The Art of Manliness - A Bible for Heroes — The Influential Book Read By History's Eminent Men

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.040 in 18th century america this book was second in popularity only to the bible it was a favorite of

00:00:16.780 many thinkers and leaders throughout history including emerson napoleon machiavelli nietzsche

00:00:21.720 and even president truman yet you probably haven't read it it's plutarch's parallel lives

00:00:27.320 if you're not familiar with plutarch's lives you're in for a treat as today's episode offers

00:00:31.740 a great intro my guest alex petkus found that even though he's a former classicist and professor

00:00:36.720 plutarch's lives is still a tough read which is why he started a podcast the cost of glory

00:00:41.280 to make it more accessible to people he does the same thing on today's episode sharing the

00:00:45.720 background on plutarch's set of biographies and its major themes alex explains why plutarch thought

00:00:50.460 that biography was a powerful way to transmit morals and how the homeric virtue he had in mind

00:00:55.140 different from that of just having good upstanding character alex then gives us a taste of plutarch

00:01:00.040 as we discuss the lives of two obscure greek and roman figures we end our conversation with how to

00:01:04.780 get started studying plutarch yourself after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is

00:01:09.400 slash plutarch

00:01:10.240 all right alex petkus welcome to the show great to be here brett thanks for having me so you are

00:01:24.760 the host of a podcast called the cost of glory which takes listeners through the greek historian

00:01:31.200 and philosopher plutarch's work parallel lives for those who aren't familiar with plutarch can you give

00:01:37.820 us a thumbnail biographical sketch of this guy yeah so if you've ever been to athens there is a monument

00:01:46.120 there that overlooks the acropolis and the pnyx it's called the philopapus monument and so this was

00:01:54.000 built in the second century a.d in honor of one of plutarch's friends and clients who he actually

00:02:02.400 addresses a treatise to so plutarch is a philosopher historian he's thought of as a historian today that

00:02:08.940 was living around the time of seneca epictetus his grandson was a teacher tutor to marcus aurelius

00:02:17.520 so he's kind of in that era around saint paul first and second century a.d and plutarch was a local

00:02:23.300 politician a local kind of leader from boeotia near thebes a little town called kyreneia and he

00:02:30.700 lived most of his life there he visited rome this is the the period that we're in is the when rome rules

00:02:36.560 all the mediterranean including greece so he's a greco-roman but you know he's a greek speaker

00:02:41.580 and he was in later life made a priest of delphi so he's a kind of a religious figure too but what i

00:02:49.160 think is really he's famous for is writing this biography that you mentioned the parallel lives

00:02:54.520 or it's a biography collection and it's one of the most famous works of antiquity and in various

00:03:00.240 periods of history it was probably the most popular of all the books from the greco-roman period

00:03:06.360 in the 18th century in america plutarch's lives the parallel lives was more popular than homer or

00:03:14.240 plato or cicero it was just second only to the bible among ancient works so it's an incredibly popular

00:03:22.040 book and he he wrote these biographies out of a a general conviction that this was a an effective way

00:03:29.560 to transmit virtue so he wrote a bunch of other moral essays but but the biographies were kind of

00:03:36.440 the the centerpiece of this and they were written for people like his friend philo pappas who was

00:03:42.460 actually a client king of the romans he was from syria and was visiting athens because i think he was in

00:03:49.360 political exile from his homeland so it's kind of written for leaders of society and those are like

00:03:54.480 plutarch's you know clients as it were the people that he taught he did he instructed in philosophy

00:03:59.460 that he's trying to add value to in his life but that's him in a nutshell so yeah he he's first a

00:04:05.300 philosopher we think of him as a historian today and i think most people when they think about history

00:04:10.880 they think you know history is a science where the goal is to create as accurate a description of

00:04:17.540 the past as possible and plutarch he sought for accuracy in his in his works but as you said his

00:04:22.560 primary goal with biography and history wasn't fact his main telos was teaching virtue morality so why

00:04:31.860 did he think biography was the most effective way to to teach morals yeah well and i i will i do want

00:04:39.200 to defend him and you know you gave him credit he is a serious historian like he does sift through

00:04:43.380 sources and he tries to discern fact from fiction but he distinguishes his project from history in

00:04:50.280 for example the introduction to the life of alexander the great one of his characters and he says i'm not

00:04:57.080 writing history so my audience will have to excuse me if i do not recount every single battle and every

00:05:05.480 you know deed done publicly by alexander because i'm writing lives and not histories and a chance

00:05:13.120 remark said at a dinner party or a joke made among friends might do more to elucidate character than

00:05:20.960 battles in which thousands died and so his goal in writing these biographies which we could call we

00:05:28.000 sort of think of as histories is really to portray the essence of a man of the character not just what

00:05:33.260 they did but more importantly who they were and for that reason he sees his mission as as much as

00:05:39.300 anything one of selection you know finding the most illustrative examples from the life so he'll tell

00:05:46.080 you the narrative of the life of a man but he'll try to get the best quotes the best illustrative

00:05:51.740 anecdotes he's a great storyteller so there's all these kind of hollywood scenes but he tries to stay

00:05:57.100 concise and the longest of his biographies is less than 100 pages in modern editions and a lot of them

00:06:01.620 are 30 to 60 pages but it was like you said it was because he thought biography was not just not just

00:06:07.600 interesting and entertaining but contained this really powerful moral juice that he wanted his

00:06:15.740 readers to get it's why he chose this genre and the way he did it the book is called parallel lives is he

00:06:22.300 would find someone from greek history and someone from roman history and do a compare and contrast between

00:06:28.680 the two that's right yeah so for example julius caesar and alexander the greatest sort of all-around

00:06:37.380 figures of either culture and demosthenes and cicero the greatest orators of the greeks and romans and

00:06:44.640 you know one of his missions is kind of cultural like he's writing for roman readers who know greek

