
00:43:12,119 --> 00:43:14,800
I believe that they're assigned by lot, so just it

632
00:43:15,039 --> 00:43:19,559
kind of random who who votes first. But in the

633
00:43:19,679 --> 00:43:22,800
centurion assemblies, there's a there's a fixed order, like the

634
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:29,280
first class citizens vote first always, and those are your

635
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:33,119
membership in those tribes is largely determined by your wealth

636
00:43:33,159 --> 00:43:37,760
class tho'se some you can inherit your slot in the

637
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:40,960
voting roles from your father, so it's it's a little

638
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:46,159
bit more complicated than that. But yeah, so voting is okay.

639
00:43:46,199 --> 00:43:49,719
So it's those that's the basic structure. But again, you

640
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:53,840
know some of these people live in you know, Naples

641
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:58,239
or Luca or you know, way outside of Rome, and

642
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:01,599
it's it's kind of it's not guarantee that they're going

643
00:44:01,679 --> 00:44:03,639
to show up for an election, right, especially if they

644
00:44:03,639 --> 00:44:06,719
don't care about the candidate. It's the time of harvest,

645
00:44:07,599 --> 00:44:12,440
so it's really biased toward toward really wealthy people and

646
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:16,159
the city mob. Yeah.

647
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:21,400
Speaker 1: Sam, Now everybody who piles into the city, Yeah, who

648
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:22,000
could serve?

649
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting question. This takes us a little bit ahead

650
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:31,599
into the life of Guias Marius. But basically, there is

651
00:44:31,639 --> 00:44:35,719
a wealth qualification for being able to enroll in the army.

652
00:44:36,119 --> 00:44:38,000
You know, it was seen in the early Republic. It

653
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,440
was seen as a privilege. You were expected to supply

654
00:44:41,599 --> 00:44:45,480
your own armor, supply your own horse, if you're an equestrian,

655
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:49,880
supply your own much of your own equipment. I think

656
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:51,960
that they would. The state would pay for your food.

657
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:54,840
But maybe you know, if you wanted to have a

658
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:58,360
nice tent, I think you'd be expected to supply that.

659
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,679
There's all kinds of ways in which the army is,

660
00:45:02,599 --> 00:45:05,480
you know, the soldier's self finance, and so there's there's

661
00:45:05,519 --> 00:45:09,880
a real and for that reason or or or it's

662
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:13,519
based on this assumption rather that you know, if you

663
00:45:13,559 --> 00:45:17,519
win a war, you get honor, and you get some

664
00:45:17,599 --> 00:45:20,360
of sharing the plunder, and you get you get paid

665
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:23,639
for being a soldier. Four hundred and fifty sister ses

666
00:45:23,679 --> 00:45:29,440
a year. You know, that's that's a living wage, and

667
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:33,480
then some for sure, So so but this change is

668
00:45:33,559 --> 00:45:38,559
actually as a result of the increasing difficulties of recruiting

669
00:45:38,599 --> 00:45:42,840
troops for massive foreign wars. And it's Gaius Marius in

670
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:46,800
the next generation after the Gracchi who who changes that,

671
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:51,880
who makes it? Who opens it up to basically anybody

672
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:59,159
who could roll Well, theoretically any citizen can run for

673
00:45:59,199 --> 00:46:06,760
any office as today. But this is why I think

674
00:46:07,079 --> 00:46:11,599
the nobles have some kind of justification for their profiteering,

675
00:46:11,679 --> 00:46:16,079
because it's incredibly expensive to mount a successful campaign, especially

676
00:46:16,079 --> 00:46:19,639
for the higher offices. You know, you've got to you've

677
00:46:19,639 --> 00:46:22,559
got to put on dinners for your supporters. You've got

678
00:46:22,599 --> 00:46:24,679
to pay all these people to go around and say

679
00:46:25,039 --> 00:46:28,519
vote for Tiberius. You've got to pay people to go

680
00:46:28,519 --> 00:46:33,519
out into the country to gin up supporters. You know,

681
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:39,920
you might have to pay people to come into Rome

682
00:46:40,199 --> 00:46:42,800
to offer to pay their expenses if they'll show up

683
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:46,719
to vote. Some of this is sub dubious legality. There's

684
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:51,079
constantly prosecutions for bribery, and it's really the line between

685
00:46:51,760 --> 00:47:00,239
bribery and legitimate election expenses is very gray, and there's

686
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:02,719
there's you know, you're not supposed to pay people directly

687
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,719
in cash to vote for you. But there's all kinds

688
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:09,440
of ways to do this in a soft manner. And essentially,

689
00:47:09,519 --> 00:47:11,800
you know, if you're not gonna put on nice dinners

690
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:15,159
for people, the other candidates certainly will and he'll beat

691
00:47:15,199 --> 00:47:19,039
you for that reason. Right, So it in practice the

692
00:47:19,079 --> 00:47:22,760
only way to the consulship, the highest office, is just

693
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:29,039
massive expenditures. And if there is a way, if you

694
00:47:29,039 --> 00:47:32,079
don't have a cash, there's a there's a credit market

695
00:47:32,119 --> 00:47:36,599
in Rome. You know, the senators they have a lot

696
00:47:36,599 --> 00:47:40,000
of liquid capital. Guy like Crassus a couple of generations later,

697
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:45,559
you know, he made a lot of his political network

698
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:50,280
and his power base, not to say his wealth through

699
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:58,039
essentially financing promising young candidates. And and the way that

700
00:47:58,199 --> 00:48:02,760
this works is you go into massive, massive debts to

701
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:08,760
win hopefully an office like the prime tourship or the consulship,

702
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:15,159
those are the two lucrative offices. Spend all this money

703
00:48:15,199 --> 00:48:19,559
to get put in office. But then after your year

704
00:48:19,639 --> 00:48:23,119
of office, you get assigned a governorship or a military command.

705
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:28,679
Governors are basically military governors, and there's always some kind

706
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:33,440
of problem going on, some local flare up, some peasants rebellion,

707
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:37,840
or some local banditry to take care of and you go.

708
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:41,239
So you can do that when you're out in the

709
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:45,599
provinces and plunder those people, sell them as slaves, take

710
00:48:45,639 --> 00:48:49,360
their stuff, or you can just take bribes to judge

711
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:52,159
cases in a certain manner. There's ways to win back

712
00:48:52,199 --> 00:48:56,519
that money, usually through unsavory means once you're a provincial governor.

713
00:48:56,559 --> 00:48:59,320
This is one of the real problems that the Republic has.

714
00:49:00,079 --> 00:49:04,960
It's not really a system designed to you know, produce

715
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:12,280
a happy and content imperial provincial base. You know, it's

716
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:15,920
it's very exploitative because you spend all this money or

717
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:19,000
you borrow this money becoming an officer, and then once

718
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:21,800
you're once you're in the position to being a governor,

719
00:49:22,039 --> 00:49:25,599
you only have one two, maybe three years to essentially

720
00:49:25,639 --> 00:49:27,519
plunder it all back and try to get a return

721
00:49:27,519 --> 00:49:28,280
on your investment.

722
00:49:30,639 --> 00:49:33,199
Speaker 1: Well, then what would be the point, I mean, are

723
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:36,800
you it's not like politicians now that they get elected

724
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,039
and then you know, when they retire, especially if they're

725
00:49:40,039 --> 00:49:43,000
in there for more than ten years, they're thirty times

726
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:46,280
there are net worth when going in. It doesn't seem

727
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:50,000
like that was that was even possible at that time. Sure,

728
00:49:50,039 --> 00:49:53,639
you might break break even or even be a little

729
00:49:53,639 --> 00:49:54,159
bit ahead.

