The Art of Manliness - #346： The Fall of the Roman Republic

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well there's been

00:00:18.200 a lot written about the fall of the roman empire but what often gets overlooked is that before

00:00:23.420 rome became an empire with what was effectively a king it was a kingless republic what was that

00:00:29.380 republic like and why did it fall into an empire before the empire itself fell well my guest today

00:00:34.760 explores this question in his book the storm before the storm his name is mike duncan and he's

00:00:39.140 the host of the revolutions in the history of rome podcast today on the show mike walks us through the

00:00:44.100 formation of the roman republic and why it was so unique amongst ancient governments he then explains

00:00:48.700 the unwritten code of behavior that governed romans and how it enabled the republic to last for nearly

00:00:53.180 500 years he then walks us through how the breakdown of that code led to the breakdown of the republic

00:00:57.980 and how reformers seeking to take rome back to the good old days of the republic only sped up its fall

00:01:03.400 we then discuss if we can see any similarities between rome's republic and the american republic

00:01:07.500 it's a fascinating episode an often overlooked part of roman history if you want to check out

00:01:11.860 the show notes for more resources go to aom.is slash duncan

00:01:16.000 mike duncan welcome to the show thank you for having me so you're the host of the history of rome

00:01:24.580 which ran from 2007 man you were like one of the pioneers of podcasts and if you started your

00:01:31.620 podcast 2007 to 2012 what was the impetus behind starting a podcast particularly one about the

00:01:38.680 history of rome um yeah i have now officially been around for a very long time uh when i started in

00:01:44.420 2007 you know most people didn't know what podcasting was at the time but there were a ton of podcasts that

00:01:50.320 existed so when i started it certainly didn't feel like oh i'm you know i'm charting you know virgin

00:01:54.980 territory here i'm you know i'm like a pioneer out in the woods there was actually a fairly good

00:01:59.380 ecosystem of podcasts that existed and i got hooked onto various history podcasts and at the same time

00:02:06.800 i was reading a bunch of old roman history this was just there's a particular love of mine ancient

00:02:12.200 history in general and the romans in particular and i was reading all of livian polybius and plutarch

00:02:18.720 and really digging into the ancient sources and at the same time had discovered podcasting as a medium

00:02:24.160 and uh went looking for a roman history podcast to supplement what i was teaching myself and at that

00:02:32.400 point in 2007 no such show existed so i'm you know i'm sitting on this pile of material that is great

00:02:39.860 all these great stories that nobody ever hears of i know about this new medium called podcasting

00:02:44.680 there is a there's no roman history podcast and i just you know started fitting everything together

00:02:50.540 in my head and sat down one day and was like i'm just gonna do a narrative history podcast that will

00:02:56.340 explain the entire roman empire from beginning to end i i can do this why can't i do this um and i just

00:03:01.720 started doing it that's awesome well uh good for you for doing that i love hearing stories of people

00:03:05.780 where they looking they had a problem saw that wasn't being filled so they started themselves that's

00:03:10.820 awesome um so your book the storm before the storm uh is taken from this podcast that you you did

00:03:17.920 and you focus particularly on the years before the fall of the roman republic there's lots of stuff out

00:03:25.340 there about the fall of the roman empire i'm curious out of all the history of rome you covered

00:03:30.680 in the years of your podcast why did you pick this particular period in roman history so i settled on

00:03:37.040 this particular period there's there's two reasons why i wound up like with this particular period

00:03:43.340 which is you know about 146 bc to um to 78 bc is first of all like you say everybody everybody knows

00:03:50.880 the story of caesar and mark antony and cleopatra like that that stuff that that was covered in hbo's

00:03:57.200 rome series um you know those those guys those personalities those stories are told over and over and over

00:04:03.400 again um and there's tons of great roman history that people don't ever get to experience because

00:04:09.300 we have a tendency to go back to like the old favorites um you know we just want the greatest

00:04:13.360 hits we don't want new material i guess um and so just pulling it back to generations and and asking

00:04:20.880 okay well if julius caesar comes along in 40 bc and 50 bc and wrecks the republic uh was the republic

00:04:27.480 healthy in the first place um was he was he able to take down a system um that was strong and healthy

00:04:34.560 and the answer is of course no and if you want to know why it is that the system was the republican

00:04:39.800 system was unhealthy to the point where a bunch of guys could come in and wage civil wars against each

00:04:45.020 other and have the whole thing collapse into a dictatorship like what caused that what caused the

00:04:51.000 sickness to begin with and to to understand that you need to go back two or three generations um

00:04:55.940 and so that's how i land on the gracchi and marius and sulla and that their stories and their lives

00:05:04.340 and that generation i mean you've read the book it is an incredibly you know it's action-packed it's

00:05:10.300 fascinating um it's every bit as interesting as anything that caesar ever got up to um and we just

00:05:15.900 we don't ever talk about it so that was i wanted to explore this this topic of if you have a republic that's

00:05:21.880 strong and healthy and then it collapses why does it start to collapse what are what are the things

00:05:26.780 that that really opened up well before we get into why it collapsed let's talk about the roman republic

00:05:32.940 and how it got its start because i think for people to understand why you know the the gravity of it

00:05:39.780 collapsing you have to understand like how amazing it was right how innovative it was so when did the roman

00:05:46.480 republic start and what were its component parts and why was why was it such an anomaly in the ancient

00:05:52.280 world and when it comes to government the legendary founding date of the republic is 509 bc um the book

00:06:01.600 is covering starts at about 146 bc and this is when it starts to collapse the republic then doesn't

00:06:08.240 actually fall fall until like the 20s bc so you're talking about almost 500 years of the of rome existing

00:06:18.200 as a republic a kingless republic which at the time when when rome was founded in 509 bc i mean everything

00:06:25.040 was you know the mediterranean world was mostly city states and most of those just like rome was and

00:06:30.440 just like rome was at the founding of the republic it was they were all kingdoms they were ruled by kings

00:06:34.740 they you know tribes would be ruled by chieftains it was a you know it's the very sort of simple

00:06:38.740 autocratic way of doing business like not even even the greeks uh were only just getting started with

00:06:44.100 with democracy in athens so for the roman republic to not just kick out the usually what happens if

00:06:50.700 if you are angry at a king is you kick out one king and then you bring in a new king you're like okay

00:06:55.640 now you're our king uh we didn't like the old king but now we like you and you're the new king

00:06:59.300 and the the really innovative crazy thing that the romans did is the senate got together they

00:07:04.560 threw out the last king of rome and said look we're done with kings we're just going to have

00:07:09.020 this cooperative government where we rule it you know there's a little ruling clique of senatorial 0.95

00:07:14.720 families and it's an it's an oligarchy but no one of us is going to be a king now this is something

