The Art of Manliness - The Roman Caesars' Guide to Ruling

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

00:00:11.380 The Roman Caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC with Julius Caesar's

00:00:16.940 heir Augustus, from whom subsequent Caesars took their name, and lasting until around the fall of

00:00:21.440 the Western Empire in 476 AD. The Caesars transitioned the Roman Republic to autocratic

00:00:27.060 rule, consolidating vast territories under centralized authority and shaping Western

00:00:31.260 governance, law, and culture. Their reign marked one of history's most influential periods,

00:00:36.580 laying the groundwork for modern empires and enduring legacies in political and architectural

00:00:40.600 innovation. They also left behind some instructive leadership lessons in both what and what not to do.

00:00:46.860 Here to unpack some of the Roman Empire's most significant Caesars as both histories and leadership

00:00:50.680 case studies is Barry Strauss, who is a classicist, professor, military historian, fellow at Stanford

00:00:56.600 Hoover Institution, and the author of numerous books, including Ten Caesars.

00:01:01.100 Today on the show, Barry shares how Augustus consolidated power by initially cleaning house,

00:01:05.740 the redeeming quality of the otherwise infamous Nero, the strategies Vespasian and Severus used to gain

00:01:10.980 legitimacy as outsiders, why Marcus Aurelius was an insightful philosopher but struggled as an emperor,

00:01:17.140 the emperor under whose rule the empire began its decline, what constantly understood about the

00:01:21.080 idea that if you want things to stay the same, everything must change, and much more.

00:01:24.940 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash Caesars.

00:01:41.400 All right, Barry Strauss, welcome back to the show.

00:01:44.380 Thank you, Brett. It's great to be back.

00:01:46.020 So we had you on last time, this is in 2019, to talk about your book, Masters of Command.

00:01:51.680 It's about leadership lessons from some of ancient history's greatest commanders, Alexander the Great,

00:01:56.880 Hannibal, and Caesar. You had a book out that came out a while back ago called Ten Caesars,

00:02:02.920 where you look at the age of Caesars and you highlight 10 significant ones in that history.

00:02:09.860 What made the particular emperors you focus on in your book stand out as the most influential or

00:02:15.680 instructive for modern readers?

00:02:18.480 A great question. So on the one hand, I wanted to focus on change agents and emperors who were

00:02:26.540 consequential, who were, to use modern terminology, not just transactional leaders, but transformational

00:02:33.340 leaders. And then to a certain extent, just basic showmanship, I wanted to choose emperors that

00:02:38.660 were interesting to write about and that would be fun to read about. And I decided to set chronological

00:02:46.100 limits. I began with Augustus, who we typically call the first of the Roman emperors. And I ended

00:02:52.740 with Constantine, who's the first Christian emperor and who establishes the city that was destined to

00:02:59.240 outstrip Rome and become the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople. I could have started

00:03:04.180 earlier with Julius Caesar, as Suetonius does, and I could have gone on later at least to 476,

00:03:11.620 the last of the Roman emperors in the West. I do have a coda about that in the book, or even to the

00:03:17.180 Byzantine Empire to 1453, as Gibbon does. But I decided that it would make a nicer and more compact

00:03:23.840 and coherent story if I went from Augustus to Constantine.

00:03:26.820 And going back to that idea, you're looking for transformative figures. This is one of the

00:03:31.700 things I love about your books. They're kind of Plutarchian in a sense.

00:03:34.620 Oh, thank you.

00:03:35.320 You show the history, but then you subtly extract lessons that even someone who lives in the 21st

00:03:41.280 century, and they're not an emperor, you can learn something about character and how to lead or how to

00:03:46.700 deal with change or how to deal with setbacks. And you do this in this book. And I hope we can flesh

00:03:51.540 out some of those ideas you talk about in the book. But let's talk about, you mentioned, you started

00:03:56.300 with Augustus. He's considered the first emperor, but you mentioned Julius Caesar. All the other

00:04:01.800 emperors that followed him took their name from this guy. He never was officially an emperor,

00:04:08.080 yet he laid the groundwork for the Roman Empire. So let's talk about him a little bit. How did his

00:04:12.640 actions and innovations set the stage for the age of Caesar's?

00:04:16.840 It's a great question. Caesar didn't see himself as an emperor. He saw himself as a Republican Roman

00:04:24.780 politician, the first man in Rome, the greatest of the Romans in his day. And from his point of view,

00:04:31.980 as a result of the opposition, the unfair opposition he faced in his quest to hold the consulship for a

00:04:38.840 second time, he was forced into a civil war in which he was such a successful commander that he defeated

00:04:45.360 all his enemies and ended up being the supreme power in Rome, the dictator, eventually the dictator

00:04:52.020 in perpetuity. So Julius Caesar, I'd see him rather as the last of the Roman Republicans than the first 0.57

00:04:59.680 of the emperors. After he had won the civil war and defeated all his enemies, he was at a loss as to

00:05:06.960 what to do and how he would govern in Rome. How would he work with what was left of the Republican

00:05:13.500 institutions? And it's clear that he toyed with different possibilities. He famously toyed with

00:05:18.860 the idea of being known as a king, as a rex, and he explicitly denied that he wanted that title.

00:05:25.380 And in some sense, it's a sign of his uncertainty of what to do that he decided to leave Rome and go

00:05:31.880 off on a grand expedition to the east to conquer Dacia, what's now Romania, and then to make war in the 0.71

00:05:37.560 Parthian Empire and perhaps conquer a part or all of it. But of course, he was assassinated on March 15th,

00:05:46.780 the Ides of March, 44 BC, before he could ever go off on this expedition and before it could become

00:05:53.260 clear how he was going to rule in Rome, how he was going to govern within the framework of the Roman

00:05:59.780 Republic or whether he was going to change that framework. There were many things up for grabs. And that was

00:06:05.480 the situation after his death that in not too long a time, in short order, led to another and another

00:06:12.580 civil war. And when the smoke finally cleared about 15 years later, it left Octavian, his adopted son,

00:06:21.780 his great nephew, his grandnephew, his sister, sister, son. It left Octavian as the last man standing

00:06:27.740 as the supreme leader in Rome. And he had to figure out now what? Now how are we going to put the pieces

00:06:34.120 together again? Okay, let's talk about Octavian. So he's now known as Augustus. Yes. He's basically

00:06:40.740 the guy, he transformed Rome from a republic to an empire. That's right. What did he do to make that

00:06:45.700 transformation? Well, the first thing he did was to deny that it was even happening. He said that Rome

00:06:52.980 remained a republic and he issued coins and other propaganda, the slogan of which was res publica

00:06:59.220 restituta, which can either mean the republic has been restored or the republic has been renovated.