730
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:55,119
Speaker 2: I mean, is it.

731
00:49:55,119 --> 00:50:00,280
Speaker 1: Purely for just the position, just the the honor, just

732
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:01,599
so that your name lives on.

733
00:50:03,199 --> 00:50:06,960
Speaker 2: That's a big factor for sure. All of these Roman

734
00:50:07,039 --> 00:50:12,639
nobles are bred to to see status as the main

735
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:15,079
game that they're playing. The honor game is the main

736
00:50:15,119 --> 00:50:19,400
game that they're playing. And there are ways, you know,

737
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:24,480
if you're savvy, you know, having say you go to Spain,

738
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:27,400
Gaius Marius does this. You go to Spain and while

739
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:34,239
you're there, perhaps knocking around some local bandits or you know,

740
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:37,639
there's also just opportunities for patronage and business doing so,

741
00:50:37,679 --> 00:50:41,719
like you can buy a mine, you can you know,

742
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,719
there's ways that you can set up kind of permanent

743
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:49,639
income streams for yourself if you're savvy and if you

744
00:50:49,679 --> 00:50:52,360
have connections and a lot of these. Somebody asked me

745
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:58,519
this recently, like it wasn't wasn't commerce frowned upon by

746
00:50:58,559 --> 00:51:04,239
the Roman elites. Yes, but a lot of them had

747
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:06,679
to be very good at it. A guy like Marius

748
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:09,440
or Crassus, they're good at making money. They just don't

749
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:15,760
see wealth as the ultimate prize. You know that it's

750
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:21,039
the thing that you that you spend in order to

751
00:51:21,039 --> 00:51:24,159
get the ultimate prize, which is honor, which is status,

752
00:51:24,159 --> 00:51:25,840
which is glory that you pass on to your kids,

753
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:28,280
which is you know, statues of yourself in the forum.

754
00:51:28,679 --> 00:51:32,400
That's the game that is most attractive to at least

755
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,400
to the people who make it to the top. A

756
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:38,760
lot of families are just content to break even, maybe

757
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:40,920
increase their patrimony a little bit, but you know, have

758
00:51:41,039 --> 00:51:44,199
their name on a law or on an aqueduct or something,

759
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,159
and they you know, I think that that's a real

760
00:51:51,039 --> 00:51:53,880
that that spirit does remain even in the Late Republic,

761
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:56,840
not among all the families, but certainly among a guy

762
00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,960
like Pompey or Caesar. I mean that they're not they

763
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,880
do become fabulously wealthy in the process. But you know,

764
00:52:04,519 --> 00:52:08,360
winning a triumph is is just it gives you this

765
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:11,079
kind of status, this charisma in town, and it's just

766
00:52:11,159 --> 00:52:16,320
much more satisfying to be yourself around Rome if you

767
00:52:16,400 --> 00:52:18,719
are a conqueror. Then if you're a rich person, there's

768
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:24,519
so many obscure rich people. Cicero's friend Atticus famously praises

769
00:52:24,559 --> 00:52:27,920
the life of the kind of lying in the shadow,

770
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:31,599
what they call it Epicurus. He was a devotee of

771
00:52:31,599 --> 00:52:38,360
Epicurean philosophy. Epicurus advised his students to escape notice in

772
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:42,559
your life. You know, lathe Bo sas so Ciso called

773
00:52:42,559 --> 00:52:46,239
it kind of shady a philosopher, a philosophy of the shade.

774
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:48,360
You know, you're not going out and getting tanned on

775
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:51,039
military campaigns. He's kind of lying in the shadows, building

776
00:52:51,079 --> 00:52:54,119
wealth and not not giving offense to anybody and not

777
00:52:54,199 --> 00:52:58,400
taking not taking punches in the political arena. But to

778
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:01,920
most Romans that's kind of I don't know, it's kind

779
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:06,079
of dishonorable or or just not ambitious. It's not impressive.

780
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:09,239
So one of the choices you make.

781
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:14,440
Speaker 1: So is that was that just instilled throughout the culture,

782
00:53:14,599 --> 00:53:18,760
even with the even with common people, people who would

783
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,960
have farms, people who would live in the city, but

784
00:53:22,119 --> 00:53:26,719
not being noblemen. Is it is Is it an honor culture?

785
00:53:27,079 --> 00:53:30,280
Is it a culture where above all else? Is that

786
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:34,079
why so many people are you know, so many men,

787
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:38,920
especially at a time when honor is a punchline, that

788
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:44,000
they're so attracted to. Looking at Rome, especially the Republic, Yeah,

789
00:53:44,199 --> 00:53:44,639
I really.

790
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:47,599
Speaker 2: Think that's true. You know, the we what we have

791
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:53,239
direct evidence for, especially in the late Republic, when we

792
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:57,320
don't have so much kind of granular evidence of like

793
00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:00,000
graffiti and Pompeii that's from one hundred years later when

794
00:54:00,199 --> 00:54:03,119
it's already a monarchy. But you know, you look at

795
00:54:03,159 --> 00:54:06,320
the heroes of the Republic. I do think that the

796
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:14,880
public man, the statesman, the nobles set the moral tone

797
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:20,960
of society. And and so you know, reading the Golic

798
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:24,920
War commentaries of Caesar, which I just finished series on

799
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:28,880
on the Cost of Glory, it's it's you know, he

800
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:33,039
singles out these centurions for special honor in his in

801
00:54:33,079 --> 00:54:35,679
his Glic War commentaries, and it's clear that the you know,

802
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:41,280
these people have a real strong honor culture in the soldiery,

803
00:54:41,639 --> 00:54:45,400
like that having your name remembered by your commander, getting

804
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,440
a shout out by by one of the nobles is

805
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:50,119
like one of the highest things that a lot of

806
00:54:50,119 --> 00:54:53,719
these guys can aspire to. But you know, one of

807
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:57,239
the ways that the Romans instill that honor culture is

808
00:54:57,239 --> 00:54:59,920
they have, you know, they have the wax masks of

809
00:55:00,159 --> 00:55:06,159
ancestors and this niche in every noble Roman villa, and

810
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:10,079
they're death masks of your you know, your great great

811
00:55:10,119 --> 00:55:15,239
great grandfather uncle who is a consul or a censor

812
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,360
a triumphed over the barbarians, and you know he's just

813
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:21,760
staring at you as you burn incense before him. And

814
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:26,159
when any member of your family dies, there's an elaborate

815
00:55:26,199 --> 00:55:30,639
funeral procession where all the young men in the family

816
00:55:30,679 --> 00:55:33,360
will put on these masks of the ancestors, and they

817
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:36,480
process in state through the streets of Rome to a

818
00:55:36,519 --> 00:55:39,239
great ceremony in the forum, and one of them makes

819
00:55:39,239 --> 00:55:42,679
a speech in honor of the dead man. While the

820
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:46,519
kind of symbolic the ancestors are symbolical looking upon you

821
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:49,679
and looking upon this man and like judging his life.