00:07:20.460 that happens in other city states in the mediterranean world and in the ancient world but

00:07:24.740 they would usually collapse after a couple generations they they wouldn't usually last for

00:07:29.340 that long never more than a century and the the insane thing is that the romans year in and year out

00:07:33.960 for 500 years managed to maintain a kingless republic which is which is a fairly remarkable

00:07:39.980 achievement especially given you know the era in which they were living so how did they come

00:07:43.980 to this arrangement of a kingless republic i mean was there like a you know a lawgiver sort of like

00:07:48.980 like kyrgyz of sparta or was it just sort of consensus they decided we're done with that and we're

00:07:54.320 going to go this new route it was very it was very much consensus i would say i mean there's a couple

00:07:58.940 of names that are important public is is a guy who's you know their names will pop up they were

00:08:04.260 early leaders of the republic but the romans the way that they handled their politics and the way

00:08:10.520 that they really handled anything like even running their own personal lives is that they did everything

00:08:15.340 after talking it over with a bunch of people like even running your own household you would get

00:08:20.060 together your friends and be like i'm thinking about buying a new plot of land like what do you think i

00:08:24.120 should do they they came to group decisions a lot whether they're out running a province or whether

00:08:30.880 they're um you know whether now it's how are we going to organize and run our own polity so i think

00:08:37.120 it really was just a bunch of guys getting together in a room and saying look we don't want to have

00:08:42.100 one person ruling over us let's try to devise a bunch of offices and a bunch of electoral processes 0.99

00:08:48.440 that will stop any one of us from ever acquiring absolute power ever again so another unique aspect

00:08:54.500 of the roman republic and their government was there there weren't any written laws instead they

00:08:59.600 lived by an unwritten code called and i think i'm pronouncing this right so if my college latin will

00:09:04.380 you know not fail me morris mayorum yeah uh most mayorum most mayorum so what was that what

00:09:12.500 what constituted most mayorum so what it is uh you know the romans do have some written law right

00:09:19.040 there's the 12 tables of the law um which was you know written shortly after the republic is founded

00:09:24.260 but yeah they didn't do much in the way they didn't they weren't constantly legislating things

00:09:29.580 and they certainly didn't have any sort of like napoleonic code level of detail for um what was legal

00:09:34.960 what was illegal what you could do what you couldn't do it was just um it was a it was a traditions

00:09:40.760 of behavior and modes of just norms of behavior that each generation would take from the generation

00:09:48.740 that preceded it they would imbibe it they would internalize it and then they would continue to

00:09:53.320 behave in the same way and that alone just the way i don't know if it was the real some something in

00:09:59.980 the dna or something in the water but the romans were very small c conservative people they didn't they

00:10:06.920 didn't need a ton of innovation they were very happy to model their own behavior off the off the

00:10:12.080 behavior of their fathers there wasn't there didn't seem to be the same need to like rebel and make new

00:10:17.360 things and innovate and and you know launch yourself forward into the future uh that is so common in the

00:10:23.600 modern world the romans that would have been i was all alien to them they liked the idea that things

00:10:28.620 were the same now as they were from for their fathers and then my sons and my daughters will live in

00:10:33.920 the same basic world that i live in and because they were so instinctively drawn to that way of life

00:10:41.200 you don't need a ton of rules and laws to say you can't do this and you can't do that because they

00:10:45.560 would just naturally behave in a certain way and this uh the most mayorum that i mean as we will talk

00:10:52.680 about here in a bit but the breakdown the republic was basically it just followed the breakdown of most

00:10:57.560 mayorum right because if you hone in specifically on the political side of it you know it's it's

00:11:05.020 custom that you know when you're when you're a consul and you um and your your term of office is up you

00:11:10.340 don't say oh i'm going to use whatever power i have at my disposal right now uh to stay in power you're

00:11:15.600 just going to you're going to resign and the next guy's going to take over and then even with

00:11:20.640 dictatorships the romans did it even though they had this dual consulship where two men were elected each

00:11:25.660 year and then they would only serve for a year before they returned to the citizen body in times

00:11:31.020 of emergency they had an office called dictator and that person was in fact given absolute power

00:11:36.760 and the remarkable thing is that over the course of these 500 years that the republic existed

00:11:41.980 every time the romans handed absolute power to somebody they set down their office when when the

00:11:49.700 when the dictatorship expired usually it was after six months and a lot of this is just you only

00:11:55.520 did that because that's the way that things had always been done and by the time that you get to

00:12:00.260 the period of my book however is people are now questioning how bound they really ought to be

00:12:07.760 by any of this and that if you want power i mean power is very seductive power is always going to be

00:12:12.960 seductive even to the romans and people started at roman leaders started asking themselves you know like

00:12:17.800 why should i follow these things that inhibit my own ability to be the best and the strongest and have the

00:12:24.700 most influence when at the end of the day if i just push harder or if i pull out like a sword or

00:12:31.220 threaten you with the with the leg of a bench um maybe i can just get my way and then when i have

00:12:38.140 power there won't be anything you can do to challenge me which unfortunately at the end of the day is true

00:12:42.660 political power rests on force uh not modes of behavior or norms or even written laws so uh before we get

00:12:50.320 into you know sort of the collapse here let's talk about the the the component parts of the republic

00:12:55.980 because that i think that's important to understand uh so you mentioned there's the consulship uh which

00:13:01.080 was basically like the executive branch right correct yeah and then there was a senate and i'm guessing

00:13:06.460 that was uh yeah like what we have and then there was the assembly um i'm curious with the senate and the

00:13:12.720 assembly were there who depending on who your social class did it did that determine what you

00:13:19.800 ended up in if you were a senator or and it's just an assemblyman yeah um so the the you know we have

00:13:26.220 our today we have like our three branches of government there's the executive branch and the

00:13:29.920 legislative branch and the judicial branch so the romans had you know three branches of their

00:13:35.180 constitution but they didn't it wasn't exactly that that same categorization so you had the consuls

00:13:40.820 and they were the executive the sort of monarchical branch the senate then represented an aristocratic

00:13:47.540 element uh which is the the wealthiest families and most prominent noble families would be in the

00:13:53.880 senate and then the assemblies were ostensibly at least a body where all roman citizens were were

00:14:00.860 constituent parts of the assembly like you could vote in the assembly the senate was not nobody was

00:14:06.300 elected to the senate uh you were appointed by a guy called the there was a particular office called

00:14:11.680 the censor and every five years uh he would go through the the list of who was in the senate and

00:14:16.560 who wasn't in the senate and there was there was i mean there was a straight-up wealth requirement to

00:14:21.140 be a member of the senate you had to own so much land you had to have so much property to your name