00:06:50.700 greeks who live under the roman empire and he's kind of trying to help greeks and romans appreciate each

00:06:56.840 other that's like a kind of side mission of his and uh because i think he recognizes this thing that

00:07:03.420 rousseau would talk about that heroes are in a lot of ways the embodiment of a culture that they're the

00:07:09.620 sort of the way that a culture becomes one is by having the same heroes and so he wanted people to

00:07:16.840 share their heroes in his sort of meeting of two cultures world that he lived in the reason that i think

00:07:22.760 this is important this is this genre of biography is because and the way that you appreciate heroes

00:07:27.900 in general is by like wanting to be like them right like this is how they structure society and and how

00:07:34.640 they have this impact on on your life by producing this emotion that aristotle talks about called zeal

00:07:41.340 yeah tell us more about zelos right is that pronounced in the greek yeah zelos zelos or zelos it's it's an

00:07:48.020 ada in greek so it kind of depends on your pronunciation but so aristotle defines zeal as

00:07:53.880 an emotion felt when a man sees present among others who are like him by nature things good and

00:08:01.860 honorable which he himself is capable of attaining and plutarch talks a lot about zeal in the biographies

00:08:08.840 we might translate zeal zelos as emulation today although that's not like a word that a lot of people

00:08:15.780 know the definition of very well it is where we get the word zeal in english actually but it's that

00:08:22.020 feeling that you feel when you see somebody doing something great and it inspires you to imitate

00:08:27.140 basically and so plutarch talks about how other deeds or other achievements of men will maybe fill

00:08:35.920 you with admiration like if you see a great statue or a well-crafted building it'll it'll fill you with

00:08:42.300 admiration but it won't necessarily make you want to go and make a statue or go and build a building

00:08:47.620 but achievements of virtue of excellence like the kind that he depicts in the biographies that these

00:08:53.920 will have a sort of natural almost magnetic effect and make you want to imitate them somehow and he

00:09:00.200 recognizes this thing that that you know so he's a student in his philosophical views of the philosopher

00:09:05.280 plato who lived four centuries earlier and he also quotes aristotle a lot and plato talked about the

00:09:11.540 power of stories mostly in a bad sense in the republic you know the the power of bad stories to

00:09:17.740 shape a bad character aristotle was a little bit more optimistic about the power of story but they

00:09:22.240 both kind of recognized that stories that you tend to gravitate in your own character towards the people

00:09:27.980 that you admire in a story and so i think plutarch is kind of basing his whole literary biographical

00:09:34.060 project on that premise that you depict the best people and you'll make great citizens as a result

00:09:39.780 so it sounds like zeal is kind of the opposite of envy a little bit that's how i'd say it it works

00:09:45.540 and that's how aristotle sees it and so aristotle defines envy as so if zeal is a pain that makes you

00:09:51.880 want to do great things when you see them being done or being achieved envy is the pain that at the fact

00:10:00.240 that other people have achieved great things so it's it's a kind of a negative passive response for

00:10:05.080 aristotle the greek word is thonos which just sounds bad to me but thonos is always bad in in greek and

00:10:15.000 it's it's the emotion that makes you want to see the mighty fall purely for the fact that they are

00:10:21.780 mighty and it's what nietzsche would define as he uses this french word when he talks about a

00:10:26.500 ressentiment like resentment you know it's a passive destructive emotion it's the tall poppy syndrome

00:10:33.700 emotion that all people will feel the the pain of will feel the results of when they achieve

00:10:40.220 greatness there's always going to be envious people around you trying to bring you down

00:10:43.360 so for aristotle and for plutarch zeal is productive and and creative and envy is destructive right so

00:10:49.500 zeal says you did that so i can do it too envy is like you did that i can't do that so i'm gonna take

00:10:55.720 it away from you somehow yeah exactly and both are are divinities in um he see it in the kind of

00:11:02.540 early greek mythology you know they like to personify these these natural forces and zeal is

00:11:08.040 one that zeus uses to uh to conquer you know the the older order of sort of wicked gods and titans

00:11:15.340 and you know envy has all kinds of destructive power causes wars and so on so you mentioned plutarch

00:11:22.740 wrote these with the goal of helping leaders lead well what influence did parallel lives have on great

00:11:31.420 leaders throughout western history well he's popular all throughout antiquity and he gets

00:11:38.840 rediscovered in the west in the renaissance and so a guy like machiavelli is reading a lot of plutarch

00:11:45.860 a lot of the examples that he cites from the prince are from plutarch plutarch i think emerson put it best

00:11:51.940 he was a great devotee of plutarch he's he calls plutarch a bible for heroes plutarch is in a way

00:11:58.920 like an encyclopedia of great figures from antiquity and he served that role as a sort of as a sort of

00:12:05.860 gateway drug for people to get enthusiastic about ancient greatness ever since the renaissance and

00:12:13.120 even before that in antiquity and so in the 18th century i already mentioned his popularity among

00:12:18.300 you know in the americas another figure that was really influenced by plutarch is rousseau

00:12:23.060 who talked about getting his spirit of liberty from three sources mainly his father his country

00:12:30.580 and plutarch and so you know rousseau was reading plutarch as a young boy and and just obsessed with

00:12:38.960 the heroes of antiquity you know whatever you think of rousseau's influence on politics i think he's a

00:12:43.840 more interesting figure than a lot of people get him credit for alexander hamilton is another great

00:12:47.660 devotee of plutarch in the winter of 1777 i think it is at valley forge he's a 25 year old aide to camp

00:12:56.660 for george washington and you know during the day he's conducting the business of the general he's

00:13:04.600 trying to get money from the continental congress because they're starving out there at valley forge

00:13:09.080 but by night he's staying up in his tent late reading plutarch's lives he's um reading the lives of

00:13:16.080 solon and lycurgus these great state founders of greece and romulus of rome and he's taking notes in

00:13:22.540 his paybook we actually have his paybook he took like 50 pages of notes that winter and you know the