822
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:52,719
So there are all these rituals that instill this kind

823
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:56,920
of intense pressure and ambition in the aristocrats. I think

824
00:55:56,960 --> 00:56:01,119
that that really does trickle down, that kind of That's

825
00:56:01,159 --> 00:56:04,920
how Rousseau describes the effect of heroes on a society.

826
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:08,599
You know, the hero. Not everybody can like be the hero,

827
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:11,840
but everybody kind of looks to the hero as a

828
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,039
model for how they're supposed to live their life. You know,

829
00:56:14,079 --> 00:56:17,199
the hero is what produced a good hero is what

830
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:19,800
produces good citizens. Even though the hero is sort of

831
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:24,119
like larger than life, he's like he adds another dimension

832
00:56:24,159 --> 00:56:26,920
that the citizens just don't have and probably shouldn't have.

833
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:34,239
Speaker 1: This may seem completely off the wall, but I'll ask

834
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:38,119
it anyway. When it comes to desiring honor, when it

835
00:56:38,159 --> 00:56:43,559
comes to desiring riches or maybe not even really knowing

836
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:49,239
why he's doing it, where do you put Trump in that?

837
00:56:51,159 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, I look at Trump and

838
00:57:00,559 --> 00:57:06,119
it really seems that whether it was you know, going

839
00:57:06,159 --> 00:57:12,079
down the Golden escalator in twenty fifteen, I don't know

840
00:57:12,119 --> 00:57:14,639
if it was there then, but you know, you look

841
00:57:14,679 --> 00:57:18,159
at him rising up after being shot in the ear

842
00:57:18,199 --> 00:57:22,519
at that rally and the misery that they've put him

843
00:57:22,559 --> 00:57:26,400
through with all of the law fair and he seems

844
00:57:26,400 --> 00:57:29,400
to have kind of been transported, you know, to this

845
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:35,800
new level of it's clearly not about profiteering at this point.

846
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:39,960
Like the man is motivated by a lot more than

847
00:57:40,039 --> 00:57:41,840
just money. You know, he's I mean, I think he's

848
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:44,159
to some extent, he's always been kind of motivated by

849
00:57:44,199 --> 00:57:50,199
the sense of glory and honor, even though those are

850
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:53,800
people will laugh, you know if you use those terms

851
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:56,440
in the same sentence as Trump, I think, but there's

852
00:57:56,480 --> 00:57:59,599
a real sense in which he's he's able been able

853
00:57:59,639 --> 00:58:04,039
to chant something that is that is that is greater

854
00:58:04,119 --> 00:58:06,400
than himself. And uh, he wouldn't be able to do

855
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:10,599
what he's doing if he wasn't somehow channeling that that energy.

856
00:58:10,679 --> 00:58:13,960
And uh, you know when you're when you're playing a

857
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:17,920
game with that big, like the stakes really are this.

858
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:22,320
You know, you're you're the memory that people have of

859
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:26,519
you after you die. I think that's a very heroic

860
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:31,320
kind of mindset of it would be better to die

861
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:38,360
gloriously doing this than to live safely and comfortably. And

862
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:41,119
he's already done enough that his children will be set

863
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:47,719
for life. But I think I think that that's one

864
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:52,239
of the things that distinguishes a great statesman from a

865
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:56,519
mediocre functionary's they're motivated by leaving a legacy that will

866
00:58:56,519 --> 00:59:02,119
outlast them and and by the glory that they can win.

867
00:59:03,159 --> 00:59:05,800
I mean, some people might have to forgive me for

868
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,599
talking these grand terms, but I see a lot of

869
00:59:08,599 --> 00:59:10,519
that really in the spirit of the Trump campaign that

870
00:59:10,559 --> 00:59:14,360
you definitely don't see on the other side of the aisle, right,

871
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:18,800
And that's probably a lot of his appeal is just

872
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:23,519
a sense of a grand historic struggle that like you're

873
00:59:23,559 --> 00:59:26,960
witnessing history and you're kind of participating it. As like

874
00:59:27,239 --> 00:59:31,840
shot after shot just whizzes past his head or I

875
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:37,960
find it incredibly compelling as a story and just fascinating

876
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:41,199
to watch. It's just just hard to pull your eyes

877
00:59:41,239 --> 00:59:44,800
away from the spectacle that's going on. And you get

878
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:46,920
the sense that a lot of these Romans were living

879
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:50,920
in similar dimensions. Certainly a guy like Pompey or Caesar

880
00:59:51,079 --> 00:59:53,880
or Marius, you know, the desire to be the first

881
00:59:53,880 --> 00:59:56,760
man in Rome, and Trump's clearly desires to be the

882
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:59,480
first man in America, which is very different, I think

883
00:59:59,519 --> 01:00:01,079
from being a you know, you don't have to be

884
01:00:01,119 --> 01:00:03,000
a monarch, you don't have to want to be a

885
01:00:03,039 --> 01:00:06,360
monarch to want to be the first man. Sulah wanted

886
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:08,199
to be the first man in Rome. He didn't want

887
01:00:08,199 --> 01:00:11,039
to be a monarch. Caesar, I'm not sure Caesar might

888
01:00:11,199 --> 01:00:14,760
might have been, you know, of the sort of historical

889
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:18,559
imagination to really to really conceive of a different future

890
01:00:18,599 --> 01:00:21,159
for Rome. But a lot of these guys that rose

891
01:00:21,239 --> 01:00:24,360
to supreme prominence, they're just trying to be the first

892
01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:27,920
man in their city, and that's that's a prize enough

893
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:28,320
for them.

894
01:00:31,119 --> 01:00:37,519
Speaker 1: Would you say that, because we haven't seen something like that,

895
01:00:37,559 --> 01:00:42,079
and so long that's why so many people are attracted

896
01:00:42,119 --> 01:00:47,519
to Trump, and that, you know, especially young people, young men.

897
01:00:48,239 --> 01:00:52,559
And it's also why you have a class of people

898
01:00:52,679 --> 01:01:01,840
who things like honor and loyalty have come a punchline. Yeah,

899
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:05,800
that that's why he's so he's so reviled by them,

900
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:11,480
because he even if he doesn't, even if he isn't

901
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:14,880
that symbol himself, even if he doesn't look at him

902
01:01:15,199 --> 01:01:19,119
himself that way, other people are projecting that onto him.

903
01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:22,239
And I think that that says something about the people

904
01:01:22,239 --> 01:01:24,519
who are projecting it on to him, but it also

905
01:01:24,559 --> 01:01:26,480
has a lot to say about the people who revile

906
01:01:26,599 --> 01:01:33,360
him that they that we haven't had a desire like

907
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:35,880
this for somebody like this in a very long time.

908
01:01:36,559 --> 01:01:40,280
And these are people who you know, will do anything,

909
01:01:40,400 --> 01:01:46,760
will will kill him to stop, to stop that even

910
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:49,000
the idea of that happening.

911
01:01:50,039 --> 01:01:57,000
Speaker 2: At this time. Yeah, well you it'd be hard to

912
01:01:57,039 --> 01:02:03,840
look at your average Washington or globalist corporate elite, you know,

913
01:02:04,000 --> 01:02:09,199
Larry Fink or whatever, and say, this man desires honor, or,

914
01:02:09,239 --> 01:02:15,440
this woman desires honor. This woman or this man is

915
01:02:15,639 --> 01:02:18,599
chasing after a glory that will outlive them. Like it's

916
01:02:18,599 --> 01:02:21,800
seen as very distasteful, right, And so what do you have?