00:14:26.200 uh to qualify for admission into the senate and then you also needed to be elected to an office so you

00:14:32.480 need so it was really the the elite of the elite both in terms of wealth and political power are in

00:14:37.340 the senate whereas over in the assembly anybody can vote in the assembly and there there were we i don't

00:14:44.340 think we need to get too deep into the weeds on the different types of assemblies there's there's

00:14:47.980 different uh there's different versions of it there's a plebeian assembly though that is specifically

00:14:52.800 reserved for the common plebeians of rome that specifically excluded the nobility so there was this

00:14:59.780 one place the plebeian assembly where at least allegedly um this is where the people were able

00:15:05.960 to insert themselves and uh and have some measure of power and control over the course of roman politics

00:15:13.340 and how the state was run gotcha so let's uh get into where your book picks up um as you said republic

00:15:19.960 started 500 bc by 146 bc rome had defeated carthage in the third punic war and this is kind of where

00:15:28.240 your book picks up and it seems like this victorious moment um for the romans was in many ways the the

00:15:33.960 beginning of the end for the republic what was it about these military victories that the romans

00:15:39.060 experienced you know with the punic wars that kind of sowed the seeds for destruction of the republic 1.00

00:15:45.260 there's a there's a lot at work in it where yeah rome rome started you know as a as a little

00:15:54.180 kingdom founded by romulus way back in the 700s bc and it's just this minor city state in italy

00:16:00.460 and then over the centuries they grow and they grow they take over italy and then they start expanding

00:16:06.180 out of italy and they run into carthage and they have this huge war that goes on for 200 years that

00:16:12.840 by the end of that uh rome and rome's legions i mean they're the most powerful thing in the

00:16:19.140 mediterranean world there's there's nothing that even kind of comes close to matching their power at 1.00

00:16:23.780 this point um even if they only technically control territory in the western mediterranean still

00:16:29.580 anytime they decided to go east they were just going to run roughshod over the like the decaying

00:16:33.860 hellenic kingdoms so reaching that pinnacle of success and power had a lot of had a lot of negative

00:16:40.880 impacts on the uh the health of the republic so for example you start having a massive influx of new

00:16:48.440 wealth into italy because i mean they're the most powerful thing they have all the gold they

00:16:53.620 control all the trade routes um so italy becomes wildly rich much much richer than it had been

00:16:59.880 even a century earlier and most of that new wealth wound up in the pockets naturally of the leaders

00:17:06.960 of rome the senate of rome the because the the consuls and the various uh senators are the ones who

00:17:12.540 are out there leading the armies they're the ones who are you know winning the spoils of war so it's very

00:17:17.460 natural that they would be the ones to um to control the new wealth that's coming in and controlling all

00:17:22.740 the slaves that are coming in because this is also rome's transformation from being a society that

00:17:28.220 had slaves as all mediterranean societies did to a society that was really run by slaves where all 0.96

00:17:35.440 the economic activity just about was you know from just the brute labor of digging ditches to uh fine

00:17:41.560 craft work being produced in the cities is all being done by slaves or their freedmen descendants 1.00

00:17:47.120 so you have this massive influx of new wealth that is going into the hands of very few people

00:17:52.000 the regular folks of rome on the other hand are kind of being shut out of all of that new wealth and

00:17:59.260 they start seeing their own fortunes decline so rome itself is benefiting massively financially

00:18:05.620 from their victories over over carthage and in greece and in spain but the success was really only

00:18:12.320 being held by a very very few people at the very top and that started dislocating traditional ways

00:18:17.520 of life in italy and it started creating a lot of tension between the rich and the poor which is you

00:18:22.580 know if we get into we'll get into tiberius gracchus and what he was trying to accomplish but then there's

00:18:27.480 another there's another element to this where then this goes back to arguments that roman historians

00:18:32.540 themselves made when they looked back on on why the republic started to collapse is that after the defeat of

00:18:38.440 carthage rome doesn't really have a major foreign threat that holds them together or that holds the

00:18:46.020 elite together where they don't feel like they need to to work in lockstep with each other because even

00:18:51.420 though they were all you know you're all senators you're all of a particular political class i mean

00:18:55.840 we know this today just because you're rich and powerful that doesn't mean you get along with other

00:18:59.700 rich and powerful people you they're often your most intense rivals and i think prior to the end of the

00:19:05.340 punic wars there was a there was a an understanding that rome had threats that it was facing that they

00:19:13.420 couldn't that the internal political elites couldn't let their own rivalries get too far out of hand or

00:19:18.620 it would destroy rome once you don't have that enemy binding them together anymore they start to turn on

00:19:24.420 each other and they're starting to use this new wealth not to fight the enemies of rome but to fight each

00:19:29.720 other and once you once those political rivalries among the elite started to break out into kind of

00:19:36.600 open warfare i mean then it was just how long until the republic falls right so extreme income inequality

00:19:42.820 is one of the one of the things that happened because of the the punic wars um and so as you said

00:19:48.740 they're all there was this income inequality so there's people putting out reform ideas economic reform

00:19:53.560 ideas large-scale economic reform ideas you mentioned tiberius gracchus what's his background what was his

00:19:59.160 reform idea to you know basically make things good with rome again well so the ironic thing about uh

00:20:05.680 tiberius gracchus is that he came from the i mean the inner inner circle of the roman nobility i don't

00:20:12.160 think that they're him and his brother gaius it would be hard to describe sort of better connected

00:20:18.040 people i mean if they were in medieval times you'd be saying that they were like the inner circle royal

00:20:22.840 family where their fathers and their grandfathers were some of the most famous heroes in roman history and

00:20:29.100 you know their mother was one of the most famous women in roman history cornelia africana so they

00:20:35.260 they come from the inner circle of the nobility but rather than using their connections and using

00:20:40.140 what power they have and using the education uh that they were that they were given to just simply keep

00:20:46.000 going uh how it to keep things going the way they had always been run they identify reforms that need to

00:20:54.920 be made to the way the republic has run especially in the wake of their victories because it was

00:20:59.380 getting quite clear that there were economic and social problems that needed to be addressed but

00:21:04.500 the senate was not addressing and so yeah so tiberius gracchus and then 10 years later his brother

00:21:08.920 guys will come along and they will try to institute some some very necessary reforms like one of them was

00:21:13.960 the lex agraria that that theme seemed that that thing seemed to like just go on and on and on for

00:21:19.780 like 10 or 20 years before it actually got put into place right so yeah and tiberius's plan and he's

00:21:26.440 he's working with a couple of other um rich senators and the basic program is all of the poor roman farmers 0.99

00:21:33.040 the citizen farmers of rome over the over the previous generation had sort of been pushed off their land