00:07:05.040 He learned his lesson from Caesar who had offended some of the old guard by his flirtation with being

00:07:11.360 a king. And he denied that he was a king. He insisted that he was nothing more than the first citizen.

00:07:18.320 This is a title that had not really existed before, but he called himself the first citizen.

00:07:23.880 And he ruled through holding a series of republican offices. Now these offices were not designed to be

00:07:32.080 held in perpetuity, much less to be combined in the purview of any one man. But Octavian did this.

00:07:39.580 He had the power of a Roman tribune. He had the power of a Roman consul, the power of imperium,

00:07:45.240 of command, as it was called. But he also ruled informally. And he was able to do this because

00:07:52.760 he had a very bloody rise to power. In these years of civil wars between 44 and 30 BC, he's responsible

00:08:03.480 for a number of battles and for the execution of about 100 Roman senators. The Roman elite suffers

00:08:11.040 greatly in these civil wars and Roman masses do as well. But one of the reasons for Octavian's success

00:08:18.160 is that he's killed off a lot of his enemies. And there's a lesson here. It's a lesson that

00:08:23.060 Machiavelli would write about a long time afterwards in The Prince. And that is, if you want to be a

00:08:28.060 successful ruler, start hard. Start by coming down on your rivals and enemies hard. God forbid you have

00:08:36.700 to kill them, as Octavian did. But make it clear who's boss and make it clear what you will and won't 0.98

00:08:43.980 tolerate. And then after that, become generous and become more gentle. So Octavian, once he achieves

00:08:53.020 supreme power, he has himself given a new name, a new title by the Senate. And that is the reverend

00:08:59.160 or the revered one. And in Latin, that's Augustus. That's a title that had never existed before in Rome,

00:09:06.880 just as princeps first, from which we get our word prince. And it only existed within the Senate.

00:09:13.180 There was an unofficial, prestigious person called the Princeps Sonatus, the first of the Senate.

00:09:19.420 But Octavian is experimenting. He's working out a new constitution that can rule Rome while trying

00:09:28.460 to create the legal fiction, maintain the fiction that Rome's still a republic, and it's not a monarchy

00:09:33.640 at all. This is a way to win friends and influence people, as we might say. And it's quite successful.

00:09:40.580 A scholar famously called it legal revolution. Legal revolution. It's a revolution that looks to

00:09:46.580 the past. It claims to be merely preserving or renovating the past rather than innovating. And

00:09:52.440 it works quite well. And he also dramatically expanded the reach of the empire as well.

00:09:58.560 Yes. He added new territories to the empire. Now, a successful Roman politician was expected to be

00:10:06.820 a military commander as well as, you know, a figure in the forum, a speaker, a negotiator in Roman

00:10:14.260 politics. Augustus himself was not a great general, but he had great generals working for him. And he was

00:10:21.020 able to add Egypt to the empire, a very wealthy, prosperous and important place. He was also able

00:10:29.120 to extend Roman rule in Europe. He conquered Northwestern Spain. And he also added roughly

00:10:36.520 Switzerland to the Roman empire as well. He attempted to add Germany, Western and Central Germany to the

00:10:44.720 empire. And that's a famous failure. His armies are defeated in a brilliant ambush, probably the most

00:10:51.000 successful act of resistance by those the Romans attempted to colonize the most successful act of 0.91

00:10:57.200 all time, or one of the one or two most successful ones. And in the year 9 AD, the Roman legions are

00:11:03.280 defeated at the Tudorberger woods by a man named Arminius. Three legions are decimated. That's about

00:11:10.360 one-tenth of the legionary manpower that Rome had. So very significant loss. And Augustus is reduced

00:11:18.640 to crying, give me back my legions. So yes, he expands the empire, but it's not as successful as he had

00:11:26.120 hoped. Why did he take on the name Caesar? Well, he took on the name Caesar for a variety of reasons.

00:11:34.300 Now, Caesar was an aristocratic name. It was the name from a Roman patrician family. It was as Roman as

00:11:41.100 Roman could be. Octavian himself, his father was not a member of the Roman nobility. Instead, he was a

00:11:49.480 member of the provincial elite. He came from a town that was about 25 miles south of Rome. And through

00:11:58.820 his mother's side, Octavian was part of the family of the Caesars. But from his father's side, he was not

00:12:05.740 all that noble and important. And the Romans were a very elitist society, extremely conscious,

00:12:13.700 acutely conscious of social status. And they would have looked at Gaius Octavius as this man was born.

00:12:20.540 Augustus was born at the title of Gaius Octavius. It's coming from a second-rate background, not really

00:12:26.280 one of us, as the Roman nobility would have said. So he is adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar. When

00:12:32.780 Caesar's will is opened, it says that he offers adoption to his grandnephew, Gaius Octavius,

00:12:38.320 completely illegal by Roman law, by the way. There's no such thing as posthumous adoption.

00:12:43.780 But this is a time of civil war when people are willing to bend the rules and then some.

00:12:49.460 Taking on the name of Caesar gives him nobility. It makes him a member of the inner circle of the

00:12:56.180 Roman elite. So he's very eager to have this title. And then he marries up. He ends up marrying a

00:13:02.240 woman who comes from the absolutely bluest of blue blood, Livia Drusilla. That's his prize.

00:13:09.560 He has made it now. Little Gaius Octavius from the second-rate nobility of Italy is now as blue-blooded

00:13:17.760 as any Roman could be. At least that's the legal fiction. 0.99

00:13:22.040 Okay. So I get the takeaway there from sort of like, if you want to be a change agent in an

00:13:25.960 organization, so his philosophy of go hard in the beginning, be brutal in the beginning,

00:13:30.340 then be generous. So like, I mean, if you come in as a new boss, right away, maybe you have to just

00:13:35.120 like, here's the rules that we're going to do. Here's how we're going to do it my way. And if

00:13:38.080 you're not on my way, then you're out of here. Get out of here. And then afterward, you can be a 0.57

00:13:42.360 little bit more generous kind of. Yes. You have to be more generous afterwards, but you have to start

00:13:46.800 out tough. You can't start out nice. And then also, I think the takeaway from him is you have to

00:13:51.080 think about PR, public relations, right? Yes. You have to say, hey, you know, he was saying like,

00:13:57.540 we're still going to be a republic, but really you're actually making an empire.

00:14:02.100 Absolutely. It's legal revolution. It's change with a friendly face. Augustus was a master of that.