917
01:02:21,920 --> 01:02:27,599
What is the alternative? Some kind of smarmy servant leadership.

918
01:02:28,079 --> 01:02:31,760
You know, oh, I'm just serving the people. I'm not

919
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:34,880
here for my own this and that. And I get that,

920
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:36,760
you know, if you're if you're a Christian, it's easy

921
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:38,559
to be duped by that. But I think it's just

922
01:02:38,559 --> 01:02:41,800
a kind of lack of imagination often and or and

923
01:02:42,119 --> 01:02:44,280
what it ends up being so often is just this

924
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:53,199
kind of a shallow veil drawn over kind of base

925
01:02:53,360 --> 01:03:00,519
careerism or profiteering and you know, insider trading and nucrative

926
01:03:01,119 --> 01:03:06,719
contracts with you know, the military industrial complex after you

927
01:03:06,960 --> 01:03:09,679
leave your tour of duty. It's it's all just kind

928
01:03:09,679 --> 01:03:13,599
of I'm sure they have a comfortable life, more comfortable

929
01:03:13,639 --> 01:03:17,519
than mine, but it's kind of contemptible, like in like

930
01:03:17,800 --> 01:03:21,599
I think that we are naturally well. This is what

931
01:03:21,719 --> 01:03:24,760
Russeau says. And I think, for all that he's seen

932
01:03:24,800 --> 01:03:28,880
as this kind of instigator of the French Revolution, he

933
01:03:29,039 --> 01:03:32,199
was a man that was obsessed with Plutarch's heroes and

934
01:03:33,559 --> 01:03:36,400
he understood I think he really understood what heroism was

935
01:03:36,519 --> 01:03:42,320
and how it was both necessary and good and also dangerous.

936
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:46,400
But you know, the hero is if they they're not

937
01:03:46,639 --> 01:03:51,159
there to serve the people. They're there to build some

938
01:03:51,320 --> 01:03:56,960
grand legacy that for a modern bureaucrat looks like megalomania.

939
01:03:57,119 --> 01:04:00,559
This is a this is a different moral unit. They

940
01:04:00,679 --> 01:04:05,679
inhabited a different like metaphysical reality. They're not trying to

941
01:04:07,559 --> 01:04:12,159
you know, just have a have their own private share

942
01:04:12,199 --> 01:04:15,639
of the pie. They're they're after some kind of immortality,

943
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:20,280
you know. And and we're so uncomfortable talking about that,

944
01:04:20,800 --> 01:04:27,199
especially since you know, nineteen forty five. It's just it's

945
01:04:27,880 --> 01:04:33,559
our whole ideological apparatus now in a way that the

946
01:04:33,639 --> 01:04:38,360
Romans ideological apparatus was sort of designed to prevent the

947
01:04:38,480 --> 01:04:43,800
rise of a monarch. You know, our ideological apparatus is

948
01:04:43,920 --> 01:04:48,440
designed to prevent the rise of a great man. There's

949
01:04:48,480 --> 01:04:52,280
a there's a kind of politics of envy that goes

950
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:54,880
under different names. But you know, you can just help

951
01:04:54,920 --> 01:04:58,320
tell the way that they handle, you know, any kind

952
01:04:58,360 --> 01:05:05,519
of visionary drive. You know, it's megalomania. It's problematic, it's creepy,

953
01:05:05,679 --> 01:05:09,440
it's toxic, whatever the case may be. It's very just

954
01:05:09,480 --> 01:05:14,039
effeminized and frankly boring. And this is why I think

955
01:05:14,079 --> 01:05:17,320
Trump is so interesting because he's like putting on a

956
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:20,360
show that we're not used as seeing in real history.

957
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:23,800
You're not supposed to make history anymore. People aren't supposed

958
01:05:23,800 --> 01:05:26,119
to want to make history, because that's how we got

959
01:05:26,119 --> 01:05:29,360
into the World wars as people wanting to make history,

960
01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:32,000
you know, young men wanting to do great things like

961
01:05:32,119 --> 01:05:35,039
The Root of All Evil to the post war and census.

962
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:39,440
And it's just so refreshing to see somebody who flies

963
01:05:39,440 --> 01:05:43,559
in the face of that to me, and so I'm

964
01:05:43,639 --> 01:05:46,840
definitely along for the ride, and it will be it

965
01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:49,119
will be very interesting no matter what happens. I think

966
01:05:49,159 --> 01:05:51,440
it's going to be interesting in ten days, right or

967
01:05:51,599 --> 01:05:52,199
eight days.

968
01:05:54,239 --> 01:06:00,559
Speaker 1: Well, it's contemptible to appeal to the masses, but what

969
01:06:00,639 --> 01:06:07,440
they do is they they have to keep this alive somehow,

970
01:06:07,559 --> 01:06:15,280
so they completely pervert it. So they become the they

971
01:06:15,320 --> 01:06:20,119
become the hero to what they see as the marginalized,

972
01:06:20,679 --> 01:06:26,679
the trends, the gay, gay people, people coming over the border,

973
01:06:27,199 --> 01:06:34,360
people like they they're not allowed to appeal to. They're

974
01:06:34,400 --> 01:06:36,960
not allowed to appeal to. I mean it seems like

975
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:41,800
really like the no what what historically you would look

976
01:06:41,800 --> 01:06:49,760
at as normal people, straight, straight men, white men Europeans,

977
01:06:50,119 --> 01:06:53,440
you're not allowed to do that. But no, we still

978
01:06:53,480 --> 01:06:56,159
need that spirit, but we're going to apply it to

979
01:06:58,079 --> 01:07:04,440
what many without brainwashing would see as I mean, really

980
01:07:04,679 --> 01:07:12,719
the degenerate class of society and the the I'm looking

981
01:07:12,800 --> 01:07:15,159
for the proper word. I don't want to be I'm

982
01:07:15,159 --> 01:07:18,000
not trying to be insulting by saying this. I'm trying

983
01:07:18,039 --> 01:07:26,360
to make a point. Is the the true like minority,

984
01:07:26,480 --> 01:07:32,639
but these little minority Nietzsch groups, But these groups have

985
01:07:32,719 --> 01:07:42,320
to in some way represent a rebellion against normalcy, against

986
01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:48,239
what what normal culture, what normal behavior?

987
01:07:48,239 --> 01:07:49,599
Speaker 2: What would be?

988
01:07:50,719 --> 01:07:54,679
Speaker 1: And I think that's that's fascinating that they think that

989
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:59,039
they are these great men and women by championing small

990
01:07:59,119 --> 01:08:05,360
groups that, yeah, you'd put one hundred and twenty years ago,

991
01:08:05,480 --> 01:08:09,800
be sadly say in a Starker side show.

992
01:08:11,559 --> 01:08:16,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, the only kind of people that the public

993
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:23,520
school education allows to be glorified are like activists, freedom

994
01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:35,720
activists or I don't know, nineteen sixties civil rights activist types. Yeah.

995
01:08:35,840 --> 01:08:38,760
I met I was on some trip when I was younger,

996
01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:46,119
and I met this guy. It was like a college

997
01:08:46,119 --> 01:08:48,640
student trip from you know, a guy from a different

998
01:08:48,680 --> 01:08:51,880
school and it's like, what are you planning to be?

999
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:55,079
I'm going to be an activist? Oh, what kind of

1000
01:08:55,079 --> 01:08:58,000
things are you gonna be? You know, what's your what?