00:13:27.540 list you could go on and on multiplying examples napoleon's supposed to have had a copy of plutarch

00:13:32.560 often by his bed and he would reread the life of caesar before famous battles and i think the most

00:13:39.480 interesting modern political figure who's a great devotee of plutarch is harry truman who was our last

00:13:46.540 self-educated president didn't have a ba and he encountered plutarch as a young man and he speaks

00:13:53.720 about in a biography that interview series that was done of him later in his life he speaks about

00:13:59.860 returning to plutarch again and again as he was going through his political career and he kind of

00:14:05.940 used plutarch as um like a like a library of character like when he would meet somebody that

00:14:11.560 he couldn't quite figure out or he's trying to decide you know as the executive this comes up a

00:14:16.600 lot like who to put in charge of what and who to trust with what sort of duties you know he would he

00:14:22.340 would go back to his bookshelf and open up plutarch and kind of thumb through and try to think of you

00:14:28.240 know who am i dealing with now is this like an alcibiades character is a cato kind of character

00:14:33.140 and you know he would often be able to nail somebody's personality by consulting plutarch who

00:14:39.360 you know according to him knew more about politics than any of the books that he had ever read

00:14:43.080 so i think uh truman's a really great figure that illustrates how plutarch is great for

00:14:49.380 self-educated people and kind of lifelong learners no i like that a lot and then another big influence

00:14:55.800 plutarch had on western culture shakespeare like shakespeare's plays like julius caesar

00:15:02.140 based on plutarch absolutely his his play coriolanus is based on plutarch's coriolanus

00:15:09.160 ancy and cleopatra on mark antony the life of alcibiades contains a character time on the

00:15:15.180 misanthrope so shakespeare's time on yeah that's probably the most influential plutarch reader of uh

00:15:21.640 of modern literary history for sure and yeah it was crazy such a big influence on western culture but i

00:15:27.560 reckon a lot of people haven't read any plutarch yeah it's funny because i think that you know

00:15:33.580 for all that he was incredibly popular for the 15th 16 17 18 centuries he kind of went out of fashion in

00:15:41.420 the 19th century although even in lincoln's day you know lincoln was there was an article written

00:15:47.560 about lincoln one time where the the journalist said ah a great devotee of plutarch is abraham lincoln

00:15:54.360 and lincoln actually wrote to him and said as a matter of fact i never have read plutarch but

00:15:58.940 since you published that article i decided to make up the deficit and so he's he's you know acquired a

00:16:03.180 copy of plutarch and started reading it it's enjoying it so you know he was so popular that it

00:16:07.560 was just assumed that a leader would have been familiar with him but he went out of fashion in the 19th

00:16:12.740 century when kind of like you alluded to at the beginning you know our education in history started

00:16:19.000 this idea that history should be a science became more popular that uh that history was about you

00:16:27.040 know discerning facts and you know assembling a kind of true account of things and even though plutarch

00:16:34.160 is a pretty good historian you know he became sidelined because the whole project that he represented

00:16:38.980 of you know history as self-help in a way history as like moral formation in philosophy just went out

00:16:46.480 of fashion it was seen as sort of not objective and um and i don't know i think that our kind of modern

00:16:52.800 sort of bureaucratized academic culture just doesn't really have a lot of room for the the high agency

00:16:59.600 men that plutarch depicts and and just kind of unproblematic admiration of them yeah i think we're

00:17:05.980 poor for it yeah for sure so when you take a look at plutarch's work as a whole are there themes that

00:17:14.080 you see that he returns to again and again yeah well many the envy of the kind of challengers in the

00:17:24.780 political sphere as a man rises through the ranks and politics the importance of honesty and justice

00:17:32.520 in one's dealings you see so many themes across the board with you know the wages of of of vice are

00:17:41.620 often you know like often it's it's through a leader's vice that somebody's able to affect their

00:17:48.400 downfall by you know tempting them with whether it's wine or women or riches so yeah plutarch is a

00:17:56.720 moralist at heart but he doesn't let his moralism cloud his judgment of people i think that's one of

00:18:03.640 his great virtues he doesn't uh make saints out of anybody and he doesn't make villains out of his

00:18:09.160 main characters either even though he um he sometimes strongly disapproves of them and so it's just a

00:18:14.880 whole kind of library of morals so one theme that i've seen that i'm particularly interested in that

00:18:20.780 plutarch tries to figure out is sussing out whether outcomes you know whether it's a war

00:18:27.560 someone's rise or fall whether that's dependent on virtue or fate start to do some definitions like

00:18:35.220 what did plutarch mean by virtue this is a really interesting question that i thought a lot about

00:18:41.400 because so plutarch is is admired by a guy like machiavelli and a guy like nietzsche who you know

00:18:49.540 machiavelli defines virtue as something like well virtu is is what he calls it something like

00:18:56.740 prowess or you know just competence in politics and war i wouldn't say that it's amoral but it's

00:19:05.640 definitely not the virtue of virtue signaling it's definitely like it's something a little different

00:19:11.460 from being an upstanding citizen right it's like skill it's right right and this this idea is sort of

00:19:19.480 in tension with maybe what you would see represented as a virtue in an author like seneca or marcus

00:19:25.920 aurelius like the stoics so plutarch is also a moralist and you know his definition of virtue as a

00:19:32.780 philosopher would be some kind of harmony of the four cardinal virtues maybe like justice temperance

00:19:39.880 wisdom and courage something like close to good citizenship close to the the philosophical idea you

00:19:48.580 do find in plato and socrates but he also i think as an artist he's dealing with these men who really

00:19:57.560 exhibit this kind of earlier almost homeric sense of virtue like in homer arete the greek word for

00:20:05.460 well what gets translated as virtue a lot arete is really prowess it's really um skill competence

00:20:12.720 and it's a form of sort of manly overwhelming excellence it actually derives from the greek word