00:14:09.520 And the Romans were extremely good at propaganda. The other thing about it is that even when Augustus

00:14:16.400 was generous, it was always the iron fist beneath the velvet glove. There was a velvet glove,

00:14:23.120 but he was always willing to use force when necessary. He just tried to use it very, very

00:14:28.660 sparingly so he wouldn't make enemies unnecessarily. The Caesar that followed him was a guy named

00:14:34.480 Tiberius. How did Tiberius differ from Augustus? Well, Tiberius, like Augustus, was a man of vision

00:14:41.540 and a man of immense talent. But unlike Augustus, he didn't have the gentle touch. He wasn't great

00:14:50.040 at propaganda. It may be significant that unlike Augustus, he does not come from the Italian

00:14:55.740 nobility. He also is an utterly blue-blooded member of the Roman nobility. And he faces life

00:15:02.680 with a certain amount of arrogance, my way or the highway. He doesn't start his reign by cleaning

00:15:09.900 house the way Augustus had done. He tries to be a kinder, gentler emperor. And it doesn't work.

00:15:18.300 He meets resistance from the Senate. After all, there are still many people in the Senate who at

00:15:23.520 least remember the name of the Republic, if not the reality of the Republic. They're too young for that.

00:15:29.340 And they were hoping that after Augustus, things would go back to the way they had been in the late

00:15:33.840 Republic, that they wouldn't have a monarch. But they were rudely disappointed. They had a rude

00:15:39.680 awakening under Tiberius. And Tiberius finds himself forced to engage in treason trials. He expands

00:15:47.860 and abuses the Roman law of treason to get rid of his enemies in the Senate.

00:15:53.560 So yeah, he started out love, but he ended his reign hated, basically.

00:15:57.080 Yes, he hated. He also has a hatchet man named Sejanus. And Sejanus, not a member of the nobility,

00:16:04.520 but Sejanus has very high hopes of becoming a member of the nobility and even becoming emperor.

00:16:10.880 And he turns on Tiberius. He's plotting against Tiberius. And it's only through the help of members

00:16:16.680 of his extended family that Tiberius is awakened to the danger at the 11th hour. And he has Sejanus

00:16:23.400 purged. So he maintains his power, but he is hated. As you say, he's a bitter old man. He's no longer

00:16:32.240 living in Rome. He lives on the island of Capri. We call it Capri. And he's ruling from a distance.

00:16:38.480 He's ruling long distance. So it's not very successful. It's a pity because like Augustus,

00:16:43.220 he's a man of vision. And Tiberius's vision is, to put it in contemporary terms, if I might,

00:16:49.260 to end endless wars. So he pulls back from Germany and he makes it clear that under his rule, 0.62

00:16:55.920 Rome is a satiated power. Rome is no longer going to expand. And that was probably good advice for

00:17:03.360 Rome at the time. The Romans needed to pull back. They needed to have peace on the frontier. And

00:17:09.100 they also couldn't afford to have the political challenge of having generals going out, winning

00:17:16.060 victories, and then marching on Rome and wanting themselves to be emperor. It was a recipe for

00:17:21.260 instability as they had seen under Caesar, Sulla, Marius, and Pompey. So it's a pity that Tiberius,

00:17:28.500 with his vision for how Rome should rule abroad, fell afoul of the Senate and fell afoul of domestic

00:17:34.740 politics. So in a sense, it's a lesson in what not to do. Yeah. So Nero was one of the emperors

00:17:42.260 that followed Tiberius. He's one of the most infamous Roman emperors. Yes. What's the actual story

00:17:47.240 behind that old adage? Nero fiddled while Rome burned. I think everyone's heard that. Did it

00:17:52.360 actually happen? Not technically. Nero did not fiddle. The fiddle hadn't been invented yet.

00:17:58.520 There were rumors that during the great fire of Rome in the summer of 64 AD, that Nero stood on the

00:18:07.340 terrace of his palace overlooking the fire. And he took out his lyre, this instrument, this harp-like

00:18:14.080 instrument that he played and sang about the fall of Troy. Nobody knows if this rumor is true or not.

00:18:22.200 It certainly is true that when the fire began, Nero was at a seaside villa outside of the city,

00:18:28.200 and he was in no particular rush to come back to Rome and oversee the relief efforts and the effort

00:18:34.180 of putting out the blaze. It was also rumored that Nero had actually set the blaze because he wanted

00:18:41.320 to engage in a massive urban renewal project. We don't know if this rumor is true or not,

00:18:47.620 but there are certain scholars, some of my colleagues, believe it is true. We just don't

00:18:52.280 know. When he came back to Rome after this infamous fiddling episode, he did throw himself into the

00:18:58.480 relief efforts, making sure the fire brigades did their job, making sure that Romans were fed and

00:19:04.340 cared for and those that had lost their houses had a place to live. And then he engages in this

00:19:09.000 amazing building boom, remaking the heart of Rome. A large part of it becomes this enormous palace.

00:19:17.240 We call it today Nero's golden house. It's not what it was called in antiquity.

00:19:21.900 It's a huge palace or set of palaces. It's a campus really with parks that were open to the public and

00:19:28.140 artificial lake, so on and so forth. It was very grand, but there were many people who were suspicious

00:19:33.840 that Nero had either set the blaze or winked at it in order to have the excuse to rebuild the city.

00:19:41.140 So it sounds like he did make some positive contributions to the Roman Empire, the rebuilding

00:19:44.900 process. You could say that was a good thing.

00:19:47.560 It was a good thing. Also like Tiberius, he was opposed to starting new wars. Rome had perennial

00:19:54.960 rivalry in the east, but the other great empire of the ancient world in this period, the Parthian

00:20:00.740 empire. It is a new version of the older Persian empire and early Iranian empire. And the Romans 0.92

00:20:07.600 and the Parthians had fought. They'd fought several wars already. And Nero, through strength,

00:20:14.380 through a show of force in the east, without actually going to war, he is able to reach an

00:20:19.620 agreement with the Parthians, a satisfactory agreement that saves face on both sides and keeps

00:20:25.540 the peace. So to that extent, Nero is a good emperor. On the other hand, he is squeezing the

00:20:31.320 provinces and the provincial misbehavior by governors, who he encouraged to abuse the

00:20:38.180 provincials and squeeze money out of them. That leads to a great revolt in Judea. It becomes known as

00:20:44.640 the Jewish War, the Great Revolt, that ultimately ends up with Nero being forced from office, having to

00:20:51.120 commit suicide. And it's only settled, the war's only settled in a later reign. So in many ways,

00:20:57.980 Nero is a failure. His personal life is scandalous. The worst part of it is that he arranges for the

00:21:04.260 murder of his own mother. So he is a matricide, a truly terrible man in many ways. 0.95

00:21:11.200 And you also talk about the way that Nero differed from some of the previous emperors,

00:21:15.060 like Augustus or Tiberius. He didn't really have like a bigger vision for the empire itself.

00:21:22.600 It seems like he was more interested in like just the personal celebrity of being the emperor.

00:21:28.340 And he did some kind of weird things to promote his own celebrity.