1001
01:08:58,159 --> 01:09:01,640
What charge are you are taking on? What's your what's

1002
01:09:01,640 --> 01:09:05,520
your cause? Oh? It doesn't really matter, you know, just activism.

1003
01:09:05,840 --> 01:09:07,880
You know, it's like it's like a category of its own.

1004
01:09:09,239 --> 01:09:15,920
This like a real what's the word. It's like a

1005
01:09:15,920 --> 01:09:18,479
a perversion of this idea of you know, Paul Newman

1006
01:09:18,720 --> 01:09:21,479
in that movie saying, you know, is it Marlon Brando?

1007
01:09:22,279 --> 01:09:25,800
You know, rebel what's your cause? What do you got?

1008
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:31,399
But it's not rebellious, it's conformist, you know. It's just

1009
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:34,319
this is just the kind of the only ideal that

1010
01:09:34,359 --> 01:09:39,840
we've allowed to be glorified in our in our school system.

1011
01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:44,079
And I always found that just to be so boring, honestly,

1012
01:09:44,319 --> 01:09:46,079
and I think a lot of young men find it

1013
01:09:46,119 --> 01:09:49,520
to be boring. But that's that's kind of the people

1014
01:09:49,560 --> 01:09:51,439
that have been allowed to make it to the top

1015
01:09:51,520 --> 01:09:55,079
for the most part in democratic politics and Republican politics.

1016
01:09:55,439 --> 01:10:02,640
Until very recently people are willing to kind of bow

1017
01:10:02,760 --> 01:10:06,640
to that the ideal that the only the only good

1018
01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:10,359
is like championing some marginal people that that that's that,

1019
01:10:10,359 --> 01:10:13,479
that's what justice is. That it's all about making some

1020
01:10:13,640 --> 01:10:19,720
marginal group lorded over the majority.

1021
01:10:20,159 --> 01:10:23,680
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not even their lives. Are the lives

1022
01:10:23,680 --> 01:10:26,840
of the marginalized that they're they're advocating for are never

1023
01:10:26,920 --> 01:10:31,359
improved by them, Yeah, they're they're never improved. It's just

1024
01:10:31,600 --> 01:10:35,800
is literally to be used as a weapon against you know.

1025
01:10:35,920 --> 01:10:39,840
It's Greg Hood had this tweet a couple of years

1026
01:10:39,880 --> 01:10:44,319
ago that said, the the consequences of the Civil Rights

1027
01:10:44,399 --> 01:10:50,279
Act are you basically trying to make enough money to

1028
01:10:50,479 --> 01:10:54,960
us the civil the Civil Rights Act is basically you

1029
01:10:55,119 --> 01:11:00,359
trying to make enough money to escape the consequences of

1030
01:11:00,399 --> 01:11:08,640
the Civil Rights Act and hide what you're doing. Mm hmm, right, yeah,

1031
01:11:08,920 --> 01:11:11,279
hide while you're doing it. Yeah, it's like, well, why

1032
01:11:11,319 --> 01:11:14,199
are you doing this? Well, I'm I can't tell you.

1033
01:11:15,960 --> 01:11:19,600
Speaker 2: It's uh. And it's very self aggrandizing to the in

1034
01:11:19,880 --> 01:11:22,760
a petty way, I think, to the to the leaders

1035
01:11:23,039 --> 01:11:27,600
of that type. And it's very different from Roman populism too,

1036
01:11:27,640 --> 01:11:30,079
it should be noted. So, you know a lot of

1037
01:11:30,720 --> 01:11:34,560
left wing people have seen in Tiberius Gracus a kind

1038
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:37,880
of hero. You know, Marx was very interested in the

1039
01:11:39,359 --> 01:11:41,520
or at least Marxist historians are very interested in the

1040
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:45,079
Gracchi and the idea of land redistribution. But you know,

1041
01:11:45,119 --> 01:11:50,439
it's not about making the poorest of the poor on

1042
01:11:50,479 --> 01:11:54,479
a on a level with the nobles. It's about rewarding

1043
01:11:55,239 --> 01:12:00,399
citizen soldiers. You know, it's about it's about empower like

1044
01:12:00,439 --> 01:12:04,760
the middle classes that are, you know, the backbone of

1045
01:12:04,760 --> 01:12:09,319
a society. And I don't know if we have time,

1046
01:12:09,439 --> 01:12:14,279
but it might be worth just in brief connecting the

1047
01:12:14,279 --> 01:12:17,760
the circle of how this gets to the problem of

1048
01:12:18,600 --> 01:12:25,479
packing voter rolls and and citizenship. So I'll be brief here.

1049
01:12:26,159 --> 01:12:28,800
I've covered this at at greater length in the biography

1050
01:12:28,840 --> 01:12:31,800
of Guius Marius on my podcast. It's one of my

1051
01:12:31,840 --> 01:12:35,159
earlier biographies. I think I've if you if you start there,

1052
01:12:35,239 --> 01:12:36,960
I do think I've gotten better, But you know, it

1053
01:12:37,000 --> 01:12:39,600
is it is a good story, and he's a fascinating figure,

1054
01:12:39,600 --> 01:12:42,039
and I go into a lot of detail in that life.

1055
01:12:42,039 --> 01:12:45,960
But essentially so Marius is from the next generation of

1056
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:48,479
the Gracchys. He's a little bit younger, but he sees

1057
01:12:48,520 --> 01:12:55,199
this all happening, and what he does is Guias Gracchus

1058
01:12:55,239 --> 01:13:00,399
By the way, Tiberius's brother tries to start another popist

1059
01:13:01,840 --> 01:13:05,319
legislative plan about ten years later and also gets lynched

1060
01:13:05,479 --> 01:13:11,319
by the Senate in very similar circumstances. Sad story, but

1061
01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:19,920
Marius is he rises on this promise of fixing elite incompetence,

1062
01:13:19,920 --> 01:13:23,279
which is starting to be a real problem for the

1063
01:13:23,359 --> 01:13:25,039
Roman state. It's starting to be kind of like a

1064
01:13:25,119 --> 01:13:28,359
threat to the security of the of the city because

1065
01:13:28,479 --> 01:13:33,560
they've got a forever war going on in North Africa.

1066
01:13:33,840 --> 01:13:36,760
People have criticized me for using that term, but essentially

1067
01:13:36,800 --> 01:13:40,680
they can't manage to defeat you Gurtha, who is this

1068
01:13:41,560 --> 01:13:47,000
sly crafty Numidian who's bribing the elites. He says everything

1069
01:13:47,159 --> 01:13:51,000
is for sale in Rome, and the Romans and General

1070
01:13:51,039 --> 01:13:54,680
after General to try to defeat him, and granted, you know,

1071
01:13:55,319 --> 01:13:58,800
there are gorilla tactics that he's using. The land is difficult,

1072
01:13:59,159 --> 01:14:03,319
but General after General is just getting bribed by Ugurtha,

1073
01:14:03,399 --> 01:14:05,359
and he knows he knows how to get these people

1074
01:14:05,359 --> 01:14:08,359
off his back. And so the rich are basically profiteering

1075
01:14:08,359 --> 01:14:10,800
off of this war in various ways, especially the commanders

1076
01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:17,680
are getting bribe. Marius becomes console on a promise to

1077
01:14:17,720 --> 01:14:19,720
put the war to an end because he's he's one

1078
01:14:19,720 --> 01:14:24,560
of the most competent generals, and he manages through a

1079
01:14:24,640 --> 01:14:27,319
tribunary law. Actually he's kind of early in his career.

