The Art of Manliness - #487： Leadership Lessons From the 3 Greatest Ancient Commanders

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Alexander the

00:00:19.560 Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar, three of the greatest generals of antiquity, but what made them

00:00:24.780 great and what can we learn from them about leadership? My guest explores these questions

00:00:28.380 in his book, Masters of Command, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership.

00:00:33.020 His name is Barry Strauss, and he's a classicist and a military historian at Cornell University.

00:00:37.240 Today on the show, we discuss the traits all three of these men possessed that made them

00:00:40.360 such great military leaders, including audacity, ambition, and a little bit of luck. Barry walks

00:00:46.180 us through the five stages of war that each of these legendary commanders navigated and

00:00:49.620 where each thrived and floundered. Barry then makes the case that while Alexander, Hannibal,

00:00:53.340 and Caesar each experienced success in the short term, in the long run, all of them failed

00:00:57.100 to achieve their ultimate aims because they became victims of their own success. We end

00:01:01.040 our conversation discussing what these commanders' shortcomings can teach modern leaders in any

00:01:04.680 kind of field, and whether it's possible to be both a bold visionary leader and a great

00:01:08.800 manager. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash mastersofcommand.

00:01:22.460 Barry Strauss, welcome to the show.

00:01:24.940 Thank you. Great to be here.

00:01:26.220 So you are a classicist, military historian, and you've written this book, Masters of Command,

00:01:32.360 Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership. And you use these guys, these

00:01:38.000 great generals, to explore what makes a great military leader. How did you decide on these

00:01:43.240 three guys and compare and contrast them?

00:01:45.580 Well, it was kind of easy to choose them. They really are the big three of ancient military

00:01:51.280 history, and the most famous generals, I would say. And also, they come as a set. Hannibal looked back

00:01:59.080 on Alexander as his role model, and so did Caesar. Each of them, in a way, measured himself against

00:02:06.260 Alexander. So the three of them really are a set of great generals. They're very famous. They have

00:02:12.960 fantastic authors write about them from the ancient world. They're remembered today. They still influence

00:02:18.940 generals today, soldiers. They're still studied. So it was kind of easy to choose them.

00:02:24.940 And another thing that you did really well is, as you compare to contrast them,

00:02:29.100 their military careers, there was a pattern to it that was very similar amongst all three of them.

00:02:33.420 Yes. So I chose them because each of them was a risk taker. Each of them loved mobile warfare. Each

00:02:42.300 of them started a war against an enemy who, in principle, was unbeatable. The enemy, in each case,

00:02:50.080 outnumbered them greatly, had more financial resources, and had a much greater navy. They either

00:02:56.080 had no navy or a much smaller navy. And yet, each of them defeated his enemy. In Hannibal's case,

00:03:04.300 of course, in the end, he lost, but he won some spectacular victories. Alexander and Caesar did

00:03:10.120 indeed defeat his enemy. And each of them, in spite of great military success and a certain amount of

00:03:17.040 political success, none of the three of them was able to achieve his final goal. None of the three of

00:03:23.960 them was able to achieve the settlement that he wanted. So there's something sad about them as

00:03:28.300 well. And we'll get into why they didn't achieve their final goal. But let's kind of do just some

00:03:33.320 rough thumbnail sketches of these guys, because we've heard lots about them. I mean, they're sort

00:03:37.500 of icons of Western history, Western culture. We have cultural references to them, Caesar crossing the

00:03:44.360 Rubicon, Hannibal, the elephants through the Alps. So let's talk about Alexander. So all these guys

00:03:50.460 were risk-takers. But what else about Alexander that we often get overlooked about him?

00:03:55.800 So Alexander was a king, and he was the son of a great conqueror. His father was Philip of Macedon,

00:04:02.400 the man who really put Macedon on the map, and took Macedon from being kind of a wreck,

00:04:08.540 a messed up, chaotic state with a lot of potential on the outside of the Greek world. He brought it to 1.00

00:04:12.920 the center. He unified it. He created a new military system, conquered all of the Greek city-states, 0.75

00:04:18.260 and prepared Macedon for what he saw as his life's work, which is to be going to war against the

00:04:24.160 Persian Empire, this giant to the east of Macedon, but one that seemed to have been past its prime.

00:04:31.860 So Alexander inherited this as a young man at the age of 20 when his father was assassinated.

00:04:37.500 And not many people were convinced that Alexander was up to the task and could equal what the great

00:04:43.140 man had done. But in fact, he was every bit up to the task and did what his father wanted to do,

00:04:49.820 and then some. So he'd been prepared all his life for war. He'd already commanded the Macedonian 0.78

00:04:56.040 cavalry in a battle when he was 18. And now he showed himself to be every inch a king and ready to take

00:05:03.560 his country to the next step. So he had a great preparation. Also, his father had prepared him all the

00:05:10.620 way he had given him, the greatest tutor imaginable. His tutor was none other than Aristotle, the premier

00:05:16.900 philosopher of the ancient world. Alexander was highly intelligent. His mother was a stormy,

00:05:25.240 brilliant woman named Olympias who convinced her son that he was unstoppable. He believed that through

00:05:33.060 his mother, Alexander believed that he was descended from none other than the Greek hero Achilles,

00:05:38.860 the hero of Epic. Alexander took Achilles as his role model in a way, in some ways a great role

00:05:46.520 model. Achilles was Greece's greatest warrior and the hero of its most important literary work,

00:05:54.100 the Iliad. But Achilles was also a tragic figure, somebody who died young and never succeeded in

00:06:00.620 conquering Troy. So a somewhat paradoxical choice on Alexander's part. But like Achilles, he was

00:06:08.000 geared for greatness. And so why did he, why did his father and why did he decide to conquer the

00:06:16.600 Persians? Like what was it that they hoped would happen after they conquered the Persians? And then 0.99

00:06:21.260 not only did Alexander want to conquer the Persians, but like he also wanted to go on and conquer the

00:06:25.480 rest of Asia. Like why? So the Persian empire was the greatest empire that not only the Greek world,

00:06:32.260 but the world period, the greatest empire that the world had ever seen. And it controlled an empire

00:06:40.520 that stretched about 3,000 miles from what is nowadays Western Turkey, all the way to what is

00:06:46.900 nowadays the Indo-Pakistani border. So enormous empire, enormous wealth, enormous power. But it was weak.

00:06:55.740 You know, it had a series of revolts over decades. A Greek mercenary army had fought its way through

00:07:03.700 the empire, defeated a Persian army and made its way home successfully. The Persians, by the same 0.99

00:07:11.000 token, had interfered in Greek wars over the decades as well. So the two sides, the Greeks and the Persians

00:07:17.600 had been at war with each other. I mean, for Philip and Alexander, it just looked like it was ripe

00:07:23.240 for the taking. They believed that they could conquer this empire, or at least part of it,

00:07:28.320 and bring it under their control. If you wanted to look at a more noble motive, well, the Western

00:07:35.280 part of the Persian empire, much of it consisted of Greek speakers who were under Persian control.