00:21:32.960 Yes, he was supremely egotistical and he was very vain about his singing ability and also about his

00:21:40.620 ability to race chariots. And so unlike some emperors who would travel around the empire in

00:21:47.200 Tiberius's case when he was a younger man to fight for Rome, and Tiberius was a great general. In Augustus's

00:21:53.280 case, both to fight but also to tour around the empire to make sure that he showed the flag to examine

00:22:01.320 provincial conditions. Nero instead goes on this grand tour of Greece. He was a Philhellene. He loved 0.93

00:22:08.720 Greek culture. And the Greeks had these famous pan-Hellenic games. Every year there was a

00:22:14.700 different one, but they were festivals of athletics and of poetry and singing. And Nero forced the poor

00:22:21.320 Greeks to have all the games in the same year. He competed in every event or in many events. And

00:22:27.380 guess what? He won every event in which he competed. It is a supreme act of irresponsibility

00:22:33.460 and egotism that he does this instead of governing the empire.

00:22:37.880 It reminded me of some business owners or startup founders who, you know, yeah, they're working on

00:22:44.380 the business, but I think they enjoy the celebrity of being a founder more than actually working on

00:22:50.540 the business. That's what it reminded me of. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I agree. That's how he comes

00:22:56.280 off. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:23:02.460 And now back to the show. An overlooked emperor is, make sure I get his name right, Vespasian?

00:23:09.200 Vespasian, yes. Yeah, Vespasian. He's overlooked often, but you argue he was one of Rome's best

00:23:14.440 emperors. So let's talk about that. What did he do during his reign? I'm not sure I'd say he's one of

00:23:19.140 Rome's best, but he's certainly one of Rome's most consequential. So he comes to power in a civil war.

00:23:24.640 He is a military man who, like Augustus, did not come from a noble family. In fact,

00:23:30.080 unlike Augustus, he had no connection to a Roman family. He's the first completely 1.00

00:23:35.120 non-noble person to become emperor, and he starts a new dynasty. So he's sent by Nero to put down the 0.52

00:23:42.080 revolt in Judea, and he's relatively successful when, in the middle of it, Nero is forced out in a coup.

00:23:49.300 He commits suicide. There's a new emperor, and Vespasian decides to cease military operations

00:23:56.560 until the smoke clears. Then that new emperor is forced out in a coup, and then there's another

00:24:02.460 coup. There are three different emperors while Vespasian is still in the east, biding his time,

00:24:08.900 seeing what's going to happen. And then he decides that if they can be emperor, so can he. And so he

00:24:14.460 has the troops declare him emperor, and he sends armies off to Italy to fight in this civil war,

00:24:21.300 to fight his way to the throne. And ultimately, they're successful, and he goes back to Italy,

00:24:27.040 and he becomes the emperor, the first emperor who does not come from the dynasty, the family of

00:24:33.980 Augustus' family. So he has a real tough job. How can he have legitimacy in the eyes of the Romans 0.99

00:24:41.940 and in the eyes of the Roman elite? And part of the importance of the Roman elite, the senate above

00:24:47.500 all, but also the equestrians, or the knights as they're called, these are the people who have the

00:24:53.620 talent, the ability, the education, the experience to actually run the empire. You need them on your

00:24:59.580 team. You can't throw them all out. And so Vespasian wants to show to them, as well as to the Roman 0.95

00:25:06.440 people, that he is worthy of being emperor. And like Augustus, he started hard. He started in a

00:25:13.220 bloody civil war, fighting his way to the throne. But now he wants to show that he is soft and that

00:25:20.140 he will give the Romans good government. So he does what Augustus had done. He becomes a great builder.

00:25:27.420 He builds all sorts of things in the city of Rome to brand the city of Rome,

00:25:31.540 to rebrand it as a monument to his dynasty. One of the reasons he becomes emperor's is that he

00:25:38.600 conveniently has two sons. That means that although he himself is not a young man, it means he will be

00:25:44.700 succeeded by competent men who will replace him and ensure that there is a period of stability.

00:25:51.360 His most famous building is the most famous building from ancient Rome. The Colosseum was built

00:25:58.020 under Vespasian to be this grand arena for gladiatorial games and for the beasts, as the

00:26:05.920 Romans called them, for the killing of animals for sport and for executions. Grim sorts of stuff that

00:26:12.500 the Romans did. Immensely popular. But it's also built as a victory monument. It's a victory monument 0.76

00:26:18.680 to his success in Judea. Vespasian and his son Titus put down the revolt. They destroy the rebels.

00:26:25.820 They destroy the rebel capital of Jerusalem. They destroy the Jewish temple. And they bring 1.00

00:26:30.760 loot, enormous amount of loot back to Rome. And the Colosseum is dedicated as a victory monument to

00:26:37.640 this. Originally, above the entrance, there is a sculpted relief of Vespasian in his chariot

00:26:44.420 that he rode in the triumph that he celebrated in Rome after his success. So there are many other

00:26:51.320 things that they built in the city. But this iconic Roman monument, as I said, probably the

00:26:56.840 most famous monument from Roman antiquity. What do you attribute his effectiveness to?

00:27:02.540 Well, again, he starts out tough. He had gotten rid of all his enemies and made it clear,

00:27:08.380 don't mess with me. F-A-F-O, as they say nowadays. And then he brought a period of peace and stability

00:27:18.200 and prosperity. He was actually a good manager and he had very talented people on his team working for

00:27:23.720 him. He knew that he was building a dynasty. He also was in many ways a humble man. He didn't

00:27:29.400 suffer from the problems that Tiberius or Nero did. He was not a member of the nobility. He wasn't born

00:27:35.480 with a silver spoon. Far from it. He had to prove himself to the Roman people. And he understood what

00:27:41.040 it was to be relatively humble. There's a famous story that Vespasian levies attacks on public 0.88

00:27:48.240 latrines. And his younger son, the future emperor Domitian, says to him, father, this is beneath our

00:27:54.320 dignity to raise money from public toilets. And Vespasian is said to have replied, son, money has

00:28:01.740 no smell. I think it's a sign of the kind of down to earth person that he was and his ability to be

00:28:09.680 pragmatic and do what was necessary to be a successful ruler. Well, speaking of that tax on

00:28:15.160 the urinals, there's a bit of trivia and you mentioned this in the book. Urinals today with

00:28:20.320 the Romance languages like Italian or French, they call them Vespasianos in Italy. They're named after

00:28:26.700 him. Yes, it's called the Vespasiano in Italy and Vespasian in French. So yeah, it's ironic the poor

00:28:33.840 guy is remembered in connection with public toilets. Maybe not what he had in mind.

00:28:40.000 Let's talk about Marcus Aurelius. I know our listeners are familiar with Marcus Aurelius,

00:28:43.580 thanks to his stoic meditations that he wrote. But what was he like as an emperor?