1080
01:14:27,359 --> 01:14:30,039
He's using this power of the of the plebs in

1081
01:14:30,159 --> 01:14:34,720
the in the council. Basically he becomes Console by normal means.

1082
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:37,960
But then there's a problem. There's like a technic legal

1083
01:14:38,039 --> 01:14:40,800
technicality that he can't get command of the war because

1084
01:14:40,800 --> 01:14:42,800
the Senator has already assigned it to this other guy,

1085
01:14:42,920 --> 01:14:45,520
mat tell Us, who's a political rival of his. And

1086
01:14:45,560 --> 01:14:48,840
so he gets the Tribune, like a tribune friend of his,

1087
01:14:48,960 --> 01:14:51,439
to propose a law that the command of the war

1088
01:14:51,479 --> 01:14:55,000
be assigned to Marius to basically control foreign policy, which

1089
01:14:55,000 --> 01:14:59,079
has never been done before. It's very creative and the succeeds.

1090
01:14:59,159 --> 01:15:02,479
And what Marius does, Senate's like, all right, well, you

1091
01:15:02,479 --> 01:15:05,279
can fight this war, but we control the finances and

1092
01:15:05,359 --> 01:15:08,159
we control recruitments, so good luck raising an army. You're

1093
01:15:08,159 --> 01:15:10,600
gonna need more forces to really defeat you, Gurtha. And

1094
01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:12,920
so what Marius does is he has another law pass

1095
01:15:12,960 --> 01:15:20,039
where he recruit he makes it breaks precedent and recruits

1096
01:15:20,319 --> 01:15:24,039
large forces of the urban poor of Rome. Who would

1097
01:15:24,039 --> 01:15:29,600
fall well below the property qualification, and so he essentially

1098
01:15:30,960 --> 01:15:34,800
inaugurates this new process by which generals can amass an

1099
01:15:34,920 --> 01:15:39,159
army that is loyal to them, that they're kind of

1100
01:15:39,159 --> 01:15:44,720
on the hook for eventually paying for the war in

1101
01:15:44,800 --> 01:15:49,840
some way and rewarding their troops by land grants to

1102
01:15:49,880 --> 01:15:53,920
come after the hopefully successful war. But he manages to

1103
01:15:53,920 --> 01:16:00,319
basically pull off this incredible quick victory against you Girth

1104
01:16:00,800 --> 01:16:06,479
by raising these you know, mass recruits of the urban poor.

1105
01:16:07,600 --> 01:16:10,079
And then he turns around and Rome has another long

1106
01:16:10,159 --> 01:16:14,359
war that's been going terribly in France in Gaul which

1107
01:16:14,399 --> 01:16:17,079
they don't control yet, against the Kimbri and the Tuotnes,

1108
01:16:17,119 --> 01:16:21,039
another barbarian invader from the north who have defeated commander

1109
01:16:21,079 --> 01:16:24,359
after commander, and Marius promises to get the war what won,

1110
01:16:25,039 --> 01:16:30,560
and he does using similar methods. He's incredibly efficient general,

1111
01:16:30,720 --> 01:16:33,079
and he stands out in a way that maybe he

1112
01:16:33,079 --> 01:16:36,159
wouldn't have fifty or one hundred years earlier, when Rome

1113
01:16:36,239 --> 01:16:40,920
had all these competent commanders, and now so many of

1114
01:16:40,920 --> 01:16:44,920
them have turned to merchandising and profiteering, and they just

1115
01:16:45,560 --> 01:16:49,319
they've gotten you know, blue blooded and you know, resting

1116
01:16:49,359 --> 01:16:52,000
on their laurels, and they've lost a lot of that

1117
01:16:52,119 --> 01:16:54,720
Roman toughness. So a guy like him who knows how

1118
01:16:54,760 --> 01:16:56,680
to get the job done, I think this is very trumpy.

1119
01:16:56,720 --> 01:16:59,199
And actually he knows how to make a deal, get

1120
01:16:59,239 --> 01:17:01,880
the job done with the people that needs He's he's

1121
01:17:01,880 --> 01:17:06,279
a good enough speaker, he fights alongside the troops. He's

1122
01:17:06,279 --> 01:17:10,319
an outsider politically too. He he manages to build a

1123
01:17:10,399 --> 01:17:14,359
huge following. He becomes consoles six times almost in a row,

1124
01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:21,199
and uh and is like credited with being well credited

1125
01:17:21,199 --> 01:17:23,640
by the Romans of his day, by a vote of

1126
01:17:23,680 --> 01:17:26,039
the people, as being worthy of the title of the

1127
01:17:26,119 --> 01:17:29,800
third founder of Rome. So guyas Mari is unquestionably first

1128
01:17:29,800 --> 01:17:34,960
man in Rome by one. And and the way that

1129
01:17:35,319 --> 01:17:40,079
this kind of cashes out into the voter issue that

1130
01:17:40,159 --> 01:17:44,319
I think is his unseen cause of the First Civil

1131
01:17:44,359 --> 01:17:50,279
War is it'll take just a sec to explain. I

1132
01:17:50,520 --> 01:17:53,279
could pause for questions. If you've gotten me, o, God,

1133
01:17:53,439 --> 01:18:01,439
keep gone. So Marius is not just a a champion

1134
01:18:01,479 --> 01:18:03,840
of the Roman par but he recruits a lot of

1135
01:18:04,279 --> 01:18:09,520
Italians who are not citizens into his armies with the

1136
01:18:09,560 --> 01:18:15,079
promise of enfranchising them or at least rewarding them with land.

1137
01:18:16,199 --> 01:18:21,399
And as Marius becomes victorious with these men and they

1138
01:18:21,439 --> 01:18:24,880
become more Romanized, they're going back to their communities in Italy,

1139
01:18:25,199 --> 01:18:28,439
often with you know, nice land grants from Marius. But

1140
01:18:28,479 --> 01:18:32,520
they're they're seeing themselves more and more as essential members

1141
01:18:32,520 --> 01:18:35,039
of the Roman state. And a lot of these guys

1142
01:18:35,039 --> 01:18:39,119
are becoming businessmen out in the provinces and they're taking

1143
01:18:39,159 --> 01:18:44,000
a great interest in Roman foreign policy and Roman legal systems,

1144
01:18:44,279 --> 01:18:46,880
and they start to have a lot more riding on

1145
01:18:47,560 --> 01:18:52,920
being able to run for office themselves vote for candidates

1146
01:18:52,960 --> 01:18:54,880
that are going to support their interests. There's a lot

1147
01:18:54,880 --> 01:18:57,520
of reasons why these men start to want start to

1148
01:18:57,520 --> 01:19:01,920
clamor for citizenship, and by the end of the nineties

1149
01:19:02,359 --> 01:19:06,960
you have it becomes a really pressing issue, like massive

1150
01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:10,840
tribes of Italians are like, we are done fighting these

1151
01:19:10,880 --> 01:19:15,279
wars without having political representation, without being eligible to run

1152
01:19:15,319 --> 01:19:22,680
for quister tribune, console, pritur and the Senate. I think

1153
01:19:22,720 --> 01:19:28,720
does something really interesting. So Marius is a Grackist kind

1154
01:19:28,760 --> 01:19:34,560
of figure, like a gracis plus general lissimo military commander,

1155
01:19:35,479 --> 01:19:40,319
and he's a populist right, he's kind of prodding the aristocracy.