00:07:41.820 And Philip, Alexander, the Macedonians and the Greeks could have thought, well, we can liberate these 1.00

00:07:47.300 people from the Persians. It's a bit more complicated because some of them were perfectly happy under Persian

00:07:52.100 role and didn't want to be liberated. And some of the Greeks felt that they were the oppressed ones

00:07:56.740 because now that the Macedonians controlled them. But mostly it was the power, the wealth,

00:08:04.220 the glory, the possibility of expanding, being a great conqueror. This was something that for kings

00:08:10.240 in the ancient world was a no-brainer. Conquest, you wanted to be a great conqueror.

00:08:15.760 Okay. And that will come back also to bite him in the butt, possibly later on. We'll talk about that. 0.99

00:08:20.300 But let's move on to Hannibal. Hannibal's an interesting character because he is from

00:08:24.540 Carthage. And a lot of people, they know of Carthage in the ancient world, but they don't

00:08:29.280 know really what role it played in the ancient world. It's in Africa. So tell us about Hannibal

00:08:34.100 and what he was trying to do.

00:08:36.260 Like Alexander, Hannibal was the son of a great general. His father, Hamilcar Barca,

00:08:42.900 was Carthage's leading commander. He successfully commanded Carthaginian forces in the First Punic

00:08:50.060 War. Although the Carthaginians lost that war to Rome, Hamilcar himself was undefeated. Then he came

00:08:55.820 back to North Africa and put down a rebellion by the mercenary troops in Carthage's army. And then he

00:09:02.880 left Carthage, left North Africa, went to Spain and carved out a new empire for Carthage in the south

00:09:09.580 of Spain. He brought his young son, Hannibal, with him to Spain and raised him to be a great

00:09:17.680 soldier. He also raised him to hate Rome. There's a story, we don't know if it's true or legend,

00:09:24.320 that at the age of nine, his father made Hannibal swear on an altar to not rest until he won revenge

00:09:33.900 on Rome. Carthage and Rome were the two greatest military and political powers of the central

00:09:40.900 Mediterranean. And they clashed in the middle of the third century BC in a war for control of the

00:09:47.380 island of Sicily. For centuries, Carthage had controlled the western part of Sicily and was

00:09:52.820 eager to take over the eastern part. Rome jumped into the Sicilian waters in the middle of the third

00:09:59.000 century and decided to try to push Carthage out of Sicily. It was a very audacious thing to do. But

00:10:05.940 the Romans succeeded in a war that lasted a generation. They finally succeeded by winning this

00:10:11.200 war on sea. And as I said, Hamilcar, Hannibal's father, bounced back, undefeated himself in this war

00:10:18.120 and bounced back by winning Carthage, a new empire in the south of Spain. Now he's killed in battle

00:10:25.060 when Hannibal's still a young man. He's succeeded, replaced by Hannibal's brother-in-law. When Hannibal's

00:10:33.720 brother-in-law in turn is killed, the army turns to Hannibal as their new commander. And Hannibal has

00:10:40.800 been groomed by his father to be a great general. And he himself is a brilliant, talented, charismatic,

00:10:48.580 visionary leader who is utterly up to the task.

00:10:51.240 And so give us some background here, some context. So this was Rome. They were fighting

00:10:56.140 Rome when Rome was a republic, correct?

00:10:58.320 Yes.

00:10:59.020 Okay. And this was not too long after Alexander. I mean, one thing that was interesting is that

00:11:03.140 these guys were within just a few hundred years of each other.

00:11:06.600 Yeah. So Alexander dies in 323 BC and Hannibal takes, Hannibal's born in 247 BC, so less than a

00:11:18.680 century later. The first war between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginian Republic, they're

00:11:23.840 both republics, takes place in the years 264 to 241 BC. And then in 218, the new war between Rome and

00:11:33.620 Hannibal. The second Punic Wars is called, or Hannibal's Wars is sometimes called, that's when

00:11:38.840 that war breaks out. So a little over a century after the death of Alexander.

00:11:42.700 And what was Hannibal's military aim by taking on the Romans?

00:11:46.920 Hannibal's military aim was twofold. First of all, the Romans threatened Carthage's new empire 0.98

00:11:53.800 in Spain. Hannibal wanted to secure that empire and get the Romans out of his hair. Secondly, 0.82

00:11:59.380 he wanted to destroy the Roman Confederacy. So Rome's power rested on its alliance system in central

00:12:06.780 Italy. Carthage's power rested on its alliance system as well. But the Roman alliance was particularly,

00:12:12.680 particularly formidable, particularly strong. And what Hannibal wanted to do was to break this

00:12:19.000 alliance up, to drive a wedge between Rome and its allies, to pry them apart, and to deprive Rome

00:12:28.540 of the ability to threaten Carthage ever again in the future. He didn't want to destroy the city of

00:12:34.020 Rome. That wasn't his plan. That was beyond him, he knew. He simply wanted to break Roman power. I say 0.91

00:12:40.740 simply, it was a huge undertaking. But he wanted to make sure that Rome could no longer threaten

00:12:45.780 Carthage.

00:12:47.040 So let's move on to Caesar. And this, again, Caesar wasn't too long after Hannibal. So Caesar's

00:12:51.920 interesting case because he was an individual who actually invaded his home country. Tell us about

00:12:57.120 that for those who aren't familiar.

00:12:58.420 Yes. So Hannibal dies in 183 BC and Caesar's born 83 years later in 100 BC. Caesar was a member of the

00:13:06.260 Roman aristocracy. Unlike Hannibal Alexander, he didn't have a father who was a great general.

00:13:12.360 His father was a politician and a commander, but not absolutely of the first rank. But Caesar burned

00:13:18.660 with ambition. Even as a young man, he was a soldier and he won a very high military honor. And he

00:13:26.160 started a political career early on. And he wanted to become top dog in Rome. And he wanted to succeed

00:13:34.460 both in politics and in the military. And his career is successful in both of those areas. In his

00:13:43.480 40s, he takes on a great undertaking. He decides he wants to conquer Gaul. And Gaul is basically France 0.70

00:13:51.860 and Belgium in our terms. He undertakes a war against the various peoples of Gaul. They are warlike,

00:13:59.960 but disorganized, and they don't have the discipline or the managerial skill or the political skill that

00:14:07.980 the Romans have. Nonetheless, it is not an easy thing to conquer them. And Caesar carries it off

00:14:14.100 in a series of lightning campaigns that take about a decade. He becomes the conqueror of France and

00:14:21.280 Belgium, as well as a little bit of Germany, and even invades Britain, although he doesn't conquer it

00:14:27.420 for Rome. He's not able to keep it. It makes him one of Rome's greatest generals ever in all the

00:14:33.920 history of the Roman Republic. It also makes him the wealthiest man in the Roman world. His ambition

00:14:40.700 is to go back to Italy and to win every honor there is and to win the height of political power and to

00:14:48.420 be recognized by the other members of the nobility that govern the Roman Republic, to be recognized

00:14:54.200 as the first man in Rome. His political enemies think that Caesar is just too much. They think he's

00:15:00.920 too ambitious, too egotistical, that he will never respect them and share power with them equally.