00:28:48.460 Well, you know, he's a great philosopher and not such a great emperor. He comes to the throne with

00:28:54.400 a disability, and that is that his predecessor, Antoninus Pius, basically confined him to quarters.

00:29:01.300 He had grown up and become a mature man with virtually no experience outside of Italy and

00:29:08.540 virtually no military experience. He reminds me a little bit of George W. Bush. He comes into

00:29:14.080 office saying, I want to be a domestic emperor. I want to use my term to give Rome good government

00:29:19.880 and to dispense justice in a philosophical and equitable manner. Instead, the poor guy is stuck

00:29:27.680 with a series of crises, external crises. Rome has two great enemies. As I mentioned, in the east,

00:29:33.920 there's the rival Parthian Empire. And in the west, there's these series of Germanic peoples who had

00:29:40.660 kicked Rome out of most of Germany in the year nine at Tudorberger Woods. And since then, 0.69

00:29:46.940 they had become more organized. They had consolidated some of the tribes into smaller ones.

00:29:52.120 Marcus Aurelius' reign begins with the enemies on both of the frontiers kicking Rome in you-know-what

00:29:59.900 and putting Rome in a very difficult situation. On top of that, there is a tremendous epidemic that

00:30:07.260 strikes the empire. It comes from the east, and it is devastating. It's quite devastating. So Marcus

00:30:14.760 Aurelius has to deal with these two wars, and he has to deal with the plague, people call it. It's not

00:30:20.900 plague. It's some kind of virus. We're not entirely sure what, but devastating results. And Marcus

00:30:28.040 Aurelius has to deal with all of this, restore order on the frontiers, which he's able to do.

00:30:34.180 But this is not his wheelhouse. It's a tremendous strain for him to do this, and he's not able to

00:30:40.080 become the domestic emperor that he had wished. I think that a more experienced general would have

00:30:46.120 been able to handle these crises much better than Marcus Aurelius did, and more rapidly than he did.

00:30:53.180 He's also faced with a rebellion in the east. One of his generals rises up in rebellion against him,

00:30:59.920 a very competent man. Luckily for Marcus, the general is assassinated by one of his subordinates

00:31:07.080 relatively early in the day. Otherwise, he might have been in great trouble. He was in such trouble

00:31:13.360 that his wife did business with the rebel general. And supposedly, she wrote compromising

00:31:19.480 letters to the rebel general saying, you know, as long as you promise that my son can one day

00:31:24.700 succeed his father, I will not stand in the way of your becoming emperor. So Marcus Aurelius had a lot

00:31:31.540 on his plate. He has to spend a certain amount of his reign on the northern frontier, much of it in what

00:31:38.940 is today Budapest, a charming city nowadays. But in the second century AD, not such a great place,

00:31:46.420 kind of the back of beyond, miserable climate from the Roman point of view. And it's there on the 0.97

00:31:52.740 frontier that he writes what becomes known as the Meditations, where he writes his thoughts about life.

00:31:59.400 A man who was, you know, devoted to his duty. He had hoped to annex two new provinces in what is

00:32:08.820 nowadays the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, but he fails. He dies on the frontier, perhaps a victim

00:32:17.180 of the epidemic himself. It keeps coming back. And he is unfortunately replaced by his son,

00:32:24.840 who turns out to be one of Rome's worst emperors. Yeah, we'll talk about his son here in a bit.

00:32:30.180 I think it's interesting that he wrote the Meditations while he's out on the frontier in these wars.

00:32:34.620 And if you read the Meditations, it's just a lot of him, you know, he wasn't writing this for the public.

00:32:39.480 It was like personal diaries, but it's him struggling with the burden of power. You can tell this guy

00:32:44.860 really didn't like being emperor. No, he was a man of philosophical bent, but he also was a Roman

00:32:51.680 who had a strong sense of duty. It's interesting from that point of view that he doesn't write the

00:32:56.440 Meditations in Latin. He writes them in Greek. Now, Greek was the philosophical language of antiquity

00:33:02.800 par excellence, but there had been Roman philosophy in Latin. There'd been Cicero and Seneca and the very

00:33:09.780 philosophical poem of Lucretius on the nature of things, De Rera Naturum. But Marcus Aurelius writes it

00:33:17.360 in Greek, partly because the Greek language was very much in fashion in his day. And perhaps partly

00:33:23.700 because, as you say, he wasn't Charlie Haprius emperor. He wanted to draw a line between his

00:33:31.320 rule as emperor and his thought as a philosopher. So this very famous book of a Roman emperor,

00:33:37.960 The Meditations, is ironically written in Greek.

00:33:41.180 What would you say is the takeaway lesson for Marcus Aurelius if you look at his career as an

00:33:47.760 emperor? The takeaway lesson is, first of all, it is not a good idea to hand the reins of power over

00:33:54.800 to someone who has no experience ruling. I think this is one of the problems with the Roman system 0.93

00:34:00.200 that many emperors are jealous of prospective successors and they do not train them. I think

00:34:06.520 another lesson, to put it the same thing in a different way, is you have to prepare for the

00:34:10.880 succession. You really do. There have been many rulers in history who have been very, very successful,

00:34:16.440 but they are afraid of what their successors might be. They kill off all potential successors. Nero is

00:34:22.560 one of them. He killed off anyone in his extended family who might possibly be competent to replace him

00:34:28.640 because he was afraid of being killed in a coup d'etat. And Marcus Aurelius' predecessor,

00:34:35.080 perhaps not so much out of fear of being killed as out of rank jealousy, he does not prepare Marcus

00:34:42.400 Aurelius for the reins of power. I think it's also a bad idea to think that you get to choose

00:34:48.420 whether you're going to be a domestic leader or a foreign leader. Events, as a British prime minister

00:34:55.580 once said, events get in the way. And Marcus Aurelius is a prime example of how events get in the way.

00:35:02.760 You've got to be prepared on all fronts and for all things.

00:35:07.380 So after Marcus Aurelius, he's kind of considered like, isn't he considered like the last of the good

00:35:10.920 emperors?

00:35:11.880 Yes.

00:35:12.320 Yeah. So the empire begins to decline. Do you think he played a role in that decline or would that have

00:35:18.060 happened even if there was another good emperor in his place?

00:35:21.360 Well, the empire was going to be faced with these frontier problems on the east and the west.

00:35:27.180 The Roman empire was a balancing act. It was a huge empire about the size of the continental United

00:35:33.120 States, very complicated with the Mediterranean Sea in the middle and various different terrains

00:35:38.340 and people speaking different languages. And it had these two great rivals in the east and the west.