00:20:19.220 for man arein just like virtus derives from the word vir in latin man so they both kind of mean

00:20:27.340 manliness etymologically in both languages and plutarch has these figures that he depicts fairly

00:20:34.700 and sympathetically who really exhibit that frightening virtue like a guy like alexander or especially a guy like

00:20:41.700 caesar you know conquering all of gaul outsmarting all of his enemies themistically is another great

00:20:47.940 example of outsmarting your enemies so for plutarch virtue i think as a philosopher he would define it

00:20:53.800 as something you know more more like being an upstanding citizen a harmony of soul but as an artist

00:21:02.440 he has this earlier kind of primal sense of manliness which is one of the reasons why he's been so appealing

00:21:08.100 to people like napoleon who kind of are looking more for that than for the good citizenship version

00:21:13.440 of virtue yeah it's this idea that you can conquer fate through your your greatness basically absolutely

00:21:21.100 yeah i mean yeah what did plutarch have to say about that like what did he have to say about the

00:21:25.440 intersection between this prowess and luck or fate in life well i i do like this formulation that

00:21:34.140 the harder you work the the luckier you get you can kind of increase your surface area for being

00:21:40.960 struck by good luck if you if you're you know hard-working virtuous person i think plutarch would

00:21:47.800 agree with that in general there are some interesting figures that bring out this tension i think that um

00:21:53.320 i look at a guy like sulla who i recently did a series on and in my podcast sulla is um was an

00:22:00.920 incredibly competent you know in the old sense of virtue the virtu politician in the generation before

00:22:08.860 julius caesar at rome and he was he was kind of a problematic figure for plutarch because he's you

00:22:15.980 know he's a sexual omnivore he indulges in drinking parties after he wins a civil war that he largely

00:22:23.900 provoked he slaughters all of his enemies in a great political purge and yet sulla was after he 0.54

00:22:31.840 won the roman the first roman civil war he renamed himself the lucky and he he liked even though he

00:22:39.280 was incredibly competent he liked to speak of how the best decisions that he made for example were not

00:22:45.640 the ones that he arrived at by calculation or forethought but that he just kind of intuited and just took

00:22:52.240 on a whim as if he were blessed by the gods and i think for a guy like sulla the the more

00:22:59.500 you believe in yourself the more kind of faith you have both in yourself and in the gods the luckier you

00:23:07.100 get there's something kind of almost mystical about a guy like sulla he so even though he's we don't

00:23:12.080 normally associate a machiavellian if you were conqueror figure like that with great piety sulla was

00:23:19.040 quite pious actually he would you know thumb his amulet of venus before battles he's always talking

00:23:25.420 about having dreams and in which the gods speak to him and he's a lavish dedicator of votive offerings

00:23:34.800 to the gods so this is kind of he has this very public piety and i think he really believed it

00:23:40.200 and so on the other hand you know for for a guy like plutarch who's a philosopher a lot of what

00:23:45.940 philosophy is supposed to give you and i think you see this a lot in the stoics too is this kind

00:23:51.820 of fortification against fate that really the reward of virtue the greatest reward of virtue is

00:23:58.500 not having success in life it's the kind of peace and contentment of mind that you get from

00:24:05.940 from cultivating excellence like virtue is its own reward for for plutarch and he has a whole essay on

00:24:12.640 this on tranquility of mind that is that's one of the upshots of that treatise like even if you get

00:24:18.300 exiled even if you're being tortured like there is some solace the greatest solace of all perhaps

00:24:24.920 in having a good character and often like that means that some of the best figures some of the most

00:24:31.300 compelling figures of plutarch end up dying these tragic deaths but you can sort of pronounce at the

00:24:36.800 end of the day that they lived a good life nonetheless we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our

00:24:41.740 sponsors and now back to the show okay so let's give our listeners a taste of plutarch's lives and

00:24:50.940 then what you're doing with it on your podcast so two lives that you cover in your show that i found

00:24:57.360 particularly interesting were those of the greek eumenes and the roman sertorius so start with eumenes

00:25:04.240 first this guy's really interesting can you give us like a thumbnail biographical sketch of this guy

00:25:08.540 yeah uh eumenes of cardia a town that nobody has ever heard of today and barely anybody had heard of

00:25:17.120 in antiquity he's from this backwater at the fringe of the greek world but he ends up becoming the royal

00:25:25.620 secretary of the macedonian king philip the second and then after philip is assassinated he becomes the

00:25:33.500 royal secretary to philip's son alexander the great and follows alexander the great on his campaigns

00:25:40.420 conquering the persian empire it goes all the way to india with him and eumenes becomes this figure

00:25:45.940 since the fourth century bc in he's greek and not a macedonian which is important for his story

00:25:51.440 but he he becomes this after alexander dies sort of tragically very young without

00:25:56.700 designating a successor eumenes becomes one of the most important people in the conflicts that

00:26:03.080 arise shortly after there's these great wars of succession that go on right after alexander dies

00:26:08.260 and eumenes proves that he wasn't just a talented administrator secretary numbers guy bureaucrat but

00:26:14.980 he's like one of the best generals of his day and he defeats great generals like antigonus and

00:26:22.720 craterus he like slays some incredibly mighty men in single combat on the battlefield it's it's an

00:26:29.760 incredible sort of rags to riches guy comes out of nowhere story that um it's one of the reasons i

00:26:36.340 started my podcast honestly because he's such an obscure figure even classicists today you know when i

00:26:42.720 was reading plutarch's lives i decided to to go through it kind of late in my career before i left

00:26:48.580 academia i stumbled upon eumenes and i'm like i should i should read this biography probably just

00:26:53.920 so i could say i read all of the lives even though he's probably not that interesting because obviously

00:26:57.900 i would have heard of him if he were that interesting but you know he's one of the most

00:27:01.960 amazing characters of all antiquity to me and so i was like oh how good are the rest of the lives

00:27:07.100 going to be if if this obscure figure is so compelling yeah i mean i've read a lot of biographies