00:15:08.220 So they decide to try to get rid of him. The Roman Senate actually takes his command away from him.

00:15:13.280 They fire him as general and say, put down your arms. Caesar instead decides to go to war against his own

00:15:20.900 country. He begins a civil war to defend what he says, both of all the rights of the Roman people,

00:15:28.620 because he is a champion of the poor, but also to defend his own status, his own dignity, his own rank,

00:15:35.680 and his own honor. So one thing that's already popped out to me as you describe these three guys

00:15:41.040 and their aims, it was both a mixture of just personal ambition, personal glory, but they also,

00:15:46.800 I don't know, presented it as they were doing something for something larger, for the greater

00:15:50.260 good for everyone else. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. Alexander said that he was

00:15:56.820 invading the Persian Empire. Actually, he said he was doing it to get revenge for the Persian invasion

00:16:02.420 of Greece 150 years earlier when the Persians had taken the city of Athens for time and burned 1.00

00:16:10.320 the temples of the gods on the Athenian necropolis. And he also said he was going to liberate the

00:16:16.420 Greeks under Persian rule. Hannibal wanted to get revenge for his own country, for what Rome had

00:16:23.400 done, bring the country national security. And when he got to Italy, he also said he was there

00:16:27.300 to liberate the Italians. Italy for the Italians was Hannibal's motto. And Caesar, of course, 0.55

00:16:33.720 said that he was fighting both for the rights and freedom of the Roman people, but also for the rank

00:16:41.840 and honor that were important to him and that were actually the cement of the Roman political system.

00:16:48.020 Just as Americans today might, for example, fight for freedom more generally, so a Roman might fight 1.00

00:16:54.280 for honor and rank. So let's talk about these attributes these guys shared and that led to their

00:17:01.020 success and also their failure. So you mentioned already that all three of them were incredible

00:17:06.560 risk-takers, but you also say there's other attributes they all shared in varying degrees.

00:17:11.580 Sure. Well, you know, they were all immensely ambitious. In ancient Greek, the word for ambition

00:17:18.220 is love of honor. And I think that really works for all three of them. They were also what the

00:17:25.120 ancients called great-souled men. They had enormously high opinions of themselves, and they aimed at great

00:17:32.560 things. Abraham Lincoln spoke about these kind of men as members of what he called the tribe of the

00:17:37.700 eagle. And he said that members of this tribe achieve great things, but they can be destabilizing

00:17:43.460 to their own society. And I think that's true of all three of them. They had some other qualities as

00:17:49.800 well. First of all, they had great leadership skills, both in politics and in war. They had very

00:17:57.280 good judgment, and they were able to make decisions on the fly. That's also tremendously important for

00:18:05.160 them. They did not need to take a lot of time or to agonize over their decisions. Risk-takers, as I

00:18:12.120 mentioned, they also showed great agility. They were flexible. They were able to roll with the

00:18:18.900 punches. They excelled in more than one form of warfare, for instance. They were all great commanders

00:18:25.960 in set battles, but they also had the ability to engage either in unconventional warfare or in

00:18:32.760 sieges. They all had access to great infrastructure, to great resources, money and manpower. None of them

00:18:42.900 could have done what he did without access to great military. They were strategists, both in the

00:18:51.460 literal sense of the term in ancient Greek. A strategos is a general, but they also had the vision

00:18:59.460 thing, as the late George Bush put it. They were able to think big, and they had a grand strategy as

00:19:06.400 well. Sad to say, they were all capable of terror. They were all capable of killing innocent people in

00:19:15.200 order to make their point, and they all engaged in terror. On a lighter note, they were geniuses at

00:19:23.840 branding, at marketing, at selling themselves, and taking simple themes, putting them forward so that

00:19:31.200 the mass of their soldiers could understand it, and the masses at home could understand it as well.

00:19:38.600 And they were all lucky. Napoleon said that he wanted to have lucky generals. I would say that

00:19:44.340 their luck was so extraordinary that we have to call it something else, fortune, or if you will,

00:19:49.840 divine providence. Nothing else can explain the way things just broke right for each of them at various

00:19:56.580 points in his career. I mean, what are some examples of that, of things breaking right for

00:20:00.860 them just because of dumb luck for these three guys? So Alexander had a very dangerous enemy whose

00:20:09.040 name no one has ever heard of. His name is Memnon of Rhodes. He was a Greek general who was a mercenary

00:20:15.980 in service of the Persians. And Memnon came up with the brilliant strategy of taking the war home to 0.87

00:20:23.080 Greece. The Persian king gave him the resources to have an enormous navy that outclassed Alexander's

00:20:29.060 puny navy. And Memnon launched an offensive to cross the Aegean islands to island hop the Aegean

00:20:35.740 and land a large army back in Greece that would have forced Alexander to turn around early in his

00:20:41.680 campaign and go fight in his homeland. Immensely successful strategy. And then suddenly,

00:20:47.820 Memnon dies in the midst of the campaign. It's really unexpected, so unexpected that a modern 0.99

00:20:56.800 novelist claims he was poisoned by a Macedonian plot. But in fact, he probably dies of a stroke or

00:21:05.200 heart attack, natural causes. But that's just immensely lucky for him to happen at this particular time.

00:21:12.800 Caesar has a number of moments when he is almost killed in battle, but he survives it. And that's

00:21:22.780 lucky as well. Hannibal's immensely lucky in that the Romans play exactly into his strategic hands. 0.95

00:21:31.600 Hannibal wants the Romans to fight pitched battles against him. Wiser heads tried to prevail in Rome and

00:21:38.560 got them to say, we can't do this. Instead, we should adopt the scorched earth policy and not give Hannibal

00:21:44.200 what he wants for fighting in the battle. But instead, in the end, they lose out in the political

00:21:48.460 debates in Rome and the Romans decide to field the biggest army they've ever put onto the battlefield

00:21:55.240 and use this to fight Hannibal. He couldn't have asked for something better. It's playing exactly into

00:22:01.700 his hands. So that's an example of dumb luck really helping him. 0.96

00:22:05.120 So all these guys had these attributes in varying degrees, but did some of them possess more of them

00:22:10.500 than the other? For example, was someone more ambitious or more willing to take risk than others?