1156
01:19:40,760 --> 01:19:43,880
He's standing outside of them on some level. So the

1157
01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:49,279
nobles see Marius has a shot at essentially if he

1158
01:19:49,439 --> 01:19:53,720
is able to enfranchise the Italians, he's going to have

1159
01:19:54,279 --> 01:19:56,560
incredible power because these people are going to be loyal

1160
01:19:56,600 --> 01:20:00,279
to him politically, and so they keep try try to

1161
01:20:00,279 --> 01:20:03,439
block him. But then somebody among the Senate has the

1162
01:20:03,439 --> 01:20:07,880
bright idea, well, why don't we be the ones to

1163
01:20:08,119 --> 01:20:12,319
enfranchise the Italians? Why don't why why not have the Senate,

1164
01:20:12,399 --> 01:20:16,239
the establishment be the patrons of these all these new

1165
01:20:16,239 --> 01:20:19,880
potential citizens. And so the elite the establishment try to

1166
01:20:19,920 --> 01:20:23,960
co opt this whole effort of bringing in new citizens

1167
01:20:25,199 --> 01:20:31,800
which are going to potentially have huge disruptive consequences in

1168
01:20:31,840 --> 01:20:36,960
the Roman electoral map, and so they their candidate they

1169
01:20:37,000 --> 01:20:39,760
put forward to do this is this guy, Livius Drusus.

1170
01:20:41,439 --> 01:20:47,239
Unfortunately he gets murdered in ninety one BC, and partly

1171
01:20:47,319 --> 01:20:51,039
because it's starting to be it gets more and more complicated.

1172
01:20:51,600 --> 01:20:53,560
I won't go into all the details here, but like,

1173
01:20:53,600 --> 01:20:57,680
if you enfranchise all these Italians, suddenly the urban poor

1174
01:20:57,760 --> 01:21:02,880
of Rome are seeing wait a second, we're we've been

1175
01:21:02,960 --> 01:21:07,359
Romans for generations and we haven't gotten all the spoils

1176
01:21:07,359 --> 01:21:11,800
of empire and now you're gonna enfranchise all these Italians,

1177
01:21:11,800 --> 01:21:15,319
and we're gonna just even pushed lower down the totem pole.

1178
01:21:15,800 --> 01:21:19,000
And so they're able to a lot of Drusus's enemies

1179
01:21:19,000 --> 01:21:24,039
are able to consolidate support against this measure. But it

1180
01:21:24,119 --> 01:21:26,239
falls through anyway, and they end up fighting this great,

1181
01:21:26,960 --> 01:21:34,560
incredibly bloody social war, which is partly so so terrible

1182
01:21:34,560 --> 01:21:38,039
because these the armies that they're fighting are essentially Roman armies,

1183
01:21:38,159 --> 01:21:41,880
you know, Roman trained, veteran armies that have been fighting

1184
01:21:41,920 --> 01:21:47,000
in foreign wars, and they know all Rome's weaknesses. But

1185
01:21:47,880 --> 01:21:53,279
eventually the citizenship is granted, but as a concession to

1186
01:21:53,359 --> 01:21:58,880
a lot of these Italian tribes to assent to you know,

1187
01:21:59,840 --> 01:22:02,399
give up the war effort and and and go loyal

1188
01:22:02,439 --> 01:22:05,000
to Rome. So it's kind of done by fiat in

1189
01:22:05,039 --> 01:22:08,960
this chaos, which is a great way to you know,

1190
01:22:09,119 --> 01:22:12,479
enact unpopular legislation if you can argue that that the

1191
01:22:12,560 --> 01:22:16,239
chaos demands it, and you know, they you know, in

1192
01:22:16,279 --> 01:22:18,479
their in their favor, they kind of didn't have a

1193
01:22:18,560 --> 01:22:21,319
choice at that point. They really had to try to

1194
01:22:21,359 --> 01:22:24,319
take some of the gasoline out of the tanks of

1195
01:22:24,359 --> 01:22:29,119
the social war. But the way that they did that

1196
01:22:29,880 --> 01:22:35,520
crucially is they we talked about how Roman voting is

1197
01:22:36,880 --> 01:22:40,960
essentially jerrymandered. You know, it's it's not technically jerrymandering, but

1198
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:45,199
it's like it's a ranking system, and they put all

1199
01:22:45,319 --> 01:22:50,560
the Italians in this one gigantic, extremely low rank tribe

1200
01:22:50,560 --> 01:22:53,640
that would always vote last and basically never be relevant

1201
01:22:53,640 --> 01:22:58,279
for important elections and votes. And so there's another pressure

1202
01:22:58,359 --> 01:23:02,079
valve that a populist that that Guias Marius sees is

1203
01:23:02,159 --> 01:23:05,680
here's the potential cause that I can use as political leverage.

1204
01:23:06,479 --> 01:23:10,680
And so what he does in Ady ABC is he

1205
01:23:10,760 --> 01:23:14,600
proposes to a tribune friend of his right proposest law.

1206
01:23:16,159 --> 01:23:19,359
Sulpicius is the guy's name. It might have been Silpicius's idea,

1207
01:23:19,399 --> 01:23:22,039
but you know, Mark whatever mar This is what Marius

1208
01:23:22,079 --> 01:23:27,239
does is he says, all right, we will enfranchise or

1209
01:23:27,279 --> 01:23:30,279
we will we will put these Italian new Italian citizens,

1210
01:23:30,359 --> 01:23:33,640
this giant voting block that is basically politically useless right now,

1211
01:23:34,199 --> 01:23:40,239
we'll redistribute them into all of the existing tribes on

1212
01:23:40,319 --> 01:23:43,239
some kind of wealth rank. And so there'll be Italians

1213
01:23:43,279 --> 01:23:46,520
in the first, second third as in addition to the

1214
01:23:46,560 --> 01:23:54,439
twentieth and thirtieth rank of voting tribes, and then they'll

1215
01:23:54,439 --> 01:23:57,720
be our guys, right, like, we'll have patronage over them

1216
01:23:57,960 --> 01:24:04,399
for a long time. And Marius adds this writer to

1217
01:24:04,439 --> 01:24:11,319
that legislation, and basically he gets all of the Italians

1218
01:24:11,399 --> 01:24:14,199
that are his sort of friends and patrons, a lot

1219
01:24:14,279 --> 01:24:17,239
of veterans from his old wars, gets them to all

1220
01:24:17,279 --> 01:24:21,800
come to Rome. So they're there present, already voting for

1221
01:24:21,840 --> 01:24:24,680
their own interests. Right. This is like once in a

1222
01:24:24,680 --> 01:24:28,720
lifetime opportunity to raise their status for generations and generations.

1223
01:24:29,279 --> 01:24:33,960
He's got them all in Rome. They're voting in this plebiscite,

1224
01:24:34,279 --> 01:24:38,800
and he proposes this other bill. Salah has got command

1225
01:24:38,840 --> 01:24:42,600
of this army to go fight Mithridates. He's in southern Italy.

1226
01:24:43,279 --> 01:24:45,840
The Senate has already awarded him the command. This war

1227
01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:51,319
promises to be fabulously lucrative. Salah is his political rival.