00:27:11.340 about alexander the great and philip and i never heard of this guy until i listened to your podcast

00:27:17.420 and i read the the biography in in plutarch yeah what i found so intriguing about this guy

00:27:22.340 he's an outsider right so he's greek but he somehow is able to work his way up to be like the second in

00:27:29.460 command and when there's all that turmoil about who was going to take over the empire after

00:27:33.740 alexander died like he had that sort of political instinct where he knew how to navigate things so that

00:27:41.660 he could be considered like oh yeah this guy this guy we're gonna make this guy in charge

00:27:46.400 yeah i think that that it was a great foresight on his part because um you know the macedonians are

00:27:54.400 they they like to advertise themselves as greeks but it's kind of like us like the english and the

00:28:01.100 scots or like think of if you've ever met somebody from glasgow like they kind of speak english but

00:28:07.000 they're kind of unintelligible depending on if they're amongst their friends and that's what the

00:28:11.260 macedonians were to the greeks and vice versa and so you know as an outsider you know you many saw that

00:28:18.500 his weakness could be a strength that if he rose up through the ranks nobody would ever suspect him

00:28:25.700 of trying to take over because oh you know a greek could never rule over macedonians i'm just the

00:28:32.060 secretary i'm just the guy you can trust with your secrets and so for that reason he gets very close

00:28:37.260 to alexander he's very clever and charismatic you know he's probably there when alexander's getting

00:28:44.360 tutored by the philosopher aristotle eumenes is keeping philip of macedon's correspondence so he's

00:28:50.400 writing these letters to these greek cities like he's kind of philip's ghost writer diplomatically

00:28:55.680 eumenes gets very close to alexander's mother the very difficult woman olympius which i think is a 0.98

00:29:02.240 a real you know probably the best evidence of his incredible people skills that he's able to preserve

00:29:08.060 good relationships with olympius who was an incredibly difficult person to get along with

00:29:12.700 especially for philip but because of that you know so when alexander dies eumenes is there's this

00:29:20.180 conclave that the generals meet in to try to sort out who's gonna take over or who's gonna be regent

00:29:26.740 you know alexander has this newborn son i think maybe wasn't born yet but he was he was you know

00:29:32.500 his mother was pregnant and so uh you know alexander's wife's was pregnant that is and so

00:29:39.440 eumenes in this conclave of great generals he says i'm just going to be the note taker guys

00:29:44.800 so that means he's in the room as the most important decision is being made he knows all of the figures

00:29:52.880 he's standing on the sidelines recording everything he has full intelligence of whatever is going on

00:29:58.020 he's very very very close to power but nobody suspects that he's going to be a big player and

00:30:03.940 because the regent that eventually gets chosen perdikus trusts him the most he ends up giving

00:30:10.140 eumenes this important job as a governor of the satrap of cappadocia some kind of important province

00:30:17.520 in asia minor and he you know he gives him some money in an army and makes eumenes a military

00:30:22.820 commander after all and so it's because perdikus felt like he could trust eumenes and eumenes of all

00:30:29.240 the people left standing when alexander died he's not a macedonian so perdikus doesn't see him as a

00:30:35.500 threat and so that allows him to to be in his very strong position when um when the war begins

00:30:41.760 okay so i'm trying to think of some lessons we can extract from that for the modern day

00:30:45.240 one is if you're a young person a young man and you're starting off in your job at a company

00:30:51.940 do not downplay opportunities to be like a scribe or like you know just sit in on meetings where you

00:30:59.440 don't actually talk but you're there just to observe maybe take notes for the boss that can

00:31:04.900 actually be really powerful yeah i think that's a great lesson and it's something that i saw i talk a

00:31:11.020 little bit about this in the life of pompey the great you know when pompey was making his own rise

00:31:16.040 in the chaos of the civil war he always he took pains to be close to the most important person

00:31:22.300 which is sulla and uh one of the things that i heard a a venture capitalist talk about one time

00:31:27.900 on a podcast i thought was really insightful is if you're at a company you should try to get really

00:31:33.080 close physically to the people who are the real power in the organization and if you can manage it

00:31:39.660 either don't have a an official position just be the boy you know the wonder boy who does all kinds

00:31:45.540 of stuff and people like what is that guy's role exactly or don't let yourself be limited by your role

00:31:51.960 you know so eumenes isn't just the royal secretary he you know he develops that relationship with

00:31:57.760 olympius you know he develops the personal touch of being the trusted person somebody you can go to

00:32:03.400 with secrets and um and that that's a great way to rise through the ranks and kind of pole vault over

00:32:08.500 other people who are just working their way through the the proper channels yeah okay so also people

00:32:14.440 skills it seems like you had that in spades so develop those for sure as much as you can so this guy

00:32:19.500 acquired a lot of power in this sort of power vacuum that existed after alexander the great

00:32:25.020 but eventually he had a downfall what led to his downfall well he finds himself in this position

00:32:30.820 the wars of succession start getting on and in full swing pradikas gets assassinated and eumenes ends up

00:32:38.120 sort of not accidentally certainly not accidentally but uh he finds himself in this coalition of loyalists

00:32:46.200 so the cause that he kind of represents is uh securing the legitimate succession of alexander's son

00:32:53.540 this is what olympius wants there are other generals that just want to say let's do away with this whole

00:32:58.660 kingdom of alexander farce and just carve it up and we can all have our own little kingdoms

00:33:03.200 that eumenes is leading a coalition of loyalists and he recognizes the weakness of of his position

00:33:10.020 because all of these guys want to be the ceo and but he's the most competent guy on the battlefield

00:33:16.160 and so he ends up as the de facto general and one of the ways that he ends up having charge of the

00:33:23.600 whole army is by he he tells the men that he has this dream where alexander the great visits him

00:33:30.880 and tells him that if he and the generals will pray for the favor of alexander who they kind of