00:22:17.320 I think they were all equally ambitious and risk takers. I would say that Caesar has a remarkable

00:22:24.600 ability to be strategic about his risk taking. In strategic terms, Caesar was actually fairly cautious

00:22:32.180 strategically. One of the reasons he's so successful is that he balances tactical risk with strategic

00:22:39.340 caution. For example, after crossing the Rubicon and conquering Italy, he was tempted to cross the

00:22:47.820 Adriatic and follow his leading enemy, Pompey, and his army to the east to fight a battle in Greece. But

00:22:54.360 he knew that Pompey had tremendous allied armies in Spain on Caesar's western flank. So instead of doing

00:23:02.400 the ultra risky thing and crossing onto Greece, Caesar instead decides to march against Pompey's armies in

00:23:09.920 Spain and protect his flank before turning eastward for the climactic battle. So Caesar

00:23:16.940 is really good at balancing risk with calculation. In other terms, I would say that Hannibal is by far the best

00:23:31.000 battlefield commander. All three of them are really great battlefield commanders, but nobody quite has

00:23:38.040 the really amazing agility that Hannibal shows on the battlefield. The ability to know just how to calculate the use of force.

00:23:49.440 For example, so the Battle of Gettysburg famously begins when Robert E. Lee loses control of his army. He tells them

00:23:56.540 don't start a fight with the Union army, but they don't listen to him, and they do, and so Lee is forced into this

00:24:03.420 battle. Hannibal faces a similar situation in northern Italy when his men disobey his command. They try to

00:24:10.280 provoke a battle with the Romans. Hannibal pulls them back, and Hannibal punishes them and manages to 0.82

00:24:16.180 make sure that he doesn't have to fight a battle on favorable terms. It's that kind of fingertip control of

00:24:23.060 his military that really makes Hannibal outstanding. And as far as branding, well, Alexander really is the

00:24:32.060 great master of branding. He makes sure that he has the greatest sculptors of his day, present his image

00:24:40.140 to the other Greeks in a series of statues, and these statues of Alexander are still immensely famous. We see

00:24:47.400 them in all the great museums of the world. On top of that, he has himself proclaimed a god, and this has

00:24:56.940 some resonance. He comes up with a new title for himself, the king of Asia. Persian kings had never

00:25:02.840 called themselves the king of Asia before, and his men expected him to be the mere king of Macedon.

00:25:07.680 And finally, when he gets into Persian lands, he strategically takes on certain items of Persian

00:25:14.560 dress in order to appeal to his new subjects. So he's able to look both ways, to both be a Greek hero,

00:25:21.880 but also be someone who would appeal to Persians. He's very flexible when it comes to marketing,

00:25:27.900 and very, very cunning as well.

00:25:30.720 Maybe I remember incorrectly. Didn't Alexander go visit the grave of Achilles, or where they thought

00:25:35.240 the grave was?

00:25:36.080 Yes, he did. So the Greeks had set up a colony at what they thought was Troy. They called it Ilium. It was a

00:25:42.740 Greek city. And one of the first things that Alexander did when he crossed the Hellespont and went into

00:25:49.400 Persian territory was he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of his ancestor, Achilles. This was also

00:25:56.320 something that would resonate well with the Greeks and show how much he respected Greek culture.

00:26:03.000 There were some Greeks who said that as a Macedonian, Alexander wasn't even a Greek,

00:26:07.320 and he had no claim to Greekness. But this was a way for Alexander, shrewdly, to show that he was

00:26:13.300 every inch of Greek. Thanks for bringing that up.

00:26:15.940 Yeah, the branding, the personal branding there. We're going to take a quick break for your words

00:26:19.160 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So throughout the book, besides highlighting these

00:26:25.760 different attributes that all these guys had, you also talked there's five stages of war that

00:26:30.260 all three of them saw, and that each stage has its own dangers to it. So what are these stages? And

00:26:37.360 then we can talk about where these guys excelled at or floundered at afterwards.

00:26:40.500 Sure. So what I call the five stages of war, the first is attack. You have to have a battle plan,

00:26:48.040 and you have to have a way of beginning. The second is resistance. As the saying goes,

00:26:53.040 no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. And so they had to decide what to do when the enemy

00:26:59.520 struck back. The third is clash. They had to come up with a way to force the enemy to confront them

00:27:09.740 on the battlefield and to win. But it's not enough to win a battle victory or a series of battle

00:27:16.860 victories. That brings us to the fourth stage, which is closing the net or sealing the deal,

00:27:23.080 if you will, getting the enemy to admit that he has been defeated and to be willing to make terms for

00:27:28.920 peace. And then finally, the last stage, knowing when to stop, knowing when to stop. And this is in

00:27:37.360 some ways the most difficult stage for a conqueror, because the same reasons that make men join the

00:27:43.220 tribe of the eagle makes it very difficult for them to step down and go into a cage, as it were.

00:27:49.840 Well, let's walk through these five stages with, say, Alexander, so we can see that in action there.

00:27:55.100 So Alexander's plan is to take the Macedonian army and to cross the Hellespont with the help of his 0.97

00:28:03.760 small navy, and then to get the Persian army to agree to fight him in the thing that he's really

00:28:11.160 good at, which is a pitched battle. The Macedonian army is the greatest army in the world when it comes

00:28:16.820 to battlefield confrontation. Luckily for him, the Persians play right into his hand. Instead of doing 1.00

00:28:25.480 what would have been wiser for them to do, to engage in a scorched earth policy and not fighting,

00:28:30.680 they agree to fight a battle. In fact, a series of battles against him. Three great battles in which

00:28:38.460 Alexander is able to defeat the resistance and to carry out the clash, which is defeating

00:28:45.580 the Persian army in set battles. But Persia still is a very strong country and it still has

00:28:52.140 military resources. Alexander has to know how to close the net, which he does by invading Iran 0.92

00:28:59.580 going after the remaining Persian army and defeating them. Now comes a more difficult stage. The Persians 1.00

00:29:08.980 retreat until their Central Asian redoubts. He decides to convince his army that they now have to march 0.92

00:29:17.580 into the Stans, if you will, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, even Kyrgyzstan, in order to defeat the Persian army

00:29:25.540 and to engage in unconventional tactics and asymmetric warfare. They're no longer fighting

00:29:32.880 pitched battles. They are engaging hit and run raids. They're fighting in terrain that Alexander's

00:29:39.980 not used to. And he has to retool his army to fight in these conditions. And he also has to accept

00:29:47.360 rather large casualties. But he pulls all that off. Then unfortunately, Alexander decides this is not

00:29:53.960 enough. He wants more. He wants to cross the Hindu Kush and to invade what the Greeks called India. For us,

00:30:02.740 that's Pakistan as well as India. This is dragging his men much further than they want to go into

00:30:09.360 climactic conditions, the monsoon that they don't want to deal with. And although Alexander does win a

00:30:15.420 pitch battle there, his men mutiny, and he is forced to go back to what has now become his base,

00:30:23.260 which is Babylon, the Persian capital in Mesopotamia, in southern Iraq. At this point,

00:30:31.060 you would say, okay, Alexander, you've conquered the Persian empire. You're in your early 30s.