00:21:38.580 as rich senatorial magnates have all of this new wealth that they've acquired and they're looking

00:21:44.960 for places to invest it and they start buying everybody out or maybe you know your husband has

00:21:50.720 gone off to war and he never came back and now you just have this dilapidated little plot and you lose

00:21:55.700 it so families the poorer families started to lose their land the richer families started to acquire these

00:22:01.040 these massive extensive estates and tiberius gracchus came in with the lex agraria and it was really quite

00:22:07.180 simple there was a there was technically a limit to how much of a certain kind of land you were allowed to

00:22:12.840 own those limits had been disregarded for generations and he said look we're gonna we're gonna impose

00:22:18.160 we're gonna start following this law that we actually do have and i'm gonna break up some of

00:22:23.660 these big estates i'm gonna chop those into manageable chunks and i'm gonna redistribute them

00:22:27.920 to poor roman citizens so that people can have land again so that we don't lose uh what made rome great

00:22:34.980 which is the the strong independent citizen farmer but a lot of people didn't like that idea obviously

00:22:41.220 right the the rich landowners did not like that idea um one bit and uh they they took it as but

00:22:49.040 they took it as a threat not just to not just like there's going to be some commission that comes around

00:22:53.640 and you know take some of your land they also believed that what tiberius gracchus was doing was

00:22:59.820 not just reforming not just making social and economic reforms but that he was going to use this to

00:23:06.180 acquire massive amounts of political power because if he's the guy who comes in as the champion of the

00:23:13.080 people and distributes all of this land i mean he is you know we get to the end of chapter one and

00:23:19.040 he's managed to acquire quite a bit of power and popularity and you go all the way back to the

00:23:23.980 beginning of the founding of the republic and the principal idea here is that no one person is ever

00:23:29.940 supposed to acquire this much power and if somebody starts to accumulate a lot of power and a lot of

00:23:35.340 popularity the other noble families would sort of circle the wagons and and gang up on that guy and

00:23:40.620 beat him beat him and his family back into place and that's what happened with tiberius where there's

00:23:46.500 this big question you know was he was he doing this land redistribution for noble purposes right to help

00:23:52.060 the poor citizens of rome or was he doing it just cynically to accumulate um political power for

00:23:58.620 himself which is certainly what his enemies always said and you know why he gets his head bashed in

00:24:03.900 with uh with a with a bench right at the end of chapter one yeah i mean that was crazy i mean you

00:24:09.940 start seeing the breakdown of uh most mayorum here and their political process i mean what political

00:24:16.900 and social precedents did the politicking of the lex agraria establish in rome after that point with

00:24:23.120 tiberius gracchus oh yeah it i mean it was so unprecedented in so many ways um and as i said at the end of

00:24:31.380 chapter one really the thing that became a major problem is like this tit for tat escalation of

00:24:38.680 breaking norms where there's a very small kernel that starts where traditionally according to most

00:24:45.860 mayorum if you were a tribune which is what tiberius gracchus was he had been elected tribune of the

00:24:50.480 plebs and this is how he's going to introduce the lexic area is if you were a tribune and you had some

00:24:55.080 new law that you wanted to introduce you showed it to the senate first and because they were the

00:24:59.680 fathers of of the they were the fathers of rome and they you know they would give you their reasoned

00:25:04.500 um opinion on the law and either say like yes you should do this or no you shouldn't

00:25:08.800 but there were so many people inside the senate who were vehemently opposed to uh land redistribution

00:25:14.460 because they were the rich magnates who were going to lose their land um in all likelihood if

00:25:20.060 tiberius had brought it to them they would have not they would have said don't do this and so he just

00:25:25.060 skipped that part of the process uh even though traditionally that's what you were supposed to do and

00:25:28.920 instead he just introduced it directly to the people so this sets off warning bells inside the

00:25:33.920 senate so what do they do they go hire uh another tribune who has this one of the powers that a 0.98

00:25:40.340 tribune has is just the ability to veto really any legislation or any matter before that comes before the

00:25:46.360 assembly so they in essence hire this guy named octavius this tribune named octavius to veto the

00:25:52.380 reading of tiberius's lexigraria so it can't even be brought before the people um this is another

00:25:59.220 break this is a so now we're now we've ratcheted things up because in the past if a tribune levied

00:26:05.080 a veto against a bill that was very popular and the lexigraria was very popular and it was going to pass

00:26:10.280 they would back down they would say okay i've sort of registered my symbolic opposition to this bill but

00:26:16.200 it's very popular so now i'm gonna withdraw my veto and let it go forward well octavius doesn't do that

00:26:21.160 octavius just keeps his veto in place no matter how popular it is no matter how many people are

00:26:25.700 screaming at him to um to drop the veto he just won't do it uh so the only way out of this for

00:26:31.980 tiberius is either to back down and withdraw the lexigraria or ratchet things up still it's still

00:26:38.420 another step further so he tiberius gracchus vetoes all legislation he says we're not doing anything

00:26:43.260 the whole state is shut down until we have a showdown over this lexigraria until you back down i'm

00:26:48.560 going to you nobody's going to sign a contract there's going to be no um no judicial proceedings

00:26:52.900 nobody can you know take out a loan everything is shut down so now rome is shut down over this

00:26:57.560 which leads the senate to attack tiberius still further which leads tiberius to make the next

00:27:03.620 step in the in the ratcheting up where he deposes octavius from from office he gets the assembly to

00:27:09.280 get together and vote which had never been done before you were never supposed to have the people

00:27:14.380 vote out a tribune that they had just voted in in the first place so it's just this like

00:27:18.520 this very simple little bill about land redistribution suddenly becomes about something

00:27:23.860 way way more than just the the reform that tiberius is trying to make and you start seeing people doing

00:27:30.920 things way out of bounds just really to block your opponents um to stop your opponent from getting

00:27:37.440 their way and that's that's really when things that entire precedent from that year of 133 bc then

00:27:43.660 sort of lived in everybody's memory and you remembered how then it ultimately ended which is

00:27:49.540 you know the senate a couple of conservative senators leading an armed mob against tiberius

00:27:54.200 gracus and literally beating him and his uh and his opponents to death to stop it yeah that's crazy i

00:27:59.740 mean i was trying to imagine you know what that must have been like and like in the other part of the

00:28:04.440 breakdown of most my arm like sometimes they were there's like they were beating them down in a place

00:28:08.300 where you weren't supposed to beat them down right it was supposed to be sort of sacred um but they're

00:28:12.480 like yeah yeah yeah this is inside this is inside the palmarium right and and the reason they have

00:28:17.700 to use um you know table legs um and various other like just bludgeons is because you weren't allowed