00:33:37.900 regard now maybe certainly this was part of alexander's myth when he was alive like maybe he's the son of

00:33:44.100 zeus right there's a kind of divine aura around him so alexander visits eumenes in the dream says

00:33:49.280 pray to me and i will guide the army and so eumenes erects this tent in which the genius of alexander is

00:33:55.360 supposed to kind of spiritually reside and he says well why don't we you know all meet in this tent and

00:34:00.900 burn incense to the genius of alexander and he will guide our our group decisions and surprisingly the

00:34:08.000 the generals say okay to this and so he knows if he gets them alone in a tent and it's like a group

00:34:13.760 decision that he can sort of sway the conversation in the right direction but he's dealing with a lot

00:34:18.920 of envy rising as as he's leading this coalition of men de facto the boss of them and he has a few

00:34:26.540 successful battles and this is happening in the mountains of iran amazingly there's elephants involved

00:34:32.560 it's just really epic but what ends up happening is in this battle that he wins tactically one of his

00:34:41.120 envious subordinates this guy pukestus ends up throwing the fight and in the chaos even though 0.90

00:34:48.560 eumenes wins the battle his enemy antigonus captures the base the camp the baggage train which is a few

00:34:55.500 miles from the battle scene there's a big cloud of dust that gets kicked up they're like fighting in a

00:35:01.100 big salt flat and when this happens essentially eumenes has this um this contingent of super elite

00:35:07.680 infantry the silver shields fighting on his side and these guys are are really really i mean they're

00:35:16.140 very talented like the navy seals of the macedonian army but they have their wives and children with

00:35:22.020 them they've sort of been accustomed to getting coddled you know they're professional soldiers and

00:35:26.760 since they're so good the generals sort of give them a lot of leeway and let them cart around their

00:35:31.860 families with them as they're fighting which ends up i think being a sort of i mean it ends up being a

00:35:36.260 great weakness and liability so antigonus captures the camp and he captures the wives and children of

00:35:40.520 the silver shields and he's able to kind of force them against eumenes once he has these hostages and 0.98

00:35:47.780 they they give him up really willingly these guys just don't have a lot of principles at this point

00:35:52.400 they're old men and so i think i think the lesson for me there is um you know eumenes i i do like to

00:35:59.040 think that he faced his fate willingly but also you know he didn't have subordinates at that point that

00:36:05.800 were really ride or die with him he was able to command a lot of loyalty through his charisma and

00:36:10.560 his championing of the the cause of being loyal to the dead king's memory but you know when you're the

00:36:16.760 best man on the battlefield and in an organization sometimes you just can't trust the people that

00:36:23.520 aren't ever going to be able to be committed to that cause as much as you are and so i think that

00:36:27.380 was part of his downfall all right let's talk about sertorius so he's the roman in this parallel live 0.61

00:36:33.020 who was this guy sertorius you know another obscure figure but sertorius i describe him as the

00:36:40.600 greatest roman rebel so theodore momson this famous nobel laureate winner roman historian

00:36:47.240 characterized sertorius as one of the best of the romans that ever lived perhaps in different

00:36:53.440 circumstances he could have been you know a savior of his country a liberator but sertorius ends up on

00:37:00.140 the losing side of the roman civil war with sulla again this is the generation right before julius

00:37:05.480 caesar and he ends up retreating to spain and in the end of the civil war in italy and holding out

00:37:11.820 for nearly 10 years against general after general that the conservative regime throws at him and so

00:37:19.240 he's an incredible inspiring figure of a will to survive and military competence can you tell us more

00:37:26.420 about what happened when sertorius got to spain like first like how did he end up there and how did

00:37:31.120 he manage to build a power base and hold out against rome for so long yeah so when sertorius

00:37:36.980 retreats to spain basically there's a incredibly bloody civil war going on raging in italy and

00:37:44.560 sertorius is on the populist side of the civil war sulla is on the ultimate conservative side of the

00:37:51.040 civil war you know the old aristocracy well one of the last dying things that the populist senate

00:37:57.720 does before sulla captures the city and has them all executed is they make sertorius a governor of

00:38:04.760 spain they make him a praetor and uh this gives him some legitimate authority i think they kind of

00:38:11.480 wanted to get rid of him because he was complaining he's a sort of junior officer complaining about how

00:38:15.580 incompetently the war effort was being handled so they're like why don't you just go to spain we'll

00:38:19.640 just give you a job to get rid of you and they think that he's you know he's not going to do much

00:38:24.380 good there they're just trying to get him out of their hair but he manages to win a couple of

00:38:29.860 battles against generals that sulla sends at him and he sees an opportunity there because the romans

00:38:36.180 have in spain by that time they don't control the whole of the iberian peninsula they just control

00:38:42.460 the coastline and mostly they're they're kind of exploiting the province for silver mines and plunder 0.97

00:38:48.600 this is just you know not very scrupulous administration on the part of successive roman

00:38:54.740 governors and so sertorius is like all right we're going to do this differently instead of

00:38:59.020 trying to exploit the natives and extract their silver to try to fund my roman army so that i can 0.99

00:39:06.500 win this civil war i'm gonna build a bridge with them and i'm going to recruit them and i'm going to

00:39:13.200 not just recruit them to you know liberate themselves from the romans i'm going to promise

00:39:19.620 them i'm going to attract them with the hope of becoming true romans themselves so he basically

00:39:27.020 recruits and trains a roman army out of the natives he kind of promises to make romans out of them he 0.99

00:39:33.360 trains their boys in latin and greek so he he inspires them with this greater hope of eventually

00:39:39.320 taking back rome and he gets very close to doing that which is a story we'll get to in a second but

00:39:45.140 i think that the way that he builds this coalition is by rethinking that these natives are not they're 0.72

00:39:51.380 not a fertile ground for us to exploit but rather for us to make allies out of and you know this is

00:39:57.860 our most valuable resource the human resource of these people that live in this province and he like