00:30:36.640 You've had your fun. It's time to settle down, to put your stamp on this empire and to create a

00:30:44.140 dynasty that can succeed you. But Alexander does not agree. Instead, he is planning a new military

00:30:53.160 expedition to conquer Arabia, which would probably mostly be the coast of Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula.

00:31:00.520 It's a joint land-sea operation. And he is hatching plans to turn west and go to war both against

00:31:09.800 Carthage and against the Roman Republic. So for Alexander, there is no limit. He wants to carry a

00:31:17.340 war without end. But just before he launches the Arabian expedition, he dies unexpectedly, just before

00:31:26.700 his 33rd birthday in June of the year 323 BC. Probably he died of a virus, a virus that might

00:31:38.380 have been made worse by the fact that he had had seven battle wounds in his years of fighting,

00:31:44.420 some of them serious. But there is a minority opinion in ancient sources that says that he was

00:31:50.360 Persian, that he was poisoned. Minority opinion in ancient sources that says that he was poisoned

00:31:55.280 by his own men because they were terrified of him and they didn't want to keep fighting.

00:32:02.240 There's an outside chance that that's true. So Alexander is a supreme example of somebody who

00:32:07.840 didn't know when to stop.

00:32:09.500 And also the other thing that upset his men, talk about, is that he was becoming too much of a Persian. 0.95

00:32:14.200 That upset he's taking Persian wives, Asian wives, dressing like a Persian, kind of thinking 0.98

00:32:19.740 himself as a Persian. He's like, everyone's like, wait, you're a Macedonian. Why are you doing that? 0.96

00:32:23.780 Right. Yeah. This is a problem that conquerors often have. It's not just Alexander. When you conquer

00:32:29.340 a new territory, you can't simply crush the new people that you've conquered. You need to somehow

00:32:36.480 make your peace with them. This is especially true of ancient armies because they don't have the

00:32:41.100 technology, either communications, military, anyway, to control these areas without getting

00:32:46.600 some degree of cooperation from the people that they have conquered. They need to get buy-in.

00:32:53.020 And Alexander's way of getting buy-in was to be able to say to his new subjects,

00:32:57.600 I'm one of you guys. I'm not just a Greco-Macedonian who's come in to make your life miserable, 0.99

00:33:02.760 but I respect your customs. I'm going to meet you halfway. Alexander meets them halfway and then some.

00:33:10.900 As you said, he takes Persian wives or Iranian wives. He takes wives who come from the east and 0.97

00:33:18.620 he also recruits Iranians to serve in his new army and he forces his men to take Iranian wives as well 0.67

00:33:27.660 who are going to give birth to sons who, from the point of view of Macedonians, are half-breeds, 0.94

00:33:34.480 they would have called them. They were racists and they would have looked down on them. Many people

00:33:38.560 in the ancient world were racists. It's not specific to the Macedonians or the Greeks. But Alexander

00:33:43.840 is looking at a broader canvas and in a way, he's remarkably un-racist. He wants to create this new

00:33:53.080 army, this new ruling group that will be a mixture of Greeks and Macedonians. He actually famously gives

00:33:58.420 a banquet in which he prays for peace and harmony between the Macedonians and the Persians. To us,

00:34:08.180 this looks like a noble ideal. To the Macedonians, this is, whoa, we went to war for Macedon to conquer

00:34:16.240 these people. We didn't go to war to make friends with them or to mate with them or to create sons who

00:34:22.460 will be half Persian. Alexander is taking his men farther than they want to go. 0.86

00:34:28.760 And so this is a great example of, you know, Alexander, he was successful in the short term

00:34:33.400 with his military games. He did invade Persia and conquered most of Asia, a lot of Asia. But after 0.70

00:34:39.260 he died, that thing just collapsed because he was so busy conquering and expanding that he didn't really

00:34:45.000 spend time building infrastructure for the newly acquired territory that he got.

00:34:48.800 No, exactly right. Yeah. I mean, Alexander, what he needed to do was to create a dynasty

00:34:55.440 and to ensure that he would have heirs who would follow him, who would be able to keep this new,

00:35:02.400 vast new empire together. And he also needed to work on the ideology of the empire, the rationale for

00:35:10.280 it. He needed to build up a ruling group that was going to be loyal to him. Instead, he dies just

00:35:17.520 before his 33rd birthday, supposedly on his deathbed when asked who he wanted to leave

00:35:23.560 his empire to. Supposedly, he said to the strongest, meaning that he knew that there was going to be a

00:35:30.360 civil war. And there was. And those civil wars last for 50 years. They're very bloody. By the time

00:35:37.540 they're done, the Persians haven't come back. His empire is in Greco-Macedonian hands, but it's split up 1.00

00:35:44.360 into a series of successor kingdoms. No one is able to hold together this thing that Alexander had

00:35:50.840 conquered. And that paved the way for the Roman Republic to rise. And let's talk about Hannibal

00:35:57.200 first. Where did he flounder out in those five stages? Because he did well, it seemed like, in a lot

00:36:01.760 of them. Yeah, he did. I mean, the attack was brilliant. He marched a land army 900 miles from

00:36:08.560 southern Spain, over the Pyrenees, over the Rhone River, including taking elephants over the Rhone

00:36:13.920 River, and then over the Alps in the winter, and lands in northern Italy. He loses most of his army.