00:28:24.260 to carry weapons inside inside that sacred boundary of rome and so in in chapter one you have guys going

00:28:31.200 up there with you know fists and you know various things you know like a rock just to like beat somebody

00:28:35.240 up because you can't take a sword inside there well you know by the end of the book you have entire armies

00:28:40.280 marching into that area like solo marches on rome with an army and crosses that boundary so

00:28:45.360 it's all these things like these little these little things that happened you know in the 130s

00:28:49.460 and the 120s they just sort of slowly snowball and once these precedents get set that you can actually

00:28:54.820 win by just literally physically beating up your opponents um it's that's a tough lesson to unlearn

00:29:00.900 yeah and i thought it was interesting all these reformers i think one thing they all had in common

00:29:04.480 was that they had this idea of you know going back to the way things were right so they're

00:29:09.540 kind of conservative but at the same time to do that they had to break with tradition

00:29:14.640 in order to accomplish those goals and that kind of led to them not being able to achieve the goal

00:29:19.340 that they had in mind which was let's go back to the way things were when the republic was first founded

00:29:24.120 it is you have correctly identified um a hot mess of contradiction that was uh it was going on with

00:29:31.760 these guys whether the grok guy who yeah there's there's a you can frame everything that they were doing

00:29:37.540 as we're trying to restore things to the way that they once were like things have gotten out of whack

00:29:42.820 and we're trying to bring it back um and then you go all the way to fast forward all the way to the

00:29:47.720 end of the book and sulla you know he is absolutely at least in his own mind believes that he is going

00:29:54.820 to restore the republic to what it was originally but yeah to get there i mean he breaks every he breaks

00:30:01.440 every rule in the book you know he's got heads mounted in the forum uh in pursuit of his traditional

00:30:08.180 political morality um so yeah it's uh it's it's good it's good sometimes if you're a leader to not

00:30:15.320 think too hard about uh what you're doing because otherwise it would break your head because you

00:30:20.760 would realize that you were you were like i say a hot mess of contradictions right so besides this

00:30:27.460 income um inequality that they were trying to battle they are also had a migrant problem

00:30:33.880 um particularly people from the north uh these were the is it the kimbry or the yeah i mean you know

00:30:40.300 everybody has their preferred uh pronunciation i've always gone with kimbry okay kimbry so who were the

00:30:45.780 kimbry and why did they start appearing in italy about this time the kimbry are a a very large you know

00:30:54.500 it's tough to say ethnically what they were but you know germanic um germanic people who originated i

00:31:00.520 think the best guess is in modern denmark is where they were coming from and they set off in about the

00:31:08.820 120s um you know in about 120 on a on a very large civilizational migration right this wasn't just like

00:31:16.780 you know like a like a wagon train or two um this wasn't just like a a group uh that went off i mean

00:31:22.380 we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people and they picked up and they left uh modern

00:31:27.520 denmark for nobody quite knows why i mean there's actually some some very interesting little stray

00:31:33.060 references and um i think it's strabo where they talk about how maybe the sea level had risen and and

00:31:39.320 uh and wrecked where where it was that they had been living there was some kind of weird climate change

00:31:43.240 uh that had gone on so they start moving south and they're looking for a new home but well most

00:31:49.200 places are inhabited already so they just kind of keep moving and keep moving and keep moving and

00:31:53.840 then um you know by the by the five or six years later they are they're showing up really knocking

00:31:59.660 on italy's door which is they're at the alps and you know the romans like everybody else don't like

00:32:05.400 the idea of these hundreds of thousands of people um wandering through their territory so they start

00:32:10.680 getting into a series of clashes with the kimbry that are called the kimbrick wars and how that

00:32:15.340 turn out for the romans how'd that work out for the romans i worked out very badly for the romans

00:32:19.920 for a very long time every time they fought the kimbry they got uh i don't know what the level of 0.98

00:32:27.160 swearing is on this podcast but they got their asses kicked uh over and over again the interesting 0.89

00:32:32.220 thing about the kimbry is that even though they're often portrayed as wanting to come down and invade 0.97

00:32:38.520 italy and uh the romans are fighting them off to prevent them from invading italy every time the

00:32:45.100 kimbry win a battle they just kind of walk away they they show up in like one now i'm gonna forget

00:32:52.000 the date but i think it was 113 they defeat the romans in battle and instead of going into italy they

00:32:57.180 just keep going up into gaul which is modern france then they circle back around after migrating some

00:33:02.760 more like four years later they beat the romans again in battle in gaul and again don't invade italy

00:33:07.740 and then even the third time that they beat the romans in battle four or five years after that again

00:33:13.260 they don't invade italy and it's not until the fourth time they come back around this is after

00:33:17.520 the romans have been fighting with them um you know for 15 years that they finally decide okay well now

00:33:22.600 we're going to push into italy and try to try to make our home there as opposed to anywhere else and

00:33:27.280 what the kimbry were up to during this whole period is just it's a complete historical mystery um

00:33:32.620 because the romans never took much time to try to understand what the kimbry's motivations were or what

00:33:38.220 they were trying to do or why is it that they never did find a home and they just kept

00:33:41.860 wandering around europe for like like 15 or 20 years um the whole thing is just kind of a mystery

00:33:46.820 that ends with them yeah finally pushing their way into italy uh but getting destroyed by gaius marius

00:33:53.320 and that's the end of the kimbry yeah and so i'm guessing this the the encounters of the kimbry

00:33:58.820 they were just expending a lot of the romans were expending a lot of resources that they probably

00:34:02.620 shouldn't have been expending yeah i mean the and the kimbry were swallowing legions whole um where 0.99

00:34:09.240 you know there was the famously the the battle of arousio is one of the biggest you know disasters

00:34:15.400 uh in the whole history of the empire not just like this part of the book but you know there's

00:34:19.920 some battles that hannibal won and then there's some later stuff against like attila where um or

00:34:25.220 some of those later wars that are you know the romans were losing 50 60 70 000 people in battle and

00:34:31.440 this is one of them where the kimbry just swallow like 50 000 50 000 legionaries uh in a single day 0.99

00:34:37.960 and it's interesting because this time period you know in in the book too is you talk a lot about

00:34:44.720 their war with jugurtha and everything that was going on where there's been this whole new uh new

00:34:50.460 this new uh problem that's opened up in rome with this uh with the corruption of the senate and

00:34:54.860 jugurtha bribing senators to not go to war with him and it seems very clear that one of the reasons

00:34:59.620 why the senate didn't want to go to war with jugurtha in north africa is because they have this

00:35:04.360 recurring problem on their northern border of these great hordes um crossing over and just

00:35:09.440 overwhelming all roman defenses okay so you mentioned gaius marius he's the guy that kind of