00:35:43.540 So it had a huge military burden. That meant high taxes, but it also meant the danger of political

00:35:48.980 instability. And the only way you could pay for all of this was inflation. So there was constant

00:35:55.420 inflation in the Roman empire. And then there were these series of epidemics that would come

00:36:00.880 through. One of the worst ones under Marcus Aurelius, but certainly not the only one. So it's really

00:36:06.920 tough to keep the empire going. Marcus Aurelius' mistake was that he was too devoted a father and he gave

00:36:14.620 the reins of power to his son Commodus. Commodus is the first man in Roman history after 200 years of

00:36:21.340 the empire, who was born to the purple. He was born to be emperor. His father was already the heir to

00:36:27.640 the throne when Commodus was born. So there was never any doubt about it. His mother was the daughter

00:36:33.280 of the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius. And as you might expect, Commodus grows up, what is the word?

00:36:41.580 Arrogant, entitled, irresponsible. He is not someone who's learned in the school of hard knocks. So unlike 0.54

00:36:49.680 Octavian Augustus, unlike Vespasian, he doesn't know what you need to do to rule. He expects he's

00:36:56.940 going to have it all his way. And so he becomes a very irresponsible emperor. The first thing he does

00:37:02.300 is he gives up the war. War is boring, not interested in war. War is hard. He makes peace

00:37:08.120 on the German frontier. He gives up his father's dream of annexing two new provinces and he goes back

00:37:14.300 to Italy. He's popular because he spends a lot of money on bread and circuses, as a Roman poet once

00:37:20.140 called it, on popular entertainment. But he's a tyrant. He kills a lot of senators. He is violent. 0.85

00:37:27.580 He is undignified from the Roman point of view. He competes as a gladiator. He portrays himself as the

00:37:34.000 second coming of Hercules. And it drives the Roman elite crazy. They're also afraid for their own necks

00:37:40.340 with this tyrant in power. And ultimately, they depose him. They have him killed as a plot

00:37:46.100 in which he is executed by an insider. And then civil war breaks out again. This is not a year of

00:37:55.740 four emperors, but it is several years of five emperors, a series of pretenders to the throne,

00:38:02.560 war east and west and all over the empire. And in one particularly humiliating incident,

00:38:09.080 one claimant to the throne is forced to auction it off before the Praetorian guards, or actually two

00:38:16.120 claimants who are auctioning off the nod from the Praetorian guard, these armed troops on the edge of

00:38:23.620 the city of Rome who protect the emperor. And the Praetorian guard gives the nod. He's not the one who

00:38:30.100 gets the throne in the end. In the end, it's a lawyer turned general from Roman North Africa

00:38:36.240 who gains the throne and starts a new dynasty, a man named Septimius Severus.

00:38:42.080 Well, let's talk about this guy because he's interesting. He's an outsider. So he's from North

00:38:45.740 Africa. He married a Syrian woman.

00:38:49.180 That's correct.

00:38:49.900 Yeah. So he was not from Italy, not from Rome, but he's able to, you know, assert himself. So how

00:38:57.300 was an outsider like him able to rise to Rome's highest position?

00:38:59.900 Right. Well, he's very much an outsider. He comes from North Africa, from what is today Libya.

00:39:05.660 He is partly descended from Italian colonists. He may also be partly of African descent. It's

00:39:12.300 unclear. The sources are unclear about this. Certainly the Romans called him an African,

00:39:17.260 but they also called anyone from North Africa an African. There's other reasons to suspect he may be

00:39:23.100 partly of African descent. As you say, he marries a Syrian and, you know, their children are part

00:39:29.680 Syrian, part North African. Wow. This is wild. How does he do it? Well, partly like Augustus or like 0.99

00:39:36.140 Vespasian, he does it in a civil war. He's as nasty as you can get. He kills off a lot of people 1.00

00:39:41.300 and he makes it clear who's the boss. But once he comes and also he kills off a lot of senators, 0.97

00:39:48.760 he's not a friend of the Senate. He rules with an iron fist, but he pays a lot of attention to the

00:39:56.960 military. He's one of Rome's most military leaders and under him and his successors, Rome is well on

00:40:04.480 the way to becoming a military dictatorship, even less of a republic than had been under the earlier

00:40:11.020 emperors with the Senate having even less power and respect than it had previously. That being said,

00:40:17.720 Septimius Severus was also a builder, as was his son Caracalla. Unlike Tiberius, he is one of these

00:40:25.140 emperors who wants to be a conqueror. And he does so both in the east and the west. In the east,

00:40:32.240 he conquers what is now more or less Iraqi Kurdistan, so northern Iraq and part of Turkey and part of

00:40:40.340 Syria. And he adds it to the Roman Empire as a new province in the east. This is a real feather in 0.70

00:40:45.880 the Roman cap. It's a very wealthy place, very important on the trade routes, the Silk Road

00:40:50.760 from the east, and also very prestigious to have a win of victory against the Parthians who had 1.00

00:40:57.240 formally controlled this area. And it would go back and forth in later years. In the west,

00:41:02.340 he's not as successful. He attempts to conquer Scotland and he fails. He dies in northern England

00:41:08.160 in what is now the city of York. And he is said to tell his sons on his deathbed, you know,

00:41:14.240 be good to each other and always pay the soldiers. Above all, pay the soldiers. And that is partly

00:41:22.140 the secret of his success. He's a military man and he uses the military to stay in power.

00:41:28.580 He and his successors create a garrison south of the city of Rome on the Appian Way. They create a

00:41:35.240 legionary garrison. They establish a legion outside of Rome. And this is sending a message to the Roman 0.75

00:41:41.720 political elite. We will not hesitate to use the legion to crush any opposition. So it's turning

00:41:49.300 the empire into a more brutal, it's turning Roman government into a more brutal, more military form

00:41:54.760 of government than the Romans had known before. And Gibbon, I think it's Gibbon who said this is the

00:42:00.620 beginning of the decline and fall of Rome. This real step away from a combination of military and civilian

00:42:06.760 government to a purely military government.

00:42:09.100 Something stood out to me about Septimus was his wife played a pretty big role in his reign. Like you talk

00:42:16.540 about this throughout the book, like women, while they didn't have official positions in the empire, 1.00

00:42:22.760 behind the scenes, they were pulling levers. You know, Nero's mother was a perfect example of that.

00:42:27.360 But this guy's wife, she actually played a pretty influential role. And it was obvious

00:42:32.460 to people that, okay, this lady, she's kind of in charge too. 1.00

00:42:37.960 Yes. And especially after his death, when the empire passed to his son, the rule passed to his son,

00:42:45.080 Caracalla, she held an official position. She was basically in charge of his correspondence. So

00:42:51.180 enormously powerful. And this would not have sit well with a lot of Romans. I mean,

00:42:56.960 they were male chauvinists, let's face it. So not as much so as some ancient empires or some

00:43:02.540 ancient civilizations. But there had been very powerful women before, but they tended to 1.00

00:43:07.940 sugarcoat it. And in her case, her name was Julia Domna, which is a name redolent of power. 1.00

00:43:14.560 She didn't even sugarcoat it.