00:36:22.480 So to desertion, to the weather, to resistance from tribes he meets along the way. So he's not there in

00:36:30.660 northern Italy with a big army he wanted. But he immediately gets new allies and wins a series of

00:36:35.900 victories over the Romans. And he defeats them in a cavalry battle in northern Italy, then a combined

00:36:42.820 arms battle in northern Italy, then a crushing defeat in central Italy at Lake Trasimene. And

00:36:48.640 finally, his greatest victory of all, the one that went down in history books, the Battle of Cannae,

00:36:54.700 August 2nd, 216 BC, in which he crushes a Roman army in the plains of southern Italy. And he's convinced 0.99

00:37:02.080 that the Romans are now going to give him what he wants, that they're going to surrender. There's 0.68

00:37:06.680 northern Italy and southern Italy have risen in revolt on the side of Hannibal against the Roman

00:37:12.680 Republic and against the Roman alliance. But as one of Hannibal's commanders says to him afterwards,

00:37:19.340 you know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but you don't know what to do with it. You don't know how to

00:37:23.720 use a victory. Hannibal, for instance, refused to march on Rome after the victory at Cannae,

00:37:29.520 as one of his advisors wanted him to. He said his army was too battered, too bruised, they needed

00:37:34.880 time to recover, and that the defenses of Rome in any case were too strong. But in later years,

00:37:40.100 he looked back on this as a mistake, that he should have stuck the knife in, that he should

00:37:44.040 have marched on Rome, however difficult it was, and that he might have terrified the Romans into

00:37:48.980 surrender or terrified some of their allies into leaving them. The problem for Hannibal is that the

00:37:56.080 Romans are a bit like Britain in 1940 against the Germans after Dunkirk. They say, well, we've lost,

00:38:02.880 it's true, but we don't announce that we've lost. We don't acknowledge it because we believe that

00:38:08.960 strategically, the odds are pretty good for us. We've got the British Navy, there's potential of

00:38:14.560 allies, particularly in the United States, so we're going to keep on fighting. The Romans are 1.00

00:38:19.520 somewhat similar. They say, yeah, well, we've lost really great battles, but we still have all our

00:38:25.000 allies in central Italy. We still have our fleet, so come and get us, and we still have our walls.

00:38:30.860 You can't win. And they go on to rebuild. The Romans have gone to rebuild. The allies in central

00:38:36.420 Italy are tied to the Romans very closely. The Romans have not only defeated them, but they've used 0.80

00:38:41.300 a combination of carrots and sticks to bring those allies into the Roman alliance and to make ties

00:38:47.240 with the ruling classes of all these cities. In some cases, they're blood ties because the ruling

00:38:52.120 classes intermarry with the Roman elite. Hannibal's not good at breaking these bonds that hold central

00:39:00.880 Italy into the Roman alliance. To do so, he would have had to lay siege to the cities of central Italy.

00:39:07.400 Hannibal's not a siege craft kind of guy. His sieges in Spain have not gone well. They've been

00:39:13.900 frustrating. He was badly wounded. He's a mobile warfare kind of guy. So Hannibal wants to take the

00:39:21.340 war to Sicily, to Sardinia. He wants to recapture the cities. He wants to get new allies in the Greek 0.85

00:39:29.720 world where he does have an alliance with the Macedonian king, but not much comes of it.

00:39:35.640 And the Romans are able to rebuild. They rebuild their army. They defeat the Carthaginians in 0.89

00:39:42.520 Sicily. And worse for him, all along, the Romans have been wanting to open a second front in Spain 1.00

00:39:47.940 with limited success. But they finally pull it off because the other problem that Hannibal runs into

00:39:55.620 is that in warfare, if you have a brilliant new way of doing things and you don't defeat the enemy,

00:40:01.260 if the enemy is any good, the enemy is going to figure out how to do this brilliant new way as

00:40:06.000 well. Case in point, the Second World War, the Germans have blitzkrieg, and their enemies eventually 0.73

00:40:11.940 figure out how to do blitzkrieg of their own. So Hannibal's worst nightmare is a Roman survivor of 1.00

00:40:19.200 the Battle of Cannae. It's a man named Scipio, a general named Scipio, who comes from one of the first

00:40:25.940 families of Roman warfare. And Scipio understands that Hannibal is able to run rings around the

00:40:33.300 Roman army because of the professionalism of his troops and the ability of his troops to carry out

00:40:39.920 combined arms tactics in which the infantry and the cavalry work well together, something the Romans

00:40:46.000 were never good at. Scipio rebuilds the Roman army to be able to do this sort of thing. Hannibal is also

00:40:52.800 good at tricks and ambushes, and Scipio is as well. And Hannibal portrays himself as kind of a god,

00:41:00.780 or at least someone who is the favor of the gods, in particular of Hercules, who is a god for the

00:41:07.960 Carthaginians as well as for the Greeks and Romans, and Scipio does something like this as well. He leads

00:41:14.180 an army to Spain, and through an ambush, he captures the Carthaginian capital city of New Carthage, modern

00:41:23.120 Carthaginia in southeastern Spain. And then he goes on to defeat the Carthaginians in battle and force

00:41:30.640 the Carthaginians out of Spain. So they lose the jewel in the crown of their empire. Hannibal's still in

00:41:38.940 Italy, but he's not able to get the Romans to admit defeat. He's not able to dislodge the Romans 0.85

00:41:45.020 from their alliance in central Italy. The attempt to reconquer Sicily fails. The Romans inflict a 0.91

00:41:53.820 bloody defeat on the Carthaginians there. The Carthaginian home government, which has never been

00:42:00.100 without its suspicions of Hannibal and suspicions of his family and what they want to do, is not giving

00:42:06.140 him the kind of support that he would absolutely want either. At this point, Scipio proves that he

00:42:14.800 is truly a master of warfare because he's not just a great battlefield general, but he is also a great

00:42:21.740 diplomat as well. And he now launches his most impressive coup. It's years in the making. It takes

00:42:29.340 years of cajoling. One of Hannibal's aces was his alliance with Numidia. Numidia is the equivalent

00:42:37.880 of what is today Algeria. The Numidians are superb horsemen. They've got one thing that the 1.00

00:42:44.100 Carthaginians absolutely need. They've got a light cavalry. This light cavalry is incredibly fast and 1.00

00:42:50.380 mobile. It's absolutely key to Hannibal's battlefield victories. What Scipio is able to do is he is able to

00:42:58.620 convince the Numidians to defect from Carthage and to join Rome. It is not an easy process. It's very

00:43:06.180 long. It's very complicated. It's got its own set of plots and almost operatic connections involving a

00:43:14.960 Numidian princess who tries to save the day for Carthage but is forced in the end to commit suicide. 0.89

00:43:21.420 But with the help of Numidia, Scipio is able to bring the war back to North Africa to force Hannibal 0.96

00:43:30.160 to leave Italy and force him to roll the dice on one final great battle in Tunisia. A battle that

00:43:39.060 because Scipio now has his Numidian ally, because he's pried this away from Carthage, that Scipio is able

00:43:46.880 to win and finally force Hannibal and the Carthaginians to win defeat. So this is an epic

00:43:53.040 war that goes back and forth. It's got these two stunning commanders, Hannibal and Scipio,

00:43:59.380 if you will, to Napoleon and Wellington of the Second Punic War. It finally ends in a Roman victory.

00:44:06.100 So it sounds like for Hannibal, he was a fantastic combat commander, but long-term strategy,

00:44:12.140 even the politics, the diplomacy, that was a slight blind spot for him?