00:35:13.840 put the end to the kimbry uh who was this guy and um why was he considered the third founder of rome

00:35:21.600 gaius marius was he was a uh he was a new man right this is a concept that gets uh introduced in the book

00:35:29.520 the novus homo where the the consulships the high offices uh admission into the senate is all tightly 0.82

00:35:38.100 controlled by the noble families of rome and a noble family by this point is defined as somebody

00:35:44.520 who has a consular ancestor right where if you've if your father or your grandfather your great

00:35:49.660 grandfather uh had achieved the consulship then your whole family was then ennobled uh you you became

00:35:56.400 one of the elite of the elite and those families tried to keep the consulship uh in their own in

00:36:02.180 their own hands they didn't want to share with anybody else they didn't like it when quote unquote

00:36:06.040 new men showed up uh and gaius marius was a new man he was he's not some like hard scrabble uh commoner

00:36:13.320 he comes from a very affluent family uh from a city not too far away from rome but he had no consular

00:36:19.320 ancestors he was a novus homo um but he was incredibly ambitious and so he wanted to push 0.99

00:36:26.260 his way into power and he ultimately was able to push his way into power thanks to again the the

00:36:32.740 constant now complaints about the corruption and the self-centeredness of the senate he was able to

00:36:37.960 kind of harness a lot of those a lot of the same energy that drove the gracchi uh gaius marius was

00:36:43.020 able to harness a lot of that for his own for his own aims and he manages to push his way into the

00:36:48.220 consulship um and by that point it's also very clear that gaius marius is one of the best generals

00:36:54.680 that rome has ever seen and this has been constantly one of his own complaints is that

00:37:00.380 by keeping the consulships in the hands of the nobility it didn't matter if you were a good

00:37:06.620 general or a bad general or a good leader or a bad leader it just mattered whether or not you were

00:37:10.960 noble um so gaius marius is sitting there as easily the most talented um general that rome had and they

00:37:18.000 were trying to keep him out of rome's wars like this is a crazy thing to do just from a from a straight

00:37:22.800 like meritocracy standpoint you want your best generals and your best people to be in charge of

00:37:27.740 the armies and marius was being blocked from that but by the time the kimbry come along he has 1.00

00:37:33.020 finally he successfully achieved the consulship and he's proven that he's the best man for the job and

00:37:38.500 they finally do send him and he succeeds where everybody else failed i mean the romans had done

00:37:43.120 nothing but fail and fail and fail and fail against the kimbry um until marius comes along and was 0.95

00:37:48.760 that why he got the third founder of rome title because he defeated the kimbry or what what 0.97

00:37:52.880 happened what else did he do right okay so this this third founder of rome business is um it it's crazy

00:37:58.480 because obviously the first founder of rome is romulus right he's the founder of rome um the second

00:38:04.700 founder of rome is a now somewhat obscure figure named marcus furious camillus who uh there there's this

00:38:12.120 there's this episode way back in like the 390s 380s bc where where a horde of um of of gauls

00:38:17.920 came into italy sacked rome and they were the the defeated romans are looking kind of at the the

00:38:25.200 ruins of their city and they're wondering whether or not they should even rebuild and uh camillus is

00:38:30.000 the guy who says no we should stay here we should rebuild so it's very natural to call him the second

00:38:34.520 founder of rome right that makes a lot of sense well you fast forward um and what what marius has done

00:38:40.000 is simply delivered uh delivered rome from the threat of the kimbry which is a great accomplishment but 1.00

00:38:47.500 uh i'm not quite i i was never i've never entirely been sure how he of all the heroes that rome had

00:38:53.920 had i mean scipio africanus was had saved rome from hannibal right i i've it's never been entirely

00:39:00.260 clear to me why scipio africanus for example was not considered the third founder of rome uh for finally

00:39:05.240 delivering rome from from hannibal but guys marius gets to be called the third founder of rome uh for

00:39:10.220 beating the kimbry so it's a it's a good question that is it's a you know it's a nice thing it's a nice

00:39:15.880 title that he got but i've never entirely been sure where it came from so one of the reforms that

00:39:21.140 he made as general was he exempted land the land ownership requirement for soldiers why did he have

00:39:28.760 to do that and why was that such a big deal so the thing to understand about the way that war worked in

00:39:35.720 the ancient world and certainly in rome is that you actually had to be rich enough to serve in the

00:39:42.940 armies you had to you had to own land to serve in the armies um which is kind of the opposite of

00:39:49.400 what we think of armies today where it's typically the ranks of the military are filled with um with

00:39:55.460 the poorest members of a society as opposed to the richest members but or in the in the early days you

00:40:01.200 know you had to outfit yourself you had to provide your own uh you know equipment and spears and horses

00:40:06.140 and all that so you you actually had to own enough to serve in the military well by the time that we're

00:40:13.180 that gaius marius comes along in the time of the gracchi right what's one of these big problems that

00:40:17.280 we've seen is um is all the poor all the poorer citizens the people who did have land who did

00:40:22.700 qualify to serve in the legions now losing that land and now you have fewer and fewer people who are

00:40:28.000 able to enter the ranks of the legions and you have a real conscription crisis where it's it's becoming

00:40:33.560 more difficult uh to fill the legions year in and year out and then you know you send off you send

00:40:39.140 all these people off against the kimbry and they get annihilated like okay well you've just lost the 0.99

00:40:43.460 ability to conscript any of those people ever again because because they're dead um well what do you what

00:40:50.240 are you ultimately going to do are you going to hold on to this idea that you need to have a certain

00:40:54.780 amount of wealth to serve in the legions uh or are you just going to say let's just drop this

00:41:00.120 requirement altogether and you can you can conscript from anybody and you know given the emergency

00:41:06.560 situation that marius was up against and that rome was up against they decided to drop the property

00:41:12.700 requirement for service in the legion which was even at that point still very nominal like it wasn't even

00:41:17.060 that much um but they finally got rid of it and yeah all of the um the poor plebs the the you know 1.00

00:41:23.240 who had really no other place to go signed up uh to go serve with gaius marius and hopefully get rich

00:41:30.520 in the army and how did that affect the military did it uh was it a detriment or did it actually help

00:41:36.420 that was the thing that helped marius defeat the kimbry finally it's definitely it's one of those

00:41:41.240 things that it's a mixed bag right where if they didn't drop the property requirement eventually rome

00:41:46.780 would have been overwhelmed by their enemies um you know even if even if they had defeated carthage

00:41:52.120 once upon a time uh somebody would come along the kimbry would come along or some other power would

00:41:56.640 eventually rise and they simply rome would would simply not be able to meet the challenge um once 0.72