00:40:01.920 treats them with respect he has this history of being a spy in the cimbrian wars he went undercover

00:40:09.900 under gaius marius a few decades earlier and you know learned the native gallic language and went

00:40:15.700 incognito and gathering intelligence so he's a very culturally flexible person you know like so many of

00:40:21.400 the great british empire heroes and so that's really the secret to his power is he kind of goes native

00:40:27.940 yeah so he's kind of like he's a fox he's sneaky wily very much i i compare him to the swamp fox

00:40:35.840 francis marion in the uh yeah in the revolutionary war because what what he ends up doing is he not

00:40:42.580 only okay he makes roman soldiers out of them but he adopts a lot of native fighting techniques that

00:40:47.840 they're very suited for which is to say guerrilla warfare so he says here's what we're going to do

00:40:51.800 they're they're going to have the advantage in these pitched battles that happen you know in the

00:40:56.880 plains we're gonna we're gonna go to the forest we're gonna cut off their supply lines we're gonna

00:41:01.620 strike and then just fade into the wilderness and they're just not going to be able to do anything

00:41:06.380 to to stop us and and he's incredibly talented at specifically this kind of sneaky form of guerrilla

00:41:13.380 warfare where you where you're just everywhere and nowhere whenever you want to be and uh you know

00:41:19.400 and because he does this he's able to fight off metellus pious one of the greatest commanders of his day

00:41:24.860 he almost uh cuts pompey's story short as a young man he really like spanks pompey like a school boy

00:41:31.800 with these guerrilla techniques that pompey just has no answer for it's it's an incredible story so

00:41:37.980 what do you think are the the takeaways for us living in the 21st century and not fighting in

00:41:43.260 guerrilla civil wars i think sertorius is and eumenes alike one principle that i see in him is he

00:41:50.960 he's a figure that illustrates how important justice is and legitimacy is when you're playing

00:41:57.080 in these spaces where there's not a lot of law and order and there's chaos you know like like in a

00:42:04.000 disruptive startup maybe or if you're in a place where civil order is breaking down those are the

00:42:10.760 places where justice is rare and all the more valuable if you can embody it and so one of the

00:42:17.660 things that sertorius does is he he says we're not gonna we're not just a rebel army we're the true

00:42:23.380 rome and so he has elections he he establishes a rival senate and he appoints officers he takes the

00:42:30.840 time to really legitimize himself through law and order through justice eumenes has his own version of

00:42:36.020 this as well so that's one takeaway another is to fight with the tactics that advantage you always

00:42:42.160 fight on your own terms you know he knows that the romans have this advantage in uh full frontal

00:42:47.060 warfare but that's not the only way to play you know you can be creative and and use tactics that

00:42:52.120 say you know a big incumbent company is not going to be able to beat a startup on speed and innovation

00:42:59.220 often right they they're very set in their ways they have this kind of slow bureaucracy even though

00:43:04.020 they have maybe unlimited resources there's often a deficit of creativity that allows contenders to

00:43:09.540 get advantages over them in particular circumstances so i think sertorius really illustrates that too

00:43:14.100 so this guy sertorius rose to power but eventually had a downfall too what led to his downfall

00:43:20.000 so i think two things for sertorius one is that it was very difficult it was easy to train the natives

00:43:29.680 to adopt this mode of guerrilla warfare they're kind of used to it they've been fighting freedom

00:43:35.300 fighting you know rebellious war against the romans for decades maybe centuries but his roman 0.95

00:43:41.840 subordinates don't like this and he ends up you know he has explicit instructions to his subordinate

00:43:48.900 commanders do not engage metellus or pompey in a head-to-head battle and two times or more this

00:43:57.360 happens and it's disastrous so he has to rely on other people to fight like he does but he can't

00:44:04.080 really convince them they're kind of set in their ways and this ends up weakening his position

00:44:08.680 militarily but what ends up destroying him is a coup among his officers among some of his most trusted

00:44:16.060 lieutenants who were resentful of him again i think you can see this with both you many's and sertorius

00:44:21.920 envy is what ends up bringing them down people think that they could do it as well as he could so sertorius

00:44:28.120 is kind of low born and he ends up getting undermined and assassinated by a higher born man who back in 0.59

00:44:36.140 rome would have outranked him but now that they're in spain he's having to take orders from this you

00:44:42.800 know gruff sabine hill country guy and sertorius got intelligence about this man perperna there you know

00:44:50.300 people said perperna is plotting something against you we have evidence and sertorius just didn't want to

00:44:55.220 hear it he didn't want to you know he's an incredibly competent military commander but i think maybe he was a

00:45:00.460 little bit too trusting in politics he just didn't have the stomach for the for really sleuthing out the

00:45:05.680 conniving wickedness of his subordinates and so they lured him to a dinner party started a brawl and in the

00:45:12.500 chaos they stab him it's very very unfortunate and kind of unworthy ending for the man

00:45:18.120 so the way these parallel lives work is like plutarch will spend some time talking about the greek

00:45:23.600 they'll spend some time talking about the roman and then he'll have an ending piece where he does

00:45:28.240 a kind of compare and contrast what does plutarch say about these two guys like does he favor one

00:45:34.460 between the two well i think plutarch's very fair-handed he says that uh eumenes probably

00:45:41.180 succeeded in more difficult circumstances because um sertorius was a legitimate governor of spain

00:45:50.140 and he had you know the legitimacy of uh of the roman roman authority behind him and the natives didn't

00:45:58.780 really have a better alternative than him you many's on the other hand you know had to contend with

00:46:04.180 macedonian egos these great egoistic barons that are commanding armies and get them to follow him 0.60

00:46:12.400 which he managed to do plutarch says that's a more remarkable achievement actually but he assigns a

00:46:19.500 kind of moral advantage to sertorius because sertorius when he kept getting attacked in spain

00:46:27.460 by these successive generals that sulla and the regime after sulla died were sending he offered