00:44:17.120 Yeah, I would say maybe not a blind spot, but he didn't have the absolute mastery of it

00:44:22.620 that Alexander and Caesar had. I think that was his difficulty. I mean, there are those who would say

00:44:30.380 Hannibal's problem was that he should never have started the war in the first place.

00:44:34.180 This was a bit of vanity on his part to think that he could have defeated the Roman Republic.

00:44:37.820 I'm not sure. I think that, I think there's a lot to be said for his decision to go to war

00:44:43.800 against Rome. Rome really was threatening Carthage's empire in Spain. But I think that

00:44:48.680 after having defeated, after having inflicted great defeat on Rome, I think Hannibal should 0.99

00:44:53.380 have gone back to Spain, declared victory, and built up his resources there.

00:44:57.680 Didn't do it, but he wanted to continue on.

00:44:59.780 Yeah.

00:45:00.140 So Hannibal, clearly he lost.

00:45:03.020 Yeah.

00:45:03.200 He got defeated. Alexander, he won, but lost in the long run. The same thing happened with Caesar.

00:45:09.580 So this is a man who climbed up the ranks of the Roman military, conquered his home country,

00:45:17.260 became the first man of Rome, the first Caesar. But it seemed like a victory, but it also didn't

00:45:23.020 last for him either. I mean, he ended up getting killed.

00:45:25.880 He ends up getting killed. He's assassinated, of course, on the odds of March, March 15th,

00:45:32.180 44 BC. And he's assassinated in a way because he wins too much. I mean, he wants to become the

00:45:41.420 first man in the Roman Republic, but instead he destroys the Roman Republic and he proclaims 0.98

00:45:49.100 himself dictator for life, a position which was completely illegal. He couldn't be dictator for

00:45:54.820 life. It's a new constitutional position. On top of that, you know, he's a famous lover,

00:46:01.960 a Latin lover, if you will. And his most famous conquest happens to be a queen, the queen of

00:46:07.300 Egypt, Cleopatra, by whom he has a son, at least she claims it's Caesar's son, Ptolemy XV,

00:46:14.920 the next king of Egypt to everybody calls Caesarian or little Caesar. And he himself flirts with

00:46:23.760 royal affectations. He wears royal robes and gets honor such as no Roman had ever had. 0.99

00:46:31.300 On top of that, he has a problem similar to Alexander. He's trying to balance the loyalty

00:46:37.240 of his old supporters with the new ones who he brings into his army. Like Alexander, he says,

00:46:43.700 you can't just crush the people you conquer. You need to win their loyalty. So Caesar famously,

00:46:49.100 after winning the Roman civil war, instead of executing his former opponents, he pardons them.

00:46:55.740 He gives them clemency, as he calls it. But this doesn't work for two reasons. First of all,

00:47:02.280 it offends and alienates his old supporters who say, hey, wait a minute. What about us? Why are you being

00:47:07.840 so nice to these new guys? And secondly, the way he gives them clemency is kind of offensive. He makes

00:47:13.020 them beg for it. Please, oh great Caesar, please forgive me for what I have done. As if there was

00:47:18.500 something wrong with defending their country against a would-be dictator. So Caesar just, you know, sets up

00:47:23.880 a sea of enemies against him. And they decide to plot against him. Caesar's not doing well in the city

00:47:31.920 of Rome. He doesn't really like Roman politics. He's more successful in the battlefield. And so he plans

00:47:38.860 to leave Rome yet again after the civil war and start a new war, this time against the enemy in

00:47:45.900 the east, the Parthian Empire, a revived Iranian empire that controls Iran. Iraq is extending into 0.73

00:47:55.460 the Roman province of Syria. They've clashed in the past. The Parthians have won. Caesar says he wants 0.96

00:48:02.040 to go now back to the east and avenge former defeats. But before he can leave Rome, he is of course

00:48:10.140 assassinated on the Ides of March. To add to the mix, Caesar was not a healthy man. He was suffering

00:48:18.020 either from epilepsy or perhaps a series of mini strokes. It's not entirely clear. That might have

00:48:26.200 weakened him on the Ides of March and probably did not bode well for his long-term longevity. He was a

00:48:33.600 man in his mid-50s. But he thought he was going to be able to pull off this military campaign and at

00:48:40.380 least win some victories. Who knows what would have happened in the end? But his opponents were convinced

00:48:45.020 that he was a threat both to his old supporters and to his former enemies who defended the Roman

00:48:52.900 Republic. So they joined together in a conspiracy and managed to take him out in the Senate on the

00:49:00.160 Ides of March, 44 BC. What happened to Rome after that? So what happened to Rome after that? Caesar had

00:49:08.820 an eye for talent. He already had begun the process of concentrating power in the Republic that used to

00:49:16.740 belong to the nobility, concentrating power in his own hands and that of his family. He didn't have any

00:49:22.820 legitimate children of his own. He had a daughter, but she had died. But he had some nephews and cousins

00:49:28.960 and he began to share power with them. The most promising was an 18-year-old grandnephew, the son of

00:49:39.120 his sister's daughter. This is a guy named Gaius Octavius. Gaius Octavius had been brought to Caesar's

00:49:47.420 attention by his mother and his grandmother. And Caesar had paid a lot of attention to him while

00:49:52.580 the kid was growing up. He was fatherless. His father had died when he was young. And Caesar has

00:49:57.760 sent young Gaius Octavius to the East to be part of this new campaign. But when Caesar dies, in his

00:50:04.620 will, it turns out that Caesar has adopted him posthumously, which is not something he did in Rome,

00:50:10.120 by the way, as heir, and left most of his enormous fortune to him. This young man was incredibly clever

00:50:17.620 and talented. He comes back to Rome and he starts a campaign to capture all of the honors and power

00:50:24.580 that Caesar had. It is a long struggle that lasts almost a generation and leads to a new civil war.

00:50:32.680 To make a long story short, this young Gaius Octavius, who becomes another Julius Caesar,

00:50:40.000 ultimately defeats everyone and becomes Rome's first emperor. We know him as Augustus. So Caesar

00:50:47.660 does leave a dynasty behind him, not in the way that he had planned. And it's a very iffy thing. But in

00:50:56.340 the end, he leaves behind him another civil war, just as Alexander had, leaves behind him another civil war.

00:51:02.020 But in the case of Caesar, one man manages to win the whole thing. The Roman Empire might have split

00:51:09.740 up into a series of smaller realms, just as Alexander's empire did. But young Gaius Octavius,

00:51:17.300 the future Augustus, is so successful, so competent, and so fortunate that he wins the whole thing.

00:51:23.920 And the Roman Republic becomes what we call the Roman Empire, the Roman monarchy, in fact.