00:42:02.720 they dropped the property requirement they are able to tap into an even deeper well of of um of

00:42:08.700 conscripts and and population so they were able the romans from this point on once you drop that

00:42:12.980 property requirement i mean they can conscript like crazy and by the time you get to the wars of

00:42:17.340 julius caesar um the civil wars and then the imperial um armies that that wind up running uh the

00:42:24.180 the frontiers of the empire then for the next couple centuries i mean you're talking about

00:42:27.420 hundreds of thousands of people uh under arms which would not have been possible uh without this

00:42:33.340 without dropping this property requirement the negative side of it is and you know many commentators

00:42:39.980 again going back to the romans themselves noticed that uh when you were a citizen farmer who was

00:42:45.780 conscripted for a short campaign and then you went back to your farm uh you had this there was this um

00:42:53.060 identification of the citizen with you know rome with the army it was all kind of the same thing

00:42:58.900 once you bring all these uh these poor conscripts in their loyalty to the state itself is very suspect 1.00

00:43:06.640 uh their loyalty is mostly to the general who was the one who was going to lead them in battle and

00:43:12.580 enrich them because they're going to now they're going to get slaves they're going to get money

00:43:15.700 they're going to get booty um and at the end of the day like if if a general says if a general for

00:43:21.720 the last couple years has kept you you know whatever poor private in the roman legions if you're getting 1.00

00:43:26.800 rich off of this guy um and he says well look you know i've got some political enemies in rome i think 0.99

00:43:32.440 we need to go i think we need to go march on rome and kick the crap out of them you're you're going to 0.95

00:43:37.080 listen to your general as opposed to feel any sort of tug of like well wait a minute you know oh the 0.97

00:43:42.180 the senate and people of rome is a sacred thing it's it's not really a sacred thing to you if you

00:43:47.320 are just um if you've been poor and you've been left behind and you've been kind of spat on by the

00:43:51.400 nobility your whole life well yeah why not follow this general uh hope he wins and when he does you

00:43:57.280 get rich along with him or at least you know richer than you had been all right so speaking of a

00:44:01.560 general who did this leads us nicely to sola uh well i i do try to keep the segues very natural

00:44:07.880 no very very very very very good very impressive so who was this sola guy and what were his political

00:44:13.520 uh aims sola is he's on the other side so like gaius marius was you know a nobody a novus homo 0.98

00:44:23.700 um who had to fight and plot his way up the um you know up the ranks uh sola comes from one of

00:44:31.280 these old patrician noble families now his his own family in the last couple generations hadn't

00:44:36.860 been much to speak of but he he had all the blood he had all the aristocratic the aristocratic air

00:44:43.700 all all the advantage all basically all the advantages that marius uh did not have so it did have

00:44:48.640 and he is just like any other roman in that he would at least any other roman noble incredibly

00:44:55.620 ambitious he wants to be the most powerful man he wants to be uh the most influential man uh he

00:45:00.560 wants to be rich he wants to be powerful and he again he just rises on up through the ranks

00:45:06.400 without really ever trying too hard he's supremely talented and supremely charismatic um but he he wants

00:45:13.520 to be the most important most powerful man in rome and so what did he what did he do to achieve that

00:45:20.780 that end well in the beginning he's just doing his his normal thing or the normal thing that anybody

00:45:27.280 would do he runs for office and he starts rising up the ranks and but he winds up becoming especially

00:45:33.200 a model for julius caesar right there there's a lot of similarities between the career of caesar and the

00:45:39.680 career of sulla where sulla is coming along in the one teens and for lack of a better way of putting it so

00:45:47.920 after so after the gracchi um is when sulla shows up and sulla is definitely somebody who recognizes

00:45:54.800 that his ambition doesn't necessarily have to be bound by these old rules of most myrom that if he is

00:46:03.760 in a tight spot that he can just circumvent whatever the rules of fair play are supposed to be you know he

00:46:11.280 even though he was a noble um you know he too can look at guys gracchus and tiberius gracchus and some of the

00:46:16.480 things that marius did um and say well if you know if my enemies are backing me into a corner why don't

00:46:23.280 i just do an end run around them and it you know all this it starts with him even just subtly you know

00:46:30.000 him him and marius had this had this rivalry uh throughout their entire lives where sulla is about 15

00:46:35.680 like 10 or 15 years younger than marius where sulla starts to subtly undermine marius in a way that

00:46:43.920 by all rules of tradition by all rules of most myorum you know sulla should be exalting marius and

00:46:49.600 saying that marius did this and marius did this great thing but sulla starts taking credit for

00:46:53.520 things um that marius doesn't think that sulla should be taking credit for me read the book this

00:46:58.320 this is all those will all be explained probably better than i'm doing it right now um but it was

00:47:03.440 very it's very clear from very early that sulla is not going to feel bound by any kind of traditional

00:47:08.240 rules of behavior if those rules are standing between him and power but the interesting thing

00:47:12.800 was that sulla like some of the other reformers he like he he said that his goal was to take rome back

00:47:19.200 to its root he was restoring he restoring rome the republic but he was kind of the guy like you said he

00:47:25.760 kind of set the president for julius caesar and the rise of the empire yeah so so as we said earlier um

00:47:33.440 he's he's the classic hot mess of contradictions where he he does consider himself to be a divinely

00:47:40.960 appointed figure like literally like the gods are using me as a vessel to restore the balance of the

00:47:48.400 old republican constitution to sort of turn back the clock on some of the things that the grok i had

00:47:53.840 introduced some of the more populist leanings the populist direction that rome had taken over the past

00:48:00.160 couple of decades and he was going to restore the aristocracy in the senate to its proper place

00:48:05.600 as the center and leading power and leading light of rome um so this is all very traditional roman

00:48:12.160 republican morality but to achieve this end uh yeah i mean he he does nothing now there's nothing

00:48:19.040 conservative about what sulla what sulla does he he gets there's a part in the book where he's you know

00:48:25.360 six he's outmaneuvered by his enemies and they wind up um expelling him from uh from the office that he

00:48:31.360 had and rather than just take it like he you know you would expect somebody to you know i got beat fair

00:48:37.680 and square you know he just turned his armies on rome and said no that's not going to be the end of me

00:48:43.040 um so yeah even though his object was extraordinarily conservative his his um his actions were were very

00:48:48.640 radical and then by the end of the book he's established this new constitution which is supposedly

00:48:56.400 going to restore the republic um to its former glory but the people who came after him the generations

00:49:03.280 after him julius caesar pompey you know crassus those guys they they don't care about the written

00:49:09.600 constitution that sulla has laid down they just looked at his biography they looked at his life and they

00:49:14.720 said look if if you're powerful enough and you're daring enough and bold enough um you can do anything