00:46:32.960 many times over to lay down arms if they would just let him return and be a private citizen and you know

00:46:39.260 never seek office again he he didn't want to keep fighting he didn't want to um to war but he he was 0.99

00:46:45.600 constantly refused they said no you'll get no quarter we're gonna hunt you down till we kill you

00:46:50.380 and so he says sertorius is warlike but eumenes on the other hand really did have an opportunity to 0.93

00:46:58.460 recede into private life he could have gone back to being a secretary or you know retired to some kind

00:47:05.560 of sinecure minor position of authority and and not gone fighting but eumenes unlike sertorius was not

00:47:12.760 only war like he was a lover of war and i think the plutarch is kind of right there that you know

00:47:18.360 somebody like eumenes really stuck his neck out he really intentionally put himself into a position

00:47:24.080 where he would be commanding armies and and fighting for a cause that he found meaningful and so plutarch

00:47:30.660 sort of prefers sertorius on that count because uh and plutarch's a man of peace he's a philosopher right

00:47:36.980 but he i think he portrays both of them pretty fairly all right so that's that's a taste of what

00:47:41.940 plutarch does in these lives how many parallel lives does he do in the complete work there are

00:47:47.980 a total of i believe it's 48 parallel lives he has a few more biographies four more that are not part

00:47:54.300 of the parallel structure but so there's 24 greeks and 24 romans for those who want to dig more into

00:48:00.760 this do you have a translation that you prefer i have a a rundown on my website on plutarch at

00:48:07.460 costofglory.com it's hard to find a single volume with all of the the lives in a kind of updated

00:48:14.240 modern translation there are older translations available i like the penguin editions they tend to

00:48:19.760 group them by time period so they'll group a bunch of romans around the death of caesar together or a

00:48:25.920 bunch of greeks around the peloponnesian war together i think that's a pretty effective way of reading just

00:48:30.720 you know i do like the parallel structure and the idea of comparing these two figures that are

00:48:36.860 comparable but you know if you're if you're just trying to get your head around the history sometimes

00:48:41.280 it does help to just read a whole series of lives that interconnect very concretely so penguin does a

00:48:48.000 pretty good job there i'm curious do you know of any modern biographers that take a plutarchian

00:48:54.420 approach to biography well i have to say that i i don't know modern biography quite as well as as

00:49:02.380 ancient i've been enjoying brian kilmeade's book on sam houston lately i live in houston texas so

00:49:07.820 you know it's kind of close to home and you know that is definitely a man straight out of plutarch's

00:49:12.940 pages you know it's it's often not the academic historians who work on historical figures but

00:49:19.520 journalists tend to have a more free hand and and taking a a moral kind of self-improvement

00:49:26.380 approach to biography i think of robert green in a lot of ways as a even though he doesn't do

00:49:30.900 biographies he relies a lot on the biographical tradition and he's a great storyteller he's drawing

00:49:35.780 out lessons you know 48 laws of power is good i really like his book mastery my friend ben wilson

00:49:42.060 how to take over the world podcast does a lot of this kind of thing with historical figures but i i'm

00:49:47.940 always open to suggestions i love to find new biographies it's just it's not so much in style

00:49:53.160 right now to to give you the kind of plutarchian snapshot of a person you know so many of our

00:49:58.440 biographies the way that people go about it is they produce these 800 900 page tomes which are um

00:50:04.960 you know very informative but often it's really hard to make it all the way through i find yeah i think

00:50:10.560 the historians who do more like narrative history so i'm the one that comes to mind hampton sides

00:50:16.080 he wrote uh blood and thunder is the biography of kit carson did some stuff about uh the war

00:50:22.500 frozen chosen in north korea he does more of that like he'll tell a great story it's really well

00:50:29.200 researched but then he's trying you kind of get glimpses of these people warts and all and seeing

00:50:35.320 how their character had an effect on the events another one sc gwen he wrote empire the summer moon

00:50:41.720 about kuana parker i think it's another so yeah like narrative history i think did he do stonewall

00:50:46.740 jackson as well yeah he did the stonewall jackson biography yeah yeah you're the second person in

00:50:51.920 this week to recommend uh hampton sides kit carson so i guess i got to get it now it's a good one yeah

00:50:57.240 we got we did an episode on that so uh we'll link to that in the show notes well alex it's been a

00:51:02.160 great conversation where can people go to learn more about the work you do well costofglory.com is my

00:51:08.320 website you can find the cost of glory podcast anywhere you get your podcasts you know spotify

00:51:13.580 apple podcast all the other players youtube i would suggest if people want to get into the

00:51:18.640 the cost of glory or plutarch try one of the more recent biographies i did like uh crassus the

00:51:24.340 richest man in rome or pompey the kid butcher uh caesar's friend and and then enemy those are

00:51:31.740 two that i did more recently i always do them in three parts so start with part one fantastic well

00:51:36.720 alex petkus same time it's been a pleasure it's been a pleasure myself talk to you soon

00:51:41.080 my guest name is alex petkus he's the host of the podcast the cost of glory you find it wherever you

00:51:46.980 listen to podcasts you also find more information about his work at his website costofglory.com

00:51:51.120 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash plutarch where you find links to resources we

00:51:55.600 delve deeper into this topic

00:51:56.660 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast the art of manly's website has been around

00:52:07.820 for nearly 17 years now the podcast for almost 11 and they both have always had one aim to help

00:52:13.680 men take action to prove every area of their lives to become better friends citizens husbands and

00:52:18.840 fathers better men if you've gotten something out of the aom podcast please consider giving back by

00:52:23.720 leaving a review or sharing an episode with a friend as always thank you for the continued support

00:52:28.060 and until next time's brett mckay reminding you to listen to the podcast but put what you've heard

00:52:32.600 into action

The Art of Manliness - November 04, 2024

A Bible for Heroes — The Influential Book Read By History's Eminent Men

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