00:43:16.060 All right. Let's talk about the last emperor you discussed, Constantine. And it's funny,

00:43:20.300 you mentioned this in the book that I do this a lot. I always forget that Constantine

00:43:24.860 was an ancient Roman emperor. I always think of Constantine as a medieval, but he wasn't.

00:43:30.580 So Constantine, he converted to Christianity famously. How did his embrace of Christianity 0.99

00:43:36.340 change Roman society?

00:43:40.020 Well, it changed it enormously. So we have to understand Constantine as a response to the 50 0.97

00:43:45.760 years of crisis that bedeviled Rome in the mid third century, third century AD. This is

00:43:51.740 between about 235 and 285 series of invasions, epidemics, inflation, urban collapse. Things go

00:44:00.580 really badly and a series of revolving door emperors and assassinations instability. And

00:44:07.080 these emperors are mostly soldier emperors. They come from the military ranks. They are not civilians

00:44:11.520 by and large. The day is saved by a series of military reformers and economic and political

00:44:18.060 reformers as well. And the basic conclusion that they reach is that for the empire to survive,

00:44:23.640 it's got to change. It's got to fundamentally change. It's got to become more military. It's got

00:44:28.940 to become more rigid. People's status has to be fixed in a way that it hadn't been before. It's got to

00:44:35.800 collect more taxes because the military is going to be more expensive, the new military. And it's got to be

00:44:42.840 more tyrannical, more dictatorial in the way that it rules. The emperor is truly going to have to become

00:44:50.300 a dominus, a master who's recognized in ways that previous emperors hadn't been. Now, the Romans were 0.69

00:44:57.820 very religious people. They really were. They were pagans, but they believed that to have a successful

00:45:02.760 country, you had to have what they called pax deorum, the peace of the gods. You had to have the gods on

00:45:08.860 your side. And they were convinced that the reason the gods were not on their side, the reason Rome had

00:45:13.980 these years of crisis, was that the gods were no longer on their side. So what are you going to do?

00:45:19.420 Ceres' emperors had different solutions. One of them, a man named Aurelian, thought the solution is to

00:45:24.940 get a new god, the sun god. We've got to worship the sun. And Constantine's father and young Constantine

00:45:31.600 himself were initiated into that religion. It was the religion of their commander, the emperor.

00:45:37.060 His successor, a man named Diocletian, said, no, it's not the sun god. We've got to do two things.

00:45:42.880 First, we've got to reinstate the Olympian gods, Jupiter and Juno and all the traditional Roman gods.

00:45:50.660 We've got to double down on our worship of them. And secondly, we've got to get rid of the atheists 1.00

00:45:56.160 who are getting us in trouble with the gods. And they considered the chief atheists to be the

00:46:00.360 Christians because the Christians denied that the Olympian gods even existed. They only recognized 0.94

00:46:06.880 one god. And so Diocletian starts a great persecution, the great persecution of the 0.94

00:46:13.620 Christians. It's infamous and it's a flop. It doesn't succeed. He is not successful in wiping 1.00

00:46:21.140 out Christianity. If anything, the staunchness of Christian resistance on the part of some and

00:46:25.840 the creation of martyrs makes the church stronger than ever. Enter Constantine, who comes to the

00:46:31.700 conclusion that Diocletian had it backwards. He was right. You needed a new religion. You needed 1.00

00:46:37.420 to reestablish peace with the gods. But the way to do it is to become Christian and to encourage all

00:46:43.660 Romans to become Christian. So he wins power in a civil war, actually in a series of civil wars. 0.82

00:46:50.080 And he's the first Christian emperor. And under him begins the process of Christianizing the emperor. 0.58

00:46:55.660 It takes about a century to most of the empire is Christian because Christianity is a minority 0.99

00:47:01.000 religion. And some pagans hold on to their own old faith for a long time. But ultimately,

00:47:07.260 Constantine is successful in doing this. How did he make that transition? Because, okay,

00:47:13.940 he's a pagan and pagans, they, you know, violence was part of their worldview, right? It was like kind

00:47:19.280 of might makes right. But with Christianity, it was like, well, nonviolence, right? He's supposed to 0.96

00:47:23.240 turn the other cheek. And he was a guy who understood the power of violence and force,

00:47:30.040 and he would use it. So how did he kind of fuse his Christian beliefs with the realities of being

00:47:36.760 emperor? I mean, Constantine, as you know, is a saint of the Orthodox Church. So one wants to approach

00:47:43.980 him with a certain amount of respect and dignity. And I think in a way he compartmentalized. On the one

00:47:50.900 hand, he is an old Roman pagan who's all about conquest and violence and force and using the 1.00

00:47:56.600 levers of power. One of the ways that he spreads Christianity is in the Western part of the empire, 0.55

00:48:03.600 he has issued the edict of Milan, this edict of toleration of all religions. But he never issues

00:48:10.240 that in the Eastern part of the empire. And what he does is he starves the temples. There's no longer

00:48:15.820 government support for the pagan temples. So they can't put on their festivals. They can't have 1.00

00:48:20.620 all their expensive sacrifices. If you want to have a religious experience, you now have to go to a

00:48:26.600 church, which he is now richly endowing. He's using imperial resources to support the church.

00:48:32.660 I think that from the Christian point of view, Constantine is a good Christian, A, because he's

00:48:36.860 a believer, and B, because he spreads the religion. You know, he is a great advocate of the church and

00:48:43.740 plays the absolutely key role in Christianizing the empire. Constantinople, the new Eastern capital,

00:48:50.620 is going to be a largely Christian city. And even Rome, Constantine realizes that he cannot 1.00

00:48:57.280 rebrand downtown Rome as a Christian city. It's simply too pagan. So instead, he rebrands the 0.98

00:49:03.660 suburbs of Rome as a Christian city. And he builds, for example, great churches on the site of martyrdoms,

00:49:09.940 where there are martyr shrines. And the two great ones that he builds are the Lateran Church,

00:49:15.260 which is the metropolitan church of Rome, on one side of the city. And on the other side of the city,

00:49:20.480 St. Peter's, in the Vatican. And by design, they're not built downtown, because that's pagan land. 0.99

00:49:27.080 They're built on the outskirts of the city to have a new Christian Rome. Constantinople is different. 0.91

00:49:32.740 You can make it Christian in the center. 0.85

00:49:36.040 How did his reign set the stage for the medieval era?