1228
01:24:51,439 --> 01:24:56,880
Sala is an optimate establishment guy, twenty years younger than Marius.

1229
01:24:57,439 --> 01:24:59,720
They've been kind of sparring in politics for a number

1230
01:24:59,720 --> 01:25:02,319
of years. Saula is a former mentee of Marius, so

1231
01:25:02,359 --> 01:25:07,399
it's personal, and Marius is disgruntled. He thinks he deserves

1232
01:25:07,399 --> 01:25:11,520
command of the Roman effort against mithridates he wants one

1233
01:25:11,560 --> 01:25:16,239
last hurrah. He's approaching seventy He says, I deserve this command.

1234
01:25:16,800 --> 01:25:21,359
And so he has another really unprecedented move. He has

1235
01:25:21,920 --> 01:25:27,039
a vote passed where to strip Saula of the command

1236
01:25:27,079 --> 01:25:30,319
and assign it to himself. And he thinks he's finally

1237
01:25:30,439 --> 01:25:34,239
kind of got the one up on Sola and Sula

1238
01:25:35,359 --> 01:25:41,560
in this extremely unprecedented move says that's not how it's

1239
01:25:41,560 --> 01:25:44,119
going to be. He marches on Rome at the head

1240
01:25:44,119 --> 01:25:46,479
of twenty thousand men, and a kind of lightning strike

1241
01:25:47,079 --> 01:25:49,760
captures the city and drives Marius out as a public enemy.

1242
01:25:50,119 --> 01:25:51,680
And that is the beginning. That is kind of the

1243
01:25:51,760 --> 01:25:56,600
spark that starts this amazingly bloody first Roman Civil War,

1244
01:25:56,680 --> 01:25:58,920
which I think is probably bloodier than the one that

1245
01:25:59,000 --> 01:26:02,760
Julius Caesar and pomp Be fought. And but it was

1246
01:26:02,880 --> 01:26:06,479
it was all because Marius had this political leverage of

1247
01:26:06,520 --> 01:26:10,600
all these people in town voting for their own, you know,

1248
01:26:11,000 --> 01:26:16,239
to increase their own political clout, that he was able

1249
01:26:16,279 --> 01:26:18,800
to use his leverage to do something that would have

1250
01:26:18,800 --> 01:26:21,640
been probably impossible if if he hadn't have had all

1251
01:26:21,680 --> 01:26:26,319
of his clients there for him. But you know, that

1252
01:26:26,479 --> 01:26:30,760
was like like the greatest evidence of that you that

1253
01:26:30,840 --> 01:26:33,800
you could want that controlling a huge block of voters

1254
01:26:33,960 --> 01:26:37,800
gives you this political wild card, right and uh, and

1255
01:26:37,840 --> 01:26:42,119
it's something that I think that we're seeing people try

1256
01:26:42,159 --> 01:26:43,960
to pull off today to some extent.

1257
01:26:46,720 --> 01:26:54,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's Uh, you can find that nothing's really original.

1258
01:26:54,640 --> 01:26:58,000
Everything's been tried before, especially when it comes to politics.

1259
01:26:58,840 --> 01:27:02,880
Politics is really some it is in many ways. I

1260
01:27:02,920 --> 01:27:07,640
mean policy policy making not so much, but the structure

1261
01:27:07,640 --> 01:27:12,359
of politics and how people, how people have tried to

1262
01:27:12,399 --> 01:27:15,840
move people, how to get people. It's all been done before.

1263
01:27:16,039 --> 01:27:20,479
So if you study your history, then you know what

1264
01:27:20,600 --> 01:27:23,199
works and what doesn't. You also know where the pitfalls

1265
01:27:23,199 --> 01:27:23,880
can lie too.

1266
01:27:24,039 --> 01:27:28,239
Speaker 2: So this is why Kissinger called Greco Roman antiquity the

1267
01:27:29,399 --> 01:27:32,800
nursery of statesmen. You know, you build up a database

1268
01:27:32,840 --> 01:27:35,920
of examples because you can see these things happening in

1269
01:27:38,279 --> 01:27:42,239
you know, in quick succession in antiquity. You see all

1270
01:27:42,239 --> 01:27:47,239
the patterns happening in the classic democracies, the classical republics,

1271
01:27:47,279 --> 01:27:51,199
the classic monarchies. And I think because we are able

1272
01:27:51,239 --> 01:27:56,640
to zoom out further without like it's not clear which

1273
01:27:56,760 --> 01:27:59,039
side you're supposed to pick. If you're like if I'm

1274
01:27:59,079 --> 01:28:03,000
a diehard trumpst or a diehard leftist and I'm looking

1275
01:28:03,000 --> 01:28:05,359
at Roman history, it's not clear which side I'm on,

1276
01:28:05,520 --> 01:28:08,920
because I mean, Marius is a populist, but he's also

1277
01:28:09,319 --> 01:28:14,640
like a super fascist general, you know. Like because of

1278
01:28:14,680 --> 01:28:17,359
that defamiliarization, I think you're able to take a step

1279
01:28:17,359 --> 01:28:21,199
back and just see these patterns for what they are,

1280
01:28:21,640 --> 01:28:27,359
you know, political leverage points, you know, using the mob

1281
01:28:27,439 --> 01:28:34,760
against your enemy, building coalitions, persuading great crowds with appeals

1282
01:28:34,760 --> 01:28:36,840
to their interests, and all these kind of things and

1283
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:41,079
the ways you can be undermined by your opponents.

1284
01:28:42,439 --> 01:28:49,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well let's wrap up there, and do

1285
01:28:49,359 --> 01:28:51,319
you have anything to promote. I think last time you

1286
01:28:51,359 --> 01:28:56,079
were on you had me linked to your authoritative speaker's guide.

1287
01:28:56,520 --> 01:28:57,680
Do you want me to do that again or do

1288
01:28:57,720 --> 01:28:58,479
you have something.

1289
01:28:58,239 --> 01:29:03,239
Speaker 2: Else that'd be great if you want so, we're I'm

1290
01:29:03,279 --> 01:29:07,039
actually in the process of launching another retreat and it's

1291
01:29:07,079 --> 01:29:11,760
going to happen in Texas in January, So if you

1292
01:29:11,800 --> 01:29:14,079
want to, this will be like an in person, four

1293
01:29:14,159 --> 01:29:18,039
day men's leadership retreat where we're going to practice the

1294
01:29:18,159 --> 01:29:21,920
art of oratory, the ancient art of persuasion and Uh,

1295
01:29:21,960 --> 01:29:25,920
there'll be a focus on discussing and making speeches and

1296
01:29:25,960 --> 01:29:30,720
taking insights from the life of Julius Caesar, who is

1297
01:29:30,720 --> 01:29:32,800
a guy I'm focusing on right now in my podcast.

1298
01:29:32,840 --> 01:29:34,640
So if you're interested in that, you can sign up

1299
01:29:34,640 --> 01:29:37,079
for the Authoritative Speaker's Guide or sign up for my

1300
01:29:37,119 --> 01:29:39,520
email list that cost them Glory dot com to hear more.

1301
01:29:40,680 --> 01:29:44,600
But yeah, same old stuff I like.

1302
01:29:44,720 --> 01:29:48,359
Speaker 1: To both of them. Thank you, Alex, appreciate it's been

1303
01:29:48,399 --> 01:29:48,840
a pleasure.