00:49:20.560 you want that's that's the lesson of sulla's life yeah not not we should just follow the senate yeah

00:49:26.960 so the complete breakdown of most mayorum yeah i think sulla pretty much represents that in spades

00:49:32.160 yeah and then this is basically this is the storm before the storm republic falls i mean what at what

00:49:37.120 point would you say like yeah the republic no longer exists it is now officially roman empire was it just

00:49:43.440 when the caesar was made yeah it's it's a that's another one of these great you know running debates

00:49:49.040 in history um because where do where do you where do you mark the end of the republic um you know you

00:49:56.080 say okay well julius caesar comes along and you know in the 40s bc it could you could say it was from

00:50:00.480 when he uh you know when he crossed the rubicon in 49 bc that was the end of it or you could say oh and

00:50:05.520 he was himself appointed dictator for life five years later which is right before they assassinated him and

00:50:10.480 then but then his heirs mark antony and octavian wind up fighting a battle with the last remnants

00:50:16.240 of the senatorial aristocracy a couple years later and you could maybe mark that as the end of the

00:50:21.600 republic or then as we know if we watch movies like cleopatra um octavian and mark antony have

00:50:27.840 a whole series of civil war so maybe the fall of the republic is is when octavian triumphs and becomes

00:50:34.160 augustus which is you know in the 20s bc but um the thing about all this is that then augustus

00:50:40.160 is an incredibly savvy political operator and he maintains the entire functioning facade of the

00:50:46.560 republic for his regime you know there was never a point in augustus's life and he's he's rome's first

00:50:53.040 emperor uh where he says i am the emperor now i'm i'm the all-powerful emperor there's that is doesn't

00:50:59.040 happen um so for for the next couple of hundred years the facade of the republic continues to exist

00:51:06.400 where there's still elections there's still consuls there's still assemblies but it's all just been

00:51:11.920 it's all manipulated and real power is held um by this by the imperial family so traditionally you say

00:51:19.040 uh the rise of augustus who's octate areas uh julius caesar's great nephew uh his arrival is the end of

00:51:25.680 the republic finally in like 27 bc but he he's a savvy guy nobody nobody exactly knew when the republic

00:51:32.560 fell because he didn't want people to think that it had fallen right so we're gonna get to the fun

00:51:37.600 part because everyone loves to do this with rome the united states is heavily patterned after rome

00:51:42.000 right our balanced government came from rome i know historians don't like using like making the

00:51:46.960 comparisons but it's fun do you see any similarities between our republic and the roman republic as you

00:51:53.520 wrote this book yeah there's there's plenty of similarities you know that's why the analogy continues to

00:51:59.840 come up and why it continues to persist obviously we patterned ourselves quite explicitly i mean we

00:52:05.680 have a we have a senate for a reason right the senate's not just some name we pulled out of a hat

00:52:10.240 you know we were we were trying to model it explicitly on uh on what the romans had and certainly the early

00:52:15.920 united states was a was a closely held landed oligarchy i think just in terms of political science

00:52:22.480 definitions of these terms that's pretty much what the early united states was and what what rome was the

00:52:27.680 the the really fascinating thing is of course that you know we start both the united states and rome

00:52:32.960 started from very humble beginnings i mean the origin story of rome is not particularly it's it's

00:52:38.400 quite unsavory right like even the romans themselves the way they described their early the early kingdom

00:52:43.680 some unsavory characters and they were uh they were not particularly strong or powerful in the early

00:52:48.720 days just like the united states was and then rose slowly but steadily over time to become the most

00:52:55.520 powerful government or the most powerful state in the world and you know we say the known world even

00:53:00.800 though like they didn't you know the romans don't touch india they don't touch china or anything like

00:53:05.360 that so they're not necessarily the most powerful thing in the world but in the mediterranean world

00:53:09.520 rome certainly was that and the united states more or less achieved that over the course of world war one

00:53:15.520 you know it's when we kind of burst onto the world scene and world war ii and the cold war

00:53:19.120 you know by the by the 90s the early 2000s you're quite openly talking about the united states as a hyper power

00:53:26.240 so there are plenty of similarities about the the rise in the course of of rome and the united states

00:53:32.400 of america with one of the most interesting being that we have managed to maintain just like they did

00:53:38.320 this sort of kingless republic we we have continued to have even as we've risen as an empire we've managed

00:53:44.080 to maintain this sort of sense of cooperative government without any one person ever permanently

00:53:50.160 achieving power despite what like well franklin roosevelt tried to get up to right well mike this

00:53:57.040 has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your the rest of

00:54:01.360 the work you do uh you can go to uh the storm before the storm.com which is just the that's going

00:54:07.760 to be the book page and that'll tell you where you can pre-order the book which is out uh october the 24th

00:54:12.880 2017 uh so you need to either pre-order the book or go down to one of your fine independent bookshops

00:54:18.640 and pick it up when it comes out i also continue to do a uh a podcast right that's where i come from

00:54:25.120 here i come from the revolutions podcast and you can go to revolutionspodcast.com and that i will walk

00:54:30.800 you through all of the great political revolutions in history so that's continuing i'm about to go back

00:54:36.320 to work right now on an episode about the liberal revolutions of 1848 and then i will also i'll be

00:54:42.560 on tour for the book in october and november and december off and on uh so i will have dates in new

00:54:47.760 york and philadelphia and boston and washington dc and then do a west coast swing in december

00:54:53.520 and all the details for that are again at revolutionspodcast.com or uh the storm before

00:54:58.720 the storm.com awesome well mike duncan thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure ah thank you

00:55:03.200 very much my guest today was mike duncan he's the author of the book storm before the storm it's

00:55:08.080 available for pre-order on amazon.com right now go check it out if you love roman history you're

00:55:12.320 gonna love this book he does such a great job it's not dry history it's like engaging full of intrigue

00:55:16.880 it's like you're reading some sort of like game of thrones novel so go check it out also you can check

00:55:21.200 out more about his work at revolutionspodcast.com and check out his podcast uh the history of rome it's

00:55:27.040 2007 to 2012 it's available on itunes and check out his latest podcast revolutions really great

00:55:33.040 show also check out our show notes aom.is slash duncan where you find links to resources where you

00:55:38.320 delve deeper into this topic

00:55:39.600 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:55:55.920 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the

00:55:59.520 podcast i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a

00:56:02.560 review on itunes or stitcher that helps us out a lot if you've done that already please tell your

00:56:06.240 friends about the podcast one thing i've learned is that most people learn about the podcast from

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00:56:13.840 this podcast i'd appreciate it if you tell a friend too about it as always thank you for your

00:56:17.280 continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - October 11, 2017

#346： The Fall of the Roman Republic

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