00:49:39.140 Well, you know, that's a good question. In the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History,

00:49:44.600 it ends with this image of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, this general church council

00:49:51.200 that he establishes to try to settle some disputes about Christian doctrine. And the Cambridge Ancient

00:49:58.120 History ends with saying, with the scene of Constantine at the council, surrounded by his

00:50:03.900 bishops, the Middle Ages begins. It's wonderful drama. I think it's exaggeration. But with Constantine,

00:50:11.280 we have this image that the state is now going to establish itself with a different ideology,

00:50:18.780 a non-pagan ideology. It's still going to be Roman, but it's going to be Christian. And this

00:50:23.240 is a revolution. It's one of the major revolutions in human affairs, an enormous historical revolution.

00:50:29.760 It was a long time coming. I know Christianity had been around for 300 years about when this happens.

00:50:36.740 But Constantine is one of these visionaries, one of these decisive visionaries who says,

00:50:43.960 in effect, and here I'm quoting one of my favorite lines from the novel, The Leopard,

00:50:48.760 if we want things to stay the same, everything has to change. And Constantine understands that,

00:50:54.840 that in a way underlines his philosophy. Who want things to stay the same, everything has to change.

00:51:00.060 So we have to have a new religion. We'll still be Roman, but we won't worship the gods in the same 0.95

00:51:05.860 way. We'll have radical change in the way that we worship the gods. And this ends up creating radical

00:51:11.600 changes in Roman society as well, changes that in some ways do represent the Middle Ages. Now,

00:51:18.100 the Middle Ages are a lot more complicated than that. But this is a very crucial change that undergirds

00:51:24.240 so much of what happens in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. And the idea that an empire needs to

00:51:30.660 have an imperial religion. That's not new. The Romans had an imperial religion. It's called the

00:51:35.260 cult of the Caesars, the worship of the emperor. And there are other attempts at imperial religions,

00:51:41.800 but with Christianity and with the creation of this new infrastructure, with the bishoprics,

00:51:48.740 and I guess I'll use the word infrastructure again, this elaborate and immensely effective

00:51:55.000 infrastructure of churches and bishops and charitable institutions and educational institutions.

00:52:02.580 Wow. It's just an immense, immense change. So the Western Roman empire lasted about 500 years,

00:52:10.640 give or take. I mean, that's like one of the longest running empires ever in human history.

00:52:14.620 What do you attribute its longevity to? And are there any lessons there for

00:52:19.380 would-be institution builders and maintainers? Yeah, it lasts even longer, really, if we say that

00:52:25.280 it was established under the republic. And it's certainly in place by the year 200 BC. God give

00:52:32.020 it more like 700 years. So there are a number of lessons. First of all, Roman culture is extremely

00:52:37.940 pragmatic. And if you want to be a successful empire, you can't afford to be hidebound and ideological.

00:52:43.640 You need to be pragmatic. You need to embrace change. By the same token, you need to have a set

00:52:50.620 of doctrines that you live by. And these doctrines have to be portable, but also non-negotiable.

00:52:57.460 So there are core Roman values, but there's also the willingness to make change and to learn from

00:53:03.240 other people, to learn from the people you conquer. Christianity is not invented by the Latin-speaking

00:53:09.060 elite of the city of Rome. Christianity begins in Judea, a rebellious province, and it spreads in 0.90

00:53:14.800 the Greek East before it ever comes to the West. And I think the adoption of it is just a sign of 0.99

00:53:21.440 Roman pragmatism. But there's so many other signs of Roman pragmatism over the years. Another reason

00:53:28.280 for the Roman success is they're great engineers. They are great road builders. They're great city

00:53:33.280 builders. They're great bridge builders. And they are very disciplined. And they're also

00:53:39.140 tremendously good at militarism. They are one of the most successful examples of a military in human

00:53:45.000 history. And that is no small part of their success. Let me also give a nod to Roman openness.

00:53:54.440 The Roman Empire, the longevity of the Roman Empire would have been inconceivable without the willingness 0.79

00:54:00.140 of the Romans to open the doors and bring new people into the elite. Sometimes it's only done 0.63

00:54:07.060 kicking and screaming. And it takes centuries for it to happen. But the elite that Rome starts out with

00:54:13.640 is nothing like the elite that it ends up with. I mean, you know, Julius Caesar is a member of an old

00:54:21.040 Roman patrician family that goes back centuries. Constantine has a father who came from what is now

00:54:27.700 Serbia and a mother who now came from what is now Western Turkey. And supposedly she was a barmaid 0.98

00:54:32.960 in her father's hotel when Constantine's father met her. We don't know if that's true, but that's a story

00:54:40.120 that's told. It's only a society that's very self-confident and willing to open the door to

00:54:45.500 outsiders, to newcomers that will succeed. But by the same token, a society that doesn't say,

00:54:51.660 anything goes, anything's okay. No, they have Roman values. And if you want to be a successful

00:54:57.260 newcomer, you have to adopt some of those values. You have to assimilate to certain Roman norms.

00:55:04.020 Well, Barry, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:55:06.940 and your work?

00:55:07.800 So I have a website, barrystrauss.com. They can find out about me and my work there. You're reminding me

00:55:14.740 that I have to update it. And let me say that I have a new book coming out. It's going to be

00:55:19.400 coming out in August. It's called Jews versus Rome, two centuries of rebellion against the world's 0.89

00:55:25.660 mightiest empire. And it tells the story of these two centuries of revolt, Jewish revolt against Rome

00:55:32.280 that are tremendously exciting and bloody and awful, but also very productive because these are the

00:55:38.940 centuries in which Christianity and rabbinic Judaism are both born. So out of these revolts come 0.98

00:55:44.900 enormously consequential changes for human history, they also show a long-term role of Iran and Iranian 1.00

00:55:53.000 civilization in what we now think of as the Mediterranean world. So I'm very excited about

00:55:58.180 this book and I hope my readers will be as well. All right. Well, Barry Strauss, thanks for your time.

00:56:02.100 It's been a pleasure.

00:56:03.380 My pleasure. Thank you, Brett.

00:56:04.440 My guest today is Barry Strauss. He's the author of the book, 10 Caesars. It's available on amazon.com

00:56:09.680 and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:56:12.800 barrystrauss.com. Also check out our show notes at awim.is slash Caesars, where you find links

00:56:17.360 to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:56:26.580 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:56:30.080 artofmanliness.com. You can find our podcast archives. And while you're there, sign up for

00:56:33.700 our newsletter. We've got a daily option and a weekly option. They're both free. It's the best

00:56:37.560 way to stay on top of what's going on at AOM. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it

00:56:41.160 if you take one minute to use a review of a podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done

00:56:45.000 that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or fan member who would think

00:56:48.700 of something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:56:52.980 Remind you to our list of the AWIM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:57:00.080 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - December 16, 2024

The Roman Caesars' Guide to Ruling

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