00:51:28.760 I mean, one of the big takeaways I got from this book was that all three of these men,

00:51:33.980 crazy ambition, crazy audacity, brilliant. But that idea that none of them knew when to stop.

00:51:43.140 I'm curious, do you think it's possible to be a part of the tribe of the Eagle, like Abraham Lincoln

00:51:48.080 said, and know when to stop, like, have that balance? Has there ever been a military leader or

00:51:54.820 a common, a military leader has been able to do that? Or do you have to have like a, like two people

00:51:59.380 sort of, sort of balance each other off?

00:52:01.580 It's a great question. It's really hard to do. And most people, most of us are good at one thing.

00:52:07.180 And we're not immensely versatile. That's why it's really important, by the way, to have

00:52:11.020 a second in command. And one of the reasons that Augustus wins is that he's not a great warrior.

00:52:17.280 And he has a second in command, he's a great warrior, and he doesn't want to

00:52:20.400 knock him off. Agrippa, Marcus Agrippa. So when you got that situation, then you can have

00:52:25.860 someone who knows how to stop, as Augustus knows how to stop. George Washington is somebody who knew

00:52:32.020 how to stop. He didn't become king after winning the American Revolution. In fact, he goes home and

00:52:39.360 retires. There you, it takes a really remarkable personality who has a kind of modesty and humility

00:52:47.680 that allows him to stop. Another person who knows how to stop is William the Conqueror.

00:52:53.080 After conquering England, he doesn't say, hey, this was just the beginning. Let's keep on going.

00:52:58.400 He knows when to stop. He figures, hey, this is a great thing to win. I'm going to spend the rest of

00:53:03.520 my life trying to absorb it. So it's possible, but it's really rare, really difficult to do.

00:53:11.160 Yeah. And what I loved about this book, I mean, while it's about military history,

00:53:14.640 you can see this, this can transfer over the same ideas to like business. You see businesses that are

00:53:19.320 just so hell-bent on growing and growing and growing, that in the end, it bites in the rear,

00:53:24.960 and they collapse like immediately and fast. Yeah. And also in business, you often see someone

00:53:30.760 who's the genius who figures out how to start a new business, but rarely is that person also going

00:53:37.300 to be the manager and administrator who can bring it to the second generation. So it's really common.

00:53:43.220 You have a founder. Great. Bye. See ya. Now we have somebody who is going to codify the whole thing

00:53:49.560 and do the hard, you know, the slog of making it work. These guys didn't like doing the slog work.

00:53:55.020 They really didn't. I mean, I think that's something they have in common.

00:53:59.620 So you got a new book out. I'm curious, how's this continuation of this book,

00:54:03.140 Masters of Command, or is it a continuation or is it something different?

00:54:05.380 It is a continuation. Thank you. So the new book is called 10 Caesars, Roman Emperors from Augustus to

00:54:11.120 Constantine. So it takes the story through Caesar's successor, Augustus, and asks,

00:54:16.820 how does he win the whole thing? What's his ambition? What makes him so successful? And then

00:54:23.120 how does he pull it off? Caesar can't get the Romans to accept him as dictator for life.

00:54:29.620 How does Augustus pull it off? And having done so, what kind of government, what kind of regime

00:54:37.740 does he leave? And how are the Romans able to continue it? Particularly because they continue 0.99

00:54:44.800 with the fiction that it's still the Roman Republic. We call it the Roman Empire, but they never did.

00:54:49.600 And we said they have emperors, but they never said that at all. They said, oh, no, no, no, no,

00:54:53.740 no. It's just a republic. Nothing has changed. Who are you going to believe? Me or your lion eyes?

00:54:59.960 Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Nothing has changed. How do they pull it off? And

00:55:04.940 in fact, not only is it not true that nothing has changed, but the Romans have this problem that

00:55:10.160 the world doesn't stand still. The world keeps changing enormously in big ways. And in a way,

00:55:16.720 the Romans are the victims of their own success. Because they have a successful empire,

00:55:21.560 the empire starts changing. How are you going to adapt when that happens? How do you make change

00:55:28.000 your friend, which you need to do if you want to stay in power? Nobody stays in power by saying,

00:55:32.100 I'm not changing anything. I can keep everything the same because you can't keep things the same. So I'm

00:55:36.840 really fascinated by this question. How do the Romans have this balance in change, in continuity?

00:55:43.700 And they do. And they managed to keep the empire for a very, very long time. And I think it's partly

00:55:49.340 because of this flexibility. It sounds like there's a lot of lessons there that can transfer over to

00:55:53.620 other areas of life as well. Indeed. Well, Barry, where can people go to learn more about your work?

00:55:58.480 People can learn more about my work in two places. First of all, I have a website,

00:56:01.620 barrystrauss.com. But also, I have a podcast, which I started in the fall, and I'm really excited

00:56:07.780 about. It's called Antiquitas, Leaders and Legends of the Ancient World. And you can find it on all the

00:56:14.100 major podcast platforms, on iTunes, for instance, or Google Play or Stitcher, as well as on my website.

00:56:21.080 And the first season is called The Gods of War. And it takes you from Achilles to Julius Caesar.

00:56:27.540 And the second season, which just recently launched, is called The Death of Caesar. And you can read

00:56:32.300 about that. You can hear about that as well on the podcast. I encourage you to listen to it. And if

00:56:37.460 you like it, please rate it on iTunes. Well, Barry, this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much

00:56:42.720 for your time. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's really been a

00:56:46.360 great pleasure for me as well. My guest name is Barry Strauss. He's the author of the book Masters of

00:56:50.600 Command. We discussed that book today. It's available on Amazon.com. Also, check out his new book,

00:56:54.820 10 Caesars. Also available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Find out more information

00:56:58.920 about his work at his website, barrystrauss.com. And while you're there, check out his podcast,

00:57:03.000 Antiquidus, Leaders and Legends of the Ancient World. You can also check out our show notes at

00:57:06.920 aom.is slash mastersofcommand, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:57:12.180 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIN podcast. Check out our website,

00:57:28.040 artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives. Got over 480 podcasts up,

00:57:32.560 evergreen. They're still good. Even if they're like five years ago, they're still quality. Also,

00:57:36.500 you can find thousands of articles we've written over the years about personal finances,

00:57:39.360 physical fitness, how to be a better husband, better father. Check it out,

00:57:42.800 artofmanliness.com. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute

00:57:46.840 to give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already,

00:57:50.640 thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think we get

00:57:53.960 something out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time,

00:57:57.220 this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AWIN podcast, but put what you've heard into

00:58:05.180 action.

00:58:09.360 you

The Art of Manliness - March 04, 2019

#487： Leadership Lessons From the 3 Greatest Ancient Commanders

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